The Saturday Profile: Leading the Tunisian Agency That Once Jailed Him

TUNIS — It was the first time Ali Laarayedh had inspected a prison cell, but even then, as the interior minister, his old instincts kicked in.

“I turned around to see who would shut the cell door on me,” he said in his quiet manner.

But no one bolted the door. For Mr. Laarayedh had experienced a profound reversal of fortune, mirroring that of the Islamist political party that he helped found. Jailed numerous times in the Interior Ministry as a political prisoner, he now runs the very security agency that once sent him to death row.

His memory of the cells remains vivid. “Even though they are on the ground floor,” he said, “once you are inside them you have the impression that you have entered a cave.”

Mr. Laarayedh, 57, speaking in his office at a considerable distance above the cells, argued that his grueling prison experiences make him a better minister, sensitive to the abuse of power and the need for not just Tunisia, but all Arab states, to bend their omnipotent secret police to the rule of law.

Others are not convinced of his commitment to the law, at least not in the Western style. Mr. Laarayedh was imprisoned repeatedly, including all the years from 1990 to 2004, for being a founding member of the Renaissance Party, or Ennahda in Arabic, the Islamist political party that dominates Tunisia’s first elected post-revolutionary government.

Many in the opposition suspect that when men like Mr. Laarayedh talk about the rule of law, they mean Shariah, or Islamic law, a Koran-based code that is often at odds with Western standards of justice. The minister has also been widely criticized for the level of violence the police still unleash to squelch protests.

The interior minister is one of at least eight cabinet ministers, about one-third of the total, who spent significant chunks of their adult lives behind bars, often in solitary confinement. Some Tunisians believe that a country struggling with unemployment and political upheaval would be better off run by technocrats rather than veteran prisoners lacking real-world experience.

After one notorious episode on Sept. 14, when the American Embassy was sacked, critics mocked Mr. Laarayedh mercilessly for saying essentially that security forces had protected the embassy’s front door, but unfortunately the marauders entered through the back. Since that melee, which left four people dead, the police have been unable to apprehend Seifallah Ben Hassine, the leader of the puritanical Salafi movement, who is wanted for helping to inspire it.

In the interview, the minister said his forces were overwhelmed that day by a lack of equipment, including armored vehicles needed to protect the police. On the larger issue of governance, he argued that Tunisia was better off in the hands of those who sacrificed for change.

“We have to choose people who can break with the past and put the country on the path to democracy and a state of law,” said Mr. Laarayedh. “If we go back to the old, to the people with experience, nothing will change.”

He prefers not to detail his own imprisonment, saying that political detainees of all stripes had to endure the same terrible physical and mental torture. Many died or lost their minds, he said; as for himself, his physical scars are not visible, so it is better to focus on the revolution. When pressed, however, he revealed some contained anger.

“One of the worst forms of torture is when they leave you all alone,” he said. “When you pound on the iron door, if you are sick or you need something, and you can pound all night and they do not respond. Believe me, that is the worst contempt and the worst violence that I experienced. They take you for a mouse or a fly, or for nothing at all. You do not exist. You are not even worth being beaten. Do you understand? You are not even worth being beaten.”

He can put that behind him, he said, mostly because the revolution succeeded. “I realized all my objectives — a dictator fell, a democracy for which I gave my life was born and Tunisians are masters of their own destiny,” he said.

Mr. Laarayedh said he worried more about the effect his long absences had on his wife, a medical technician, and his three children, as he dedicated his life to political activism.

After obtaining a degree in maritime engineering in 1980, he worked for the government for only a year before going underground. He had odd jobs like teaching math in private schools, and he even got married in 1983 while on the run. His long years in and out of prison began around 1987.

Those years instilled in him the need for Tunisia to reach an equilibrium, he said, for a government able to curb the excesses of both the religious zealots and the liberals. Each camp accuses him of coddling the other.

“I don’t want the state to be hostage to either of these extremist tendencies,” he said.

He denied that the Renaissance Party worked in collusion with the more puritanical Salafis, who have staged a series of violent protests against art galleries and other liberal institutions. “We try to compromise between modernity, with all its values, and our own authenticity, our Arab Muslim identity,” he said, whereas the Salafis create “an antagonism between the present and the past.”

Some activists, particularly women, remain skeptical. Tunisia had perhaps the most progressive Arab gender laws for decades, and they believe that the Renaissance Party is shrinking the public space for women. They had hoped for something different given that while underground, the Islamists had emphasized the universal rights of man.

Olfa el-Alem, a political organizer, noted that despite repeated promises to investigate police violence against demonstrators, no results had been publicized.

“I thought the day they gained their liberty they would let others have their freedom as well,” said Ms. Alem, referring to the Renaissance leaders.

Mr. Laarayedh and other Renaissance leaders suggested that they lack full control over the levers of state. Mr. Laarayedh said Tunisians cannot yet take their nascent democracy for granted.

“This used to be Ben Ali’s desk!” he said, beaming, as he showed a visitor his office. Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, the leader deposed by the January 2011 revolution, was prime minister when he seized the presidency in a bloodless 1987 coup.

Perhaps the best testament to the fact that democracy will emerge from Tunisia’s ferment, Mr. Laarayedh said, is that he now sits at that desk.

“It is a miracle,” he said. “If you want to look for irrefutable evidence that there was a revolution here, it is that someone condemned to death by this very ministry has become the minister.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 26, 2013

An earlier version of this article misidentified the title held by Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali when he seized the presidency in 1987. He was prime minister, not interior minister.

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Digital Domain: Republic Wireless’s Plan Melds Wi-Fi and Network Calling

AN Android smartphone with unlimited calls, unlimited texting, unlimited data and no contract, all for $19 a month? Really?

When I first saw this offer from Republic Wireless, I rubbed my eyes and looked for an asterisk leading to fine print that detailed a huge catch. But Republic, a division of a telecom company called Bandwidth.com, delivers exactly what it advertises. It can do so because the handset technology is a curious hybrid: it uses Wi-Fi when the customer is in a Wi-Fi area and Sprint Nextel’s 3G network when it is not.

The concept brings together the best of two worlds: the low cost of voice calls carried over the Internet and the convenience of making calls to any phone number using a major carrier’s cellular network when Wi-Fi isn’t available.

In my own case, on a typical day, I use my mobile phone mostly when I’m not actually mobile: I’m either at home or at work, perfectly positioned to use Wi-Fi at both locations. And I don’t even use the phone as a phone all that much. I use it mainly for e-mail and texts, neither of which requires enough bandwidth to benefit from the power of the fastest data networks.

If you walk into a Verizon Wireless store and buy an iPhone 5, you’ll pay $60 or more a month for an unlimited talk and texting plan, depending on the data allocation for Internet use that you select to go with it. Some of that monthly charge goes toward repaying the carrier for the discounted price that makes a $649 iPhone seem as if it costs only $200. But most of the charge is for gaining access to the carrier’s wireless network.

“We were looking at a mobile industry that had begun to charge extraordinary amounts of money, and we saw an industry opportunity that everybody else was missing: Wi-Fi is the new mobile,” says David Morken, co-founder and chief executive of Bandwidth, based in Raleigh, N.C.

Smartphone apps that offer voice calls using data plans, not minutes allocated for calls, are plentiful. Just last month, Facebook quietly added an option that lets users of the iPhone version of Facebook Messenger place free voice calls to other Messenger users. But using those apps to make a call means the recipient has to run the same app, an irksome requirement that never comes up when using phones alone.

Republic buys access to Sprint’s network on a wholesale basis for calls made outside of Wi-Fi areas. Its business model assumes, however, that Wi-Fi carries the load a majority of the time its phones are used. The company says that its service, even at $19 a month, is a profitable operation on a per-customer basis.

“We don’t have to force people, or even ask people, how to behave,” Mr. Morken says. “Over 60 percent of the time that the phone is being used, on average, our users are using Wi-Fi and that number is only going up.”

Last month, I tested a Republic handset, a Motorola Defy XT. It’s a light smartphone with a small screen, acceptable sound quality and great battery life.

Republic’s Web site gently warns against acting like a “data hog” and encourages its customers to “play nice and try to use Wi-Fi as much as you can.” But scolding isn’t needed: Wi-Fi is faster than 3G, so users have an incentive to opt for Wi-Fi wherever it is available.

