A Highflier Loses Altitude as Google’s Clicks Go Flat

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO — Are Internet users clicking on fewer Google ads and putting the company’s growth prospects at risk? Those questions are weighing on investors, who have cut the value of Google shares by 38 percent since they peaked at $747.24 in early November. The slide continued Tuesday when Google shares dropped 4.6 percent to close at $464.19, as investors were spooked by a report by the research firm comScore that said clicks on Google ads the United States were flat in January when compared with a year earlier. In all, Google’s shares have fallen $283 from their peak, wiping out $83 billion in market value, and bringing a aura of vulnerability, at least on Wall Street, to a company that just four months ago seemed unstoppable. Investors have focused with new intensity on Google’s so-called paid clicks, which grew at 30 percent in the fourth quarter, because the search and advertising giant earns the vast majority of its revenue from text ads, for which it is paid only when users click on them. Many analysts saw the comScore report as the clearest sign that Google, which does not give forecasts about its future performance, is not impervious to the slowdown that is buffeting the United States economy. “There are pretty strong signals now that the economic slowdown is having impact on consumers’ behavior online and therefore having a negative impact on Google,” said Clayton Moran, an analyst with the Stanford Group. Wall Street analysts say that in addition to concerns about the economy, the company is facing a growing number of questions that are weighing on its shares. Has Google gotten so big that its ability to gain further market share is limited? Is its spending out of control? Will it face stronger competition if its two chief rivals, Microsoft and Yahoo, end up merging? For now, however Google remains a highly profitable company that is outpacing all of its major competitors. Its share of the fast-growing online advertising market in the United States increased to 28 percent last year, from 19 percent in 2005, according to eMarketer, a research firm. And even some of Google’s biggest critics are reluctant to bet against the company in the long term. “Everything wrong with Google’s stock is self-inflicted,” said Scott Cleland, an analyst at the Precursor Group, who testified before Congress against Google’s proposed merger with DoubleClick. Mr. Cleland said the most recent quarter, when Google’s revenue grew at 51 percent while profit rose only 17 percent, was the latest sign that the company was overspending. “If they cut their spending a little, so that they could start gaining earnings momentum again, their stock valuation would return,” he said. Others point out that the unexpected weakness in “paid clicks” that comScore reported may be the result of deliberate actions taken by Google that may benefit it in the long term. “I think at least half of it is self-inflicted,” said Jordan Rohan, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets. Mr. Rohan noted that Google has reduced the clickable area in text ads to avoid accidental clicks, which earn it revenue but are of little value to advertisers. In recent months, Google has taken other measures to improve the usefulness of its ads. For instance, it ended contracts with Web sites whose sole purpose is to carry ads — the kind that Web users are directed to when they mistype a Web address — as those ads tend to deliver poor results for marketers. Many sophisticated marketers base their search advertising budgets not on the number of clicks they receive, but on the value those clicks create in terms of purchases or sales leads, said Marianne Wolk, an analyst with Susquehanna Financial Group. If Google weeds out poor quality clicks, advertisers may be willing to pay more for every click, Ms. Wolk said. