Diner’s Journal Blog: PepsiCo Will Halt Use of Additive in Gatorade

PepsiCo announced on Friday that it would no longer use an ingredient in Gatorade after consumers complained.

The ingredient, brominated vegetable oil, which was used in citrus versions of the sports drink to prevent the flavorings from separating, was the object of a petition started on Change.org by Sarah Kavanagh, a 15-year-old from Hattiesburg, Miss., who became concerned about the ingredient after reading about it online. Studies have suggested there are possible side effects, including neurological disorders and altered thyroid hormones.

The petition attracted more than 200,000 signatures, and this week, Ms. Kavanagh was in New York City to tape a segment for “The Dr. Oz Show.” She visited The New York Times on Wednesday and while there said, “I just don’t understand why they can’t use something else instead of B.V.O.”

“I was in algebra class and one of my friends kicked me and said, ‘Have you seen this on Twitter?’ ” Ms. Kavanagh said in a phone interview on Friday evening. “I asked the teacher if I could slip out to the bathroom, and I called my mom and said, ‘Mom, we won.’ ”

Molly Carter, a spokeswoman for Gatorade, said the company had been testing alternatives to the chemical for roughly a year “due to customer feedback.” She said Gatorade initially was not going to make an announcement, “since we don’t find a health and safety risk with B.V.O.”

Because of the petition, though, Ms. Carter said the company had changed its mind, and an unidentified executive there gave Beverage Digest, a trade publication, the news for its Jan. 25 issue.

Previously, a spokesman for PepsiCo had said in an e-mail, “We appreciate Sarah as a fan of Gatorade, and her concern has been heard.”

Brominated vegetable oil will be replaced by sucrose acetate isobutyrate, an emulsifier that is “generally recognized as safe” as a food additive by the Food and Drug Administration. The new ingredient will be added to orange, citrus cooler and lemonade Gatorade, as well Gatorade X-Factor orange, Gatorade Xtremo citrus cooler and a powdered form of the drink called “glacier freeze.”

Ms. Carter said consumers would start seeing the new ingredient over the next few months as existing supplies of Gatorade sell out and are replaced.

Health advocates applauded the company’s move. “Kudos to PepsiCo for doing the responsible thing on its own and not waiting for the F.D.A. to force it to,” said Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

Mr. Jacobson has championed the removal of brominated vegetable oil from foods and beverages for the last several decades, but the F.D.A. has left it in a sort of limbo, citing budgetary constraints that it says keep it from going through the process needed to formally ban the chemical or declare it safe once and for all.

Brominated vegetable oil is banned as a food ingredient in Japan and the European Union. About 10 percent of drinks sold in the United States contain it, including Mountain Dew, which is also made by PepsiCo; some flavors of Powerade and Fresca from Coca-Cola; and Squirt and Sunkist Peach Soda, made by the Dr Pepper Snapple Group.

PepsiCo said it had no plans to remove the ingredient from Mountain Dew and Diet Mountain Dew, both of which generate more than $1 billion in annual sales.

Heather White, executive director at the Environmental Working Group, said of PepsiCo’s decision, “We can only hope that other companies will follow suit.” She added, “We need to overhaul how F.D.A. keeps up with the latest science on food additives to better protect public health.”

Ms. Kavanagh agreed. “I’ve been thinking about ways to take this to the next level, and I’m thinking about taking it to the F.D.A. and asking them why they aren’t doing something about it,” she said. “I’m not sure yet, but I think that’s where I’d like to go with this.”

---

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 26, 2013

An earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of the 15-year-old who started a petition on Change.org to end the use of brominated vegetable oil in Gatorade. She is Sarah Kavanagh, not Kavanaugh.

A version of this article appeared in print on 01/26/2013, on page B1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: PepsiCo Will Halt Additive Use In Gatorade.

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 based 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 based 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..

Gadgetwise Blog: Is January the Time to Buy Electronics?

At the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in early January, manufacturers tantalized consumers with new electronics soon to hit the shelves. But what does that do to the prices of current models that are being replaced? Is this a golden buying opportunity?

Yes and no. Yes for TVs, no for laptops. I’ll explain.

Decide.com, which tracks the price of electronics, studied what happened to the cost of TVs and laptops in past years after C.E.S.

What it found is that TV prices dip to near yearly lows after the show, matching holiday prices. With the average price of the top 250 TVs at $1,057, the post-show average is projected to drop an average of $211, to $846, based on data from previous  years. That is a 20 percent savings.

Laptops don’t drop so steeply. After the show, the 100 most popular laptops have historically been discounted 8 percent. This year that would mean the top 100 laptops, which average $780 in price, would be reduced $62, to $718.

Laptop price are lowest in late June through early July, right before the back to school sales, and during the last two weeks of September, after those sales, according to Decide.com’s data. At those times the discounts are typically 10 percent.

Of course, averages can be deceiving. Prices are volatile all year around, so a particular TV or computer you want could be discounted far more at any time.

There are a number of browser add-ons and apps that let you track prices of individual products, or you can use Decide.com – but it will cost you. Membership is $5 a month or $30 a year for full access.

Read More..

Defense Official Hints That Israel Is Stepping Back From Plans to Unilaterally Attack Iran

JERUSALEM — Israel’s departing defense minister, Ehud Barak, said that the Pentagon had prepared sophisticated blueprints for a surgical operation to set back Iran’s nuclear program should the United States decide to attack, a statement that was a possible indication that Israel has shelved plans of any unilateral strike.

Johannes Eisele/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Ehud Barak, Israel’s defense minister, at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland.

In an interview conducted at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and published by The Daily Beast on Friday, Mr. Barak was asked if there was any way Israel could go to war with Iran over what the West believes is a nuclear weapons program without dragging in the war-weary United States.

Mr. Barak replied that there were more than just the two options — of full-scale war or allowing Iran to obtain nuclear weapons capability — in the event that sanctions and diplomacy failed.

“What we basically say is that if worse comes to worst, there should be a readiness and an ability to launch a surgical operation that will delay them by a significant time frame and probably convince them that it won’t work because the world is determined to block them,” he said.

Under orders from the White House, Mr. Barak added, “the Pentagon prepared quite sophisticated, fine, extremely fine, scalpels,” referring to the ability to carry out pinpoint strikes.

Mr. Barak did not specify what those “scalpels” were. But there has been a broad effort at the White House, the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies to develop an overlapping series of options that could set back, though probably not halt, Iran’s nuclear progress.

Iran insists that its nuclear program is solely for peaceful purposes.

The Pentagon declined to comment on the report, but a senior defense official said: “The U.S. military constantly plans for a range of contingencies we might face around the world, and our planning is often quite detailed.” The official added, “That shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone.”

Mr. Barak and the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, led a hawkish line against Iran’s nuclear drive over the past few years, emphasizing Israel’s doctrine of self-reliance for such existential issues and warning that the time to stop Iran from going nuclear was running out.

But in recent months, faced with tough opposition from Washington, particularly ahead of the November presidential elections, and public criticism from a string of Israeli former security chiefs, the prospect of an imminent unilateral Israeli strike receded. Israel suggested that its own deadline had been put off until this spring or summer.

In the past few weeks Mr. Netanyahu campaigned for re-election in Israel as a strong leader who, among other things, had managed to persuade the world to deal with the Iranian threat.

