Slipstream: Consumer Data Protection Laws, an Ocean Apart

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OVER the years, the United States and Europe have taken different approaches toward protecting people’s personal information. Now the two sides are struggling to bridge that divide.




On this side of the Atlantic, Congress has enacted a patchwork quilt of privacy laws that separately limit the use of Americans’ medical records, credit reports, video rental records and so on. On the other side, the European Union has instituted more of a blanket regulatory system; it has a common directive that gives its citizens certain fundamental rights — like the right to obtain copies of records held about them by companies and institutions — that Americans now lack.


Even so, United States officials maintain that the divergent approaches are equal. “The sum of the parts of U.S. privacy protection is equal to or greater than the single whole of Europe,” says Cameron F. Kerry, general counsel of the Commerce Department. He is overseeing an agency effort to help develop voluntary, enforceable codes of conduct for industry groups, like app developers, whose collection and use of consumer data are now unregulated.


Europe begs to differ.


“Yes, we share the basic idea of privacy,” says Peter Hustinx, Europe’s data protection supervisor. “But there is a huge deficit on the U.S. side.”


Alas, the data-control divide appears to be widening.


A year ago, the European Commission proposed comprehensive reforms to strengthen online privacy rights — changes that could have big repercussions for American technology companies and marketers that operate in the European Union. American officials, trade groups and tech executives have responded by taking frequent treks to Brussels and other cities, where they have urged regulators and legislators to reconsider the one-regulation-fits-all-data approach. What’s at stake, American industry representatives say, is nothing less than a free and commerce-friendly Internet.


“The ecosystem of the Internet is very delicate,” says Kevin Richards, senior vice president of federal government affairs at TechAmerica, a trade group that represents companies like Google and Microsoft. “It’s not wise to have an overly broad, prescriptive, one-size-fits-all approach that would hinder or undermine the ability of companies to innovate in a global economy.”


European Union members already have data protection laws in place, based on a directive from 1995 that laid out principles for the collection of personal information. The proposed new rules would strengthen some existing provisions. They would standardize data protections across the 27 member states. They would also provide some new rights, such as “data portability” — the right of consumers to easily transfer their text files, photographs and videos from one social network, or e-mail or cloud storage service, to another. And they would subject companies that violate the rules to penalties of up to 2 percent of their annual global revenue.


Asked for comment, Viviane Reding, the vice president of the European Commission and the architect of the proposed regulation, said in a statement: “The main problem is that our rules predate the digital age and it became increasingly clear in recent years that they needed an update.” She continued: “That is why I have proposed a root-and-branch reform of the E.U.’s data protection rules — currently under discussion in the European Parliament and the Council of the E.U. — that will both protect citizens’ rights and facilitate business in the digital age.”


BUT some provisions seem too rigid to United States officials and trade groups. They argue that the American approach — sector-specific privacy laws, in addition to industry self-regulation and enforcement by the Federal Trade Commission — is more nimble.


“We hope that Europe will move in the direction of those multistakeholder standards, and not standards which are not flexible and don’t move at Internet speed,” says Mr. Kerry, who has taken at least four trips to European cities in the last year to discuss these issues.


From the perspective of some European legislators, however, United States representatives seem more interested in protecting commerce than consumers. The full-court American effort may have backfired, they say, pushing some European officials toward even broader measures. Last month, Jan Philipp Albrecht, a representative of the European Parliament who reviewed the draft regulation, proposed additional rights for citizens — like the right not to be subject to consumer profiling.


“My impression is that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Commerce Department are mostly just following the interests of Silicon Valley,” he says. “This leads to heavy pressure on the European regulator, I can say.”


But Mr. Kerry says the United States must make its views known if the systems are to work in concert.


“I know that some people have raised eyebrows at our involvement; I make no apologies,” Mr. Kerry says. “We in the United States and countries and businesses around the world are stakeholders in this process. This has an important impact on the global economy.”


The solution to this trans-Atlantic clash may simply be American ingenuity.


Last year, President Barack Obama proposed a “Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights” that would give Americans many of the same baseline protections that the draft European rule proposes to reinforce. These include the right of access to records that companies hold about them, the right to correct those records and the right to have limits on the personal data that companies collect and keep. Administration officials said they would work with Congress on legislation based on those rights and to extend oversight to industries not currently covered by federal privacy laws.


