DealBook: Alternatives to Dell Deal Come With Too Little Certainty

Objectors to Michael S. Dell‘s $24.4 billion leveraged buyout of Dell are in a tight corner. The likes of Southeastern Asset Management are right that Mr. Dell, the company’s founder, and Silver Lake Partners have made a low-ball offer. Yet, it’s at a respectable 25 percent premium, and the company’s shares haven’t topped the $13.65-a-share deal price in months or Southeastern’s $23.72-a-share valuation in years.

Dell’s net cash, its finance business at book value and the cost of recent acquisitions, which Dell says are doing well, add up to almost $13 a share, as Southeastern points out. That’s practically the whole of the buyout price, yet it ignores the value of Dell’s server and PC business and most of its I.T. consulting. Those businesses may be in decline, but they are not worthless.

Or look at it this way. Analysts expect Dell to generate $4.6 billion of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or Ebitda, in the coming year. After capital expenditure, estimated interest costs following the buyout and taxes, the company will probably churn out more than $2 billion in free cash flow. That’s an impressive return on the buyers’ roughly $6 billion of equity — much more than sufficient to compensate for the risk of a continued slide in the P.C. business.

Southeastern is justified in worrying that the role of the founder and largest shareholder will deter rival bids, despite the board’s efforts to use independent advisers and allow a period to find a buyer at a higher price. Industry rivals might want to pick off some Dell units, but most likely not the whole. And without Mr. Dell’s willing involvement, it is probably too big a bite for private equity firms. Moreover, short-term investors betting on the sale — who perhaps now hold a quarter of all Dell’s shares — will mostly vote for the bird in hand if the alternative is the stock returning to earth with a thud.

Southeastern’s other ideas require patience. For instance, a big special dividend financed by debt would still leave shareholders with a period of high leverage and potential earnings volatility before they have as much in their pockets as the buyout price. Yet, returning about $4 billion to investors over the past two years via buybacks and a recent dividend has not done anything to persuade public investors of Dell’s charms.

Investors have had time to understand Mr. Dell’s turnaround plan, but Dell’s shares traded at no more than about $11 apiece in the months before buyout rumors surfaced in early January. Not enough shareholders seem to be persuaded that it’s worth waiting around. More optimistic owners like Southeastern, with its 8.5 percent stake, could be in a position to force the price higher. But barring a major surprise, it looks as though alternatives to the buyout provide too little certainty to match up.

Robert Cyran is a columnist and Richard Beales is assistant editor at Reuters Breakingviews. For more independent commentary and analysis, visit breakingviews.com.

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The Consumer: Picking Source of Baby's Milk

When Bevil Conway and his partner brought their premature twins home from the hospital, the two fathers felt it was important to keep them on a diet of breast milk. So the new parents purchased a couple of coolers and an extra freezer, and they started scouring Web sites for mothers with extra milk to share.

They found a physician who was moving away; she gave them a stash of frozen milk she had pumped but never needed. They stopped by a fire station in Lexington, Mass., to retrieve milk from a firefighter’s wife. They picked up 100 ounces from a woman whose husband wanted his freezer back before hunting season, and they made regular visits to a woman in Maine who became a close friend and produced startling, prodigious amounts of milk.

And all of it was free.

“It was amazing, absolutely amazing,” said Dr. Conway, 38, a neuroscientist and artist in Cambridge, Mass. “We managed to feed the twins continuously without any formula for 14 months.”

Wet nursing has moved into the Internet age. Where once new parents desperate for breast milk recruited a local mother or, more recently, turned to milk banks or made do with formula, now they rely on informal networks of donors, mostly strangers, hosted on Web sites like Eats on Feets and Human Milk 4 Human Babies.

But some physicians and public health experts fear that in their quest to provide infants with the benefits of breast milk, new parents may inadvertently be exposing their babies to potential harm.

Breast milk confers enormous health benefits. It’s considered the ideal nutrition for infants, and it contains antibodies and other protective immune factors that appear to reduce colds, ear and gastrointesintal infections, asthma and eczema, as well as diabetes and even leukemia, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Neonatal intensive care units insist on breast milk for the smallest babies because it drastically improves their prospects.

But it is also a bodily fluid that can harbor harmful bacteria and viruses, including H.I.V., and H.I.V.-positive mothers can transmit the virus to their babies through their milk.

Established human milk banks carefully screen donors, test them for diseases and pasteurize the breast milk they provide. But there is a huge demand for milk — in 2012 the banks dispensed 2.5 million ounces of milk, up from 2.1 million ounces in 2011 — and the banks must prioritize the smallest and sickest babies.

And the prices are steep. Breast milk can cost up to $5.50 an ounce, more than the cost of formula. A 3-month-old can drink anywhere from 20 to 40 ounces a day or more.

As a result, many new parents are turning to the Web, despite the Food and Drug Administration’s recommendation against feeding babies breast milk acquired directly from individuals or online.

“You don’t know what you’re getting on the Internet,” said Dr. Susan Landers, a neonatologist in Austin, Tex., one of several experts who in 2010 urged the Food and Drug Administration to step in and start regulating human milk banks. (The F.D.A. declined.)

Dr. Landers noted that even if donor mothers have tested negative for viruses and bacteria, they may drink alcohol, smoke marijuana or use medicine that can be passed on through breast milk.

When researchers reviewed the blood tests of 1,091 potential milk donors who had approached one milk bank over a recent six-year period, they found that 3.3 percent tested positive for a virus or bacterium on screening tests (some may have been false positives). Six were infected with syphilis, 17 with hepatitis B and three with hepatitis C. Six tested positive for human T-cell lymphotropic viruses (HTLV-1 and HTLV-2), and four were H.I.V.-positive.

Officials with milk banks also worry that informal milk sharing is robbing them of potential donors and could curtail the supply to premature babies. “Their lives can depend on receiving human milk,” said Kim Updegrove of the Human Milk Banking Association of North America. “And we don’t have enough. We are constantly cutting back on requests from hospitals.”

But many parents don’t even want pasteurized milk of the sort banks provide, because the heating process destroys some of the very substances — some of the milk’s immunoglobulin A, for example — that they are seeking in breast milk.

“We use it straight up,” Dr. Conway said. “We want all the antibodies.” He noted that the donors he encountered were always willing to provide their medical records and were always nursing their own babies.

So what’s a parent-to-be to do?

Pregnant women who want to breast-feed should plan for it, making sure their hospitals’ policies facilitate breast-feeding and allow a baby and mother to share a room. Pacifiers should be avoided.

If a baby is born prematurely and can’t nurse, breast milk should be pumped 10 to 12 times a day to establish a supply.

Parents who use donor milk from informal channels should ask about the health histories of the donors and for recent blood tests and medical records.

Dr. Landers suggested new parents also consider flash-heating donor milk, a technique that can inactivate H.I.V. and destroy bacteria while retaining much of the milk’s nutritional and antimicrobial properties and important antibodies.

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Well: Picking Source of Baby's Milk

When Bevil Conway and his partner brought their premature twins home from the hospital, the two fathers felt it was important to keep them on a diet of breast milk. So the new parents purchased a couple of coolers and an extra freezer, and they started scouring Web sites for mothers with extra milk to share.

They found a physician who was moving away; she gave them a stash of frozen milk she had pumped but never needed. They stopped by a fire station in Lexington, Mass., to retrieve milk from a firefighter’s wife. They picked up 100 ounces from a woman whose husband wanted his freezer back before hunting season, and they made regular visits to a woman in Maine who became a close friend and produced startling, prodigious amounts of milk.

And all of it was free.

“It was amazing, absolutely amazing,” said Dr. Conway, 38, a neuroscientist and artist in Cambridge, Mass. “We managed to feed the twins continuously without any formula for 14 months.”

Wet nursing has moved into the Internet age. Where once new parents desperate for breast milk recruited a local mother or, more recently, turned to milk banks or made do with formula, now they rely on informal networks of donors, mostly strangers, hosted on Web sites like Eats on Feets and Human Milk 4 Human Babies.

But some physicians and public health experts fear that in their quest to provide infants with the benefits of breast milk, new parents may inadvertently be exposing their babies to potential harm.

Breast milk confers enormous health benefits. It’s considered the ideal nutrition for infants, and it contains antibodies and other protective immune factors that appear to reduce colds, ear and gastrointesintal infections, asthma and eczema, as well as diabetes and even leukemia, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Neonatal intensive care units insist on breast milk for the smallest babies because it drastically improves their prospects.

But it is also a bodily fluid that can harbor harmful bacteria and viruses, including H.I.V., and H.I.V.-positive mothers can transmit the virus to their babies through their milk.

Established human milk banks carefully screen donors, test them for diseases and pasteurize the breast milk they provide. But there is a huge demand for milk — in 2012 the banks dispensed 2.5 million ounces of milk, up from 2.1 million ounces in 2011 — and the banks must prioritize the smallest and sickest babies.