Late Tuesday, Mr. Netanyahu said “the first challenge was and still is to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.”

But Mr. Netanyahu and his conservative Likud Party emerged weakened from the elections, with much of the Israeli electorate more focused on domestic issues.

Mr. Barak chose not to run for re-election after polls showed that his tiny Independence faction was unlikely to pass the electoral threshold.

Elisabeth Bumiller and David E. Sanger contributed reporting from Washington.

Read More..

DealBook: S.E.C. Pick Is Ex-Prosecutor, in Signal to Wall Street

9:13 p.m. | Updated

The White House delivered a strong message to Wall Street on Thursday, taking the unusual step of choosing two former prosecutors as top financial regulators.

But translating that message into action will not be easy, given the complexities of the market and Wall Street’s aggressive nature.

At a short White House ceremony, President Obama named Mary Jo White, the first female United States attorney in Manhattan, to run the Securities and Exchange Commission. Mr. Obama also renominated Richard Cordray as the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a position he has held for the last year under a temporary recess appointment without Senate approval.

With the appointments, the president showed a renewed resolve to hold Wall Street accountable for wrongdoing, extolling his candidates’ records as prosecutors.

Ms. White spent more than a decade as a top federal prosecutor in New York City, overseeing the prosecution of the crime boss John Gotti and those responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. As an Ohio prosecutor, Mr. Cordray filed lawsuits against Bank of America and the American International Group.

“It’s not enough to change the law,” Mr. Obama said. “We also need cops on the beat to enforce the law.”

Still, Ms. White and Mr. Cordray face their own challenges.

While Ms. White, 65, is best known as an aggressive prosecutor, she also built a lucrative legal practice defending Wall Street executives, a potential concern for consumer advocates. And she lacks experience in the financial minutiae central to a regulatory role.

Mr. Cordray, 53, presents another potential problem for the White House. The Senate last year declined to confirm him in the face of Republican and Wall Street opposition to the newly created consumer bureau. Several Republicans on Thursday again voiced their concerns.

“There’s absolutely no excuse for the Senate to wait any longer to confirm him,” Mr. Obama said.

Both Midwestern natives, Ms. White and Mr. Cordray arrived in Washington as outsiders. A five-time “Jeopardy” champion from Ohio, Mr. Cordray became the consumer bureau’s enforcement chief after losing re-election for state attorney general. As Ohio’s top prosecutor, he became known as the Midwestern sheriff of Wall Street.

Ms. White, who was born in Kansas City, Mo., changed career paths after graduating with a master’s degree in psychology. She obtained a law degree from Columbia University in 1974, and a few years later, began her first stint as a federal prosecutor in Manhattan.

She ultimately became the United States attorney in Manhattan, earning a reputation as a tenacious prosecutor with an independent streak. Ms. White embraced the often-repeated joke that her office was the United States attorney for the “sovereign,” rather than Southern, district of New York.

In 1997, aides to Manhattan District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau accused her of trying to thwart a state insider trading investigation by allowing a defendant charged by the district attorney’s office to plead guilty to federal charges. Doing so effectively ended Mr. Morgenthau’s case, but Ms. White was unapologetic. “To prosecute such crimes under only state law diminishes their seriousness,” she said at the time.

As the chief federal prosecutor in Manhattan, Ms. White pursued white-collar crime and Wall Street fraud. She secured a $340 million fine against Daiwa Bank for illegally covering up trading losses and other crimes.

She distinguished her career with a series of terrorism cases. She supervised the original investigation into Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, and oversaw six major trials, including those stemming from the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and a plot to blow up New York landmarks.

Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the former United States attorney in Chicago who previously worked under Ms. White, called her “a force of nature.”

She also trained a generation of federal prosecutors. Two former assistants became high-level S.E.C. officials: Robert S. Khuzami, the departing enforcement chief, and George S. Canellos, his deputy. Preet Bharara, the current United States attorney in Manhattan, whom Ms. White hired in 1999, emphasized her “legendary work ethic,” citing her 1 a.m. e-mail dispatches. Her philosophy, Mr. Bharara said, was that prosecuting wrongdoing was “not just about earning notches on your belt.”

While former employees described her as “no nonsense,” she was often spotted sipping a Bud Light at a weekly social gathering for junior prosecutors. And despite being barely 5 feet tall, she also was an exuberant point guard in a local lawyers’ basketball league, and once arrived at a tennis match on a red motorcycle, while Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman” blared loudly.

With her prosecutorial victories and independent political status, Ms. White is expected to receive broad support on Capitol Hill. Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York joined a chorus of Democratic enthusiasm on Thursday, declaring that Ms. White was a “tough-as-nails prosecutor.”

But she could face questions about her command of Wall Street arcana.

Regulatory chiefs are often market experts or academics. If confirmed, Ms. White will succeed Elisse B. Walter, a longtime S.E.C. official, who took over as chairwoman after Mary L. Schapiro stepped down as the agency’s leader in December. Ms. Schapiro, a seasoned policy maker and specialist in market structure, overhauled the agency after it was blamed for missing the warning signs of the financial crisis. Ms. White, in contrast, built her career on the law-and-order side of the securities industry, with just a brief stint as a director of the Nasdaq.

The gaps in her résumé could complicate Ms. White’s agenda in the face of fierce Wall Street lobbying. Under the next chairman, the agency must write dozens of rules to carry out the Dodd-Frank act, a regulatory overhaul passed in response to the crisis. The agency also must grapple with the increasingly complex markets and rapid-fire trading that dominate Wall Street.

People close to the S.E.C. note, however, that her husband, John W. White, is a veteran of the agency. From 2006 through 2008, he was head of the S.E.C.’s division of corporation finance.

Ms. Schapiro also argued that Ms. White’s outsider status could inject new life into the agency. “Nobody comes in an expert across the board,” Ms. Schapiro said. “A fresh look on some of these policy issues might be exactly what we need.”

Ms. White could face additional questions about her career, a revolving door in and out of government. In private practice, she defended some of Wall Street’s biggest names, including Kenneth D. Lewis, a former chief of Bank of America. As the head of litigation at Debevoise & Plimpton, she also represented JPMorgan Chase and the board of Morgan Stanley.

Barbara S. Jones, who retired recently from the federal bench in Manhattan and now practices law at the firm Zuckerman Spaeder, said Ms. White, a close friend, would benefit from both prosecuting and defending executives over her career. “She has been on both sides,” Ms. Jones said. “She will be tough when she has to be, but she’ll be fair.”

At the White House on Thursday, Ms. White spoke only briefly, saying she would work “to protect investors and to ensure the strength, efficiency and the transparency of our capital markets.” Mr. Obama noted that Ms. White, whose 43rd wedding anniversary fell on Thursday, was a childhood fan of “The Hardy Boys,” as he was, adding that she “built a career the Hardy boys could only dream of.” “You don’t want to mess with Mary Jo,” he said.

Peter Baker and Kitty Bennett contributed reporting.

A version of this article appeared in print on 01/25/2013, on page A1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Sign to Wall St. In Obama’s Picks For Regulators.

Read More..

SciTimes Update: Science News From Around the Web

Matthew Born for The New York Times

An estimated 15,000 crocodiles, like this one, have escaped from a farm in Limpopo, South Africa.