A coalition of more than a dozen American advocacy groups said it would send a letter on Monday to senior Obama administration officials, seeking a meeting to ensure that American policy makers’ efforts in Europe “are not averse to the views expressed by the president.” The coalition includes the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Center for Digital Democracy.


“Does the Obama administration really want to be on the opposite side of the European effort to upgrade and modernize its privacy law which is at its core about the protection of a fundamental freedom?” asks Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.


European officials hold out hope that Congress will enact baseline consumer privacy protections for Americans.


“This development — which is much welcomed in Europe — shows that we have much in common,” Ms. Reding of the European Commission said in her statement, speaking of the privacy bill of rights. “Convergence is springing up and synergies are possible.”


E-mail: slipstream@nytimes.com.



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Ferrol Sams, Doctor Turned Novelist, Dies at 90

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Ferrol Sams, a country doctor who started writing fiction in his late 50s and went on to win critical praise and a devoted readership for his humorous and perceptive novels and stories that drew on his medical practice and his rural Southern roots, died on Tuesday at his home in Fayetteville, Ga. He was 90.


The cause, said his son Ferrol Sams III, also a doctor, was that he was “slap wore out.”


“He lived a full life,” his son said. “He didn’t leave anything in the tank.”


Dr. Sams grew up on a farm in the rural Piedmont area of Georgia, seven mud-road miles from the nearest town. He was a boy during the Depression; books meant escape and discovery. He read “Robinson Crusoe,” then Mark Twain and Charles Dickens. One of his English professors at Mercer University, in Macon, suggested he consider a career in writing, but he chose another route to examining the human condition: medical school.


When he was 58 — after he had served in World War II, started a medical practice with his wife, raised his four children and stopped devoting so much of his mornings to preparing lessons for Sunday school at the Methodist church — he began writing “Run With the Horsemen,” a novel based on his youth. It was published in 1982.


“In the beginning was the land,” the book begins. “Shortly thereafter was the father.”


In The New York Times Book Review, the novelist Robert Miner wrote, “Mr. Sams’s approach to his hero’s experiences is nicely signaled in these two opening sentences.”


He added: “I couldn’t help associating the gentility, good-humored common sense and pace of this novel with my image of a country doctor spinning yarns. The writing is elegant, reflective and amused. Mr. Sams is a storyteller sure of his audience, in no particular hurry, and gifted with perfect timing.”


Dr. Sams modeled the lead character in “Run With the Horsemen,” Porter Osborne Jr., on himself, and featured him in two more novels, “The Whisper of the River” and “When All the World Was Young,” which followed him into World War II.


Dr. Sams also wrote thinly disguised stories about his life as a physician. In “Epiphany,” he captures the friendship that develops between a literary-minded doctor frustrated by bureaucracy and a patient angry over past racism and injustice.


Ferrol Sams Jr. was born Sept. 26, 1922, in Woolsey, Ga. He received a bachelor’s degree from Mercer in 1942 and his medical degree from Emory University in 1949. In his addition to his namesake, survivors include his wife, Dr. Helen Fletcher Sams; his sons Jim and Fletcher; a daughter, Ellen Nichol; eight grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren.


Some critics tired of what they called the “folksiness” in Dr. Sams’s books. But he did not write for the critics, he said. In an interview with the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame, Dr. Sams was asked what audience he wrote for. Himself, he said.


“If you lose your sense of awe, or if you lose your sense of the ridiculous, you’ve fallen into a terrible pit,” he added. “The only thing that’s worse is never to have had either.”


This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 2, 2013

An earlier version of this obituary misstated the town in which Mr. Sams died. It was Fayetteville, Ga., not Lafayette, Ga.



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Ferrol Sams, Doctor Turned Novelist, Dies at 90

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Ferrol Sams, a country doctor who started writing fiction in his late 50s and went on to win critical praise and a devoted readership for his humorous and perceptive novels and stories that drew on his medical practice and his rural Southern roots, died on Tuesday at his home in Fayetteville, Ga. He was 90.