The Motorola handset is the only one now offered by Republic, and it costs $259. The phone runs an older version of Android, and it has some first-generation glitches, like losing a connection when a caller starts out on a Wi-Fi network and then leaves the coverage area. (With a click, the call is resumed using Sprint’s cellular network.)

Today most Wi-Fi access requires a logon. But that shouldn’t prove a great inconvenience: you can simply set up the phone once with Wi-Fi at home, then once more at the office. At other locations, users can ignore Wi-Fi availability and use 3G instead.

Mr. Morken says a solution to the Wi-Fi-to-cellular handoff problem has been worked out in the company’s lab, and should be available midyear. Later this year, he also expects to offer more handset models, including one at the high end; he says they will run the latest version of Android.

Matt Carter, president of the Global Wholesale and Emerging Solutions division at Sprint, asserted that the company was happy to serve as Republic’s supplier. When I asked whether Republic’s Wi-Fi-centric model, with its drastically lower price to the consumer, would pose a serious threat to the incumbent carriers, including Sprint, he said, “If the world operated based on just economic decisions, people wouldn’t go buy the most expensive cars on the planet, right?”

Mr. Carter listed reasons that most consumers would prefer the wireless service obtained directly from a major carrier: a wider range of devices and the convenience of placing a call without having to tinker with Wi-Fi setup.

Republic “will resonate with a sliver of the marketplace,” Mr. Carter said. He compared wireless carriers to the major airline carriers, which still control a majority of the market despite low-priced upstarts like JetBlue or Southwest, which he described as appealing only to “a certain segment of the population.”

Philip Cusick, a J.P. Morgan analyst who covers telecommunications, says he doesn’t expect a major shift of customers to Republic Wireless. The price difference isn’t as great as it first appears, he says, when one considers that 80 percent of customers of AT&T and Verizon are on family or employer-related discount plans.

MR. MORKEN of Bandwidth.com says he knows that his company must lower the price of its handset — the industry rule-of-thumb for no-contract wireless services is that a simple handset cannot cost more than $99 and a smartphone, $149. But if Republic can offer me an Android phone with a generously sized screen for a reasonable price, I don’t see why, with Wi-Fi available at work and home, I should continue to pay an expensive-sports-car price for my wireless service.

“There’s a reason why the carriers around the world don’t want you using Wi-Fi for voice and text,” Mr. Morken says. “You will soon realize you shouldn’t have to pay what you’re paying today.”

Randall Stross is an author based in Silicon Valley and a professor of business at San Jose State University. E-mail: stross@nytimes.com.

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Religious Groups and Employers Battle Contraception Mandate

Shawn Thew/European Pressphoto Agency

President Obama, with his health secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, offering a compromise on the contraception mandate last year.

In a flood of lawsuits, Roman Catholics, evangelicals and Mennonites are challenging a provision in the new health care law that requires employers to cover birth control in employee health plans — a high-stakes clash between religious freedom and health care access that appears headed to the Supreme Court.

In recent months, federal courts have seen dozens of lawsuits brought not only by religious institutions like Catholic dioceses but also by private employers ranging from a pizza mogul to produce transporters who say the government is forcing them to violate core tenets of their faith. Some have been turned away by judges convinced that access to contraception is a vital health need and a compelling state interest. Others have been told that their beliefs appear to outweigh any state interest and that they may hold off complying with the law until their cases have been judged. New suits are filed nearly weekly.

“This is highly likely to end up at the Supreme Court,” said Douglas Laycock, a law professor at the University of Virginia and one of the country’s top scholars on church-state conflicts. “There are so many cases, and we are already getting strong disagreements among the circuit courts.”

President Obama’s health care law, known as the Affordable Care Act, was the most fought-over piece of legislation in his first term and was the focus of a highly contentious Supreme Court decision last year that found it to be constitutional.

But a provision requiring the full coverage of contraception remains a matter of fierce controversy. The law says that companies must fully cover all “contraceptive methods and sterilization procedures” approved by the Food and Drug Administration, including “morning-after pills” and intrauterine devices whose effects some contend are akin to abortion.

As applied by the Health and Human Services Department, the law offers an exemption for “religious employers,” meaning those who meet a four-part test: that their purpose is to inculcate religious values, that they primarily employ and serve people who share their religious tenets, and that they are nonprofit groups under federal tax law.

But many institutions, including religious schools and colleges, do not meet those criteria because they employ and teach members of other religions and have a broader purpose than inculcating religious values.

“We represent a Catholic college founded by Benedictine monks,” said Kyle Duncan, general counsel of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which has brought a number of the cases to court. “They don’t qualify as a house of worship and don’t turn away people in hiring or as students because they are not Catholic.”

In that case, involving Belmont Abbey College in North Carolina, a federal appeals court panel in Washington told the college last month that it could hold off on complying with the law while the federal government works on a promised exemption for religiously-affiliated institutions. The court told the government that it wanted an update by mid-February.

Defenders of the provision say employers may not be permitted to impose their views on employees, especially when something so central as health care is concerned.

“Ninety-nine percent of women use contraceptives at some time in their lives,” said Judy Waxman, a vice president of the National Women’s Law Center, which filed a brief supporting the government in one of the cases. “There is a strong and legitimate government interest because it affects the health of women and babies.”

She added, referring to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Contraception was declared by the C.D.C. to be one of the 10 greatest public health achievements of the 20th century.”

Officials at the Justice Department and the Health and Human Services Department declined to comment, saying the cases were pending.

A compromise for religious institutions may be worked out. The government hopes that by placing the burden on insurance companies rather than on the organizations, the objections will be overcome. Even more challenging cases involve private companies run by people who reject all or many forms of contraception.

The Alliance Defending Freedom — like Becket, a conservative group — has brought a case on behalf of Hercules Industries, a company in Denver that makes sheet metal products. It was granted an injunction by a judge in Colorado who said the religious values of the family owners were infringed by the law.

“Two-thirds of the cases have had injunctions against Obamacare, and most are headed to courts of appeals,” said Matt Bowman, senior legal counsel for the alliance. “It is clear that a substantial number of these cases will vindicate religious freedom over Obamacare. But it seems likely that the Supreme Court will ultimately resolve the dispute.”

The timing of these cases remains in flux. Half a dozen will probably be argued by this summer, perhaps in time for inclusion on the Supreme Court’s docket next term. So far, two- and three-judge panels on four federal appeals courts have weighed in, granting some injunctions while denying others.

One of the biggest cases involves Hobby Lobby, which started as a picture framing shop in an Oklahoma City garage with $600 and is now one of the country’s largest arts and crafts retailers, with more than 500 stores in 41 states.

David Green, the company’s founder, is an evangelical Christian who says he runs his company on biblical principles, including closing on Sunday so employees can be with their families, paying nearly double the minimum wage and providing employees with comprehensive health insurance.

Mr. Green does not object to covering contraception but considers morning-after pills to be abortion-inducing and therefore wrong.

“Our family is now being forced to choose between following the laws of the land that we love or maintaining the religious beliefs that have made our business successful and have supported our family and thousands of our employees and their families,” Mr. Green said in a statement. “We simply cannot abandon our religious beliefs to comply with this mandate.”

The United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit last month turned down his family’s request for a preliminary injunction, but the company has found a legal way to delay compliance for some months.

Read More..

Religious Groups and Employers Battle Contraception Mandate

Shawn Thew/European Pressphoto Agency

President Obama, with his health secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, offering a compromise on the contraception mandate last year.

In a flood of lawsuits, Roman Catholics, evangelicals and Mennonites are challenging a provision in the new health care law that requires employers to cover birth control in employee health plans — a high-stakes clash between religious freedom and health care access that appears headed to the Supreme Court.

In recent months, federal courts have seen dozens of lawsuits brought not only by religious institutions like Catholic dioceses but also by private employers ranging from a pizza mogul to produce transporters who say the government is forcing them to violate core tenets of their faith. Some have been turned away by judges convinced that access to contraception is a vital health need and a compelling state interest. Others have been told that their beliefs appear to outweigh any state interest and that they may hold off complying with the law until their cases have been judged. New suits are filed nearly weekly.