Friday in science, crocodiles on the loose, coffee fraud, a sleepy squirrel wakes up and melting glaciers. Check out these headlines from around the Web.

Crocodiles on the Loose: An estimated 15,000 crocodiles have escaped from a farm in Limpopo, South Africa, reports The Guardian. Heavy flooding forced the farmers to open their gates to keep the walls from crumbling, sweeping the crocs away down the Limpopo River. Experts say it is not easy to catch a crocodile. The best method: sneak up and grab it.

Fertility Rates Drop in Afghanistan: A drop in birth rates in Afghanistan suggests that education and health planning programs for women are making a difference, reports USA Today. The average number of children Afghan women can expect to have in their lifetime fell to 5.1 at the end of the decade from 8 in the 1990s and 6.3 in the mid-2000s , a USA Today analysis of birth data found.

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Does your dog truly love you?

Animal Passion: Animals have rich emotional lives, reports Psychology Today. The magazine has republished a 2006 report about an Ohio researcher who has studied animal sadness, fear, rage, attachment and a love of play time.

New Stomach Virus: A new strain of norovirus, the cause of a dreaded intestinal illness, is circulating in the United States, The Washington Post reports. The strain, designated “GII.4 Sydney,” appeared in Australia last March. Norovirus causes vomiting and diarrhea and is responsible for 21 million cases of illness a year in this country. Hand-washing and general cleanliness are the best precautions.

We Like How We Smell: Our brains can detect our own scent and distinguish it from the smells of others, reports Discover.com. Scientists have long known that people are drawn to mates with a different smell than their own, but new research marks the first time that scientists have shown that people recognize and like their own smells.

Smokers in Jail: A proposed bill in Oregon would make nicotine a controlled substance and would make cigarette possession illegal, punishable by a year in prison or a $6,250 fine, reports LiveScience.com. Critics say the bill is overly idealistic and would be extremely difficult to implement.

Squirrels on Video: New Scientist offers a video of hibernating Arctic squirrels waking up.

Dolphins Help Dying Friend: For the first time, dolphins have been spotted teaming up to try to rescue an injured group member, reports New Scientist. You can watch the sad video here.

Yogurt Linked to Better Eating Habits: Yogurt eaters report consuming higher amounts of other good-for-you foods, like fruits, vegetables, nuts, fish and whole grains, than do people who don’t eat yogurt, reports eScience News. The study was partially funded by a yogurt maker.

Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

Food Fraud on the Rise: Food fraud – which occurs when food products are mislabeled, diluted or adulterated – is on the rise, reports CNN. The most commonly fraudulent products are olive oil, milk, saffron, honey and coffee. Fillers can be added to spices. Olive oils diluted with cheaper vegetable oil. Pomegranate juice may really be made with grape and pear juices.

An Rx for X and Z: Pharmaceutical companies eager to grab the attention of doctors and patients are returning to drug names starting with X and Z, reports Reuters via The Chicago Tribune. New names for cancer treatments include Xtandi, Xalkori, Xgeva, Zaltrap, Zelboraf and Zytiga.

People Enjoy Safe Sex: A study funded by a condom maker has found that people really like sex, with or without a condom, reports The Atlantic.

Graeme Robinson for The New York Times

Dung Beetles Are Celestial Navigators: Researchers fitted dung beetles with tiny blinders for experiments showing that the feces-eating insects rely on the stars to navigate, reports Scientific American.

Melting Glaciers: Climate change has shrunk Andean glaciers between 30 and 50 percent since the 1970s and could melt many of them away altogether in coming years, reports The Independent. Andean glaciers are a vital source of fresh water for tens of millions of South Americans.

Read More..

SciTimes Update: Science News From Around the Web

Matthew Born for The New York Times

An estimated 15,000 crocodiles, like this one, have escaped from a farm in Limpopo, South Africa.

Friday in science, crocodiles on the loose, coffee fraud, a sleepy squirrel wakes up and melting glaciers. Check out these headlines from around the Web.

Crocodiles on the Loose: An estimated 15,000 crocodiles have escaped from a farm in Limpopo, South Africa, reports The Guardian. Heavy flooding forced the farmers to open their gates to keep the walls from crumbling, sweeping the crocs away down the Limpopo River. Experts say it is not easy to catch a crocodile. The best method: sneak up and grab it.

Fertility Rates Drop in Afghanistan: A drop in birth rates in Afghanistan suggests that education and health planning programs for women are making a difference, reports USA Today. The average number of children Afghan women can expect to have in their lifetime fell to 5.1 at the end of the decade from 8 in the 1990s and 6.3 in the mid-2000s , a USA Today analysis of birth data found.

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Does your dog truly love you?

Animal Passion: Animals have rich emotional lives, reports Psychology Today. The magazine has republished a 2006 report about an Ohio researcher who has studied animal sadness, fear, rage, attachment and a love of play time.

New Stomach Virus: A new strain of norovirus, the cause of a dreaded intestinal illness, is circulating in the United States, The Washington Post reports. The strain, designated “GII.4 Sydney,” appeared in Australia last March. Norovirus causes vomiting and diarrhea and is responsible for 21 million cases of illness a year in this country. Hand-washing and general cleanliness are the best precautions.

We Like How We Smell: Our brains can detect our own scent and distinguish it from the smells of others, reports Discover.com. Scientists have long known that people are drawn to mates with a different smell than their own, but new research marks the first time that scientists have shown that people recognize and like their own smells.

Smokers in Jail: A proposed bill in Oregon would make nicotine a controlled substance and would make cigarette possession illegal, punishable by a year in prison or a $6,250 fine, reports LiveScience.com. Critics say the bill is overly idealistic and would be extremely difficult to implement.

Squirrels on Video: New Scientist offers a video of hibernating Arctic squirrels waking up.

Dolphins Help Dying Friend: For the first time, dolphins have been spotted teaming up to try to rescue an injured group member, reports New Scientist. You can watch the sad video here.

Yogurt Linked to Better Eating Habits: Yogurt eaters report consuming higher amounts of other good-for-you foods, like fruits, vegetables, nuts, fish and whole grains, than do people who don’t eat yogurt, reports eScience News. The study was partially funded by a yogurt maker.

Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

Food Fraud on the Rise: Food fraud – which occurs when food products are mislabeled, diluted or adulterated – is on the rise, reports CNN. The most commonly fraudulent products are olive oil, milk, saffron, honey and coffee. Fillers can be added to spices. Olive oils diluted with cheaper vegetable oil. Pomegranate juice may really be made with grape and pear juices.

An Rx for X and Z: Pharmaceutical companies eager to grab the attention of doctors and patients are returning to drug names starting with X and Z, reports Reuters via The Chicago Tribune. New names for cancer treatments include Xtandi, Xalkori, Xgeva, Zaltrap, Zelboraf and Zytiga.

People Enjoy Safe Sex: A study funded by a condom maker has found that people really like sex, with or without a condom, reports The Atlantic.

Graeme Robinson for The New York Times

Dung Beetles Are Celestial Navigators: Researchers fitted dung beetles with tiny blinders for experiments showing that the feces-eating insects rely on the stars to navigate, reports Scientific American.