The cause, said his son Ferrol Sams III, also a doctor, was that he was “slap wore out.”


“He lived a full life,” his son said. “He didn’t leave anything in the tank.”


Dr. Sams grew up on a farm in the rural Piedmont area of Georgia, seven mud-road miles from the nearest town. He was a boy during the Depression; books meant escape and discovery. He read “Robinson Crusoe,” then Mark Twain and Charles Dickens. One of his English professors at Mercer University, in Macon, suggested he consider a career in writing, but he chose another route to examining the human condition: medical school.


When he was 58 — after he had served in World War II, started a medical practice with his wife, raised his four children and stopped devoting so much of his mornings to preparing lessons for Sunday school at the Methodist church — he began writing “Run With the Horsemen,” a novel based on his youth. It was published in 1982.


“In the beginning was the land,” the book begins. “Shortly thereafter was the father.”


In The New York Times Book Review, the novelist Robert Miner wrote, “Mr. Sams’s approach to his hero’s experiences is nicely signaled in these two opening sentences.”


He added: “I couldn’t help associating the gentility, good-humored common sense and pace of this novel with my image of a country doctor spinning yarns. The writing is elegant, reflective and amused. Mr. Sams is a storyteller sure of his audience, in no particular hurry, and gifted with perfect timing.”


Dr. Sams modeled the lead character in “Run With the Horsemen,” Porter Osborne Jr., on himself, and featured him in two more novels, “The Whisper of the River” and “When All the World Was Young,” which followed him into World War II.


Dr. Sams also wrote thinly disguised stories about his life as a physician. In “Epiphany,” he captures the friendship that develops between a literary-minded doctor frustrated by bureaucracy and a patient angry over past racism and injustice.


Ferrol Sams Jr. was born Sept. 26, 1922, in Woolsey, Ga. He received a bachelor’s degree from Mercer in 1942 and his medical degree from Emory University in 1949. In his addition to his namesake, survivors include his wife, Dr. Helen Fletcher Sams; his sons Jim and Fletcher; a daughter, Ellen Nichol; eight grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren.


Some critics tired of what they called the “folksiness” in Dr. Sams’s books. But he did not write for the critics, he said. In an interview with the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame, Dr. Sams was asked what audience he wrote for. Himself, he said.


“If you lose your sense of awe, or if you lose your sense of the ridiculous, you’ve fallen into a terrible pit,” he added. “The only thing that’s worse is never to have had either.”


This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 2, 2013

An earlier version of this obituary misstated the town in which Mr. Sams died. It was Fayetteville, Ga., not Lafayette, Ga.



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Americans Closest to Retirement Were Hardest Hit by Recession

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David Maxwell for The New York Times


Susan Zimmerman, 62, has three part-time jobs.









Michael Stravato for The New York Times

Arynita Armstrong, 60, at her home in Willis, Tex. She last worked five years ago. “When you’re older, they just see gray hair and they write you off,” she says.






In the current listless economy, every generation has a claim to having been most injured. But the Labor Department’s latest jobs snapshot and other recent data reports present a strong case for crowning baby boomers as the greatest victims of the recession and its grim aftermath.


These Americans in their 50s and early 60s — those near retirement age who do not yet have access to Medicare and Social Security — have lost the most earnings power of any age group, with their household incomes 10 percent below what they made when the recovery began three years ago, according to Sentier Research, a data analysis company.


Their retirement savings and home values fell sharply at the worst possible time: just before they needed to cash out. They are supporting both aged parents and unemployed young-adult children, earning them the inauspicious nickname “Generation Squeeze.”


New research suggests that they may die sooner, because their health, income security and mental well-being were battered by recession at a crucial time in their lives. A recent study by economists at Wellesley College found that people who lost their jobs in the few years before becoming eligible for Social Security lost up to three years from their life expectancy, largely because they no longer had access to affordable health care.


“If I break my wrist, I lose my house,” said Susan Zimmerman, 62, a freelance writer in Cleveland, of the distress that a medical emergency would wreak upon her finances and her quality of life. None of the three part-time jobs she has cobbled together pay benefits, and she says she is counting the days until she becomes eligible for Medicare.


In the meantime, Ms. Zimmerman has fashioned her own regimen of home remedies — including eating blue cheese instead of taking penicillin and consuming plenty of orange juice, red wine, coffee and whatever else the latest longevity studies recommend — to maintain her health, which she must do if she wants to continue paying the bills.


“I will probably be working until I’m 100,” she said.


As common as that sentiment is, the job market has been especially unkind to older workers.


Unemployment rates for Americans nearing retirement are far lower than those for young people, who are recently out of school, with fewer skills and a shorter work history. But once out of a job, older workers have a much harder time finding another one. Over the last year, the average duration of unemployment for older people was 53 weeks, compared with 19 weeks for teenagers, according to the Labor Department’s jobs report released on Friday.


The lengthy process is partly because older workers are more likely to have been laid off from industries that are downsizing, like manufacturing. Compared with the rest of the population, older people are also more likely to own their own homes and be less mobile than renters, who can move to new job markets.


Older workers are more likely to have a disability of some sort, perhaps limiting the range of jobs that offer realistic choices. They may also be less inclined, at least initially, to take jobs that pay far less than their old positions.


Displaced boomers also believe they are victims of age discrimination, because employers can easily find a young, energetic worker who will accept lower pay and who can potentially stick around for decades rather than a few years.


“When you’re older, they just see gray hair and they write you off,” said Arynita Armstrong, 60, of Willis, Tex. She has been looking for work for five years since losing her job at a mortgage company. “They’re afraid to hire you, because they think you’re a health risk. You know, you might make their premiums go up. They think it’ll cost more money to invest in training you than it’s worth it because you might retire in five years.


“Not that they say any of this to your face,” she added.


When older workers do find re-employment, the compensation is usually not up to the level of their previous jobs, according to data from the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University.


In a survey by the center of older workers who were laid off during the recession, just one in six had found another job, and half of that group had accepted pay cuts. Fourteen percent of the re-employed said the pay in their new job was less than half what they earned in their previous job.


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The Lede Blog: Video and Images of New Clashes in Cairo

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Last Updated, 6:04 p.m. As our colleagues Kareem Fahim and David Kirkpatrick report, Egyptian protesters clashed with riot police officers outside the presidential palace in Cairo on Friday night.

Protesters hurled rocks and launched fireworks over the building’s outer wall, setting fire to a guard tower and drawing a robust response from security forces, who protesters said fired tear gas, rubber bullets and birdshot, causing many to flee through the streets of an upper-class Cairo neighborhood.

Video, photographs and text reports uploaded by activist bloggers and journalists on the scene showed the clashes, as protesters hurled rocks and launched fireworks over the palace walls, setting fire to a guard tower, and officers fired tear gas, rubber bullets and birdshot, causing many to flee through the streets of the upper-class Cairo neighborhood. In one instantly notorious incident that unfolded on live television, officers stripped and beat a protester outside the palace. Graphic images of the beating were recorded from at least two angles, and broadcast on both Egypt’s ONTV and Al Hayat, a satellite news channel.

A well-known rights lawyer, Ragia Omran, reported on Twitter that one protester died after being shot in the head and neck outside the palace.

Earlier on Friday, video posted online by Tahrir News, an independent news organization, appeared to show officers setting fire to a small tent city that protesters had erected outside the walls of the palace.

Members of the Egyptian security forces set fire on Friday to a tent city erected by protesters outside the presidential palace

Video posted online by Magdy Samaan, an Egyptian journalist, appeared to show protesters hurling Molotov cocktails and setting a guard tower alight, as the crowd chanted for President Mohamed Morsi to “Leave!” Off camera, protesters could also be heard chanting “The People Want the Fall of the Regime,” another signature chant of the Egyptian revolution.

Video shot by an Egyptian journalist outside the presidential palace in Cairo on Friday showed protesters setting fire to a guard tower.

After the protests against Egypt’s new Islamist president turned violent, the Muslim Brotherhood’s official English-language Twitter feed, @Ikhwanweb, drew attention to video of protesters throwing rocks and launching fireworks over the walls of the palace from Al-Hayat, a satellite news channel. Mr. Morsi, long a senior leader of the Brotherhood, was the movement’s candidate for the presidency.