“This is highly likely to end up at the Supreme Court,” said Douglas Laycock, a law professor at the University of Virginia and one of the country’s top scholars on church-state conflicts. “There are so many cases, and we are already getting strong disagreements among the circuit courts.”

President Obama’s health care law, known as the Affordable Care Act, was the most fought-over piece of legislation in his first term and was the focus of a highly contentious Supreme Court decision last year that found it to be constitutional.

But a provision requiring the full coverage of contraception remains a matter of fierce controversy. The law says that companies must fully cover all “contraceptive methods and sterilization procedures” approved by the Food and Drug Administration, including “morning-after pills” and intrauterine devices whose effects some contend are akin to abortion.

As applied by the Health and Human Services Department, the law offers an exemption for “religious employers,” meaning those who meet a four-part test: that their purpose is to inculcate religious values, that they primarily employ and serve people who share their religious tenets, and that they are nonprofit groups under federal tax law.

But many institutions, including religious schools and colleges, do not meet those criteria because they employ and teach members of other religions and have a broader purpose than inculcating religious values.

“We represent a Catholic college founded by Benedictine monks,” said Kyle Duncan, general counsel of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which has brought a number of the cases to court. “They don’t qualify as a house of worship and don’t turn away people in hiring or as students because they are not Catholic.”

In that case, involving Belmont Abbey College in North Carolina, a federal appeals court panel in Washington told the college last month that it could hold off on complying with the law while the federal government works on a promised exemption for religiously-affiliated institutions. The court told the government that it wanted an update by mid-February.

Defenders of the provision say employers may not be permitted to impose their views on employees, especially when something so central as health care is concerned.

“Ninety-nine percent of women use contraceptives at some time in their lives,” said Judy Waxman, a vice president of the National Women’s Law Center, which filed a brief supporting the government in one of the cases. “There is a strong and legitimate government interest because it affects the health of women and babies.”

She added, referring to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Contraception was declared by the C.D.C. to be one of the 10 greatest public health achievements of the 20th century.”

Officials at the Justice Department and the Health and Human Services Department declined to comment, saying the cases were pending.

A compromise for religious institutions may be worked out. The government hopes that by placing the burden on insurance companies rather than on the organizations, the objections will be overcome. Even more challenging cases involve private companies run by people who reject all or many forms of contraception.

The Alliance Defending Freedom — like Becket, a conservative group — has brought a case on behalf of Hercules Industries, a company in Denver that makes sheet metal products. It was granted an injunction by a judge in Colorado who said the religious values of the family owners were infringed by the law.

“Two-thirds of the cases have had injunctions against Obamacare, and most are headed to courts of appeals,” said Matt Bowman, senior legal counsel for the alliance. “It is clear that a substantial number of these cases will vindicate religious freedom over Obamacare. But it seems likely that the Supreme Court will ultimately resolve the dispute.”

The timing of these cases remains in flux. Half a dozen will probably be argued by this summer, perhaps in time for inclusion on the Supreme Court’s docket next term. So far, two- and three-judge panels on four federal appeals courts have weighed in, granting some injunctions while denying others.

One of the biggest cases involves Hobby Lobby, which started as a picture framing shop in an Oklahoma City garage with $600 and is now one of the country’s largest arts and crafts retailers, with more than 500 stores in 41 states.

David Green, the company’s founder, is an evangelical Christian who says he runs his company on biblical principles, including closing on Sunday so employees can be with their families, paying nearly double the minimum wage and providing employees with comprehensive health insurance.

Mr. Green does not object to covering contraception but considers morning-after pills to be abortion-inducing and therefore wrong.

“Our family is now being forced to choose between following the laws of the land that we love or maintaining the religious beliefs that have made our business successful and have supported our family and thousands of our employees and their families,” Mr. Green said in a statement. “We simply cannot abandon our religious beliefs to comply with this mandate.”

The United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit last month turned down his family’s request for a preliminary injunction, but the company has found a legal way to delay compliance for some months.

Read More..

Factory Fire Kills 7 Workers in Bangladesh

A.M. Ahad/Associated Press

Firefighters and volunteers worked to extinguish the fire at a small garment factory in Bangladesh’s capital on Saturday.

DHAKA, Bangladesh — In the latest blow to Bangladesh’s garment industry, seven workers died on Saturday after a fire swept through a factory here not long after seamstresses had returned from a lunch break. Workers said supervisors had locked one of the factory exits, forcing some people to jump out of windows to save their lives.

The fatal fire comes roughly two months after the horrific blaze at the Tazreen Fashions factory, which left 112 workers dead and focused global attention on unsafe conditions in Bangladesh’s garment industry. Tazreen Fashions, located just outside Dhaka, the capital, had been making clothing for some of the world’s biggest brands and retailers, including Walmart.

In the aftermath of the Tazreen Fashions fire, Bangladeshi political and industrial leaders pledged to quickly improve fire safety and even conducted high-profile, nationwide inspections of many of the country’s 5,000 apparel factories. Global brands, meanwhile, promised consumers that they would not buy clothes from unsafe factories.

But Saturday’s fire in a densely populated section of Dhaka, is a grim reminder that the problems remain. The blaze erupted at about 2 p.m. at Smart Garment Export, a small factory that employed about 300 people, most of them young women who were making sweaters and jackets. All seven of the dead workers were women.

Masudur Rahman Akand, a supervisor in the Bangladesh Fire Department, said workers were returning from lunch when the blaze erupted in a storage area. The factory was located on the second-floor of a building, above a bakery, and it lacked proper exits and fire prevention equipment, Mr. Akand said.

“We did not find fire extinguishers,” he said. “We did not find any safety measures.”

With smoke filling the factory floor, workers apparently panicked. Mr. Akand said the seven workers who died either suffocated or were trampled by others trying to escape. Eight other workers were hospitalized with injuries. Workers told rescuers that many people could not quickly escape because one of the exits was blocked by a locked steel gate. Witnesses said people began jumping out of windows before the gate was finally unlocked.

Azizul Hoque, a police supervisor, said investigators initially suspected that the fire was caused by an electrical short circuit in a room where fabrics and materials were being stored. But Mr. Hoque said the investigation was continuing.

“We do not know the reason or the source or the origin of the fire,” he said.

It was unclear whether the Smart Garment factory was making clothing for international brands or retailers. Dhaka’s industrial areas are filled with factories, large and small, that produce clothing for much of the Western world. Bangladesh is now the world’s second-biggest exporter of apparel, trailing only China.

An American delegation with four members of Congress arrived in Dhaka on Saturday to meet with political leaders and garment industry executives for a discussion of trade issues, including efforts by Bangladesh to win tariff-free access to the American market for the country’s clothing exports.

Julfikar Ali Manik reported from Dhaka, and Jim Yardley from New Delhi.

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U.S. Envoy Apologizes for Ship’s Grounding on Philippine Coral Reef

Philippine Western Command, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The Guardian, a Navy minesweeper, hit the Tubbataha Reef about 80 miles east of the Philippine island of Palawan on Jan. 17.

MANILA — The United States ambassador to the Philippines apologized Friday for the grounding of an American naval ship on a reef in a marine sanctuary, the latest in a string of embarrassing episodes for the United States military in the country at a time when the administration is pushing a “pivot” to Asia and the American military has increased its presence in the Philippines.

“I wish to convey to the Philippine government and people my profound regret over the grounding of the U.S.S. Guardian on Tubbataha Reef,” the American ambassador, Harry K. Thomas Jr., said in a statement issued Friday about the Jan. 17 accident that left the ship listing in the water.

The area struck by the minesweeper is a Unesco World Heritage site, and is described by the organization as “a pristine coral reef” that is home to more than 350 species of coral and almost 500 types of fish.

“This is the collateral damage from the U.S. military presence in our country,” said Bobby Tuazon, the director of policy studies at the Center for People Empowerment in Governance, based in Manila. “What were they doing there in the first place? This is a World Heritage site.”

The minesweeper crashed into the reef after a refueling stop at Subic Bay and as it was on its way to Indonesia, according to the Navy. The Navy has said the ship was using digital navigation charts that turned out to be faulty, according to a preliminary review, though an investigation into the cause of the accident is continuing.

Opinion in the country on the increased military presence, which includes port visits by naval ships, is split. President Benigno S. Aquino III has welcomed it as a counterbalance to what is viewed by many Filipinos as aggressive actions by China in the South China Sea. The Philippines and China have multiple overlapping territorial claims in the area and the two countries have engaged in tense maritime standoffs while asserting their sovereignty over contested areas.

But others Filipinos remain wary more than 20 years after the shuttering of the Subic Bay Naval Station, a casualty of the sense among some that the base was a painful reminder of decades of American rule.

The Associated Press reported that the Philippine government wants to fine the Navy for damages and for the entry into a marine sanctuary.

The recent grounding of the naval ship was preceded by other events that have led to renewed criticism of the United States military presence here. On Jan. 6, fishermen in the Philippines recovered an unmanned American drone that had been lost after it was used during American military exercises near the Pacific island of Guam.

Residents on the island of Masbate were initially alarmed by the discovery, fearing that it was an armed drone similar to those used in Afghanistan. But American and Philippine officials quickly clarified that it was an unarmed drone used as an aerial target.

The Philippine Senate is also investigating accusations that an American government contractor dumped about 50,000 gallons of untreated domestic waste from a Navy ship near Subic Bay after joint exercises in October. The former American naval facility, which is frequently visited by American ships, is also a popular Filipino tourist destination for beachgoers.

In the latest episode, the United States Navy minesweeper hit the Tubbataha Reef about 80 miles east of the Philippine island of Palawan, according to a Navy statement.

The full extent of the damage done to the reef by the 224-footship cannot be determined until the vessel is removed, but aerial photos taken by the Philippine military indicate that ship has put a gash in the reef measuring more than half the ship’s length.

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DealBook: Compuware Rejects Elliott's $2.3 Billion Bid

11:46 a.m. | Updated

Compuware said on Friday that its board had rejected a $2.3 billion takeover bid by Elliott Management, arguing that the hedge fund’s offer was too low.

Instead, the business software maker said that it was focused on its own corporate turnaround blueprint, including a three-year plan to cut costs and an effort to spin off its Covisint business communication products arm. It also unveiled plans to pay a 50-cent quarterly dividend, beginning next quarter.

Compuware said that Elliott’s offer of $11 a share, made last month, would not deliver enough value to shareholders, compared to the improvements that its self-help plan would yield.

“We believe that selling the company at $11.00 per share does not take into account our progress returning the business to profitable growth and our future prospects,” Bob Paul, the company’s chief executive, said in a statement.

The decision by Compuware sets up a potential clash with Elliott, which has managed to score some big wins in its battles with technology companies. It bid for Novell, leading the software maker to sell itself to Attachmate for $2.2 billion.

People close to Elliott have argued that the hedge fund was fully prepared to pay the $2.3 billion it had offered for Compuware. But the hedge fund also believed that private equity firms would also express interest.

Though shares in Compuware began rising after Elliott disclosed an 8 percent stake in the company in November, they have remained largely below the $11-a-share offer, implying investor skepticism about a deal being done. The stock closed on Thursday at $10.76.

Jesse Cohn, the Elliott portfolio manager overseeing the hedge fund’s bid, said in a statement: ““This is a good outcome. Compuware has granted our request for access to diligence to confirm an offer for the company. We will immediately reach out to negotiate an appropriate N.D.A. and look forward to moving quickly to engage in diligence with the help of our legal and financial advisors. We remain very interested in the company.”

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Well: Ask Well: Squats for Aging Knees

You are already doing many things right, in terms of taking care of your aging knees. In particular, it sounds as if you are keeping your weight under control. Carrying extra pounds undoubtedly strains knees and contributes to pain and eventually arthritis.

You mention weight training, too, which is also valuable. Sturdy leg muscles, particularly those at the front and back of the thighs, stabilize the knee, says Joseph Hart, an assistant professor of kinesiology and certified athletic trainer at the University of Virginia, who often works with patients with knee pain.

An easy exercise to target those muscles is the squat. Although many of us have heard that squats harm knees, the exercise is actually “quite good for the knees, if you do the squats correctly,” Dr. Hart says. Simply stand with your legs shoulder-width apart and bend your legs until your thighs are almost, but not completely, parallel to the ground. Keep your upper body straight. Don’t bend forward, he says, since that movement can strain the knees. Try to complete 20 squats, using no weight at first. When that becomes easy, Dr. Hart suggests, hold a barbell with weights attached. Or simply clutch a full milk carton, which is my cheapskate’s squats routine.

Straight leg lifts are also useful for knee health. Sit on the floor with your back straight and one leg extended and the other bent toward your chest. In this position, lift the straight leg slightly off the ground and hold for 10 seconds. Repeat 10 to 20 times and then switch legs.

You can also find other exercises that target the knees in this video, “Increasing Knee Stability.”

Of course, before starting any exercise program, consult a physician, especially, Dr. Hart says, if your knees often ache, feel stiff or emit a strange, clicking noise, which could be symptoms of arthritis.

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Well: Ask Well: Squats for Aging Knees

You are already doing many things right, in terms of taking care of your aging knees. In particular, it sounds as if you are keeping your weight under control. Carrying extra pounds undoubtedly strains knees and contributes to pain and eventually arthritis.

You mention weight training, too, which is also valuable. Sturdy leg muscles, particularly those at the front and back of the thighs, stabilize the knee, says Joseph Hart, an assistant professor of kinesiology and certified athletic trainer at the University of Virginia, who often works with patients with knee pain.

An easy exercise to target those muscles is the squat. Although many of us have heard that squats harm knees, the exercise is actually “quite good for the knees, if you do the squats correctly,” Dr. Hart says. Simply stand with your legs shoulder-width apart and bend your legs until your thighs are almost, but not completely, parallel to the ground. Keep your upper body straight. Don’t bend forward, he says, since that movement can strain the knees. Try to complete 20 squats, using no weight at first. When that becomes easy, Dr. Hart suggests, hold a barbell with weights attached. Or simply clutch a full milk carton, which is my cheapskate’s squats routine.

Straight leg lifts are also useful for knee health. Sit on the floor with your back straight and one leg extended and the other bent toward your chest. In this position, lift the straight leg slightly off the ground and hold for 10 seconds. Repeat 10 to 20 times and then switch legs.

You can also find other exercises that target the knees in this video, “Increasing Knee Stability.”

Of course, before starting any exercise program, consult a physician, especially, Dr. Hart says, if your knees often ache, feel stiff or emit a strange, clicking noise, which could be symptoms of arthritis.

Read More..

Court Rejects Recess Appointments to Labor Board

In a ruling that called into question nearly two centuries of presidential “recess” appointments that bypass the Senate confirmation process, a federal appeals court ruled on Friday that President Obama violated the Constitution when he installed three officials on the National Labor Relations Board a year ago.

The ruling was a blow to the administration and a victory for Mr. Obama’s Republican critics – and a handful of liberal ones – who had accused Mr. Obama of improperly claiming that he could make the appointments under his executive powers. The administration had argued that the president could decide that senators were really on a lengthy recess even though the Senate considered itself to be meeting in “pro forma” sessions.

But the court went beyond the narrow dispute over pro forma sessions and issued a far more sweeping ruling than expected. Legal specialists said its reasoning would virtually eliminate the recess appointment power for all future presidents when it has become increasingly difficult for presidents to win Senate confirmation for their nominees. In recent years, senators have more frequently balked at consenting to executive appointments. President George W. Bush made about 170 such appointments, including John R. Bolton to be ambassador to the United Nations and two appeals court judges, William H. Pryor Jr. and Charles W. Pickering Sr.

“If this opinion stands, I think it will fundamentally alter the balance between the Senate and the president by limiting the president’s ability to keep offices filled,” said John P. Elwood, who handled recess appointment issues for the Justice Department during the Bush administration. “This is certainly a red-letter day in presidential appointment power.”

The ruling, if not overturned, could paralyze the National Labor Relations Board, an independent agency that oversees labor disputes, because it would lack a quorum without the three Obama appointments in January 2012.

The ruling’s immediate impact was to invalidate one action by the board involving a union fight with a Pepsi-Cola bottler in Washington State, but it raises the possibility that all the board’s decisions from the past year could be nullified. The decision also casts a legal cloud over Mr. Obama’s appointment that same day of Richard Cordray as the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

A White House spokesman said, “We disagree strongly with the decision” by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, adding that it conflicted with other court rulings and well over a century of government practice. Administration officials did not immediately say whether they would appeal the ruling or wait for other appeals courts to issue decisions in similar lawsuits filed across the country challenging other labor board actions.

The three judges on the appeals court panel, all of them appointed by Republicans, rejected the Justice Department’s argument that Mr. Obama could make the labor board appointments by declaring the Senate’s pro forma sessions during its winter break — in which a single senator came into the empty chamber every three days to bang the gavel — a sham. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives had refused to let the Democratic-controlled Senate adjourn for more than three days.

“An interpretation of ‘the Recess’ that permits the President to decide when the Senate is in recess would demolish the checks and balances inherent in the advice-and-consent requirement, giving the President free rein to appoint his desired nominees at any time he pleases, whether that time be a weekend, lunch, or even when the Senate is in session and he is merely displeased with its inaction,” wrote Judge David B. Sentelle. “This cannot be the law.”

The panel went on to significantly narrow the definition of “recess,” for purposes of the president’s appointment power. The judges held that presidents may invoke their recess appointment power only between formal sessions of Congress – a brief period that usually arises only once a year – rather than during breaks that arise during a session, like lawmakers’ annual August vacations. Two of the three judges also ruled that the president may also only use that power to fill a vacancy that opens during the same recess.

The ruling also called into question nearly 200 years of previous such appointments by administrations across the political spectrum. The executive branch has been making intrasession appointments since 1867 and has been using recess appointments to fill vacancies that opened before a recess since 1823. Among other things, Mr. Elwood noted, it called into question every ruling made by several federal appeals court judges who were installed by recess power.

“You know there are people sitting in prisons around the country who will become very excited when they learn of this ruling,” he said.

Read More..

American Mumbai Plotter Sentenced to 35 Years

CHICAGO (AP) — Minutes before an American was sentenced to 35 years in prison for helping plan an attack on Mumbai, India, one of his victims tearfully pleaded for a harsh punishment despite the terrorist plotter's widespread cooperation with U.S. investigators following his arrest.

David Coleman Headley, 52, shifted uncomfortably in a gray tracksuit and kept his eyes fixed on the Chicago courtroom floor Thursday as he listened to the American children's author describe the violent chaos during her 2008 vacation to India.

Bullets flew past her check and panicked diners dived under tables as gunmen burst into a hotel restaurant, then walked around executing people one by one, recalled Linda Ragsdale, at times almost shouting as she stood just a few feet from Headley during the sentencing hearing.

"I know the sweet sickening smell of gunfire and blood," said Ragsdale, 53, of Nashville, Tenn., who was shot through the chest — the bullet passing along her spine and then out her thigh. "I know what a bullet can do to every part of the human body ... These are things I never needed to know, never needed to experience."

She did not comment after the judge imposed the sentence, but others victimized by the attack that has been called India's 9/11 said they were disturbed and upset Headley did not get the maximum life sentence he faced. With credit for good behavior, he could walk out of prison before he turns 80.

"He lost his right to live life as a free man. He doesn't deserve to be let out. He gave up that right when he played a role in the attack," said Kia Scherr, whose husband Alan Scherr and 13-year-old daughter, Naomi, were at the same table as Ragsdale and died.

It was prosecutors who pressed for leniency, saying they wanted Headley to get no more than 35 years as credit for his almost immediate cooperation after his 2009 arrest and providing intelligence about terror networks, including the Pakistani-based group that mounted the attack. Rewarding Headley with the hope of at least a few years of freedom, the said, would encourage future suspects in terrorist cases to spill their secrets.

A somber Judge Harry Leinenweber sounded reluctant about imposing the lesser sentence, saying the Mumbai assault was so unfathomable and terrifying that, "perhaps the lucky ones were the ones who didn't survive."

"I don't have any faith in Mr. Headley when he says he's a changed person and believes in the American way of life," he said.

Ragsdale, the only victim to address the court during Thursday's hearing, also read a text message from Kia Scherr to the judge, in which Scherr implored the court not to give Headley less than life in prison and asserting that anything less "would be an appalling dishonor."

The attack heightened the strain in a historically antagonistic relationship between India and Pakistan, which have fought three major wars. Indian officials accuse Pakistani intelligence of helping to plan the assault — an allegation Pakistan denies.

It was Headley's meticulous scouting missions that helped make the assault by 10 gunmen from a Pakistani-based militant group on multiple targets in Mumbai so deadly. TV cameras captured much of the three-day rampage that including multiple targets, including the landmark Taj Mahal Hotel.

Ragsdale painted a detailed picture of the gory scene as she huddled under the table with Scherr's husband Alan and her daughter, Naomi. After the initial gunfire, they were all still alive, and she said she would have thrown her body across the teen to shield her.

"That moment still haunts me," she said, crying, as she looked straight at Headley. She said she passed out from her injuries under the table and "awoke to hear Naomi take her last breath."

Headley showed no emotion when the sentence was announced. Earlier, when the judge asked if him if he wanted to address the court, he leaned forward and said politely, "No your honor, I expressed everything in the letter I wrote you."

Read More..

AT&T Fourth-Quarter Earnings Hurt by Pensions and Storm

Over the holiday season, AT&T sold a record number of smartphones. But its quarterly earnings took a hit from pension costs and Hurricane Sandy.

On Thursday, AT&T reported a loss in the fourth quarter of $3.9 billion, or 68 cents a share, up from a loss of $6.7 billion, or $1.12 a share, from the same quarter a year earlier.

The company said revenue was essentially flat at $32.6 billion.

Its adjusted per-share earnings were 44 cents a share, excluding pension costs, the impact of Hurricane Sandy and the sale of its advertising units. Wall Street analysts had expected 45 cents a share on earnings of $32.2 billion, according to Thomson Reuters.

“We had an excellent 2012,” said Randall Stephenson, AT&T’s chief executive, in a statement. “Looking ahead, our key growth platforms — mobile data, U-verse and strategic business services — all have good momentum with a lot of headroom,” Mr. Stephenson added.

The company, based in Dallas, said that it sold 10.2 million smartphones over the quarter, the most ever sold by any American carrier. A majority of those smartphones were iPhones: AT&T sold 8.6 million iPhones, in contrast with Verizon’s 6.2 million iPhones. AT&T, the second biggest carrier after Verizon Wireless, is in the process of a major network expansion. It said late last year that it would invest an extra $14 billion to expand its wireless and broadband services through 2015. It expects that its fourth-generation network technology, called LTE, will cover 300 million people by the end of next year.

Beyond making upgrades to its wireless network, AT&T has plans to offer new services that might create new revenue streams. In March, it will begin selling its new wireless home security system, Digital Life, which will allow people to use tablets or phones to monitor their homes from afar. If a burglar trips a motion sensor in the house, for example, a user can receive a text message, then call the police. Ralph de la Vega, chief executive of AT&T Mobility, has said that he believes home security will be a big opportunity to increase revenue, because only 20 percent of American homes have security systems, leaving millions of homeowners as potential buyers.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 24, 2013

An earlier version of this article published online misstated the expectation of Wall Street analysts for AT&T’s quarterly per-share earnings. It was 45 cents, not 48 cents.

Read More..

The New Old Age Blog: Grief Over New Depression Diagnosis

When the American Psychiatric Association unveils a proposed new version of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the bible of psychiatric diagnoses, it expects controversy. Illnesses get added or deleted, acquire new definitions or lists of symptoms. Everyone from advocacy groups to insurance companies to litigators — all have an interest in what’s defined as mental illness — pays close attention. Invariably, complaints ensue.

“We asked for commentary,” said David Kupfer, the University of Pittsburgh psychiatrist who has spent six years as chairman of the task force that is updating the handbook. He sounded unruffled. “We asked for it and we got it. This was not going to be done in a dark room somewhere.”

But the D.S.M. 5, to be published in May, has generated an unusual amount of heat. Two changes, in particular, could have considerable impact on older people and their families.

First, the new volume revises some of the criteria for major depressive disorder. The D.S.M. IV (among other changes, the new manual swaps Roman numerals for Arabic ones) set out a list of symptoms that over a two-week period would trigger a diagnosis of major depression: either feelings of sadness or emptiness, or a loss of interest or pleasure in most daily activities, plus sleep disturbances, weight loss, fatigue, distraction or other problems, to the extent that they impair someone’s functioning.

Traditionally, depression has been underdiagnosed in older adults. When people’s health suffers and they lose friends and loved ones, the sentiment went, why wouldn’t they be depressed? A few decades back, Dr. Kupfer said, “what was striking to me was the lack of anyone getting a depression diagnosis, because that was ‘normal aging.’” We don’t find depression in old age normal any longer.

But critics of the D.S.M. 5 now argue that depression may become overdiagnosed, because this version removes the so-called “bereavement exclusion.” That was a paragraph that cautioned against diagnosing depression in someone for at least two months after loss of a loved one, unless that patient had severe symptoms like suicidal thoughts.

Without that exception, you could be diagnosed with this disorder if you are feeling empty, listless or distracted, a month after your parent or spouse dies.

“D.S.M. 5 is medicalizing the expected and probably necessary process of mourning that people go through,” said Allen Frances, a professor emeritus at Duke who chaired the D.S.M. IV task force and has denounced several of the changes in the new edition. “Most people get better with time and natural healing and resilience.”

If they are diagnosed with major depression before that can happen, he fears, they will be given antidepressants they may not need. “It gives the drug companies the right to peddle pills for grief,” he said.

An advisory committee to the Association for Death Education and Counseling also argued that bereaved people “will receive antidepressant medication because it is cheaper and ‘easier’ to medicate than to be involved therapeutically,” and noted that antidepressants, like all medications, have side effects.

“I can’t help but see this as a broad overreach by the APA,” Eric Widera, a geriatrician at the University of California, San Francisco, wrote on the GeriPal blog. “Grief is not a disorder and should be considered normal even if it is accompanied by some of the same symptoms seen in depression.”

But Dr. Kupfer said the panel worried that with the exclusion, too many cases of depression could be overlooked and go untreated. “If these things go on and get worse over time and begin to impair someone’s day to day function, we don’t want to use the excuse, ‘It’s bereavement — they’ll get over it,’” he said.

The new entry for major depressive disorder will include a note — the wording isn’t final — pointing out that while grief may be “understandable or appropriate” after a loss, professionals should also consider the possibility of a major depressive episode. Making that distinction, Dr. Kupfer said, will require “good solid clinical judgment.”

Initial field trials testing the reliability of D.S.M. 5 diagnoses, recently published in The American Journal of Psychiatry, don’t bolster confidence, however. An editorial remarked that “the end results are mixed, with both positive and disappointing findings.” Major depressive disorder, for instance, showed “questionable reliability.”

In an upcoming post, I’ll talk more about how patients might respond to the D.S.M. 5, and to a new diagnosis that might also affect a lot of older people — mild neurocognitive disorder.

Paula Span is the author of “When the Time Comes: Families With Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions.”

---

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 24, 2013

An earlier version of this post misspelled the surname of a professor emeritus at Duke who chaired the D.S.M. IV task force. He is Allen Frances, not Francis.

Read More..

The New Old Age Blog: Grief Over New Depression Diagnosis

When the American Psychiatric Association unveils a proposed new version of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the bible of psychiatric diagnoses, it expects controversy. Illnesses get added or deleted, acquire new definitions or lists of symptoms. Everyone from advocacy groups to insurance companies to litigators — all have an interest in what’s defined as mental illness — pays close attention. Invariably, complaints ensue.

“We asked for commentary,” said David Kupfer, the University of Pittsburgh psychiatrist who has spent six years as chairman of the task force that is updating the handbook. He sounded unruffled. “We asked for it and we got it. This was not going to be done in a dark room somewhere.”

But the D.S.M. 5, to be published in May, has generated an unusual amount of heat. Two changes, in particular, could have considerable impact on older people and their families.

First, the new volume revises some of the criteria for major depressive disorder. The D.S.M. IV (among other changes, the new manual swaps Roman numerals for Arabic ones) set out a list of symptoms that over a two-week period would trigger a diagnosis of major depression: either feelings of sadness or emptiness, or a loss of interest or pleasure in most daily activities, plus sleep disturbances, weight loss, fatigue, distraction or other problems, to the extent that they impair someone’s functioning.

Traditionally, depression has been underdiagnosed in older adults. When people’s health suffers and they lose friends and loved ones, the sentiment went, why wouldn’t they be depressed? A few decades back, Dr. Kupfer said, “what was striking to me was the lack of anyone getting a depression diagnosis, because that was ‘normal aging.’” We don’t find depression in old age normal any longer.

But critics of the D.S.M. 5 now argue that depression may become overdiagnosed, because this version removes the so-called “bereavement exclusion.” That was a paragraph that cautioned against diagnosing depression in someone for at least two months after loss of a loved one, unless that patient had severe symptoms like suicidal thoughts.

Without that exception, you could be diagnosed with this disorder if you are feeling empty, listless or distracted, a month after your parent or spouse dies.

“D.S.M. 5 is medicalizing the expected and probably necessary process of mourning that people go through,” said Allen Frances, a professor emeritus at Duke who chaired the D.S.M. IV task force and has denounced several of the changes in the new edition. “Most people get better with time and natural healing and resilience.”

If they are diagnosed with major depression before that can happen, he fears, they will be given antidepressants they may not need. “It gives the drug companies the right to peddle pills for grief,” he said.

An advisory committee to the Association for Death Education and Counseling also argued that bereaved people “will receive antidepressant medication because it is cheaper and ‘easier’ to medicate than to be involved therapeutically,” and noted that antidepressants, like all medications, have side effects.

“I can’t help but see this as a broad overreach by the APA,” Eric Widera, a geriatrician at the University of California, San Francisco, wrote on the GeriPal blog. “Grief is not a disorder and should be considered normal even if it is accompanied by some of the same symptoms seen in depression.”

But Dr. Kupfer said the panel worried that with the exclusion, too many cases of depression could be overlooked and go untreated. “If these things go on and get worse over time and begin to impair someone’s day to day function, we don’t want to use the excuse, ‘It’s bereavement — they’ll get over it,’” he said.

The new entry for major depressive disorder will include a note — the wording isn’t final — pointing out that while grief may be “understandable or appropriate” after a loss, professionals should also consider the possibility of a major depressive episode. Making that distinction, Dr. Kupfer said, will require “good solid clinical judgment.”

Initial field trials testing the reliability of D.S.M. 5 diagnoses, recently published in The American Journal of Psychiatry, don’t bolster confidence, however. An editorial remarked that “the end results are mixed, with both positive and disappointing findings.” Major depressive disorder, for instance, showed “questionable reliability.”

In an upcoming post, I’ll talk more about how patients might respond to the D.S.M. 5, and to a new diagnosis that might also affect a lot of older people — mild neurocognitive disorder.

Paula Span is the author of “When the Time Comes: Families With Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions.”

---

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 24, 2013

An earlier version of this post misspelled the surname of a professor emeritus at Duke who chaired the D.S.M. IV task force. He is Allen Frances, not Francis.

Read More..

AT&T Fourth-Quarter Earnings Hurt by Pensions and Storm

Over the holiday season, AT&T sold a record number of smartphones. But its quarterly earnings took a hit from pension costs and Hurricane Sandy.

On Thursday, AT&T reported a loss in the fourth quarter of $3.9 billion, or 68 cents a share, up from a loss of $6.7 billion, or $1.12 a share, from the same quarter a year earlier.

The company said revenue was essentially flat at $32.6 billion.

Its adjusted per-share earnings were 44 cents a share, excluding pension costs, the impact of Hurricane Sandy and the sale of its advertising units. Wall Street analysts had expected 45 cents a share on earnings of $32.2 billion, according to Thomson Reuters.

“We had an excellent 2012,” said Randall Stephenson, AT&T’s chief executive, in a statement. “Looking ahead, our key growth platforms — mobile data, U-verse and strategic business services — all have good momentum with a lot of headroom,” Mr. Stephenson added.

The company, based in Dallas, said that it sold 10.2 million smartphones over the quarter, the most ever sold by any American carrier. A majority of those smartphones were iPhones: AT&T sold 8.6 million iPhones, in contrast with Verizon’s 6.2 million iPhones. AT&T, the second biggest carrier after Verizon Wireless, is in the process of a major network expansion. It said late last year that it would invest an extra $14 billion to expand its wireless and broadband services through 2015. It expects that its fourth-generation network technology, called LTE, will cover 300 million people by the end of next year.

Beyond making upgrades to its wireless network, AT&T has plans to offer new services that might create new revenue streams. In March, it will begin selling its new wireless home security system, Digital Life, which will allow people to use tablets or phones to monitor their homes from afar. If a burglar trips a motion sensor in the house, for example, a user can receive a text message, then call the police. Ralph de la Vega, chief executive of AT&T Mobility, has said that he believes home security will be a big opportunity to increase revenue, because only 20 percent of American homes have security systems, leaving millions of homeowners as potential buyers.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 24, 2013

An earlier version of this article published online misstated the expectation of Wall Street analysts for AT&T’s quarterly per-share earnings. It was 45 cents, not 48 cents.

Read More..

The Lede Blog: Clinton Testifies on Benghazi Attacks

The Lede followed Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s testimony Wednesday before the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Senate Foreign Relations Committee about the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks on the American Consulate in the eastern city of Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

At a House Committee hearing last October investigating the attack, as reported on The Lede, State Department officials and security experts who served on the ground offered conflicting assessments about what resources were requested and made available to deal with growing security concerns in Tripoli and Benghazi.

Mrs. Clinton had been scheduled to testify before Congress last month, but an illness, a concussion and a blood clot near her brain forced her to postpone her appearance.

As our colleagues Michael R. Gordon and Eric Schmitt reported, four State Department officials were removed from their posts on last month after an independent panel criticized the “grossly inadequate” security at a diplomatic compound in Benghazi.

Read More..

Gadgetwise Blog: A New Kind of Holster for iPhone

Unless you carry a Bushmaster Adaptive Combat Rifle around, the Sector 5 Black Ops iPhone cover from Element Case is likely to be the most polarizing accessory you own.

The case is made from a resin called G10 and designed by a company best known for its premium handgun grips, VZ Grips.

The back of the case bears a checkering pattern common to handguns, and it has a rim of machined aluminum that is anodized with a nonreflective coating.

They even throw in a back knurled power button and “tactical holster” for affixing your phone to your belt.

Like many Element Case products, the cost is high: $200. Element Case has made a business of creating expensive covers from premium and exotic materials, like its $200 Ronin case made with a bumper of resin-impregnated wood.

The weaponized iPhone case certainly courts controversy, but thanks to the remarkably grippy pattern on the Black Ops model, you may not give it up until they pry it from you cold, dead hands.

Read More..

Well: Long Term Effects on Life Expectancy From Smoking

It is often said that smoking takes years off your life, and now a new study shows just how many: Longtime smokers can expect to lose about 10 years of life expectancy.

But amid those grim findings was some good news for former smokers. Those who quit before they turn 35 can gain most if not all of that decade back, and even those who wait until middle age to kick the habit can add about five years back to their life expectancies.

“There’s the old saw that everyone knows smoking is bad for you,” said Dr. Tim McAfee of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “But this paints a much more dramatic picture of the horror of smoking. These are real people that are getting 10 years of life expectancy hacked off — and that’s just on average.”

The findings were part of research, published on Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine, that looked at government data on more than 200,000 Americans who were followed starting in 1997. Similar studies that were done in the 1980s and the decades prior had allowed scientists to predict the impact of smoking on mortality. But since then many population trends have changed, and it was unclear whether smokers today fared differently from smokers decades ago.

Since the 1960s, the prevalence of smoking over all has declined, falling from about 40 percent to 20 percent. Today more than half of people that ever smoked have quit, allowing researchers to compare the effects of stopping at various ages.

Modern cigarettes contain less tar and medical advances have cut the rates of death from vascular disease drastically. But have smokers benefited from these advances?

Women in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s had lower rates of mortality from smoking than men. But it was largely unknown whether this was a biological difference or merely a matter of different habits: earlier generations of women smoked fewer cigarettes and tended to take up smoking at a later age than men.

Now that smoking habits among women today are similar to those of men, would mortality rates be the same as well?

“There was a big gap in our knowledge,” said Dr. McAfee, an author of the study and the director of the C.D.C.’s Office on Smoking and Public Health.

The new research showed that in fact women are no more protected from the consequences of smoking than men. The female smokers in the study represented the first generation of American women that generally began smoking early in life and continued the habit for decades, and the impact on life span was clear. The risk of death from smoking for these women was 50 percent higher than the risk reported for women in similar studies carried out in the 1980s.

“This sort of puts the nail in the coffin around the idea that women might somehow be different or that they suffer fewer effects of smoking,” Dr. McAfee said.

It also showed that differences between smokers and the population in general are becoming more and more stark. Over the last 20 years, advances in medicine and public health have improved life expectancy for the general public, but smokers have not benefited in the same way.

“If anything, this is accentuating the difference between being a smoker and a nonsmoker,” Dr. McAfee said.

The researchers had information about the participants’ smoking histories and other details about their health and backgrounds, including diet, alcohol consumption, education levels and weight and body fat. Using records from the National Death Index, they calculated their mortality rates over time.

People who had smoked fewer than 100 cigarettes in their lifetimes were not classified as smokers. Those who had smoked at least 100 cigarettes but had not had one within five years of the time the data was collected were classified as former smokers.

Not surprisingly, the study showed that the earlier a person quit smoking, the greater the impact. People who quit between 25 and 34 years of age gained about 10 years of life compared to those who continued to smoke. But there were benefits at many ages. People who quit between 35 and 44 gained about nine years, and those who stopped between 45 and 59 gained about four to six years of life expectancy.

From a public health perspective, those numbers are striking, particularly when juxtaposed with preventive measures like blood pressure screenings, colorectal screenings and mammography, the effects of which on life expectancy are more often viewed in terms of days or months, Dr. McAfee said.

“These things are very important, but the size of the benefit pales in comparison to what you can get from stopping smoking,” he said. “The notion that you could add 10 years to your life by something as straightforward as quitting smoking is just mind boggling.”

Read More..

Well: Long Term Effects on Life Expectancy From Smoking

It is often said that smoking takes years off your life, and now a new study shows just how many: Longtime smokers can expect to lose about 10 years of life expectancy.

But amid those grim findings was some good news for former smokers. Those who quit before they turn 35 can gain most if not all of that decade back, and even those who wait until middle age to kick the habit can add about five years back to their life expectancies.

“There’s the old saw that everyone knows smoking is bad for you,” said Dr. Tim McAfee of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “But this paints a much more dramatic picture of the horror of smoking. These are real people that are getting 10 years of life expectancy hacked off — and that’s just on average.”

The findings were part of research, published on Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine, that looked at government data on more than 200,000 Americans who were followed starting in 1997. Similar studies that were done in the 1980s and the decades prior had allowed scientists to predict the impact of smoking on mortality. But since then many population trends have changed, and it was unclear whether smokers today fared differently from smokers decades ago.

Since the 1960s, the prevalence of smoking over all has declined, falling from about 40 percent to 20 percent. Today more than half of people that ever smoked have quit, allowing researchers to compare the effects of stopping at various ages.

Modern cigarettes contain less tar and medical advances have cut the rates of death from vascular disease drastically. But have smokers benefited from these advances?

Women in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s had lower rates of mortality from smoking than men. But it was largely unknown whether this was a biological difference or merely a matter of different habits: earlier generations of women smoked fewer cigarettes and tended to take up smoking at a later age than men.

Now that smoking habits among women today are similar to those of men, would mortality rates be the same as well?

“There was a big gap in our knowledge,” said Dr. McAfee, an author of the study and the director of the C.D.C.’s Office on Smoking and Public Health.

The new research showed that in fact women are no more protected from the consequences of smoking than men. The female smokers in the study represented the first generation of American women that generally began smoking early in life and continued the habit for decades, and the impact on life span was clear. The risk of death from smoking for these women was 50 percent higher than the risk reported for women in similar studies carried out in the 1980s.

“This sort of puts the nail in the coffin around the idea that women might somehow be different or that they suffer fewer effects of smoking,” Dr. McAfee said.

It also showed that differences between smokers and the population in general are becoming more and more stark. Over the last 20 years, advances in medicine and public health have improved life expectancy for the general public, but smokers have not benefited in the same way.

“If anything, this is accentuating the difference between being a smoker and a nonsmoker,” Dr. McAfee said.

The researchers had information about the participants’ smoking histories and other details about their health and backgrounds, including diet, alcohol consumption, education levels and weight and body fat. Using records from the National Death Index, they calculated their mortality rates over time.

People who had smoked fewer than 100 cigarettes in their lifetimes were not classified as smokers. Those who had smoked at least 100 cigarettes but had not had one within five years of the time the data was collected were classified as former smokers.

Not surprisingly, the study showed that the earlier a person quit smoking, the greater the impact. People who quit between 25 and 34 years of age gained about 10 years of life compared to those who continued to smoke. But there were benefits at many ages. People who quit between 35 and 44 gained about nine years, and those who stopped between 45 and 59 gained about four to six years of life expectancy.

From a public health perspective, those numbers are striking, particularly when juxtaposed with preventive measures like blood pressure screenings, colorectal screenings and mammography, the effects of which on life expectancy are more often viewed in terms of days or months, Dr. McAfee said.

“These things are very important, but the size of the benefit pales in comparison to what you can get from stopping smoking,” he said. “The notion that you could add 10 years to your life by something as straightforward as quitting smoking is just mind boggling.”

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Media Decoder Blog: Adding Subscribers, Netflix Posts Surprise Profit

Netflix on Wednesday announced a surprise profit in the fourth quarter of 2012 and a new total of 27 million streaming subscribers in the United States, a jump of more than two million from the third quarter.

The company also added nearly two million new subscribers in other countries, though it continued to lose money overseas, as expected. Overall, however, the company reported $8 million in net income and $945 million in revenue. Analysts had expected a slight loss, not a profit, due to the rising costs of acquiring must-see streaming content.

Netflix’s fourth-quarter earnings exceeded not just Wall Street’s expectations but also its own, as the chief executive, Reed Hastings, and chief financial officer, David Wells, noted in a letter to investors. Revenues, they said, were driven in part by holiday season sales of new tablets and television sets.

Investors cheered the news, and at one point sent Netflix shares soaring more than 30 percent in after-hours trading.

The growth spurt in the fourth quarter attested to the popularity of on-demand libraries of television shows and movies. Streaming services by Amazon, Hulu, and Redbox are competing on the same playing field as Netflix, but for now Netflix is the biggest such service by far.

“The fact that our growth remains this strong despite intensifying competition, and our already substantial U.S. market penetration, underlines the large opportunity ahead,” Mr. Hastings and Mr. Wells wrote.

Netflix ended 2012 with 27.1 million streaming subscribers in the United States and 6.1 million elsewhere. On Wednesday it predicted that it would end the first quarter of 2013 with somewhere between 28.5 and 29.2 million in the United States and somewhere between 6.6 and 7.3 million elsewhere.

Net income will be about in line with the fourth quarter, Netflix said, since the revenue from new subscribers will be offset by licensing expenses and continuing declines in its DVD-by-mail business.

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France and Germany Celebrate 50th Anniversary of Élysée Treaty

BERLIN — France and Germany recently issued a joint postage stamp as part of a yearlong celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Élysée Treaty, the landmark agreement between the two former enemies.

The stamp is identical, except for one telling difference. In each country, it bears a picture of a man and woman, side by side, peering through lenses colored in blue-white-red and black-red-gold. But the French stamp costs 80 euro cents, while its German twin sells for only 75.

In a year loaded with symbolic gestures and 4,000 events, including Tuesday’s joint session of Parliament, joint cabinet dinner and a concert, that 5-cent disparity is a reminder that despite the decades of friendship and enormous day-to-day cooperation, significant, often devilish, differences persist.

De Gaulle once described Europe as “a coach with horses, with Germany the horse and France the coachman.” Since he signed the treaty with Konrad Adenauer in 1963, successive governments in both countries have struggled to overcome, or overlook, what divides them.

But the relationship has never been as close as some hoped. While the German news media celebrated Tuesday’s anniversary of a treaty that has been a cornerstone for the European Union and German prosperity, the tone from France was harsher. Le Figaro called it “a friendship broken down,” foundering on “diplomatic and economic tensions,” while Le Monde called the event “a festival of hypocrisy.”

The critical matter, however, is that war between the two peoples, who murdered each other for centuries, seems as inconceivable now as the Spanish Inquisition.

“Coming from a long history of conflict and war, they have succeeded in intertwining themselves so closely that today one can no longer imagine it any other way than both partners working closely together,” said Georg Link, the German foreign minister’s commissioner for Franco-German cooperation.

Chancellor Angela Merkel, a conservative, and President François Hollande, a Socialist, began the festivities on Monday here, with a question-and-answer session with university students from both countries. Sitting side by side, they appeared at ease for the first time since Mr. Hollande came to power last May, exchanging jokes and using first names — a public first, and a telling shift.

Yet, even if the two succeed in establishing a better relationship, the tensions between centralized, statist France and federal Germany are real and will persist. They involve European issues like the euro zone crisis and the failed merger of the aerospace giants EADS and BAE Systems, as well as foreign policy matters, like the obvious disagreements over military engagements in Libya and now Mali.

French officials say the two leaders get on decently, agree on fundamental questions and maintain a daily web of contacts and relationships at all levels. They argue that former President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, a conservative, deferred too much to Ms. Merkel to the detriment of the euro and economic growth, and that Mr. Hollande and Ms. Merkel have gotten more done through compromise.

Honest about their differences, Mr. Hollande cited as examples of the new relationship a “pact for growth” to go alongside a fiscal discipline treaty, championed by Ms. Merkel, and the ability to come to agreement on the single banking supervisory system for the euro zone. Ms. Merkel said they planned to meet in May to work out a joint position on economic cooperation, growth and competitiveness ahead of the next European Union summit in June.

The French have sought to “rebalance” the power structures within the European Union by working closely with the Spanish and Italian leaders, and softened the quasi-religious quality of the German prescription of budget discipline and debt reduction.

But it remains true in European Union affairs that Ms. Merkel’s words carry more weight than those of any other leader — and not just because of Germany’s demographic and economic power. There is an understanding that nothing works in the bloc without German agreement, and that France, weaker economically and more saddled with debt, plays a more junior role.

A survey of 25,000 people on either side of the border released ahead of Tuesday’s festivities showed that while 80 percent of Germans and 70 percent of French hold the other in high regard, stereotypes persist.

The French still see themselves as Europe’s center of policy creativity, but view Germany as the overly cautious, and increasingly begrudging, paymaster. The Germans, however, consider their caution one of their greatest assets, and grumble at French reluctance to reform their social-welfare system and reduce their dependence on nuclear energy.

With an active military and a seat on the Security Council, the French also see themselves as playing a far more important diplomatic role globally, while Germany seems to have regressed in its willingness to use force.

As France has moved to engage militarily in Mali, for instance, responding quickly to a cry for help from an ally, French officials note that while Britain was quick to offer air transport help, Berlin initially pledged only political support. The Germans have since offered two cargo planes.

On Tuesday the chancellor gave no indication of German eagerness to join the fight, thanking French troops for their efforts “for all of us.”

One enduring bond between Paris and Berlin is a belief in the importance of the European Union as an anchor for peace and prosperity. The leaders have acknowledged that the strength of their bond has often proved troubling for their European partners, as seen in British efforts to renegotiate its terms for membership.

“Europeans have a special view of German-French relations,” Mr. Hollande told a group of students, with a smile. “When we get along, they are afraid it will be to their detriment. And when we do not get along, they realize then that it is to their detriment.”

The chancellor, seated beside him, nodded vigorously.

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