Melting Glaciers: Climate change has shrunk Andean glaciers between 30 and 50 percent since the 1970s and could melt many of them away altogether in coming years, reports The Independent. Andean glaciers are a vital source of fresh water for tens of millions of South Americans.

Read More..

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.”

Read More..

India Ink: Free Expert Advice for Rahul Gandhi

He formally became the vice president of the governing Congress party this week, and is expected to throw his hat into the ring for India’s top job in the 2014 general elections, but Rahul Gandhi, the 42-year-old reticent scion of India’s Gandhi dynasty, remains something of a mystery.

He has long given the media a wide berth, choosing to quietly reorganize his party’s youth wing behind the scenes, and has never held a cabinet position. With the general election looming, voters, strategists, party insiders and opponents are clamoring to know what, exactly, it is that Mr. Gandhi stands for, or intends to do if he becomes prime minister.

India Ink spoke to image consultants, communications professionals and media commentators for their take on Mr. Gandhi’s image, and their advice for the youth leader.

Dilip Cherian, founding partner of Perfect Relations, is an image manager and media commentator.

On Rahul Gandhi’s image now:

My reading is that Rahul Gandhi feels that given that his focus is on restructuring his party, he doesn’t need to have an outward strategy as much as an inward one. He is not worried by others’ perceptions.

Actually, he has probably done a good thing by insulating himself from his party; otherwise he would be answerable for everything the government has done so far.

Let’s also not forget that he’s playing within the Indian context; he is not running in an American presidential election. The average voting Joe in India is only concerned with what happens on the ground. It’s only the Indian reading classes and the elite who want to know where Manmohan Singh stands on domestic issues and foreign policy, and even then, you normally hear only platitudes.

I think the Congress party’s problem is that their three top leaders — Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh and Rahul Gandhi — are in the same mold. So they end up relying on spokespeople to a far greater extent than they should.

His advice:

As a communications adviser, I would try to understand what your comfort zone is, and craft a strategy that suits your individual personality. What works for a Narendra Modi or a Mamata Banerjee will not work for Rahul Gandhi. I think if Rahul Gandhi had to change styles, he would have to alter too much about himself. He tends to be the kind of person who wants to hear people and not say much.

I would perhaps allow a greater opportunity for people in the party to hear him on different issues, rather than just in these choreographed events. I would also build a strong communications office around him, which can talk about where he stands on policy issues and what he is doing. That will take the pressure off him.

Mr. Cherian has worked on several political campaigns, including those of the Congress Party.

Suhel Seth, managing partner of Counselage India, is a marketing expert.

On Rahul Gandhi’s image now:

The problem is, the Gandhi family believes they have a right to rule this country. But we now have a country that is engaged and enraged, and a politician who is indifferent.

Rahul Gandhi needs to take a stand. The youth always takes a stand. His silence comes across as arrogance. When you don’t engage with the people, you’re saying, “It is my right to govern. I will speak when I decide to speak.”

In this world, we need to know Rahul Gandhi’s MRI [magnetic resonance imaging] status. I’m sure he means well and his heart is in the right place, but you have to build an image of acceptability. Many leaders in this country are working hard to build a public image – and that’s the difference between being born with a silver spoon and acquiring a silver spoon.

He really needs to define what he stands for. He is an enigma pretending to be a riddle. He should only look at his great grandfather, Jawaharlal Nehru, who articulated his views on so many things, from women’s rights to socialism to nation building.

His advice:

He has already missed a lot of opportunities. If I were his adviser, I would have advised him to take six young Turks from his party and go down to India Gate to talk to the protestors, connect with them.

I would make him do three defining interviews with international, national and regional media. I would not go to schools and colleges and spin doctored speeches and read from a prepared text.

I would also put out a Chintan, or belief paper, which outlines his approach on domestic and foreign policies.

Mr. Seth has not done any work for the Congress Party.

Ramachandra Guha is a historian and author.

On Rahul Gandhi’s image now:

It’s not about image; it’s about record. Why does Rahul Gandhi have an image problem? Because he has no track record of achievement. His achievements are unsubstantial; he has had an undistinguished political career.

Young people judge a person by their achievements. He had nine years to prove himself. He has not played a proactive role in government, he has not participated in parliament. Politics is about taking responsibility, putting yourself through the hard grind.

Why does Arvind Kejriwal have appeal? He is the same age as Rahul Gandhi, but he took one of the most competitive exams in the world and went to an Indian Institute of Technology. Then he passed the civil service exams. He ran a non-governmental organization. In a democratizing society, royal blood is irrelevant. Does anyone know who Mayawati’s father is?

When Sonia Gandhi entered politics 15 years ago, it was seen as an act of sacrifice. The memory of the assassination of her mother-in-law and husband was still fresh. Rahul Gandhi can’t evoke the benefit of those emotions anymore.

Whether you talk to the people or not is irrelevant. How much does Raman Singh or Nitish Kumar or A.K. Antony talk?

His advice:

Rahul Gandhi will be judged by what he does. He should take up a ministry. If he cares about rural issues, let him take up the rural development ministry. Even in Parliament, why don’t we hear from him on any topic? He says he is reorganizing the party, but nobody knows what that really means.

Speeches are not important. Someone else writes a speech. But Rahul Gandhi has never given an interview. Can he do a one-hour interview with Karan Thapar, who is the most rigorous interviewer on TV, on any subject?

Mr. Guha has no association with the Congress Party.

Harjiv Singh is a co-founder of Gutenberg Communications.

On Rahul Gandhi’s image now:

I don’t think Rahul Gandhi has an image problem. He has not been media savvy, but everybody has been talking about him for the last 8 years. Everything he says makes news.

So as a communications person, I see nothing wrong with the way he’s been so far. There’s nothing wrong with not talking everyday about everything. He has spoken when there is a need to speak. When the Congress lost in Uttar Pradesh last year, he took responsibility for the loss.

His advice:

All these years, he was one of many general secretaries, so he didn’t have to engage as much. Now that he is vice president, his strategy needs to change. If now he does not start communicating, the Congress party will have to strategically think about what that means. At the end of the day, politics is about perception.

He doesn’t need an aggressive strategy like Narendra Modi, because Mr. Modi had to focus on building and repairing an image and projecting himself to a wider audience.

But I would like to see more of him, hear more from him. The speech was a good start. I liked what I heard. He spoke with candidness about a vision for transforming the country; he spoke of an inclusive India. He spoke in both English and Hindi.

He needs to engage with the urban classes. His party has always been about rural India, but with the issue of corruption and women’s rights, we have a changed urban middle class. He will lose out on a big audience if he doesn’t engage with them.

I would recommend that he and his office share and disseminate his message more widely. They should create platforms where he can communicate with the masses. He can also use social media effectively to reach a wide audience. Some leaders, like Shashi Tharoor, have done that effectively.

Gutenberg has done no work for the Congress Party, but members of Mr. Singh’s family have.

Piyush Pandey is the executive chairman and creative director at Ogilvy and Mather, India.

On Rahul Gandhi’s image:

To date, his image has been a problem. He has been public-shy, which is not what is expected of a youth leader. But Rahul Gandhi will be tested now. This year is probably the most important year of his life; it’s now or never. If his party has to succeed, its vice president has to connect with the people.

