Business Briefing | Retailing: Best Buy Shares Rally on Improved Holiday Sales

The Best Buy Company had better-than-expected holiday sales, setting off a gain of $2, or 16.4 percent, in its stock price, to $14.21 a share on Friday. The holiday quarter accounted for about a third of Best Buy’s revenue last year. The chain said that revenue at stores open at least a year fell 1.4 percent for the nine weeks ended Jan. 5. The company’s performance in the United States was flat. The chief executive, Hubert Joly, said in a statement that the result was better than the last several quarters. A Morningstar analyst, R. J. Hottovy, said the results showed that some of Best Buy’s initiatives, like more employee training and online price matching helped increase sales.

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Former Lab Technician Denies Faulty DNA Work in Rape Cases

A former New York City laboratory technician whose work on rape cases is now being scrutinized for serious mistakes said on Friday that she had been unaware there were problems in her work and, disputing an earlier report, denied she had resigned under pressure.

The former lab technician, Serrita Mitchell, said any problems must have been someone else’s.

“My work?” Ms. Mitchell said. “No, no, no, not my work.”

Earlier, the city medical examiner’s office, where Ms. Mitchell said she was employed from 2000 to 2011, said it was reviewing 843 rape cases handled by a lab technician who might have missed critical evidence.

So far, it has finished looking over about half the cases, and found 26 in which the technician had missed biological evidence and 19 in which evidence was commingled with evidence from other cases. In seven cases where evidence was missed, the medical examiner’s office was able to extract a DNA profile, raising the possibility that detectives could have caught some suspects sooner.

The office declined to identify the technician. Documents said she quit in November 2011 after the office moved to fire her, once supervisors had begun to discover deficiencies in her work. A city official who declined to be identified said Ms. Mitchell was the technician.

However, Ms. Mitchell, reached at her home in the Bronx on Friday, said she had never been told there were problems. “It couldn’t be me because your work gets checked,” she said. “You have supervisors.”

She also said that she had resigned because of a rotator cuff injury that impeded her movement. “I loved the job so much that I stayed a little longer,” she said, explaining that she had not expected to stay with the medical examiner’s office so long. “Then it was time to leave.”

Also on Friday, the Legal Aid Society, which provides criminal defense lawyers for most of the city’s poor defendants, said it was demanding that the city turn over information about the cases under review.

If needed, Legal Aid will sue the city to gain access to identifying information about the cases, its chief lawyer, Steven Banks, said, noting that New York was one of only 14 states that did not require routine disclosure of criminal evidence before trial.

Disclosure of the faulty examination of the evidence is prompting questions about outside review of the medical examiner’s office. The City Council on Friday announced plans for an emergency oversight committee, and its members spoke with outrage about the likelihood that missed semen stains and “false negatives” might have enabled rapists to go unpunished.

“The mishandling of rape cases is making double victims of women who have already suffered an indescribably horrific event,” said Christine C. Quinn, the Council speaker.

A few more details emerged Friday about a 2001 case involving the rape of a minor in Brooklyn, in which the technician missed biological evidence, the review found. The victim accused an 18-year-old acquaintance of forcing himself on her, and he was questioned by the police but not charged, according to a law enforcement official.

Unrelated to the rape, he pleaded guilty in 2005 to third-degree robbery and served two years in prison. The DNA sample he gave in the robbery case was matched with the one belatedly developed from evidence the technician had overlooked in the 2001 rape, law enforcement officials said. He was recently indicted in the 2001 rape.

Especially alarming to defense lawyers was the possibility that DNA samples were cross-contaminated and led to false convictions, or could do so in the future.

“Up to this point,” Mr. Banks said, “they have not made information available to us, as the primary defender in New York City, to determine whether there’s an injustice that’s been done in past cases, pending cases, or allowing us to be on the lookout in future cases.” He added, “If it could happen with one analyst, how does anyone know that it stops there?”

The medical examiner’s office has said that the risk of cross-contamination was extremely low and that it does not appear that anyone was wrongly convicted in the cases that have been reviewed so far. And officials in at least two of the city’s district attorneys’ offices — for Brooklyn and Manhattan — said they had not found any erroneous convictions.

But Mr. Banks said the authorities needed to do more, and that their statements thus far were the equivalent of “trust us.”

“Given what’s happened,” he said, “that’s cold comfort.”

Read More..

Former Lab Technician Denies Faulty DNA Work in Rape Cases

A former New York City laboratory technician whose work on rape cases is now being scrutinized for serious mistakes said on Friday that she had been unaware there were problems in her work and, disputing an earlier report, denied she had resigned under pressure.

The former lab technician, Serrita Mitchell, said any problems must have been someone else’s.

“My work?” Ms. Mitchell said. “No, no, no, not my work.”

Earlier, the city medical examiner’s office, where Ms. Mitchell said she was employed from 2000 to 2011, said it was reviewing 843 rape cases handled by a lab technician who might have missed critical evidence.

So far, it has finished looking over about half the cases, and found 26 in which the technician had missed biological evidence and 19 in which evidence was commingled with evidence from other cases. In seven cases where evidence was missed, the medical examiner’s office was able to extract a DNA profile, raising the possibility that detectives could have caught some suspects sooner.

The office declined to identify the technician. Documents said she quit in November 2011 after the office moved to fire her, once supervisors had begun to discover deficiencies in her work. A city official who declined to be identified said Ms. Mitchell was the technician.

However, Ms. Mitchell, reached at her home in the Bronx on Friday, said she had never been told there were problems. “It couldn’t be me because your work gets checked,” she said. “You have supervisors.”

She also said that she had resigned because of a rotator cuff injury that impeded her movement. “I loved the job so much that I stayed a little longer,” she said, explaining that she had not expected to stay with the medical examiner’s office so long. “Then it was time to leave.”

Also on Friday, the Legal Aid Society, which provides criminal defense lawyers for most of the city’s poor defendants, said it was demanding that the city turn over information about the cases under review.

If needed, Legal Aid will sue the city to gain access to identifying information about the cases, its chief lawyer, Steven Banks, said, noting that New York was one of only 14 states that did not require routine disclosure of criminal evidence before trial.

Disclosure of the faulty examination of the evidence is prompting questions about outside review of the medical examiner’s office. The City Council on Friday announced plans for an emergency oversight committee, and its members spoke with outrage about the likelihood that missed semen stains and “false negatives” might have enabled rapists to go unpunished.

“The mishandling of rape cases is making double victims of women who have already suffered an indescribably horrific event,” said Christine C. Quinn, the Council speaker.

A few more details emerged Friday about a 2001 case involving the rape of a minor in Brooklyn, in which the technician missed biological evidence, the review found. The victim accused an 18-year-old acquaintance of forcing himself on her, and he was questioned by the police but not charged, according to a law enforcement official.

Unrelated to the rape, he pleaded guilty in 2005 to third-degree robbery and served two years in prison. The DNA sample he gave in the robbery case was matched with the one belatedly developed from evidence the technician had overlooked in the 2001 rape, law enforcement officials said. He was recently indicted in the 2001 rape.

Especially alarming to defense lawyers was the possibility that DNA samples were cross-contaminated and led to false convictions, or could do so in the future.

“Up to this point,” Mr. Banks said, “they have not made information available to us, as the primary defender in New York City, to determine whether there’s an injustice that’s been done in past cases, pending cases, or allowing us to be on the lookout in future cases.” He added, “If it could happen with one analyst, how does anyone know that it stops there?”

The medical examiner’s office has said that the risk of cross-contamination was extremely low and that it does not appear that anyone was wrongly convicted in the cases that have been reviewed so far. And officials in at least two of the city’s district attorneys’ offices — for Brooklyn and Manhattan — said they had not found any erroneous convictions.

But Mr. Banks said the authorities needed to do more, and that their statements thus far were the equivalent of “trust us.”

“Given what’s happened,” he said, “that’s cold comfort.”

Read More..

Gadgetwise Blog: Project Basement: The Receiver

My search for a receiver is over.

As I had said in a previous installment, buying a receiver used to be easy. You got the one that sounded best in your price range, period. Now, connections are the first concern — will you have enough HDMI slots for the next few years?

That said, I couldn’t make the purchase based on connectors and specifications alone. This is, after all, audio equipment. How could I buy without hearing it?

But hearing equipment is getting to be more difficult. There are a fewer independent stereo stores. As big box stores to fight “show rooming” — customers auditioning equipment they then buy cheaper online — often don’t let you listen.