And the prices are steep. Breast milk can cost up to $5.50 an ounce, more than the cost of formula. A 3-month-old can drink anywhere from 20 to 40 ounces a day or more.

As a result, many new parents are turning to the Web, despite the Food and Drug Administration’s recommendation against feeding babies breast milk acquired directly from individuals or online.

“You don’t know what you’re getting on the Internet,” said Dr. Susan Landers, a neonatologist in Austin, Tex., one of several experts who in 2010 urged the Food and Drug Administration to step in and start regulating human milk banks. (The F.D.A. declined.)

Dr. Landers noted that even if donor mothers have tested negative for viruses and bacteria, they may drink alcohol, smoke marijuana or use medicine that can be passed on through breast milk.

When researchers reviewed the blood tests of 1,091 potential milk donors who had approached one milk bank over a recent six-year period, they found that 3.3 percent tested positive for a virus or bacterium on screening tests (some may have been false positives). Six were infected with syphilis, 17 with hepatitis B and three with hepatitis C. Six tested positive for human T-cell lymphotropic viruses (HTLV-1 and HTLV-2), and four were H.I.V.-positive.

Officials with milk banks also worry that informal milk sharing is robbing them of potential donors and could curtail the supply to premature babies. “Their lives can depend on receiving human milk,” said Kim Updegrove of the Human Milk Banking Association of North America. “And we don’t have enough. We are constantly cutting back on requests from hospitals.”

But many parents don’t even want pasteurized milk of the sort banks provide, because the heating process destroys some of the very substances — some of the milk’s immunoglobulin A, for example — that they are seeking in breast milk.

“We use it straight up,” Dr. Conway said. “We want all the antibodies.” He noted that the donors he encountered were always willing to provide their medical records and were always nursing their own babies.

So what’s a parent-to-be to do?

Pregnant women who want to breast-feed should plan for it, making sure their hospitals’ policies facilitate breast-feeding and allow a baby and mother to share a room. Pacifiers should be avoided.

If a baby is born prematurely and can’t nurse, breast milk should be pumped 10 to 12 times a day to establish a supply.

Parents who use donor milk from informal channels should ask about the health histories of the donors and for recent blood tests and medical records.

Dr. Landers suggested new parents also consider flash-heating donor milk, a technique that can inactivate H.I.V. and destroy bacteria while retaining much of the milk’s nutritional and antimicrobial properties and important antibodies.

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Frequent Flier: Lessons From a Talkative Airplane Seatmate - Frequent Flier

I’VE spent most of my career in the cosmetics industry, and now, as chief executive of Ahava North America, I’m doing many more business trips.

Q. How often do you fly for business?

A. Three to four times a month, mostly domestic, but international maybe once a month.

Q. What’s your least favorite airport?

A. Atlanta’s Hartsfield airport. There are just too many trams. I like an airport you can walk.

Q. Of all the places you’ve been, what’s the best?

A. Paris. I love the energy, the city’s grandeur, the architecture, everything. I think I was born to be there.

Q. What’s your secret airport vice?

A. I eat too much, always have a Starbucks, buy too many weekly magazines, and I always go into the lounges and look for yogurt-covered raisins. As far as I’m concerned, all those raisins are mine.

Flying can be a hassle since I miss my family. I’m married and have three daughters, and I like to spend as much time with them as possible. But I think, too, that my family is proud of me and my job, so there are certainly lessons they can learn from mom traveling a lot for work, but still making them the priority.

My husband and I have a standing joke. Since I fly with United so often both domestically and internationally, I see their brand videos constantly and I feel like I know the president, Jeff Smisek, personally. So when I’m on an evening flight, I always send a text to my husband before takeoff and say, “Jeff Smisek says good night.”

I recently participated in a parent-teacher conference while I was in Paris. I was in an airline lounge on the phone with the teacher. You learn to make do. I am in a book club with other mothers and their daughters. I need to keep up with everyone, and I get the bulk of my reading done when I’m traveling. I miss my daughters a lot when I do have to go away. So even feeling that connection by reading the same books makes going away a little easier.

Since I’ve traveled so much, especially internationally, I’m absolutely maniacal about full disclosure on customs forms. I don’t want any hassle.

One of Ahava’s shareholders produces dates, and as a way to welcome me to the company when I started, the shareholder gave me a few boxes. I put them in my luggage and then totally forgot they were in there. So I didn’t disclose them on the customs forms at Newark.