Video aired by Al-Hayat TV station showed protesters throwing rocks and launching fireworks over the walls of the presidential palace in Cairo.

Mr. Morsi’s office posted condemned the protesters in updates on Twitter, and even tried to reclaim the mantle of the 2011 revolution.

Until Mr. Morsi was sworn into office last summer, protests outside the presidential palace were all but unheard of and clashes with the hated security forces typically took place outside police stations or the downtown headquarters of the Interior Ministry. As the activist blogger Wael Eskandar noted, that changed in early December.

After Islamist supporters of the president attacked protesters outside the palace in December, the Muslim Brotherhood was blamed for provoking the violence. On Friday, a note posted on Ikhwanweb said that the Brotherhood would not call on rank-and-file members to defend the presidential palace.

As the clashes between the security forces and protesters escalated on Friday night, Bel Trew, a British journalist for the state news site Ahram Online, reported from the scene that officers of the Central Security Forces were shooting at protesters, or those they believed to be protesters, at close range.

She also reported seeing the police shoot one man with birdshot at close range outside a Costa Cafe. He was not a protester, but a cafe employee leaving work, she said.

Protesters also gathered in Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo on Friday, where witnesses said the scene was much more subdued.

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Google Submits Proposal in Bid to Resolve E.U. Antitrust Case

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BRUSSELS — E.U. officials said Friday that Google had submitted proposals aimed at ending a three-year antitrust case focused on its hugely popular online search service, but the offer did not prevent rivals from seeking to prolong its legal entanglements.




After filing a new complaint against Google this past week, Icomp, an industry group backed by Microsoft, urged European regulators on Friday to approach the company’s proposal with caution.


“To be seen as a success, any settlement must include specific measures to restore competition and allow other parties to compete effectively on a level playing field,” David Wood, legal counsel for Icomp, said in a statement.


Michael Weber, chief executive of an online mapping service called hot-map.com, a member of Icomp based in Germany, said he hoped the offer by Google was “enough to restore competition,” but “if not, we will take into account all legal options we have and we won’t hesitate to use them.”


If they remain dissatisfied, critics of Google in Europe can sue the European Commission, the European Union’s executive arm, at the General Court of the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg for failing to push hard enough for an effective solution. Such cases can take years to reach a final judgment.


Google managed to reach one settlement Friday. In France, it agreed to pay €60 million, or $82 million, into a fund to help French media develop their presence on the Internet, the president’s office said. Publishers in France had been pushing for Google to pay them licensing fees for the headlines and summaries of articles in its search engines.


The new antitrust complaint by Icomp, filed Thursday, claimed the search giant was using exclusive agreements to discourage advertisers and publishers from using competing advertising platforms and search services like Bing and Yahoo.


Neither the company nor European officials were willing Friday to describe the settlement proposals. But it had been expected that Google would offer revisions to the way it conducts its online search business in Europe to address regulators’ concerns that the company’s activities were unfair to other Web publishers and its online competitors.


The two parties are still negotiating the terms of the proposed settlement, and a final agreement between Google and the commission is expected in the coming week, according to a person briefed on the negotiations who was not authorized to speak publicly before an agreement was reached.


The commission has taken a tougher line with Google than the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, which decided in January, after a 19-month inquiry into how the company operated its search engine, that Google had not broken antitrust laws.


Joaquín Almunia, the European competition commissioner and top E.U. antitrust official, has been formally investigating Google since November 2010. He has insisted that Google make changes to the most sensitive area of its business, online search.


If Mr. Almunia ultimately accepts Google’s offer, the company will avoid further investigation that could lead to a fine of as much as 10 percent of its annual global sales, which came to about $50 billion last year. Google would also avoid a guilty finding that could restrict its activities in Europe.


“We continue to work cooperatively with the commission,” Al Verney, a spokesman for Google in Brussels, said Friday.


Antoine Colombani, a spokesman for Mr. Almunia, said at a news conference Friday that Google had sent “a detailed proposal,” which the commission was analyzing before taking further steps.


But there is no formal timeline in European antitrust cases, which means that negotiations could continue.