For instance, I was interested in a Sony STR-DN1030, which has excellent specs for its $500 price, including a built-in Wi-Fi, unusual for receivers in its class. H.H. gregg had the Sony and many other receivers I was interested in on display, but not a single one was plugged in. Deal breaker.

I tried a Best Buy store with a Magnolia, the higher-end home theater section. The store didn’t carry the Sony, so that model was out of the running. I was able to hear the Denon AVR2113CI, the Yamaha RX-A720BL, the Marantz NR1603, and the Pioneer Elite VSX-60.

They all met my minimum feature requirements, which meant at least five HDMI inputs, the audio surround decoders I wanted, and they had to be less than 16 inches deep to fit my shelves.

I’m glad I listened. To me the Pioneer Elite VSX-60 stood out as the obvious winner. Sound was more detailed and had more dimension than the other receivers.

But I must admit that what I did next contributed to Best Buys show-rooming problem. I went to see which of these receivers was available from my local independent electronics dealer, Soundscape, here in Baltimore. Almost all of them, although they didn’t have the Pioneer on display.

Ethically, I was a bit torn. But if my purchase is going to keep someone in business, I think Soundscape needs me more than Best Buy. The scales tipped further when Soundscape’s owner offered a discount since I’m a regular there. That settled it.

With the VSX-60 installed I am confident I made the right choice. Even though it replaces an older NAD receiver that cost twice as much, the sound is excellent and surround sound effect is far superior.

I will admit, though, it is not quite as easy to use as my prior receivers. I haven’t figured out how to turn off the scaling, which adjusts the size and clarity of a picture to suit my TV. This comes with the territory of sophisticated new features.

Next up, the Blu-ray player.

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French Soldier Killed in Somalia Commando Raid

At least one French commando was  killed during a daring raid Friday night to rescue a French intelligence operative held hostage in Somilia. The captive officer, identified as Denis Allex, was killed by his captors during the operation, the French defense minister said Saturday. A second commando remained unaccounted for.

A statement by the defense ministry said that two commandoes had been killed, but there appeared to be some confusion within the ministry about the status of the second commando.

The raid also resulted in the death of 17 Somali fighters, according to the defense ministry.

“Faced with the intransigence of the terrorists, who refused to negotiate for three and a half years and who were holding Denis Allex in inhumane conditions, an operation was planned and carried out,” the ministry said. “During the assault, violent combat took place.”

The raid came as France sent troops into the African nation of Mali to help the government beat back advances by Islamic rebels. The Somali raid to get Mr. Allex led to speculation that the French government was trying to prevent reprisals for its actions in Mali.

But the French defense minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, said during a news conference on Saturday that the two operations were not connected. The Associated Press reported that an official with the Somali militant group al-Shabab confirmed that fighting began after helicopters dropped off soldiers.

“Five helicopters attacked a house in in the town. They dropped soldiers off the ground, so that they could reach their destination,” the official said.

In 2009, a French raid to free a yacht that had been captured by Somali pirates resulted in the death of a captive, Florent Lemaçon.

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F.A.A. to Begin a Review of Boeing 787s

Federal authorities said Friday they would order a review of electrical systems in Boeing’s new 787 Dreamliner following a spate of incidents, including a battery fire earlier this week in Boston, 15 months after the technologically advanced aircraft came into service.

The Federal Aviation Administration said it would examine critical systems on the Boeing 787, including the design, manufacture and assembly of the aircraft. More details were to be announced at a news conference Friday in Washington with Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood; the administrator of the F.A.A., Michael Huerta; and Ray Conner, the head of Boeing’s commercial airplane division.

The review comes amid an investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board into why a battery pack caught fire in a parked 787 at Logan International Airport in Boston on Monday. The fire occurred in a Japan Airlines plane from Tokyo after the passengers and crew had left the plane.

The battery, which powered the auxiliary power unit used when the plane is on the ground, sustained “severe fire damage,” according to the N.T.S.B.

Earlier on Friday, All Nippon Airlines of Japan reported cracks in the cockpit window of a 787 Dreamliner heading from Tokyo to Matsuyama. A spokeswoman said it was the third time that cracks had appeared in the windshield of one of the 17 787s operated by A.N.A.; the other two incidents happened last year.

Boeing has delivered 50 of the 787 airplanes so far and has received orders for more than 800 of the planes. But since their first commercial flight in November 2011, some 787s have had electrical fires, fuel leaks or other problems.

The 787, which makes extensive use of lightweight carbon composites, also relies on electric systems more than previous generations of airplanes. Electrical systems, not mechanical ones, operate hydraulic pumps, de-ice the wings, pressurize the cabin and handle other tasks. The plane also has electric brakes instead of hydraulic ones.

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The New Old Age Blog: Taking a Zen Approach to Caregiving

You try to help your elderly father. Irritated and defensive, he snaps at you instead of going along with your suggestion. And you think “this is so unfair” and feel a rising tide of anger.

How to handle situations like this, which arise often and create so much angst for caregivers?

Jennifer Block finds the answer in what she calls “contemplative caregiving” — the application of Buddhist principles to caregiving and the subject of a year-long course that starts at the San Francisco Zen Center in a few weeks.

This approach aims to cultivate compassion, both for older people and the people they depend on, said Ms. Block, 49, a Buddhist chaplain and the course’s lead instructor. She’s also the former director of education at the Zen Hospice project in San Francisco and founder of the Beyond Measure School for Contemplative Care, which is helping develop a new, Zen-inspired senior living community in the area.

I caught up with Ms. Block recently, and what follows is an edited transcript of our conversation.

Let’s start with your experience. Have you been a caregiver?

My experience in caregiving is as a professional providing spiritual care to individuals and families when they are facing and coping with aging and sickness and loss and dying, particularly in hospital and hospice settings.

What kinds of challenges have you witnessed?

People are for the most part unprepared for caregiving. They’re either untrained or unable to trust their own instincts. They lack confidence as well as knowledge. By confidence, I mean understanding and accepting that we don’t know all the answers – what to do, how to fix things.

This past weekend, I was on the phone with a woman who’d brought her mom to live near her in assisted living. The mom had been to the hospital the day before. My conversation with the daughter was about helping her see the truth that her mother needed more care and that was going to change the daughter’s responsibilities and her life. And also, her mother was frail, elderly, and coming nearer to death.

That’s hard, isn’t it?

Yes, because we live in a death-denying society. Also, we live in a fast-paced, demanding world that says don’t sit still — do something. But people receiving care often need most of all for us to spend time with them. When we do that, their mortality and our grief and our helplessness becomes closer to us and more apparent.

How can contemplative caregiving help?

We teach people to cultivate a relationship with aging, sickness and dying. To turn toward it rather than turning away, and to pay close attention. Most people don’t want to do this.

A person needs training to face what is difficult in oneself and in others. There are spiritual muscles we need to develop, just like we develop physical muscles in a gym. Also, the mind needs to be trained to be responsive instead of reactive.

What does that mean?

Here’s an example. Let’s say you’re trying to help your mother, and she says something off-putting to you like “you’ve always been terrible at keeping house. It’s no wonder you lost my pajamas.”

The first thing is to notice your experience. To become aware of that feeling, almost like being slapped emotionally. To notice your chest tightening.

Then I tell people to take a deep breath. And say something to themselves like “soften” to address that tightness. That’s how you can stay facing something uncomfortable rather than turning away.

If I were in this position, I might say something to myself like “hello unhappiness” or “hello suffering” or “hello aging” to tether myself.

The second step would be curiosity about that experience. Like, wow, where do I feel that anger that rose up in me, or that fear? Oh, it’s in my chest. I’m going to feel that, stay with it, investigate it.

Why is that important?

Because as we investigate something we come to understand it. And, paradoxically, when we pay attention to pain it changes. It softens. It moves. It lessens. It deepens. And we get to know it and learn not to be afraid of it or change it or fix it but just come alongside of it.

Over hours, days, months, years, the mind and heart come to know pain. And the response to pain is compassion — the wish for the alleviation of pain.

Let’s go back to what mother said about your housekeeping and the pajamas. Maybe you leave the room for five minutes so you can pay attention to your reaction and remember your training. Then, you can go back in and have a response rather than a reaction. Maybe something like “Mom, I think you’re right. I may not be the world’s best housekeeper. I’m sorry I lost your pajamas. It seems like you’re having a pretty strong response to that, and I’d like to know why it matters so much to you. What’s happening with you today?”