Some leaders are able to do this with charisma that is larger than life, so they attract leadership without saying much. But Rahul Gandhi doesn’t have that. If he is reluctant to project and participate, he shouldn’t have taken this position.

People don’t care about how hard you practice. The public cares about how you played the match. So it’s not enough to build the party behind the scenes. His advantage is that at the moment he doesn’t really have a negative image, but it’s not positive either. It’s neutral.

His advice:

The basic principles of communication are, the public must see what you’re doing. If you have a good product, you have to talk about it.

He needs to show things and he needs to say things. First, he needs to show his work, and then he must talk about it. That’s when people will start believing.

Manmohan Singh’s formula won’t work for him. Mr. Singh is respected for his economic acumen. He became prime minister is his 70s. Rahul Gandhi is in his forties — he has to do something.

Ogilvy and Mather has done no work for the Congress Party or the Gandhi family.

Read More..

New Mutations Discovered in Melanomas

In a leap forward in understanding the basic science of one of the most lethal cancers, two groups of researchers have found mutations in most melanomas that are unlike any they have seen before in cancer. The changes are in regions that control genes, not in the genes themselves. The mutations are exactly the type caused by exposure to ultraviolet light, indicating they might be among the first DNA changes in a cell’s path to melanoma.

The discoveries, published online Thursday in two papers in the journal Science Express, do not immediately suggest new treatments or ways to prevent melanoma, researchers said. But the findings help explain how melanomas — and, possibly, other cancers — develop and what drives their growth, insights that may be critical to long-term efforts to develop ways to prevent or stop the cancer.

For years, cancer researchers have searched for mutations in genes, but this time, they looked for — and found — mutations in a region that regulates genes. They did it by examining the entire DNA of multiple tumors, studying not just genes but also what has been called the dark matter, the 99 percent of the DNA that includes regions that control genes.

“You could think of this as one glimmer in what has been called cancer’s dark matter,” said Dr. Levi A. Garraway of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Broad Institute of Harvard and M.I.T.

The complete DNA sequences of 70 malignant melanomas led to the new discovery. A small control region was mutated in 7 out of 10 of the tumors, and also, the investigators found, in liver and bladder cancers. The cancer cells had one of two tiny changes that together were more common than any mutation ever found in the genes of melanoma.

A team led by Rajiv Kumar of the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, and Dirk Schadendorf of the University of Essen, looked for the mutations in a family whose members tended to get melanoma. Four relatives who developed melanoma had inherited them, while four who remained melanoma-free did not have the mutations. They also found one of the mutations in a 36-year-old member of the family who had not developed melanoma but had had many moles, often a sign of risk in families prone to melanoma.

Their findings indicate that those who inherit the mutations might be born with cells that have taken a first step toward cancer.

The mutations spur cells to make an enzyme, telomerase, that keeps cells immortal by preventing them from gradually losing the ends of their chromosome, the telomeres. When telomeres erode, a cell dies. But the enzyme also has other, poorly understood functions that are thought to keep cancer cells alive, said Robert Weinberg, an M.I.T. researcher who studies telomerase and cancer and was not involved with the research. “The paradigm that it does nothing but extend telomeres is a gross oversimplification,” he said.

Abundant telomerase is so important to cancers that it occurs in 90 percent of them, said Immaculata De Vivo, a Harvard Medical School researcher who studies telomerase and cancer and directs a DNA sequencing program. She, too, was not involved with the research.

The results of the two studies presented in the papers “are like a court of law — it’s the preponderance of the evidence,” she said. “We all knew telomerase was important for cancer, but now we are finding the mechanisms, the machinery.”

Scientists were surprised that the mutations in the dark matter of melanoma tumors were so commonplace. Dr. Garraway and his colleagues had the entire DNA sequences for a collection of melanomas — genes as well as the rest of the DNA including areas that turn genes on and off.

“We said, ‘Let’s just take a look and see if there are any mutations in a regulatory region,” Dr. Garraway said.

At first, they looked at the DNA sequences of 19 tumors. They were amazed to find one or the other of the two mutations in 17 of them. So the researchers decided to look at 51 additional melanomas and a handful of bladder and liver cancers. The mutations popped up again.

“It was really quite striking,” Dr. Garraway said.

But it’s not clear how to reverse the mutations’ cancer-causing effects, Dr. Garraway said. And although people have long wanted to block telomerase production in cancer cells, they have not found a drug to do it.

Still, the findings are highly significant, experts said.

“We have always known that just looking at genes alone would provide a limited number of answers about why cancer develops,” said Elaine Mardis of Washington University, who was not involved with the research. “The brakes or the gas that control the genes that cause cancer are as important as gene mutations,” she said. The new papers, Dr. Mardis added, “show where additional answers may lie.”

Read More..

Media Decoder Blog: A Resurgent Netflix Beats Projections, Even Its Own

1:51 p.m. | Updated For all those who have doubted its business acumen, Netflix had a resounding answer on Wednesday: 27.15 million.

That’s the number of American homes that were subscribers to the streaming service by the end of 2012, beating the company’s own projections for the fourth quarter after a couple of quarters of underwhelming results.

Netflix’s growth spurt in streaming — up by 2.05 million customers in the United States, from 25.1 million in the third quarter — was its biggest in nearly three years, and helped the company report net income of $7.9 million, surprising many analysts who had predicted a loss.

The results reflected just how far Netflix has come since the turbulence of mid-2011, when its botched execution of a new pricing plan for its services — streaming and DVDs by mail — resulted in an online flogging by angry customers. Investors battered its stock price, sending it from a high of around $300 in 2011 to as low as $53 last year.

“It’s risen from the ashes,” said Barton Crockett, a senior analyst at Lazard Capital Markets. “A lot of investors have been very skeptical that Netflix will work. With this earnings report, they’re making a strong argument that the business is real, that it will work.”

Investors, cheered by the results, sent Netflix shares soaring. By Thursday afternoon the shares were up more than 37 percent to $141.49.

Netflix’s fourth-quarter success was a convenient reminder to the entertainment and technology industries that consumers increasingly want on-demand access to television shows and movies. Streaming services by Amazon, Hulu and Redbox are all competing on the same playing field, but for now Netflix remains the biggest such service, and thus a pioneer for all the others.

“Our growth and our competitors’ growth shows just how large the opportunity is for Internet TV, where people get to control their viewing experience,” Netflix’s chief executive, Reed Hastings, said in a telephone interview Wednesday evening.

Questions persist, though, about whether Netflix will be able to attract enough subscribers to keep paying its ever-rising bills to content providers, which total billions of dollars in the years to come. The company said on Wednesday that it might take on more debt to finance more original programs, the first of which, the political thriller “House of Cards,” will have its premiere on the service on Feb. 1. Netflix committed about $100 million to make two seasons of “House of Cards,” one of five original programs scheduled to come out on the service this year.

“The virtuous cycle for us is to gain more subscribers, get more content, gain more subscribers, get more content,” Mr. Hastings said in an earnings conference call.

The company’s $7.9 million profit for the quarter represented 13 cents a share, surprising analysts who had expected a loss of 12 cents a share. The company said revenue of $945 million, up from $875 million in the quarter in 2011, was driven in part by holiday sales of new tablets and television sets.

Netflix added nearly two million new subscribers in other countries, though it continued to lose money overseas, as expected, and said it would slow its international expansion plans in the first part of this year.