“I can’t anticipate the timing or the substance of the analysis,” Mr. Colombani said.


Mr. Almunia could still take a far more confrontational stance with Google by sending the company a statement of objections, which is the European equivalent of formal antitrust charges. But that is something Mr. Almunia has been eager to avoid because he favors nonlitigious solutions to antitrust problems, particularly in the fast-moving technology field, to prevent cases from dragging on for years.


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Well: Gluten-Free Muffin Recipes

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For people who need to eliminate gluten from their diet, baking becomes a challenge. Beginners often find gluten-free baked goods too dense. Even the Recipes for Health columnist Martha Rose Shulman didn’t like the flavor of a commercial gluten-free flour mix, which left her gluten-free cookies and tart-shells with a strong taste of bean flour. As a result, she created her own gluten-free mix for baking muffins. She writes:

My son Liam still doesn’t know that the muffins he has been devouring all week are gluten-free.

I put together my own gluten-free flour mix, one without bean flour, and turned to America’s favorite Gluten-Free Girl, Shauna James Ahem, for guidance. I was already thinking about making muffins, and I wanted a mix that could replace the whole wheat flour I usually use in conjunction with other grains or flours. Her formula for a whole-grain flour mix is simple – 70 percent ground gluten-free grain like rice flour, millet flour, buckwheat flour or teff (the list on her site is a long one) and 30 percent starch like potato starch, cornstarch or arrowroot.

For this week’s recipes, I used what I had, which was brown rice flour, potato starch and cornstarch – 20 percent potato starch and 10 percent cornstarch — and that’s the basis for the nutritional analyses of this week’s recipes. I used this mix in conjunction with a gluten-free meal or flour, so the amount of pure starch in the batters is much less than 30 percent.

When you bake anything it is much simpler and results are more consistent if you use grams and scale your ingredients. This is especially true with gluten-free baking, since you are working with grain and starch formulas. Digital scales are not expensive and I urge you to switch over to this method if you like to bake. I have given approximate cup measures so the recipes will work both ways, but scaling is more accurate.

Here are five ways to bake gluten-free muffins:

Gluten-Free Banana Chocolate Muffins: These dark chocolate muffins taste more extravagant than they are.

Gluten-Free Cornmeal, Fig and Orange Muffins: A sweet and grainy cornmeal mixture makes for a delicious muffin.

Gluten-Free Whole Grain Cheese and Mustard Muffins: A savory muffin with a delicious strong flavor.

Gluten-Free Buckwheat, Poppy Seed and Blueberry Muffins: The buckwheat flour is high-fiber and makes a dark, richly-flavored muffin.

Gluten-Free Cornmeal Molasses Muffins: Strong molasses provides a good source of iron in an easy-to-make muffin.

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Well: Gluten-Free Muffin Recipes

Label:

For people who need to eliminate gluten from their diet, baking becomes a challenge. Beginners often find gluten-free baked goods too dense. Even the Recipes for Health columnist Martha Rose Shulman didn’t like the flavor of a commercial gluten-free flour mix, which left her gluten-free cookies and tart-shells with a strong taste of bean flour. As a result, she created her own gluten-free mix for baking muffins. She writes:

My son Liam still doesn’t know that the muffins he has been devouring all week are gluten-free.

I put together my own gluten-free flour mix, one without bean flour, and turned to America’s favorite Gluten-Free Girl, Shauna James Ahem, for guidance. I was already thinking about making muffins, and I wanted a mix that could replace the whole wheat flour I usually use in conjunction with other grains or flours. Her formula for a whole-grain flour mix is simple – 70 percent ground gluten-free grain like rice flour, millet flour, buckwheat flour or teff (the list on her site is a long one) and 30 percent starch like potato starch, cornstarch or arrowroot.

For this week’s recipes, I used what I had, which was brown rice flour, potato starch and cornstarch – 20 percent potato starch and 10 percent cornstarch — and that’s the basis for the nutritional analyses of this week’s recipes. I used this mix in conjunction with a gluten-free meal or flour, so the amount of pure starch in the batters is much less than 30 percent.