Are other skills important?

Another skill is to become aware of how much we receive as well as give in caregiving. Caregiving can be really gratifying. It’s an expression of our values and identity: the way we want the world to be. So, I try to teach people how this role benefits them. Such as learning what it’s like to be old. Or having a close, intimate relationship with an older parent for the first time in decades. It isn’t necessarily pleasant or easy. But the alternative is missing someone’s final chapter, and that can be a real loss.

What will you do in your course?

We’ll teach the principles of contemplative care and discuss them. We’ll have homework, such as ‘Bring me three examples of someone you were caring for who was caring toward you in return.’ That’s one way of practicing attention. And people will train in meditation.

We’ll also explore our own relationship to aging, sickness, dying and loss. We’ll tell our stories: this is the situation I was in, this is where I felt myself shut down, this was the edge of my comfort or knowledge. And we’ll teach principles from Buddhism. Equanimity. Compassion. Deep inner connectedness.

What can people do on their own?

Mindfulness training is offered in almost every city. That’s one of the core components of this approach.

I think every caregiver needs to have their own caregiver — a therapist or a colleague or a friend, someone who is there for them and with whom they can unburden themselves. I think of caregiving as drawing water from a well. We need to make sure that we have whatever nurtures us, whatever supplies that well. And often, that’s connecting with others.

Are other groups doing this kind of work?

In New York City, the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care educates the public and professionals about contemplative care. And in New Mexico, the Upaya Zen Center does similar work, much of it centered around death and dying.

People who want to read about this might want to look at a new book of essays, “The Arts of Contemplative Care: Pioneering Voices in Buddhist Chaplaincy and Pastoral Work” (Wisdom Publications, 2012).

Read More..

The New Old Age Blog: Taking a Zen Approach to Caregiving

You try to help your elderly father. Irritated and defensive, he snaps at you instead of going along with your suggestion. And you think “this is so unfair” and feel a rising tide of anger.

How to handle situations like this, which arise often and create so much angst for caregivers?

Jennifer Block finds the answer in what she calls “contemplative caregiving” — the application of Buddhist principles to caregiving and the subject of a year-long course that starts at the San Francisco Zen Center in a few weeks.

This approach aims to cultivate compassion, both for older people and the people they depend on, said Ms. Block, 49, a Buddhist chaplain and the course’s lead instructor. She’s also the former director of education at the Zen Hospice project in San Francisco and founder of the Beyond Measure School for Contemplative Care, which is helping develop a new, Zen-inspired senior living community in the area.

I caught up with Ms. Block recently, and what follows is an edited transcript of our conversation.

Let’s start with your experience. Have you been a caregiver?

My experience in caregiving is as a professional providing spiritual care to individuals and families when they are facing and coping with aging and sickness and loss and dying, particularly in hospital and hospice settings.

What kinds of challenges have you witnessed?

People are for the most part unprepared for caregiving. They’re either untrained or unable to trust their own instincts. They lack confidence as well as knowledge. By confidence, I mean understanding and accepting that we don’t know all the answers – what to do, how to fix things.

This past weekend, I was on the phone with a woman who’d brought her mom to live near her in assisted living. The mom had been to the hospital the day before. My conversation with the daughter was about helping her see the truth that her mother needed more care and that was going to change the daughter’s responsibilities and her life. And also, her mother was frail, elderly, and coming nearer to death.

That’s hard, isn’t it?

Yes, because we live in a death-denying society. Also, we live in a fast-paced, demanding world that says don’t sit still — do something. But people receiving care often need most of all for us to spend time with them. When we do that, their mortality and our grief and our helplessness becomes closer to us and more apparent.

How can contemplative caregiving help?

We teach people to cultivate a relationship with aging, sickness and dying. To turn toward it rather than turning away, and to pay close attention. Most people don’t want to do this.

A person needs training to face what is difficult in oneself and in others. There are spiritual muscles we need to develop, just like we develop physical muscles in a gym. Also, the mind needs to be trained to be responsive instead of reactive.

What does that mean?

Here’s an example. Let’s say you’re trying to help your mother, and she says something off-putting to you like “you’ve always been terrible at keeping house. It’s no wonder you lost my pajamas.”

The first thing is to notice your experience. To become aware of that feeling, almost like being slapped emotionally. To notice your chest tightening.

Then I tell people to take a deep breath. And say something to themselves like “soften” to address that tightness. That’s how you can stay facing something uncomfortable rather than turning away.

If I were in this position, I might say something to myself like “hello unhappiness” or “hello suffering” or “hello aging” to tether myself.

The second step would be curiosity about that experience. Like, wow, where do I feel that anger that rose up in me, or that fear? Oh, it’s in my chest. I’m going to feel that, stay with it, investigate it.

Why is that important?

Because as we investigate something we come to understand it. And, paradoxically, when we pay attention to pain it changes. It softens. It moves. It lessens. It deepens. And we get to know it and learn not to be afraid of it or change it or fix it but just come alongside of it.

Over hours, days, months, years, the mind and heart come to know pain. And the response to pain is compassion — the wish for the alleviation of pain.

Let’s go back to what mother said about your housekeeping and the pajamas. Maybe you leave the room for five minutes so you can pay attention to your reaction and remember your training. Then, you can go back in and have a response rather than a reaction. Maybe something like “Mom, I think you’re right. I may not be the world’s best housekeeper. I’m sorry I lost your pajamas. It seems like you’re having a pretty strong response to that, and I’d like to know why it matters so much to you. What’s happening with you today?”

Are other skills important?

Another skill is to become aware of how much we receive as well as give in caregiving. Caregiving can be really gratifying. It’s an expression of our values and identity: the way we want the world to be. So, I try to teach people how this role benefits them. Such as learning what it’s like to be old. Or having a close, intimate relationship with an older parent for the first time in decades. It isn’t necessarily pleasant or easy. But the alternative is missing someone’s final chapter, and that can be a real loss.

What will you do in your course?

We’ll teach the principles of contemplative care and discuss them. We’ll have homework, such as ‘Bring me three examples of someone you were caring for who was caring toward you in return.’ That’s one way of practicing attention. And people will train in meditation.

We’ll also explore our own relationship to aging, sickness, dying and loss. We’ll tell our stories: this is the situation I was in, this is where I felt myself shut down, this was the edge of my comfort or knowledge. And we’ll teach principles from Buddhism. Equanimity. Compassion. Deep inner connectedness.

What can people do on their own?

Mindfulness training is offered in almost every city. That’s one of the core components of this approach.

I think every caregiver needs to have their own caregiver — a therapist or a colleague or a friend, someone who is there for them and with whom they can unburden themselves. I think of caregiving as drawing water from a well. We need to make sure that we have whatever nurtures us, whatever supplies that well. And often, that’s connecting with others.

Are other groups doing this kind of work?

In New York City, the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care educates the public and professionals about contemplative care. And in New Mexico, the Upaya Zen Center does similar work, much of it centered around death and dying.

People who want to read about this might want to look at a new book of essays, “The Arts of Contemplative Care: Pioneering Voices in Buddhist Chaplaincy and Pastoral Work” (Wisdom Publications, 2012).

Read More..

Visit by Google Chairman May Benefit North Korea

BEIJING — As a work of propaganda, the images that North Korea circulated this week showing Google’s executive chairman, Eric E. Schmidt, touring a high-tech incubation center are hard to beat.

Adrian Bradshaw/European Pressphoto Agency

Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s executive chairman, at left wearing a tie, and former Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico spoke to reporters in Beijing on Thursday after returning from North Korea.

With former Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico at his side, Mr. Schmidt, who is fond of describing the Internet as the enemy of despots, toured what was presented as the hub of the computer industry in one of the world’s most pitiless police states. Both men gazed attentively as a select group of North Koreans showed their ability to surf the Web.

It is unclear what the famously hermetic North Koreans hoped to accomplish by allowing the visit. But the photos of the billionaire entrepreneur taking the time to visit the nation’s computer labs were bound to be useful to a new national leader whom analysts say needs to show his people that their impoverished nation is moving forward.

It will matter little, those experts say, that the visitors were bundled against the cold, indoors — a sign of the country’s extreme privation — or that the vast majority of North Koreans have no access to computers, much less the Web beyond their country’s tightly controlled borders.