The “flix” in Netflix, its largely forgotten DVD-by-mail business, fared a bit better than the company had projected, posting a loss of just 380,000 subscribers in the quarter, to 8.22 million. The losses have slowed for four consecutive quarters, indicating that the homes that still want DVDs really want DVDs.

On the streaming side, Netflix’s retention rate improved in the fourth quarter, suggesting growing customer satisfaction.

Asked whether the company’s reputation had fully recovered after its missteps in 2011, Mr. Hastings said, “We’re on probation at this point, but we’re not out of jail.”

He has emphasized subscriber happiness, even going so far as to say on Wednesday that “we really want to make it easy to quit” Netflix. If the exit door is well marked, he asserted, subscribers will be more likely to come back.

The hope is that original programs like “House of Cards” and “Arrested Development” will lure both old and new subscribers to the service. Those programs, plus the film output deal with the Walt Disney Company announced in December, affirm that Netflix cares more and more about being a gallery — with showy pieces that cannot be seen anywhere else — and less about being a library of every film and TV show ever made.

“They’re morphing into something that people understand,” said Mr. Crockett of Lazard Capital.

Mr. Hastings said this had been happening for years, but that it was becoming more apparent now to consumers and investors.

Mr. Hastings’s letter to investors brought up the elephant in the room, the activist investor Carl C. Icahn, who acquired nearly 10 percent of the company’s stock last October. Mr. Icahn, known for his campaigns for corporate sales and revampings, stated then that Netflix “may hold significant strategic value for a variety of significantly larger companies.”

Netflix subsequently put into place a shareholder rights plan, known as a poison pill, to protect itself against a forced sale by Mr. Icahn.

The company said on Wednesday, “We have no further news about his intentions, but have had constructive conversations with him about building a more valuable company.”

Factoring in the stock’s 30 percent rise since November and the after-hours action on Wednesday, Mr. Icahn’s stake has now more than doubled in value, to more than $700 million from roughly $320 million.

A version of this article appeared in print on 01/24/2013, on page B1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: A Resurgent Netflix Beats Projections, Even Its Own.

Read More..

American Mumbai Plotter Sentenced to 35 Years

CHICAGO (AP) — An American drug dealer who had faced life in prison was sentenced instead to 35 years Thursday for helping plan the deadly 2008 attacks on Mumbai, India — a punishment prosecutors said reflected his broad cooperation with U.S. investigators but that a victim's family member called "an appalling dishonor."

It was David Coleman Headley's meticulous scouting missions that facilitated the assault by 10 gunmen from a Pakistani-based militant group on multiple targets in Mumbai, including the landmark Taj Mahal Hotel. TV cameras captured much of the three-day rampage often called India's 9/11. More than 160 people, including children, were killed.

Glimpses of the horror came through the teary testimony of one of the victims who described the gory scene as she huddled under a restaurant table with her friends as gunmen sprayed the room with bullets, then walked around executing men, women and children one by one. Her own clothes soaked with blood.

"I know what a bullet can do to every part of the human body," said Linda Ragsdale, a Tennessee children's author, who was shot. "I know the sound of life leaving a 13-year-old child. These are things I never needed to know, never needed to experience."

Headley faced life in prison, and at 52 years old, even a 35-year term could mean he'll never walk free. But federal prosecutors had asked for a more lenient 30 to 35 years, citing his extraordinary cooperation including as the government's star witness at the 2011 trial of a Chicago businessman convicted in a failed attack on a Danish newspaper.

Former U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald spoke in court calling Headley's cooperation within 30 minutes of his 2009 arrest "unusual".

However, Ragsdale and other victims called the 35 years unjust for the severity of the violence.

U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber said he considered the cooperation in imposing his sentence even though "the damage that was done was unfathomable." He cited a letter from Headley who vowed that he was a changed man, but Leinenweber said he didn't buy it.

"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.

Headley, who did not address the court, showed no emotion when the sentence was announced. Security was tight at the packed hearing; dogs were walked through the lines of people waiting to get into the courtroom.

Prosecutors say Headley, who was born in the U.S. to a Pakistani father and American mother, was motivated in part by his hatred of India going back to his childhood. He changed his birth name from Daood Gilani in 2006 so he could travel to and from India more easily to do reconnaissance without raising suspicions.

He never pulled a trigger in the attack, but his contribution to the Pakistani-based militant group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, made the assault more deadly. He conducted meticulous scouting missions — videotaping and mapping targets — so the attackers who had never been to Mumbai adeptly found their way around.

One woman whose husband and daughter were killed in the attack said a lighter sentence would be "an appalling dishonor" to those killed.

"I feel that for the magnitude of the killings that took place, David Headley has lost his right to live as a free man," said Kia Scherr, who is currently in Mumbai. "This would be a moral outrage that is inexcusable."

Prosecutors also have praised Headley for testifying against Tahawwur Rana, the Chicago businessman convicted of providing aid to Lashkar and backing a failed plot to attack a Danish newspaper for publishing depictions of the Prophet Muhammad. Rana, sentenced last week to 14 years in prison, claimed his friend Headley duped him.

Testifying at Rana's trial in 2011, Headley spoke in a monotone voice, seemingly detached, even as he described one proposal for the never-carried-out Danish plot to behead newspaper staff and throw their heads onto a street.

In video excerpts of his interviews with the FBI after his arrest, Headley appears flippant, cool and calculating.

Prosecutors have recounted only in broad terms how Headley has shed light on the leadership, structure and possible targets of Lashkar-e-Taiba, which was believed to have ties to the Pakistani intelligence agency known as ISI. Headley has said his ISI contact was a "Major Iqbal," who was named in the indictment that charged Headley.

The attackers arrived by boat on Nov. 26, 2008, carrying grenades and automatic weapons, and fanned out to hit multiple targets, crowded train station, a Jewish center and the hotel.

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.

For his cooperation and guilty plea, Headley secured both a promise that he would not face the death penalty and would not be extradited to India. Late last year, India secretly hanged the lone gunman who survived the Mumbai attack, Mohammed Ajmal Kasab.

The 12 counts Headley pleaded guilty to included conspiracy to commit murder in India and aiding and abetting in the murder of six Americans, who included Americans Alan Scherr and his 13-year-old daughter, Naomi.

The Scherr family members were in India for a two-week spiritual retreat and were staying at the Oberoi Trident Hotel, one of the sites that came under assault.

After the attack, Scherr helped start an organization called the One Life Alliance, which seeks to work against terrorism by promoting understanding and respect for the sacredness of life.

"This is how I am surviving this event, which erased life as I knew it," she wrote in an email from Mumbai, where she continues to travel to for charity work.

___

Read More..

DealBook: At Davos, Financial Leaders Debate Reform and Monetary Policy

DAVOS, Switzerland — Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, apologized again for the bank’s recent $6 billion trading loss, this time in front of an audience that included the elite of the financial world. But in keeping with his confident demeanor, it was a diet portion of humble pie.

“If you’re a shareholder of mine, I apologize,” Mr. Dimon said at the World Economic Forum annual meeting here. But he quickly added, “We did have record profits. Life goes on.”

During an often contentious panel discussion in Davos that included several other bank executives, Mr. Dimon clashed with a top official of the International Monetary Fund about whether the banking system was still too dangerous.