When you bake anything it is much simpler and results are more consistent if you use grams and scale your ingredients. This is especially true with gluten-free baking, since you are working with grain and starch formulas. Digital scales are not expensive and I urge you to switch over to this method if you like to bake. I have given approximate cup measures so the recipes will work both ways, but scaling is more accurate.

Here are five ways to bake gluten-free muffins:

Gluten-Free Banana Chocolate Muffins: These dark chocolate muffins taste more extravagant than they are.

Gluten-Free Cornmeal, Fig and Orange Muffins: A sweet and grainy cornmeal mixture makes for a delicious muffin.

Gluten-Free Whole Grain Cheese and Mustard Muffins: A savory muffin with a delicious strong flavor.

Gluten-Free Buckwheat, Poppy Seed and Blueberry Muffins: The buckwheat flour is high-fiber and makes a dark, richly-flavored muffin.

Gluten-Free Cornmeal Molasses Muffins: Strong molasses provides a good source of iron in an easy-to-make muffin.

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DealBook: Dutch Government Takes Control of SNS Reaal

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The Dutch government on Friday nationalized one of the country’s biggest financial institutions, SNS Reaal, after the troubled company failed to find a private sector buyer.

The Dutch finance minister, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, said that the government would spend 3.7 billion euros ($5 billion) in taxpayer money to clean up the bank, which has struggled for years with unprofitable real estate loans. Mr. Dijsselbloem said in a statement that the takeover “was made necessary by the extreme situation” of the bank and the “serious and immediate threat posed by that situation to the stability of the financial system.”

Shareholders and subordinated bondholders of SNS Reaal will be wiped out, effective immediately, Mr. Dijsselbloem said. The holders of senior debt will be repaid and depositors will not lose their money.

The move comes as Europe continues to deal with sluggish economies and debt problems. Last year, Spain took over Bankia, a mortgage lender also hurt by property deals.

Problems at SNS Reaal, which is based in Utrecht, had intensified in the last two weeks as depositors began losing faith, fearing talks with potential buyers would fail. The company had been reportedly negotiating possible investments from the private equity firm CVC Capital Partners and other funds in the hope of averting disaster.

Three top executives of SNS Reaal said in a statement that they were stepping down, as “they do not want to and cannot take responsibility for the nationalization scenario.” The three — Ronald R. Latenstein, the bank’s chief executive; Rob Zwartendijk, the chairman; and Ference Lamp, the chief financial officer — said they had done “everything in their power” to avoid a bailout.

“The persons in question do not advocate the chosen solution, but respect the choice of the Ministry of Finance,” according to a statement.

The announcement is the latest in a spate of recent bad news from European banks. On Thursday, Deutsche Bank posted a surprise fourth-quarter loss of $3 billion, and problems continue at Monti dei Paschi di Siena, which received a bailout from the Italian government last year.

The case of SNS Reaal also adds urgency to efforts to set up procedures to identify and wind down troubled banks in a way that does not burden taxpayers. European leaders and regulators agree that they need a way to dispose of bad banks but have not been able to agree on a way to do so. Despite a law last year giving authorities in the Netherlands more power to intervene in troubled banks, Dutch citizens will still wind up picking up the bill for SNS.

In fact, some of the impetus for the Dutch government’s action might have come from the planned transfer of bank supervisory responsibility away from national regulators to the European Central Bank, as well as the pressure of new bank regulations. Regulators and industry executives may have decided that it is best to act now rather than let the central bank dictate their actions.

The move also signaled the transfer of another of the Netherlands’ biggest financial institutions into state hands. The Dutch business of ABN Amro was nationalized in October 2008 after the collapse of Lehman Brothers sent the world financial system into shock.

ABN Amro had been taken over and split up by Royal Bank of Scotland, Fortis and Santander in a 2007 deal that has since come to epitomize the worst excesses of the credit bubble. Both Royal Bank of Scotland and Fortis, once the biggest Belgian financial house, were laid low by the debt burdens they took on for the ABN Amro deal when the credit crisis struck.

The ABN Amro deal also marred SNS Reaal, which needed a bailout in 2008 after it acquired the broken-up lender’s property business. That bailout has not been fully repaid.