The men’s quixotic four-day trip ended Thursday much the way it began, with some analysts calling the visit hopelessly naïve and others describing it as valuable back-channel diplomacy at a time when Washington and Pyongyang are not on speaking terms (again).

“I’m still spinning my wheels to figure out a plausible motivation for why they went,” said Daniel Pinkston, a North Korea specialist at the International Crisis Group.

Mr. Schmidt and Mr. Richardson insist they accomplished some good — showing the world has not forgotten the plight of an American detained in the North, and at least trying to nudge the tightly sealed nation a bit closer to the fold of globally connected nations.

“As the world becomes increasingly connected, their decision to be virtually isolated is very much going to affect their  physical world, their economic growth and so forth,” Mr. Schmidt told reporters after arriving at Beijing International Airport. “We made that alternative very, very clear.”

The unofficial visit, however, raised hackles in Washington, and provided rich fodder for commentators and comedians. Even before the Americans left Pyongyang, someone created an account on Tumblr, the popular social blogging site, called “Eric Schmidt looking at things,” that parodied sites (themselves parodies) featuring the country’s leaders earnestly inspecting livestock, soldiers or leather insoles. (Mr. Schmidt is shown looking intently at computer screens, “the back of a North Korean Student,” and Mr. Richardson.)

Others were less kind. Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, took to Twitter to call the self-appointed delegation “useful idiots,” and John R. Bolton, a former United Nations ambassador, said the delegation was unwittingly feeding the North Korean propaganda mill as it sought to burnish the credentials of Kim Jung-un, the nation’s leader, who is in his 20s.

“Pyongyang uses gullible Americans for its own purposes,” Mr. Bolton wrote in The New York Daily News.

The State Department said it did not think the timing of the visit was “particularly helpful,” given efforts by the United States to rally international support for tougher sanctions following North Korea’s recent launching of a rocket that intelligence experts say could help in the development of missiles that could one day reach the United States.

As if on cue, the North Korean news media hailed the visit by “the Google team” — which included Jared Cohen, who leads Google’s think tank — highlighting their visit to the mausoleum where Mr. Kim’s grandfather and father lie in state. There, Mr. Richardson and Mr. Schmidt “expressed admiration and paid respect to Comrade Kim Il-sung and Comrade Kim Jong-il,” the North’s main party newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, said.

Choe Sang-Hun contributed reporting from Seoul, South Korea, Claire Cain Miller from San Francisco, and Edward Wong from Beijing.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 11, 2013

An earlier version of this article paraphrased incorrectly State Department comments about the visit to North Korea by Mr. Schmidt and Mr. Richardson. The Department said it did not think the timing of the visit was “particularly helpful.” It did not call the visit “not particularly helpful.”

Read More..

India Ink: Railway Fare Hike Announced

The Indian government said Wednesday that it would raise all railway passenger fares, which would be the first across-the-board increase in nine years, as it grapples with a growing fiscal deficit and weak finances.

Rail passengers will have to pay 10 to 25 percent more, depending on fare class, under the government’s plan, which is expected take effect Jan. 21. Pawan Kumar Bansal, the railways minister, said the higher fares will generate 66 billion rupees ($1.2 billion) in one year for the strained railway system. “Facilities and safety measures will improve with an increase in fares,” he told reporters.

The move comes as part of a series of fiscal changes initiated in September, including an increase in fuel prices and an opening of the retail sector to foreign investment. In October, Finance Minister P. Chidambaram announced a fiscal road map designed to cap the national deficit for this financial year at 5.3 percent of the gross domestic product.

The fare increase was welcomed by analysts. “This announcement signals the willingness of New Delhi to take politically unpopular decisions to put the economy in order,” said Sujan Hajra, chief economist at Anand Rathi Financial Services. “Even if these measures are not particularly populist, the government is now ready to bite the bullet for improving the fiscal situation.”

However, the government’s plan has already been greeted with some resistance from the opposition parties. “The near 20 percent hike in fares has dealt a big blow to the common man, who is already reeling under high inflation,” said the spokesman for the Bharatiya Janata Party, Ravi Shankar Prasad, according to the Press Trust of India.

Increasing the railway passenger fares has always been a politically sensitive issue, with critics saying that the move that will harm the poorest of the poor, who will not be able to afford higher prices.

Although fares for freight and higher-class travel have seen increases, a lack of political support has kept railways ministers from successfully pushing up passenger fares across the board since 2004. In fact, as Vikas Bajaj of The New York Times noted, adjusted for inflation, railway ticket prices have fallen about 48 percent in the past nine years.

In March 2012, the former railways minister Dinesh Trivedi proposed raising fares, citing a required improvement in safety and modernization of the railways. He was almost immediately dismissed from his position by the West Bengal chief minister and his boss, Mamata Banerjee, who said the fare increase was unacceptable.

Speaking with India Ink shortly after his dismissal, Mr. Trivedi said, “There is too much politics in rail and a trend to discourage any kind of modernization and it is a sad story. If the railway is not robust, the economy of India will not grow.”

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European Central Bank Leaves Key Rate Unchanged

FRANKFURT — The European Central Bank left its main interest rate at a record low Thursday, apparently concluding that any further reduction would be powerless to ease a severe credit crunch in countries like Italy or Spain.

The E.C.B. left its benchmark rate at 0.75 percent. Some bank watchers had looked for a further reduction, in light of recent data showing that inflation is falling and many businesses continue to have trouble getting credit. A recovery of the European economy is unlikely until businesses are able to borrow again.

While cutting interest rates is a standard policy tool of central banks, Mario Draghi, the president of the E.C.B., has often complained that the central bank has lost much of its influence over rates in troubled countries like Spain. Comercial banks there are already struggling with problem loans and reluctant to lend except at much higher rates.

The E.C.B. governing council, which held its regularly monthly monetary policy meeting in Frankfurt, may have concluded that a rate cut now would be superfluous. The E.C.B. has been allowing banks to borrow as much as they want from the central bank at 0.75 percent, if they can provide collateral. But the E.C.B. cannot compel banks to pass on lower rates to customers, and many do not.

In addition, governing council members including Jens Weidmann, president of the German Bundesbank, may have argued that there is a danger of inflation in some countries if the benchmark rate is cut any further.

The annual rate of inflation in the euro zone is 2.2 percent and has been falling. The E.C.B. aims for a rate of 2 percent, and outside Germany — which is historically hypersensitive to inflation fears — few people are worried about rising prices.

Analysts had been divided on whether the E.C.B. would cut rates Thursday. The euro zone economy is shrinking, unemployment is rising, and E.C.B. figures released last week showed that credit issued to businesses continued to decline.

“In a normal world, a central bank confronted with these circumstances would look for ways to ease monetary conditions,” Carl Weinberg, chief economist of High Frequency Economics in Valhalla, New York, wrote in a note to clients.

But other economists expected the E.C.B. to wait because of signs that the euro zone economy could be poised for a mild recovery. Several indicators of business sentiment, such as the Ifo index in Germany, have shown that managers have become more optimistic and more willing to invest, because they are less afraid that the euro zone will break up.

“These indicators again came in better in December, with a particularly strong improvement in the Ifo Index, which argues for unchanged key rates in January,” Michael Schubert, an analyst at Commerzbank, wrote in a note.

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Flu Widespread, Leading a Range of Winter’s Ills

It is not your imagination — more people you know are sick this winter, even people who have had flu shots.

The country is in the grip of three emerging flu or flulike epidemics: an early start to the annual flu season with an unusually aggressive virus, a surge in a new type of norovirus, and the worst whooping cough outbreak in 60 years. And these are all developing amid the normal winter highs for the many viruses that cause symptoms on the “colds and flu” spectrum.

Influenza is widespread, and causing local crises. On Wednesday, Boston’s mayor declared a public health emergency as cases flooded hospital emergency rooms.

Google’s national flu trend maps, which track flu-related searches, are almost solid red (for “intense activity”) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s weekly FluView maps, which track confirmed cases, are nearly solid brown (for “widespread activity”).

“Yesterday, I saw a construction worker, a big strong guy in his Carhartts who looked like he could fall off a roof without noticing it,” said Dr. Beth Zeeman, an emergency room doctor for MetroWest Medical Center in Framingham, Mass., just outside Boston. “He was in a fetal position with fever and chills, like a wet rag. When I see one of those cases, I just tighten up my mask a little.”

Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston started asking visitors with even mild cold symptoms to wear masks and to avoid maternity wards. The hospital has treated 532 confirmed influenza patients this season and admitted 167, even more than it did by this date during the 2009-10 swine flu pandemic.

At Brigham and Women’s Hospital, 100 patients were crowded into spaces licensed for 53. Beds lined halls and pressed against vending machines. Overflow patients sat on benches in the lobby wearing surgical masks.

“Today was the first time I think I was experiencing my first pandemic,” said Heidi Crim, the nursing director, who saw both the swine flu and SARS outbreaks here. Adding to the problem, she said, many staff members were at home sick and supplies like flu test swabs were running out.

Nationally, deaths and hospitalizations are still below epidemic thresholds. But experts do not expect that to remain true. Pneumonia usually shows up in national statistics only a week or two after emergency rooms report surges in cases, and deaths start rising a week or two after that, said Dr. Gregory A. Poland, a vaccine specialist at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. The predominant flu strain circulating is an H3N2, which typically kills more people than the H1N1 strains that usually predominate; the relatively lethal 2003-4 “Fujian flu” season was overwhelmingly H3N2.

No cases have been resistant to Tamiflu, which can ease symptoms if taken within 48 hours, and this year’s flu shot is well-matched to the H3N2 strain, the C.D.C. said. Flu shots are imperfect, especially in the elderly, whose immune systems may not be strong enough to produce enough antibodies.

Simultaneously, the country is seeing a large and early outbreak of norovirus, the “cruise ship flu” or “stomach flu,” said Dr. Aron J. Hall of the C.D.C.’s viral gastroenterology branch. It includes a new strain, which first appeared in Australia and is known as the Sydney 2012 variant.

This week, Maine’s health department said that state was seeing a large spike in cases. Cities across Canada reported norovirus outbreaks so serious that hospitals were shutting down whole wards for disinfection because patients were getting infected after moving into the rooms of those who had just recovered. The classic symptoms of norovirus are “explosive” diarrhea and “projectile” vomiting, which can send infectious particles flying yards away.

“I also saw a woman I’m sure had norovirus,” Dr. Zeeman said. “She said she’d gone to the bathroom 14 times at home and 4 times since she came into the E.R. You can get dehydrated really quickly that way.”

This month, the C.D.C. said the United States was having its biggest outbreak of pertussis in 60 years; there were about 42,000 confirmed cases, the highest total since 1955. The disease is unrelated to flu but causes a hacking, constant cough and breathlessness. While it is unpleasant, adults almost always survive; the greatest danger is to infants, especially premature ones with undeveloped lungs. Of the 18 recorded deaths in 2012, all but three were of infants under age 1.

That outbreak is worst in cold-weather states, including Colorado, Washington, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Vermont.

Although most children are vaccinated several times against pertussis, those shots wear off with age. It is possible, the authorities said, that a new, safer vaccine introduced in the 1990s gives protection that does not last as long, so more teenagers and adults are vulnerable.

And, Dr. Poland said, if many New Yorkers are catching laryngitis, as has been reported, it is probably a rhinovirus. “It’s typically a sore, really scratchy throat, and you sometimes lose your voice,” he said.

Though flu cases in New York City are rising rapidly, the city health department has no plans to declare an emergency, largely because of concern that doing so would drive mildly sick people to emergency rooms, said Dr. Jay K. Varma, deputy director for disease control. The city would prefer people went to private doctors or, if still healthy, to pharmacies for flu shots. Nursing homes have had worrisome outbreaks, he said, and nine elderly patients have died. Homes need to be more alert, vaccinate patients, separate those who fall ill and treat them faster with antivirals, he said.

Dr. Susan I. Gerber of the C.D.C.’s respiratory diseases branch, said her agency has not seen any unusual spike of rhinovirus, parainfluenza, adenovirus, coronavirus or the dozens of other causes of the “common cold,” but the country is having its typical winter surge of some, like respiratory syncytial virus “that can mimic flulike symptoms, especially in young children.”

The C.D.C. and the local health authorities continue to advocate getting flu shots. Although it takes up to two weeks to build immunity, “we don’t know if the season has peaked yet,” said Dr. Joseph Bresee, chief of prevention in the agency’s flu division.

Flu shots and nasal mists contain vaccines against three strains, the H3N2, the H1N1 and a B. Thus far this season, Dr. Bresee said, H1N1 cases have been rare, and the H3N2 component has been a good match against almost all the confirmed H3N2 samples the agency has tested.

About a fifth of all flus this year thus far are from B strains. That part of the vaccine is a good match only 70 percent of the time, because two B’s are circulating.

For that reason, he said, flu shots are being reformulated. Within two years, they said, most will contain vaccines against both B strains.

Joanna Constantine, 28, a stylist at the Guy Thomas Hair Salon on West 56th Street in Manhattan, said she recently was so sick that she was off work and in bed for five days — and silenced by laryngitis for four of them.

She did not have the classic flu symptoms — a high fever, aches and chills — so she knew it was probably something else.

Still, she said, it scared her enough that she will get a flu shot next year. She had not bothered to get one since her last pregnancy, she said. But she has a 7-year-old son and a 5-year-old daughter, “and my little guys get theirs every year.”

Jess Bidgood contributed reporting.

Read More..

Flu Widespread, Leading a Range of Winter’s Ills

It is not your imagination — more people you know are sick this winter, even people who have had flu shots.

The country is in the grip of three emerging flu or flulike epidemics: an early start to the annual flu season with an unusually aggressive virus, a surge in a new type of norovirus, and the worst whooping cough outbreak in 60 years. And these are all developing amid the normal winter highs for the many viruses that cause symptoms on the “colds and flu” spectrum.

Influenza is widespread, and causing local crises. On Wednesday, Boston’s mayor declared a public health emergency as cases flooded hospital emergency rooms.

Google’s national flu trend maps, which track flu-related searches, are almost solid red (for “intense activity”) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s weekly FluView maps, which track confirmed cases, are nearly solid brown (for “widespread activity”).

“Yesterday, I saw a construction worker, a big strong guy in his Carhartts who looked like he could fall off a roof without noticing it,” said Dr. Beth Zeeman, an emergency room doctor for MetroWest Medical Center in Framingham, Mass., just outside Boston. “He was in a fetal position with fever and chills, like a wet rag. When I see one of those cases, I just tighten up my mask a little.”

Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston started asking visitors with even mild cold symptoms to wear masks and to avoid maternity wards. The hospital has treated 532 confirmed influenza patients this season and admitted 167, even more than it did by this date during the 2009-10 swine flu pandemic.

At Brigham and Women’s Hospital, 100 patients were crowded into spaces licensed for 53. Beds lined halls and pressed against vending machines. Overflow patients sat on benches in the lobby wearing surgical masks.

“Today was the first time I think I was experiencing my first pandemic,” said Heidi Crim, the nursing director, who saw both the swine flu and SARS outbreaks here. Adding to the problem, she said, many staff members were at home sick and supplies like flu test swabs were running out.

Nationally, deaths and hospitalizations are still below epidemic thresholds. But experts do not expect that to remain true. Pneumonia usually shows up in national statistics only a week or two after emergency rooms report surges in cases, and deaths start rising a week or two after that, said Dr. Gregory A. Poland, a vaccine specialist at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. The predominant flu strain circulating is an H3N2, which typically kills more people than the H1N1 strains that usually predominate; the relatively lethal 2003-4 “Fujian flu” season was overwhelmingly H3N2.

No cases have been resistant to Tamiflu, which can ease symptoms if taken within 48 hours, and this year’s flu shot is well-matched to the H3N2 strain, the C.D.C. said. Flu shots are imperfect, especially in the elderly, whose immune systems may not be strong enough to produce enough antibodies.

Simultaneously, the country is seeing a large and early outbreak of norovirus, the “cruise ship flu” or “stomach flu,” said Dr. Aron J. Hall of the C.D.C.’s viral gastroenterology branch. It includes a new strain, which first appeared in Australia and is known as the Sydney 2012 variant.

This week, Maine’s health department said that state was seeing a large spike in cases. Cities across Canada reported norovirus outbreaks so serious that hospitals were shutting down whole wards for disinfection because patients were getting infected after moving into the rooms of those who had just recovered. The classic symptoms of norovirus are “explosive” diarrhea and “projectile” vomiting, which can send infectious particles flying yards away.

“I also saw a woman I’m sure had norovirus,” Dr. Zeeman said. “She said she’d gone to the bathroom 14 times at home and 4 times since she came into the E.R. You can get dehydrated really quickly that way.”

This month, the C.D.C. said the United States was having its biggest outbreak of pertussis in 60 years; there were about 42,000 confirmed cases, the highest total since 1955. The disease is unrelated to flu but causes a hacking, constant cough and breathlessness. While it is unpleasant, adults almost always survive; the greatest danger is to infants, especially premature ones with undeveloped lungs. Of the 18 recorded deaths in 2012, all but three were of infants under age 1.

That outbreak is worst in cold-weather states, including Colorado, Washington, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Vermont.

Although most children are vaccinated several times against pertussis, those shots wear off with age. It is possible, the authorities said, that a new, safer vaccine introduced in the 1990s gives protection that does not last as long, so more teenagers and adults are vulnerable.

And, Dr. Poland said, if many New Yorkers are catching laryngitis, as has been reported, it is probably a rhinovirus. “It’s typically a sore, really scratchy throat, and you sometimes lose your voice,” he said.

Though flu cases in New York City are rising rapidly, the city health department has no plans to declare an emergency, largely because of concern that doing so would drive mildly sick people to emergency rooms, said Dr. Jay K. Varma, deputy director for disease control. The city would prefer people went to private doctors or, if still healthy, to pharmacies for flu shots. Nursing homes have had worrisome outbreaks, he said, and nine elderly patients have died. Homes need to be more alert, vaccinate patients, separate those who fall ill and treat them faster with antivirals, he said.

Dr. Susan I. Gerber of the C.D.C.’s respiratory diseases branch, said her agency has not seen any unusual spike of rhinovirus, parainfluenza, adenovirus, coronavirus or the dozens of other causes of the “common cold,” but the country is having its typical winter surge of some, like respiratory syncytial virus “that can mimic flulike symptoms, especially in young children.”

The C.D.C. and the local health authorities continue to advocate getting flu shots. Although it takes up to two weeks to build immunity, “we don’t know if the season has peaked yet,” said Dr. Joseph Bresee, chief of prevention in the agency’s flu division.

Flu shots and nasal mists contain vaccines against three strains, the H3N2, the H1N1 and a B. Thus far this season, Dr. Bresee said, H1N1 cases have been rare, and the H3N2 component has been a good match against almost all the confirmed H3N2 samples the agency has tested.

About a fifth of all flus this year thus far are from B strains. That part of the vaccine is a good match only 70 percent of the time, because two B’s are circulating.

For that reason, he said, flu shots are being reformulated. Within two years, they said, most will contain vaccines against both B strains.

Joanna Constantine, 28, a stylist at the Guy Thomas Hair Salon on West 56th Street in Manhattan, said she recently was so sick that she was off work and in bed for five days — and silenced by laryngitis for four of them.

She did not have the classic flu symptoms — a high fever, aches and chills — so she knew it was probably something else.

Still, she said, it scared her enough that she will get a flu shot next year. She had not bothered to get one since her last pregnancy, she said. But she has a 7-year-old son and a 5-year-old daughter, “and my little guys get theirs every year.”

Jess Bidgood contributed reporting.

Read More..

State of the Art: Mixing and Matching to Create the Near-Perfect Digital Calendar - State of the Art

60 Seconds With Pogue: Calendars:
David Pogue reviews calendar apps and software.

You know what’s kind of wild? We can identify products by their container designs. You’d know a ketchup bottle, even if it was empty and unlabeled, no matter what the brand. You’d know a pickle jar, or a milk jug, or a bottle of salad dressing, or a cereal box just by their container shapes.

Same goes for the big software categories. You’d know a spreadsheet anywhere — formula bar at the top, grid below — no matter what company made it. Or e-mail program, word processor, Web browser. They all work pretty much alike.

But there’s one software category, an incredibly important one, where there’s no standard design or set of features: calendar software. Each one seems to have evolved on its own Galápagos island.

Take the new Calendar app in Windows 8. So much of Windows 8’s touch-screen mode is modern, updated and fresh — color, gestures, typography — that you’d expect an equally modernized calendar app at its heart.

Wow, would you be wrong. Listen, Microsoft: 1990 called. It wants its calendar back.

You can’t drag vertically through the Day-view column to create an appointment. You can’t drag an appointment to reschedule it. You can’t record an auto-repeating appointment like “Monday, Wednesday, Friday” or “first Tuesday of the month.”

And incredibly, you can’t create separate categories, like Home, Work and Social. There’s no way to color-code your appointments or hide certain categories.

That same week, on another computer, I installed a Mac calendar program called BusyCal 2.0. You know what’s so brilliant? When you open it, today’s date is always in the top row, no matter what week of the month this is. You always see the next four or five weeks, even if some are in the following month.

And why not? Almost always, you open your calendar to check coming dates — so why fill the screen with dates that have already gone by? That’s a limitation of paper calendars, where every month shows 1 in the first square.

And that’s when I had my epiphany. Our electronics are capable of fantastic flexibility, features and design; why are we still modeling our digital calendars on paper ones?

Apple’s Calendar app for the Mac goes so far as to display a little leather “binding” at the top, complete with scraps of torn-off “paper” to indicate where previous months’ “pages” have been torn off. Why?

If you spend enough time with the world’s calendar apps, you can see, through the mist, a vision of the ultimate digital calendar program. If you could mix and match the best of all the motley calendar apps, here’s what you might come up with.

¶ Give us an alternative to tabbing from Start Time to End Time and typing numbers into a tiny New Event box. Let us drag to indicate a meeting’s length. Or give us speech — intelligent speech, like Siri on the iPhone. “Make an appointment next Tuesday morning at seven: tennis with Casey,” you can say. Your hands never leave the wheel, the cat or the delicious beverage.

We should also be able to type plain-English phrases like “tomorrow 1pm lunch mtg” or “4/15 730p Dinner with boss,” and marvel as it creates the right appointment on the right calendar square at the right time. (Google, Apple’s Calendar for the Mac, BusyCal and, in particular, the iPhone app Fantastical can all do this.) Here again, you’re not fiddling with a dialogue box to enter a new event.

¶ Microsoft’s greatest calendaring effort remains Outlook, the e-mail program that comes with some versions of Microsoft Office. Outlook has its detractors, but one thing it got right is integration with your e-mail and address book. What are appointments, after all, but interactions with people you know — and how better to set up meetings with them than with e-mail?

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 9, 2013

An earlier version of this article stated that Apple and Android phones do not allow users to drag to reschedule appointments on their calendar apps. The standard Android calendar does not allow users to drag to reschedule.

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France Debates Gay Marriage Law

Jeff Pachoud/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Demonstrators in Lyon, France, spoke out in December in favor of same-sex marriage. President François Hollande supports a “marriage for all” bill.

PARIS — Frigide Barjot has made a career of mocking the establishment of France, dressing in fluorescent pink sweaters, playing in a band called the Dead Pompidous and hosting a philosophy soirée at which she handed out T-shirts with the logo, “Kierkegaard is my homeboy.”

But Ms. Barjot, born Virginie Merle 50 years ago, has also rediscovered her religious roots, writing a book called “Confessions of a Trendy Catholic.” And she has become one of the main actors and voices in France’s fierce debate over gay marriage, adoption rights and state financing for procreation assistance. It is a debate as sincere and confused, in a way, as Ms. Barjot’s own involvement.

Despite her love of mockery and her support for the rights of gay couples, she is strongly opposed to gay marriage, and especially to the part of a proposed law that would allow married gay couples to adopt children and be recognized as their parents. On Sunday, she will help lead a large demonstration called “La Manif Pour Tous,” or a demonstration for everyone, a follow-up to an initial protest in November.

Legalizing gay marriage — “marriage for all” — was a campaign promise by President François Hollande, a Socialist, but it has proved tricky and divisive in France, which is a secular republic but remains an essentially Roman Catholic country where few go to church. He promised to enact it within a year of taking office last May, and his draft bill will go before Parliament for debate by the end of this month.

Same-sex marriages are now performed in about a dozen countries and at least 9 of the 50 states in America, while it is constitutionally banned in others. But gay marriage was not a big issue in the 2012 presidential campaign, and there are a number of cases about its legality before the Supreme Court.

In France, religious leaders have become deeply involved, arguing that the government should be cautious before redefining the institution of marriage and legal “parenthood.” The chief rabbi of France, Gilles Bernheim, has cautioned about toying with the idea that gender has become “a social role that we choose for ourselves,” instead of “a given element of nature that man has to accept.”