Zhu Min, deputy director of the I.M.F., said the financial industry was too large in proportion to the economy. More than four years after the financial crisis, Mr. Min noted that banks still operated on too much borrowed money and still traded in overly complicated derivatives that were impossible for outsiders to understand.

“The whole financial sector is too big,” Mr. Min said.

Mr. Dimon responded that JPMorgan was fulfilling its duty to lend to businesses and governments. He said JPMorgan and other banks no longer dealt with subprime mortgages and some of the other complex financial concoctions that led to the crisis. He also said JPMorgan had not abandoned Spain or Italy despite the risks in those highly indebted countries.

“Everyone I know is trying to do a good job for their clients,” Mr. Dimon said during a debate moderated by Maria Bartiromo of the cable channel CNBC on the opening day of the meeting.

During the same discussion, Axel Weber, the chairman of UBS and former president of the Bundesbank, harshly criticized the European Central Bank and other central banks for keeping interest rates at record lows.

Mr. Weber said it was wrong to combat a crisis caused by excessive borrowing by encouraging even more borrowing. Record low official interest rates and other extraordinary measures to pump cash into the economy would eventually backfire, he said.

“We are trying to solve the crisis with more leveraging,” he said. “We are having a better life at the expense of future generations.”

Mr. Weber was once the front-runner to become president of the European Central Bank. But he resigned as head of the German central bank in 2011 after clashing with other members of the E.C.B. governing council over its purchases of euro zone government bonds.

Mario Draghi, who became president of the European Central Bank instead, has since calmed financial markets with a promise to buy government bonds in whatever amounts needed to contain borrowing costs for countries like Spain.

“I haven’t changed my views too much” on bond purchases, said Mr. Weber, who did not mention Mr. Draghi by name.

Mr. Weber has since presided over attempts by UBS to deal with the aftermath of the financial crisis and wrongdoing by some bank employees. UBS, based in Zurich, agreed to pay a $1.5 billion fine as part of a settlement last month over the manipulation of crucial benchmarks used to set mortgage and other interest rates.

“There have been excesses,” Mr. Weber said on Wednesday. “We need to fix them and move forward.”

Participants in the panel agreed that new bank regulations had fallen far short of what was needed to prevent problems at individual lenders from causing wider economic and financial crises, though they disagreed on what could be done better.

“We just experienced the worst financial crisis since the 1930s,” Mr. Min of the I.M.F. said. “We’re not safer yet.”

Mr. Dimon said conditions for economic growth were good “if we do all the right things.”

“If not,” he added, “we could be experiencing crises for another 10 years.”

Read More..

SciTimes Update : Science News From Around the Web

Wednesday in Science, we’re reading about killer penguins, texting moms, asteroid mining, designing a more pleasurable condom and a maple leaf controversy in Canada. Check out these and other science headlines from around the Web.

The Last 925,000 Pounds Are Always the Hardest: Boston’s citywide challenge to lose one million pounds in a year appears to have fallen about 925,000 pounds short, The Wall Street Journal reports. With just a few months left to go, the city’s collective weight loss has reached only about 75,000 pounds. Why did the city diet fail? Maybe it was the “Scooper Bowl” all-you-can-eat ice cream festival.

Andy Isaacson for The New York Times

An Adélie penguin colony in Cape Royds, Antarctica.

No Escape from a Hungry Penguin: Hungry penguins with tiny video cameras strapped to their backs have given scientists a rare glimpse of their killer feeding habits, reports The Guardian. In more than 14 hours of filming using cameras strapped to 11 Adélie penguins, not once did a bird fail to capture its prey. Penguins are such efficient killers, most of their victims have no time to hide, while others try in vain to flee. Watch it all on Penguin-cam.

The Condom Gets a Makeover: Most condoms are made of latex. Los Angeles design company Strata has developed a new silicone condom it claims not only does a better job blocking viruses and bacteria, but also scores more points in the pleasure department. You can learn more about the “Origami” condom and watch a video at New Scientist (registration required).

Mathieu Belanger/Reuters

New Canadian money seems to depict a species of maple leaf that is not Canadian in origin.

Canada Turns Over a New Leaf: Canada’s new $20, $50 and $100 bills appear to have the wrong maple leaf on them, reports BBC Canada. Botanists say the bills feature a Norwegian maple leaf, with five lobes, rather than the Canadian sugar maple leaf, which has just three lobes. Bank of Canada officials say the image is a “stylized blend” of maple leaves created with the help of a botanist and designed to avoid regional bias.

Universal Art: Scientists use thin sections of meteorites to study the history of the universe. But to the rest of us, they are just really pretty. Scientific American offers a slide show revealing the stained-glass beauty in ancient meteorites.

Erin Siegal/Reuters

An employee at Google resting in a nap pod, which blocks out light and sound.

Businesses Invest in Sleep: Tired office workers cost businesses billions in productivity and it’s estimated that one in three workers doesn’t get enough rest. As a result, some companies are now offering sleep talks and special lighting to promote better sleep among the staff, reports The Wall Street Journal. Google offers its workers a sleep pod for midday power naps.

Men More Likely to Cheat at Science: Men are more likely than women to commit scientific fraud, reports Science Daily. A new study in the journal mBio found that in 215 cases of scientific fraud in the records of the United States Office of Research Integrity, 65 percent were blamed on men.

Anti-Bacterial Soap Ingredient Found in Lakes: Triclosan, the common ingredient found in antibacterial soaps and toothpastes, is showing up in increasing amounts in Minnesota lakes, Science360 reports.

Mining Asteroids: A team of entrepreneurs and engineers announced plans for a space mining company that would turn asteroids into rocket fuel, solar panels and components for spacecraft orbiting the earth, reports The Christian Science Monitor. In theory, mining asteroids should be cheaper than hauling materials from earth. Watch a video discussion on CBS This Morning. National Geographic also reports on the perils and promise of mining asteroids.

Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

Alcohol Hinders Sleep: While many people think a nightcap might help them sleep, drinking alcohol before bedtime actually reduces sleep quality, reports WebMD. The review of 27 studies found that while alcohol does allow healthy people to fall asleep quicker and sleep more deeply for a while, it also reduces rapid eye movement (REM) sleep.

Moms Text Behind the Wheel: Having a baby on board does not curb a new mother’s texting and cellphone use, reports USA Today. A new survey shows that 78 percent of mothers with children under age 2 acknowledge talking on the phone while driving with their babies. Meanwhile, 26 percent say they text or check their e-mail – behavior that rivals that of teenage drivers. Nearly two-thirds of them said that they have turned around to deal with their baby in the back seat while driving.

Read More..

SciTimes Update : Science News From Around the Web

Wednesday in Science, we’re reading about killer penguins, texting moms, asteroid mining, designing a more pleasurable condom and a maple leaf controversy in Canada. Check out these and other science headlines from around the Web.

The Last 925,000 Pounds Are Always the Hardest: Boston’s citywide challenge to lose one million pounds in a year appears to have fallen about 925,000 pounds short, The Wall Street Journal reports. With just a few months left to go, the city’s collective weight loss has reached only about 75,000 pounds. Why did the city diet fail? Maybe it was the “Scooper Bowl” all-you-can-eat ice cream festival.