It was very early in the morning, about 4:30 a.m., and I went to the luggage carousel to wait for my bags. I did see my bags, as well as several dogs and their handlers huddled around my luggage. I had to go through a second round of security, which was pretty embarrassing. I should have eaten those dates during my trip.

I try to maximize my time in flight. I usually go straight to sleep and actively avoid conversation. However, recently, on a business trip to Israel, this woman sat next to me and introduced herself, saying, “Hi, my name is Mary Alice. We’re going to be spending a lot of time together on this flight.” The first thing I thought was, “Oh no, a talker.” But she was very sweet, so I figured we could talk for a few minutes.

I learned that this was her first time flying internationally, and that she was an 80-year-old Catholic nun. Traveling to Israel was at the top of her bucket list, and her sister-in-law donated her own frequent flier miles to her. Then her community pitched in and gave her some money so her dream could come true.

I wound up talking to her almost the entire trip. I realized how jaded I was becoming about travel. I’m so much younger than she was, but she was like a child, just so eager to see and experience new things. I gave her a lot of tips and advice about Israel, and she was very grateful.

But it was really me who was grateful. She made me realize that all the traveling I do really is a gift, and maybe all of us who travel a lot need to open up to our seatmates once in a while. Like me, you might learn something wonderful.

By Elana Drell-Szyfer, as told to Joan Raymond. E-mail: joan.raymond@nytimes.com.

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3 North Korean Doctors Are Killed in Nigeria

POTISKUM, Nigeria (AP) — Assailants in northeastern Nigeria have killed three North Korean doctors, beheading one of them, officials said Sunday.

The attack on Saturday night in Potiskum, a town in Yobe State, comes after gunmen killed at least nine women who were administering polio vaccines in Kano, the major city in Nigeria’s predominantly Muslim north.

The assailants apparently killed the North Korean doctors inside their home, said Dr. Mohammed Mamman, chairman of the Hospital Managing Board of Yobe State.

The North Korean doctors had no security guards at their residence and typically traveled around the city without a police escort, officials said.

All three bodies had what appeared to be machete wounds.

Two of the men had their throats slit. The assailants beheaded the other doctor.

The doctors lived in a quiet neighborhood in the town. There was no room to house them at the hospital, where they would have had some protection, Dr. Mamman said.

Initially, doctors at the hospital who worked with the three men identified them as being from South Korea, while the police said they were from China.

But Dr. Mamman said that the three men were from North Korea and had lived in the state since 2005 as part of a medical program between Yobe State and the North Korean government.

More than a dozen other North Korean doctors work in the state under the program, which also includes engineers, Dr. Mamman said.

He said all the North Koreans would receive immediate protection from the security forces.

“It is very unfortunate,” he said of the killings.

The Yobe State police commissioner, Sanusi Rufai, confirmed that the attack took place and said that officers had begun an investigation.

Mr. Rufai said the police had already arrested 10 people, though the police in Nigeria routinely round up those living around the site of a crime, whether or not there is any evidence suggesting their complicity.

North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency did not immediately report the three doctors’ deaths on Sunday.

No one claimed responsibility for the attack, though suspicion fell on the Islamist sect Boko Haram. Members of the sect, whose name means “Western education is sacrilege,” have been attacking government buildings and security forces over the past year and a half.

In 2012 alone, the group was blamed for killing at least 792 people.

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Reviewing Three Brands of Tax Preparation Software

TAX preparation is moving to the cloud.

The makers of the better-known tax prep programs — TurboTax, H&R Block at Home and TaxAct — say that many customers, particularly younger ones, prefer Web-based programs to old-fashioned, desktop versions. Web-based programs — techies call this cloud computing — reside on remote servers that customers access via their browsers. They offer the convenience of working on a return from any Internet-connected computer and having that return stored on the software makers’ secure servers.

After spending several days running my family’s tax information through Web and desktop offerings, I learned that I’m old-school. For a decade, I’ve completed our return on my Mac desktop, and I prefer that. Desktop programs may be costlier and, in some ways, clunkier — you must buy them on CD or download them — but they also offer more flexibility.

A single purchase, for example, lets you prepare and file multiple returns, as you might want to do if you’re part of a same-sex couple or if you help family members or friends with their taxes. And you can more easily jump back and forth between the tax return and the interviews the programs use to gather information. That lets you check entries as you make them, as my wife, a C.P.A., insists upon. What you lose in convenience, you gain in control.