Pope Benedict XVI cited Rabbi Bernheim in a Christmas address opposing gay marriage, saying that it was wrong for people “to deny their nature and decide it is not something previously given to them, but that they make themselves.” He drew a parallel between those who deplore “the manipulation of nature” where “our environment is concerned,” but sanction it as “man’s fundamental choice where he himself is concerned.”

The intervention of religious leaders in opposition, including Muslims, has caused something of an uproar, especially among supporters of the Socialist government. The minister in charge of education, Vincent Peillon, has even warned parochial schools against having debates in classrooms about the merits of gay marriage and adoption, citing a threat to French secularism, bringing charges of Catholic-bashing.

“To make a child, you need a man and a woman,” Ms. Barjot said. For a gay couple to become the legal parents of a child “is totally contrary to reality,” she said.

She is quite happy for gay couples to have official status and legal protections. “The problem is not homosexuality, but human filiation,” she argues — a child’s need to have legal affiliation and access to its biological parents.

Mr. Hollande and his government say that they were elected on a clear platform and will pass the “marriage for all” law, and that the legislature, not the street, will decide.

A careful political tactician, however, Mr. Hollande has said he wants to keep separate from the marriage law the demand of some Socialist legislators that the government also legalize access to state-financed help for married lesbian couples seeking to bear children. On this issue, Mr. Hollande describes himself as not having strong views, which means that he does not favor the idea.

Scott Sayare contributed reporting.

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DealBook: Ping An Shares Fall for 2nd Straight Day

SHANGHAI – Shares in the Ping An Group, the Chinese insurance and banking giant, fell in Shanghai trading for the second consecutive day on Wednesday over concerns that the British bank HSBC was having trouble selling its 15.6 percent stake in the company.

HSBC had announced plans in December to sell a $9.4 billion stake in Ping An to the Charoen Pokphand Group of Thailand. Part of that sale has already been completed. But media outlets have reported this week that the China Development Bank, a big state lender, has decided not to finance the rest of the deal and that the China Insurance Regulatory Commission is likely to reject the deal.

The report, first published by The South China Morning Post, could not be independently confirmed. The parties involved all declined to comment on Wednesday. A spokesman for Ping An, which is based in Shenzhen, China, would say only that approval of the deal was proceeding normally.

But several analysts have expressed doubts that the full deal will go through on time. In Hong Kong, Ping An shares rebounded on Wednesday from a sharp drop on Tuesday, while Ping An’s share price continued to decline for a second day in trading on the Shanghai Stock Exchange.

The deal is facing difficulty at a time of growing scrutiny of Ping An. The company, which is one of the largest insurers in China and a financial conglomerate worth about $60 billion, has longstanding financial ties to the relatives of China’s prime minister, Wen Jiabao, according to documents obtained by The New York Times.

The Times reported in October and November that the relatives of China’s prime minister had amassed a multibillion-dollar stake in Ping An before the company’s initial public stock offering in 2004.

The stake was bought from a Chinese state-owned company for about $65 million in late 2002, and was at one time worth as much as $3.7 billion. The relatives of Mr. Wen owned a portion of those shares through a series of holding companies. It is unclear whether they have sold their entire stake.

The relatives of China’s former Central Bank chief, Dai Xianglong, also held a Ping An stake through holding companies during the same period. At one time, the companies controlled about $3.1 billion in Ping An shares, according to corporate documents obtained by The Times.

The relatives obtained the shares at a time when the two senior government officials were effectively acting as financial regulators with oversight of Ping An during a crucial period before its I.P.O. in 2004.

The relatives of the two senior officials have denied holding the stakes.

HSBC acquired its initial stake in Ping An in September 2002, and bought additional stakes in Ping An from Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. On Dec. 5, HSBC said it planned to sell its entire 15.6 percent stake to the Charoen Pokphand Group of Thailand to increase capital.

Soon after, one of China’s top business publications, Caixin, reported that a large part of the payment for the first part of the purchase would come from a group of Chinese investors and Ping An’s management team, as well as the former president of Thailand, Thaksin Shinawatra. Ping An and Charoen Pokphand disputed the Caixin magazine report.

Ping An is widely regarded as one of the most successful financial services firms in China. The company was founded in 1988, and has operated as a shareholding company since shortly after that time. It is not considered a state- owned company, but the government of Shenzhen has always held a big stake in Ping An, which operates the country’s second-largest insurer.

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Recipes for Health: Cauliflower and Tuna Salad — Recipes for Health

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

I have added tuna to a classic Italian antipasto of cauliflower and capers dressed with vinegar and olive oil. For the best results give the cauliflower lots of time to marinate.

1 large or 2 small or medium cauliflowers, broken into small florets

1 5-ounce can water-packed light (not albacore) tuna, drained

1 plump garlic clove, minced or pureéd

1/3 cup chopped flat-leaf parsley

3 tablespoons capers, drained and rinsed

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

3 tablespoons sherry vinegar or champagne vinegar

6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Salt and freshly ground pepper

1. Place the cauliflower in a steaming basket over 1 inch of boiling water, cover and steam 1 minute. Lift the lid for 15 seconds, then cover again and steam for 5 to 8 minutes, until tender. Refresh with cold water, then drain on paper towels.

2. In a large bowl, break up the tuna fish and add the cauliflower.

3. In a small bowl or measuring cup, mix together the garlic, parsley, capers, lemon juice, vinegar, and olive oil. Season generously with salt and pepper. Add the cauliflower and toss together. Marinate, stirring from time to time, for 30 minutes if possible before serving. Serve warm, cold, or at room temperature.

Yield: Serves 6 as a starter or side dish

Advance preparation: You can make this up to a day ahead, but omit the parsley until shortly before serving so that it doesn’t fade. It keeps well in the refrigerator for up to 5 days.

Nutritional information per serving: 188 calories; 15 grams fat; 2 grams saturated fat; 2 grams polyunsaturated fat; 10 grams monounsaturated fat; 10 milligrams cholesterol; 8 grams carbohydrates; 3 grams dietary fiber; 261 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste); 9 grams protein

Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health.”

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Recipes for Health: Cauliflower and Tuna Salad — Recipes for Health

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

I have added tuna to a classic Italian antipasto of cauliflower and capers dressed with vinegar and olive oil. For the best results give the cauliflower lots of time to marinate.

1 large or 2 small or medium cauliflowers, broken into small florets

1 5-ounce can water-packed light (not albacore) tuna, drained

1 plump garlic clove, minced or pureéd

1/3 cup chopped flat-leaf parsley

3 tablespoons capers, drained and rinsed

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

3 tablespoons sherry vinegar or champagne vinegar

6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Salt and freshly ground pepper

1. Place the cauliflower in a steaming basket over 1 inch of boiling water, cover and steam 1 minute. Lift the lid for 15 seconds, then cover again and steam for 5 to 8 minutes, until tender. Refresh with cold water, then drain on paper towels.

2. In a large bowl, break up the tuna fish and add the cauliflower.

3. In a small bowl or measuring cup, mix together the garlic, parsley, capers, lemon juice, vinegar, and olive oil. Season generously with salt and pepper. Add the cauliflower and toss together. Marinate, stirring from time to time, for 30 minutes if possible before serving. Serve warm, cold, or at room temperature.

Yield: Serves 6 as a starter or side dish

Advance preparation: You can make this up to a day ahead, but omit the parsley until shortly before serving so that it doesn’t fade. It keeps well in the refrigerator for up to 5 days.

Nutritional information per serving: 188 calories; 15 grams fat; 2 grams saturated fat; 2 grams polyunsaturated fat; 10 grams monounsaturated fat; 10 milligrams cholesterol; 8 grams carbohydrates; 3 grams dietary fiber; 261 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste); 9 grams protein

Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health.”

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Online Banking Attacks Were Work of Iran, U.S. Officials Say

SAN FRANCISCO — The attackers hit one American bank after the next. As in so many previous attacks, dozens of online banking sites slowed, hiccupped or ground to a halt before recovering several minutes later.

Daniel Rosenbaum for The New York Times

James A. Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington believes that recent online attacks on American banks have been the work of Iran.

But there was something disturbingly different about the wave of online attacks on American banks in recent weeks. Security researchers say that instead of exploiting individual computers, the attackers engineered networks of computers in data centers, transforming the online equivalent of a few yapping Chihuahuas into a pack of fire-breathing Godzillas.