As part of the deal announced Friday, the state will forgive 800 million euros of the unpaid bailout loans, inject 2.2 billion euros into SNS and write off 700 million euros from the bank’s property portfolio.

The government will also require the country’s top three banks — ING, ABN Amro and Rabobank — to contribute 1 billion euros next year in a onetime payment. ING estimated that its share of the cost of bailing out SNS Reaal would come to 300 million to 350 million euros, but said the impact on its finances would be limited.

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 1, 2013

An earlier version of the article incorrectly spelled the name of the nationalized company. It is SNS Reaal, not SNS Reall.

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Hagel Offers Endorsement of U.S. Military Might

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Tough Questions for Hagel at Hearing:
Chuck Hagel, President Obama’s nominee for secretary of defense, had some sharp exchanges with Senator John McCain.







WASHINGTON — Chuck Hagel, President Obama’s nominee to be secretary of defense, came under sharp and sometimes angry questioning Thursday on a wide range of issues from fellow Republicans at his Senate confirmation hearing, including from his old friend, Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who is still smoldering about their break over the Iraq war.




Mr. Hagel, 66, a former senator from Nebraska and a decorated Vietnam veteran who would be the first former enlisted soldier to be secretary of defense, often seemed tentative in his responses to the barrage from fellow Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee, who showed him little deference and frequently cut him off.


One of the most hostile questioners was Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who told Mr. Hagel to “give me an example of where we’ve been intimidated by the Israel-Jewish lobby to do something dumb.'’ Mr. Hagel, who in 2006 said the “Jewish lobby” intimidates Congress, could not.


From Mr. Hagel's home state, Senator Deb Fischer told Mr. Hagel that he held "extreme views" that were "far to the left of this administration.'' Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, surprised the hearing with excerpts on a giant video screen from an interview Mr. Hagel gave to Al Jazeera in 2009. Although it was difficult to hear the short clips he provided, Mr. Cruz asserted that they showed Mr. Hagel agreeing with a caller who suggested that Israel had committed war crimes.


“Do you think the nation of Israel has committed war crimes?'’ Mr. Cruz demanded.


“No, I do not, Senator,'’ Mr. Hagel replied.


But his exchange with Mr. McCain was the most notable, given that the two former Vietnam veterans were close friends when they served in the Senate until Mr. Hagel’s views on the Iraq War caused a split. In 2008, Mr. Hagel did not endorse Mr. McCain for president and traveled with Mr. Obama, then a senator from Illinois, to Iraq and Afghanistan.


Mr. Hagel dodged a direct answer as Mr. McCain asked him repeatedly if history would judge whether Mr. Hagel was right or wrong in opposing the surge in American armed forces when he was in the Senate. The escalation, along with other major factors, is credited in helping to quell the violence in Iraq at the time. When Mr. Hagel said he wanted to explain, Mr. McCain bore in.


“Are you going to answer the question, Senator Hagel — the question is whether you were right or wrong?” Mr. McCain said.


“I’m not going to give you a yes or no answer,” Mr. Hagel replied.


Mr. McCain did not let up.


"I think history has already made a judgment about the surge, sir, and you’re on the wrong side of it,” Mr. McCain said, then seemed to threaten that he would not vote for Mr. Hagel if he did not answer the question.


It took the next questioner, Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida, to draw Mr. Hagel out on the subject. “I did question the surge,” Mr. Hagel said. “I always asked the question, is this going to be worth the sacrifice?” He said 1,200 American men and women lost their lives in the surge. “I’m not certain it was required,” Mr. Hagel said. “Now, it doesn’t mean I was right.”


Despite the theatrics, it was unclear how the committee would vote on Mr. Hagel’s nomination. He needs a majority of the 26-member panel, which includes 14 Democrats, almost all of whom are likely to support his nomination. And there remained a possibility that perhaps one or two Republicans would join them. If Mr. Hagel advances out of the committee, he would have an easier time when the entire Senate votes on his confirmation.


The onslaught by Republicans, however, began even before Mr. Hagel made his opening statement.


The ranking Republican on the committee, Senator James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, told Mr. Hagel that he would not vote for him because of his position of “appeasing” America’s adversaries.


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