Each of the tax preparation programs, whether desktop or online, has strengths and shortcomings. TurboTax is the easiest to use, importing lots of financial information with just a few clicks. H&R Block promises the most reassuring help — its staff will represent you at no extra charge if you’re audited. TaxAct offers the best price. A look at each provider’s offerings shows where it excelled and stumbled in preparing my family’s 2012 return.

TurboTax

TurboTax’s maker, Intuit, has its roots in technology, not taxes, and its facility with bits and bytes shows in its wares. Its desktop and online programs make doing taxes as simple as such a time-eating task can be. If you end up cursing come tax time, the target will be the I.R.S., not your software.

I downloaded the desktop version of TurboTax Premier for $89.99 — though I learned later that I could have paid $10 less if I’d bought it on CD at my local Staples. The download took only a few seconds, as did the import of information from our 2011 return. All of the unchanged data from 2011 — names, addresses, federal ID numbers, even descriptions of business expenses — popped into the right places on the 2012 forms. Even the names of the charities we support carried over. The software also imported my wife’s W-2 and all of the information on our investments from Vanguard, T. Rowe Price and Fidelity. All I had to do was key in details for a few local banks and update the amounts we’d given to charity.

The online version of TurboTax, by contrast, didn’t import as much. My attempt to transfer our 2011 return failed, and an import from one of the fund companies went awry. I inherited an I.R.A., and the money is invested in about a half-dozen funds. Instead of creating an entry for a single 1099-R, the program created a half-dozen, which I had to combine.

Otherwise, the online program looked and worked much the same way as the desktop software. I didn’t have to pay to try it because TurboTax, like H&R Block and TaxAct, doesn’t require online users to pay until they file their returns. Had I filed with the online version of TurboTax Premier, I would have paid $49.99 for a single federal return — the price as it was discounted at the time. But TurboTax says it could rise to as much as $74.99, its list price, before April 15.

 

TurboTax upgraded its assistance features for this year’s tax filing season — a welcome improvement. In the past, I’d found some help links hard to locate and navigate. When I wanted to pose a question to a tax expert, I had to dig around. But not anymore. When I had a question about recording tax-exempt interest, I clicked on the help link, and TurboTax offered a choice between a call and an online chat. Within seconds, I was e-chatting with Marilyn G., and she pointed me to the right spot on the return. We were done in less than five minutes, and I paid nothing extra. I’ve had a tougher time buying jeans online. (All three companies also provide extensive tax-law explanations embedded in their programs.)

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For Families Struggling with Mental Illness, Carolyn Wolf Is a Guide in the Darkness

When a life starts to unravel, where do you turn for help?

Melissa Klump began to slip in the eighth grade. She couldn’t focus in class, and in a moment of despair she swallowed 60 ibuprofen tablets. She was smart, pretty and ill: depression, attention deficit disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, either bipolar disorder or borderline personality disorder.

In her 20s, after a more serious suicide attempt, her parents sent her to a residential psychiatric treatment center, and from there to another. It was the treatment of last resort. When she was discharged from the second center last August after slapping another resident, her mother, Elisa Klump, was beside herself.

“I was banging my head against the wall,” the mother said. “What do I do next?” She frantically called support groups, therapy programs, suicide prevention lines, anybody, running down a list of names in a directory of mental health resources. “Finally,” she said, “somebody told me, ‘The person you need to talk to is Carolyn Wolf.’ ”

That call, she said, changed her life and her daughter’s. “Carolyn has given me hope,” she said. “I didn’t know there were people like her out there.”

Carolyn Reinach Wolf is not a psychiatrist or a mental health professional, but a lawyer who has carved out what she says is a unique niche, working with families like the Klumps.

One in 17 American adults suffers from a severe mental illness, and the systems into which they are plunged — hospitals, insurance companies, courts, social services — can be fragmented and overwhelming for families to manage. The recent shootings in Newtown, Conn., and Aurora, Colo., have brought attention to the need for intervention to prevent such extreme acts of violence, which are rare. But for the great majority of families watching their loved ones suffer, and often suffering themselves, the struggle can be boundless, with little guidance along the way.

“If you Google ‘mental health lawyer,’ ” said Ms. Wolf, a partner with Abrams & Fensterman, “I’m kinda the only game in town.”

On a recent afternoon, she described in her Midtown office the range of her practice.

“We have been known to pull people out of crack dens,” she said. “I have chased people around hotels all over the city with the N.Y.P.D. and my team to get them to a hospital. I had a case years ago where the person was on his way back from Europe, and the family was very concerned that he was symptomatic. I had security people meet him at J.F.K.”