The skill required to carry out attacks on this scale has convinced United States government officials and security researchers that they are the work of Iran, most likely in retaliation for economic sanctions and online attacks by the United States.

“There is no doubt within the U.S. government that Iran is behind these attacks,” said James A. Lewis, a former official in the State and Commerce Departments and a computer security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

Mr. Lewis said the amount of traffic flooding American banking sites was “multiple times” the amount that Russia directed at Estonia in a monthlong online assault in 2007 that nearly crippled the Baltic nation.

American officials have not offered any technical evidence to back up their claims, but computer security experts say the recent attacks showed a level of sophistication far beyond that of amateur hackers. Also, the hackers chose to pursue disruption, not money: another earmark of state-sponsored attacks, the experts said.

“The scale, the scope and the effectiveness of these attacks have been unprecedented,” said Carl Herberger, vice president of security solutions at Radware, a security firm that has been investigating the attacks on behalf of banks and cloud service providers. “There have never been this many financial institutions under this much duress.”

Since September, intruders have caused major disruptions to the online banking sites of Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, U.S. Bancorp, PNC, Capital One, Fifth Third Bank, BB&T and HSBC.

They employed DDoS attacks, or distributed denial of service attacks, named because hackers deny customers service by directing large volumes of traffic to a site until it collapses. No bank accounts were breached and no customers’ money was taken.

By using data centers, the attackers are simply keeping up with the times. Companies and consumers are increasingly conducting their business over large-scale “clouds” of hundreds, even thousands, of networked computer servers.

These clouds are run by Amazon and Google, but also by many smaller players who commonly rent them to other companies. It appears the hackers remotely hijacked some of these clouds and used the computing power to take down American banking sites.

“There’s a sense now that attackers are crafting their own private clouds,” either by creating networks of individual machines or by stealing resources wholesale from poorly maintained corporate clouds, said John Kindervag, an analyst at Forrester Research.

How, exactly, attackers are hijacking data centers is still a mystery. Making matters more complex, they have simultaneously introduced another weapon: encrypted DDoS attacks.

Banks encrypt customers’ online transactions for security, but the encryption process consumes system resources. By flooding banking sites with encryption requests, attackers can further slow or cripple sites with fewer requests.

A hacker group calling itself Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters has claimed in online posts that it was responsible for the attacks.

The group said it attacked the banks in retaliation for an anti-Islam video that mocked the Prophet Muhammad, and pledged to continue its campaign until the video was scrubbed from the Internet. It called the campaign Operation Ababil, a reference to a story in the Koran in which Allah sends swallows to defeat an army of elephants dispatched by the king of Yemen to attack Mecca in A.D. 571.

But American intelligence officials say the group is actually a cover for Iran. They claim Iran is waging the attacks in retaliation for Western economic sanctions and for a series of cyberattacks on its own systems. In the last three years, three sophisticated computer viruses — called Flame, Duqu and Stuxnet — have hit computers in Iran. The New York Times reported last year that the United States, together with Israel, was responsible for Stuxnet, the virus used to destroy centrifuges in an Iranian nuclear facility in 2010.

“It’s a bit of a grudge match,” said Mr. Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

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India Ink: India Lodges Protest with Pakistan Over Soldiers' Deaths

India said it summoned Pakistan’s envoy in New Delhi on Wednesday to strongly protest the killing and mutilation of two Indian soldiers in the disputed territory of Kashmir after the second firefight in three days between the nuclear-armed neighbors.

The Indian government said that Pakistan troops crossed the de facto border, known as the Line of Control, on Tuesday and attacked Indian soldiers who were patrolling the area, subjecting two soldiers’ bodies to “barbaric and inhuman mutilation.”

“The government of Pakistan was asked to immediately investigate these actions that are in contravention of all norms of international conduct and ensure that these do not recur,” the Indian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Pakistan denied the allegations. A military official, speaking on the customary condition of anonymity, called it “Indian propaganda” to divert attention from a clash on Sunday in which a Pakistani soldier died.

Kashmir, a rocky Himalayan region that once witnessed a bloody insurgency and is still claimed by both India and Pakistan, has been a major focus of tension in South Asia. The two countries have fought two wars over Kashmir, but a cease-fire has been in place there for a decade.

It is unclear whether this latest clash between India and Pakistan will derail the steps the neighbors have taken to warm their relationship since the 2008 terror attacks on Mumbai by militants based in Pakistan. Recent high-level negotiations have included a new visa agreement that eased restrictions for travelers and plans to bolster trade ties between the two rival nations.

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DealBook: Easing of Rules for Banks Acknowledges Reality

When a global committee of regulators and central bankers agreed to a new set of rules for the banking system a year and a half ago, Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, told The Financial Times, “I’m very close to thinking the United States shouldn’t be in Basel anymore. I would not have agreed to rules that are blatantly anti-American.”

Over the last weekend, Mr. Dimon finally got what he had wanted: a form of deregulation of sorts. The new international capital requirements for banks, known as Basel III — apologies if your eyes are glazing over — were significantly relaxed by regulators.

Instead of requiring banks to maintain, by 2015, a certain amount of assets that can quickly be turned into cash, the most stringent deadline was pushed to 2019. Perhaps more important, the type of assets that could be counted in a bank’s liquidity requirement was changed to be more flexible, including securities backed by mortgages, for example, instead of simply sovereign debt.

This sounds boring, but it is important stuff. Increasing bank capital and liquidity requirements — think of it as the size of a bank’s rainy day fund — is arguably more significant than all of the new laws in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The more capital a bank is required to hold, the lower the chance it could suffer a run on the bank like Lehman Brothers did in 2008.

Given memories of the financial crisis, the idea that regulators would loosen rules even a smidgen is considered a huge giveaway. The conventional wisdom is that the banks are the big winners and the regulators are, once again, patsies, capitulating under pressure to the all-powerful financial industry. The headlines tell the story: “Banks Win 4-Year Delay as Basel Liquidity Rule Loosened,” Bloomberg declared. The Financial Times splashed, “ ‘Massive Softening’ of Basel Rules.” “Bank Regulators Retreat,” the Huffington Post said. Reuters described the new regulations as a “light touch.”

Mayra Rodríguez Valladares, a managing principal at MRV Associates, a regulatory consulting firm, put it this way, “With every part of Basel III that is gutted, we are increasingly back where we were at the eve of the crisis.” She went on to say, “In today’s financial world, regulators pretend to supervise while banks pretend to be liquid.”

But this is a knee-jerk response.

While there is no question that the original rules would do a better job preventing the next 100-year flood in the banking system, their quick adoption most likely would have created their own drag on the economy because bank lending would most likely have been curtailed.

“If Basel had been implemented this year as written, it almost certainly would have thrown the U.S. and other economies into a recession more than going over the fiscal cliff ever would have,” John Berlau of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a research organization promoting free markets, wrote. Mr. Berlau, who may have a penchant for hyperbole, had been calling the deadline the Basel cliff. He added, “Basel III has been delayed, and for Main Street growth and financial stability, that is all to the good.”

Mr. Berlau is right. In truth, the reason that regulators ultimately chose to relax the rules was simple practicality: many banks in Europe and some in the United States would have never been able to meet the requirements without significantly reducing the amount of credit they were to extend to Main Street over the next two years, according to people involved in the Basel decision process.

That’s the other side of the regulatory coin that Main Street often forgets about. At the time that the original rules were written in 2010, the consensus among economists was that the global economy would be in much better shape today than it is.

“Nobody set out to make it stronger or weaker, but to make it more realistic,” Mervyn A. King, governor of the Bank of England, explained.

Let’s be clear: high capital requirements are a good thing to do to reduce risk in the system. And there is no question that the banks, especially in the United States, are in a much stronger position than they were. Let’s also stipulate that the Basel committee did a horrible job before the financial crisis in setting and enforcing proper standards. Basel’s loosening of rules before the crisis that worsened the pain of the global banking system.

But the push for stricter rules just as the global economy is trying to nurse itself back to health, simply to satisfy the public, rather to find a solution that balances the risks to the economy and the banking system, would have been a mistake. The chances of a leverage-induced crisis from Wall Street banks right now is quite low.

The challenge for regulators is making sure their memories aren’t so short that they seek to scale back the rules again.

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This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 8, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the affiliation of John Berlau. He is a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, not the Bastiat Institute.

A version of this article appeared in print on 01/08/2013, on page B1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Easing of Rules For Banks Acknowledges Reality.

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