Andy Isaacson for The New York Times

An Adélie penguin colony in Cape Royds, Antarctica.

No Escape from a Hungry Penguin: Hungry penguins with tiny video cameras strapped to their backs have given scientists a rare glimpse of their killer feeding habits, reports The Guardian. In more than 14 hours of filming using cameras strapped to 11 Adélie penguins, not once did a bird fail to capture its prey. Penguins are such efficient killers, most of their victims have no time to hide, while others try in vain to flee. Watch it all on Penguin-cam.

The Condom Gets a Makeover: Most condoms are made of latex. Los Angeles design company Strata has developed a new silicone condom it claims not only does a better job blocking viruses and bacteria, but also scores more points in the pleasure department. You can learn more about the “Origami” condom and watch a video at New Scientist (registration required).

Mathieu Belanger/Reuters

New Canadian money seems to depict a species of maple leaf that is not Canadian in origin.

Canada Turns Over a New Leaf: Canada’s new $20, $50 and $100 bills appear to have the wrong maple leaf on them, reports BBC Canada. Botanists say the bills feature a Norwegian maple leaf, with five lobes, rather than the Canadian sugar maple leaf, which has just three lobes. Bank of Canada officials say the image is a “stylized blend” of maple leaves created with the help of a botanist and designed to avoid regional bias.

Universal Art: Scientists use thin sections of meteorites to study the history of the universe. But to the rest of us, they are just really pretty. Scientific American offers a slide show revealing the stained-glass beauty in ancient meteorites.

Erin Siegal/Reuters

An employee at Google resting in a nap pod, which blocks out light and sound.

Businesses Invest in Sleep: Tired office workers cost businesses billions in productivity and it’s estimated that one in three workers doesn’t get enough rest. As a result, some companies are now offering sleep talks and special lighting to promote better sleep among the staff, reports The Wall Street Journal. Google offers its workers a sleep pod for midday power naps.

Men More Likely to Cheat at Science: Men are more likely than women to commit scientific fraud, reports Science Daily. A new study in the journal mBio found that in 215 cases of scientific fraud in the records of the United States Office of Research Integrity, 65 percent were blamed on men.

Anti-Bacterial Soap Ingredient Found in Lakes: Triclosan, the common ingredient found in antibacterial soaps and toothpastes, is showing up in increasing amounts in Minnesota lakes, Science360 reports.

Mining Asteroids: A team of entrepreneurs and engineers announced plans for a space mining company that would turn asteroids into rocket fuel, solar panels and components for spacecraft orbiting the earth, reports The Christian Science Monitor. In theory, mining asteroids should be cheaper than hauling materials from earth. Watch a video discussion on CBS This Morning. National Geographic also reports on the perils and promise of mining asteroids.

Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

Alcohol Hinders Sleep: While many people think a nightcap might help them sleep, drinking alcohol before bedtime actually reduces sleep quality, reports WebMD. The review of 27 studies found that while alcohol does allow healthy people to fall asleep quicker and sleep more deeply for a while, it also reduces rapid eye movement (REM) sleep.

Moms Text Behind the Wheel: Having a baby on board does not curb a new mother’s texting and cellphone use, reports USA Today. A new survey shows that 78 percent of mothers with children under age 2 acknowledge talking on the phone while driving with their babies. Meanwhile, 26 percent say they text or check their e-mail – behavior that rivals that of teenage drivers. Nearly two-thirds of them said that they have turned around to deal with their baby in the back seat while driving.

Read More..

DealBook: Microsoft May Back Dell Buyout

The effort to take Dell private has gained a prominent, if unusual, backer: Microsoft.

The software giant is in talks to help finance a takeover bid for Dell that would exceed $20 billion, a person briefed on the matter said on Tuesday. Microsoft is expected to contribute up to several billion dollars.

An investment by Microsoft — if it comes to pass — could be enough to push a leveraged buyout of the struggling computer maker over the goal line. Silver Lake, the private equity firm spearheading the takeover talks, has been seeking a deep-pocketed investor to join the effort. And Microsoft, which has not yet made a commitment, has more than $66 billion in cash on hand.

Microsoft and Silver Lake, a prominent investor in technology companies, are no strangers. The private equity firm was part of a consortium that sold Skype, the online video-chatting pioneer, to Microsoft for $8.5 billion nearly two years ago. And the two companies had discussed teaming up to make an investment in Yahoo in late 2011, before Yahoo decided against selling a minority stake in itself.

A vibrant Dell is an important part of Microsoft’s plans to make Windows more relevant for the tablet era, when more and more devices come with touch screens. Dell has been one of the most visible supporters of Windows 8 in its products.

That has been crucial at a time when Microsoft’s relationships with many PC makers have grown strained because of the company’s move into making computer hardware with its Surface family of tablets.

Frank Shaw, a spokesman for Microsoft, declined to comment.

If completed, a buyout of Dell would be the largest leveraged buyout since the financial crisis, reaching levels unseen since the takeovers of Hilton Hotels and the Texas energy giant TXU. Such a deal is taking advantage of Dell’s still-low stock price and the abundance of investors willing to buy up the debt issued as part of a transaction to take the company private. And Silver Lake has been working with Dell’s founder, Michael S. Dell, who is expected to contribute his nearly 16 percent stake in the company to a takeover bid.

Yet while many aspects of the potential deal have fallen into place, including a potential price of up to around $14 a share, talks between Dell and its potential buyers may still fall apart.

Shares of Dell closed up 2.2 percent on Tuesday, at $13.12. They began rising after CNBC reported Microsoft’s potential involvement in a leveraged buyout. Microsoft shares slipped 0.4 percent, to $27.15.

Microsoft’s lending a hand to Dell could make sense at a time when the PC industry is facing some of the biggest challenges in its history. Dell is one of Microsoft’s most significant, longest-lasting partners in the PC business and among the most committed to creating machines that run Windows, the operating system that is the foundation of much of Microsoft’s profits.

But PC sales were in a slump for most of last year, as consumers diverted their spending to other types of devices like tablets and smartphones. Dell, the third-biggest maker of PCs in the world, recorded a 21 percent decline in shipments of PCs during the fourth quarter of last year from the same period in 2011, according to IDC.

In a joint interview in November, Mr. Dell and Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, exchanged friendly banter, as one would expect of two men who have been in business together for decades.

Mr. Dell said Mr. Ballmer had gone out of his way to reassure him that Microsoft’s Surface computers would not hurt Dell sales.

“We’ve never sold all the PCs in the world,” said Mr. Dell, sitting in a New York hotel room brimming with new Windows 8 computers made by his company. “As I’ve understood Steve’s plans here, if Surface helps Windows 8 succeed, that’s going to be good for Windows, good for Dell and good for our customers. We’re just fine with all that.”

Microsoft has been willing to open its purse strings in the past to help close partners. Last April, Microsoft committed to invest more than $600 million in Barnes & Noble’s electronic books subsidiary, in a deal that ensures a source of electronic books for Windows devices. Microsoft also agreed in 2011 to provide the Finnish cellphone maker Nokia billions of dollars’ worth of various forms of support, including marketing and research and development assistance, in exchange for Nokia’s adopting Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system.

A version of this article appeared in print on 01/23/2013, on page B1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Microsoft May Back Dell Buyout.

Read More..