Many lawyers work with mentally ill people or their families, but Ron Honberg, the national director of policy and legal affairs for the National Alliance on Mental Illness, said he did not know of another lawyer who did what Ms. Wolf does: providing families with a team of psychiatrists, social workers, case managers, life coaches, security guards and others, and then coordinating their services. It can be a lifeline — for people who can afford it, Mr. Honberg said. “Otherwise, families have to do this on their own,” he said. “It’s a 24-hour, 7-day-a-week job, and for some families it never ends.”

Many of Ms. Wolf’s clients declined to be interviewed for this article, but the few who spoke offered an unusual window on the arcane twists and turns of the mental health care system, even for families with money. Their stories illustrate how fraught and sometimes blind such a journey can be.

One rainy morning last month, Lance Sheena, 29, sat with his mother in the spacious family room of her Long Island home. Mr. Sheena was puffy-eyed and sporadically inattentive; the previous night, at the group home where he has been living since late last summer, another resident had been screaming incoherently and was taken away by the police. His mother, Susan Sheena, eased delicately into the family story.

“I don’t talk to a lot of people because they don’t get it,” Ms. Sheena said. “They mean well, but they don’t get it unless they’ve been through a similar experience. And anytime something comes up, like the shooting in Newtown, right away it goes to the mentally ill. And you think, maybe we shouldn’t be so public about this, because people are going to be afraid of us and Lance. It’s a big concern.”

Her son cut her off. “Are you comparing me to the guy that shot those people?”

“No, I’m saying that anytime there’s a shooting, like in Aurora, that’s when these things come out in the news.”

“Did you really just compare me to that guy?”

“No, I didn’t compare you.”

“Then what did you say?”

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For Families Struggling with Mental Illness, Carolyn Wolf Is a Guide in the Darkness

When a life starts to unravel, where do you turn for help?

Melissa Klump began to slip in the eighth grade. She couldn’t focus in class, and in a moment of despair she swallowed 60 ibuprofen tablets. She was smart, pretty and ill: depression, attention deficit disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, either bipolar disorder or borderline personality disorder.

In her 20s, after a more serious suicide attempt, her parents sent her to a residential psychiatric treatment center, and from there to another. It was the treatment of last resort. When she was discharged from the second center last August after slapping another resident, her mother, Elisa Klump, was beside herself.

“I was banging my head against the wall,” the mother said. “What do I do next?” She frantically called support groups, therapy programs, suicide prevention lines, anybody, running down a list of names in a directory of mental health resources. “Finally,” she said, “somebody told me, ‘The person you need to talk to is Carolyn Wolf.’ ”

That call, she said, changed her life and her daughter’s. “Carolyn has given me hope,” she said. “I didn’t know there were people like her out there.”

Carolyn Reinach Wolf is not a psychiatrist or a mental health professional, but a lawyer who has carved out what she says is a unique niche, working with families like the Klumps.

One in 17 American adults suffers from a severe mental illness, and the systems into which they are plunged — hospitals, insurance companies, courts, social services — can be fragmented and overwhelming for families to manage. The recent shootings in Newtown, Conn., and Aurora, Colo., have brought attention to the need for intervention to prevent such extreme acts of violence, which are rare. But for the great majority of families watching their loved ones suffer, and often suffering themselves, the struggle can be boundless, with little guidance along the way.

“If you Google ‘mental health lawyer,’ ” said Ms. Wolf, a partner with Abrams & Fensterman, “I’m kinda the only game in town.”

On a recent afternoon, she described in her Midtown office the range of her practice.

“We have been known to pull people out of crack dens,” she said. “I have chased people around hotels all over the city with the N.Y.P.D. and my team to get them to a hospital. I had a case years ago where the person was on his way back from Europe, and the family was very concerned that he was symptomatic. I had security people meet him at J.F.K.”

Many lawyers work with mentally ill people or their families, but Ron Honberg, the national director of policy and legal affairs for the National Alliance on Mental Illness, said he did not know of another lawyer who did what Ms. Wolf does: providing families with a team of psychiatrists, social workers, case managers, life coaches, security guards and others, and then coordinating their services. It can be a lifeline — for people who can afford it, Mr. Honberg said. “Otherwise, families have to do this on their own,” he said. “It’s a 24-hour, 7-day-a-week job, and for some families it never ends.”

Many of Ms. Wolf’s clients declined to be interviewed for this article, but the few who spoke offered an unusual window on the arcane twists and turns of the mental health care system, even for families with money. Their stories illustrate how fraught and sometimes blind such a journey can be.

One rainy morning last month, Lance Sheena, 29, sat with his mother in the spacious family room of her Long Island home. Mr. Sheena was puffy-eyed and sporadically inattentive; the previous night, at the group home where he has been living since late last summer, another resident had been screaming incoherently and was taken away by the police. His mother, Susan Sheena, eased delicately into the family story.

“I don’t talk to a lot of people because they don’t get it,” Ms. Sheena said. “They mean well, but they don’t get it unless they’ve been through a similar experience. And anytime something comes up, like the shooting in Newtown, right away it goes to the mentally ill. And you think, maybe we shouldn’t be so public about this, because people are going to be afraid of us and Lance. It’s a big concern.”

Her son cut her off. “Are you comparing me to the guy that shot those people?”

“No, I’m saying that anytime there’s a shooting, like in Aurora, that’s when these things come out in the news.”

“Did you really just compare me to that guy?”

“No, I didn’t compare you.”

“Then what did you say?”

Read More..

Bits Blog: Disruptions: Apple Is Said to Be Developing a Curved-Glass Smart Watch

Dick Tracy had one. As did Inspector Gadget and James Bond. A watch that doubled as a computer, two-way radio, mapping device or television.

Though such a device has been lost to science fiction comics and spy movies of the era before smartphones, the smart watch might soon become a reality, in the form of a curved glass device made by Apple.

In its headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., Apple is experimenting with wristwatch-like devices made of curved glass, according to people familiar with the company’s explorations, who spoke on the condition that they not be named because they are not allowed to publicly discuss unreleased products. Such a watch would operate on Apple’s iOS platform, two people said, and stand apart from competitors based on the company’s understanding of how such glass can curve around the human body.

Apple declined to comment on its plans. But the exploration of such a watch leaves open lots of exciting questions: If the company does release such a product, what would it look like? Would it include Siri, the voice assistant? Would it have a version of Apple’s map software, offering real-time directions to people walking down the street? Could it receive text messages? Could it monitor a user’s health or daily activity? How much will it cost? Could Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, be wearing one right now, whispering sweet nothings to his wrist?

Such a watch could also be used to make mobile payments, with Apple’s Passbook payment software.

Although it would take Dick Tracy to find the answers to those questions, and it’s uncertain when Apple might unveil such a device, it’s clear that Apple has the technology.

Last year, Corning, the maker of the ultra-tough Gorilla Glass that is used in the iPhone, announced that it had solved the difficult engineering challenge of creating bendable glass, called Willow Glass, that can flop as easily as a piece of paper in the wind without breaking.

Pete Bocko, the chief technology officer for Corning Glass Technologies, who worked on Willow Glass, said via telephone that the company had been developing the thin, flexible glass for more than a decade, and that the technology had finally arrived.

“You can certainly make it wrap around a cylindrical object and that could be someone’s wrist,” Mr. Bocko said. “Right now, if I tried to make something that looked like a watch, that could be done using this flexible glass.”

But Mr. Bocko warns that it is still quite an engineering feat to create a foldable device. “The human body moves in unpredictable ways,” he said. “It’s one of the toughest mechanical challenges.”

To add to the excitement of an Apple watch, late last year the Chinese gadget site Tech.163 reported that the company had begun development of a watch featuring Bluetooth and a 1.5-inch display.

“Apple’s certainly made a lot of hiring in that area,” said Sarah Rotman Epps, a Forrester analyst who specializes in wearable computing and smartphones. “Apple is already in the wearable space through its ecosystem partners that make accessories that connect to the iPhone,” she said, adding: “This makes Apple potentially the biggest player of the wearables market in a sort of invisible way.”

“Over the long term wearable computing is inevitable for Apple; devices are diversifying and the human body is a rich canvas for the computer,” Ms. Epps said. “But I’m not sure how close we are to a new piece of Apple hardware that is worn on the body.”

Investors would most likely embrace an iWatch, with some already saying that wearable computing could replace the smartphone over the next decade.

“We believe technology could progress to a point where consumers have a tablet plus wearable computers, like watches or glasses, that enable simple things like voice calls, texting, quick searches, navigation,” Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray, said in a report last month. “These devices are likely to be cheaper than an iPhone and could ultimately be Apple’s best answer to addressing emerging markets.”

Mr. Cook is clearly interested in wearables. In the past he has been seen wearing a Nike FuelBand, which tracks a user’s daily exertion. The FuelBand data is shared wirelessly with an iPhone app.

Bob Mansfield, Apple’s senior vice president for technologies, who previously ran hardware engineering, has also been particularly interested in wearables, an Apple employee said. Mr. Mansfield is engrossed by devices that connect to the iPhone, through Bluetooth, sharing information back and forth from the human body to the phone, including the Nike FuelBand and Jawbone Up.

If smartphones do become smart watches and smart glasses, Apple seems to have the technology to make standout wearable computers.

Last year the company filed patents for displays that sit over the eye and stream information to the retina. Given that the iPod Nano is about the size of an overfed ant, the company clearly knows how to make small devices, too.

But, maybe there are other devices coming before wearables. Apple has long been rumored to be working on a television-like experience. And, there is the possibility of an Apple car.

In a meeting in his office before he died, Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s co-founder and former chief executive, told John Markoff of The New York Times that if he had more energy, he would have liked to take on Detroit with an Apple car.

In August, during the company’s patent trial with Samsung, Philip W. Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president for worldwide product marketing, said on the stand that Apple had explored making “crazy stuff” before development of the iPhone and iPad, including a camera or a car. While Apple continues its experiments with wearables, its biggest competitor, Google, is pressing ahead with plans to make wearable computers mainstream.

According to a Google executive who spoke on the condition that he not be named, the company hopes its wearable glasses, with a display that sits above the eye, will account for 3 percent of revenue by 2015. Olympus is also working on wearable computers.

Google is holding private workshops in San Francisco and New York for developers to start building applications for its glasses. At the event in San Francisco last week, Hosain Rahman, chief executive of Jawbone, the maker of the Up, a wrist device that tracks people’s energy and sleep, said that “a decade from now we won’t be able to imagine life without the wearables that we use to access information, unlock our doors, pay for goods and most importantly track our health.”

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Venezuela, Despite Myriad Problems, Seizes On a Hat

Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters

Vice President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela wore a patriotic cap to a parade Monday in Caracas.

CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuela seems to lurch from one crisis to another. President Hugo Chávez has virtually disappeared since going to Cuba for cancer surgery more than eight weeks ago. Last month, 58 people were killed in a prison when inmates clashed with soldiers. Inflation is spiking, the government just announced a currency devaluation and lurid murders are the stuff of daily headlines.

But high on the list of government priorities last week was an unexpected item: baseball caps.

Even in a country where political theater of the absurd is commonplace, the great cap kerfuffle took many Venezuelans by surprise.

It all started over the summer, when a young state governor, Henrique Capriles, ran for president against Mr. Chávez. Mr. Capriles started wearing a baseball cap decorated with the national colors — yellow, blue and red — and the stars of the Venezuelan flag.

In response, the electoral council, dominated by Chávez loyalists, threatened to sanction Mr. Capriles for violating a rule against using national symbols in the campaign. The move struck many people as patently partisan because Mr. Chávez regularly wore clothes made up of the national colors and patterned on the flag and used vast amounts of government resources to promote his re-election.

Suddenly, the tricolor cap became a symbol of Mr. Capriles’s underdog campaign, and soon it could be seen everywhere, on the noggins of his supporters.

But Mr. Capriles lost the election in October, and the cap was mostly forgotten. Until now.

At a rally on Monday to celebrate the anniversary of a failed 1992 coup led by Mr. Chávez, a host of government officials unexpectedly pulled out caps like the one Mr. Capriles had made famous and put them on.

Had Mr. Chávez’s top cadre switched sides? Nothing of the sort.

“It is the cap of the revolution,” Vice President Nicolás Maduro said from the stage. “They can’t steal it like they’re accustomed to stealing it.”

He held up the hat, which had a small emblem commemorating the coup’s anniversary, and shouted, “Cap in hand! Tricolor in hand, everyone!”

A day later, at a session of the National Assembly, legislators on both sides of the aisle showed up wearing caps. The chamber looked like the stands at a baseball game.

All of this has given rise to plenty of jokes.

“The cap — expropriate it!” said one wag on Twitter, referring to a famous episode when Mr. Chávez, a socialist, in what seemed like a spontaneous act, ordered the nationalization of several buildings in the center of Caracas.

Then came a new twist on Thursday night, when the government interrupted regular television and radio programming with a special broadcast. Anxious Venezuelans worried about Mr. Chávez’s long absence might have wondered if they were about to get an update on the president’s health.

Nope. The two-minute broadcast consisted of images of Mr. Chávez, at various points of his 14-year presidency, wearing the tricolor cap.

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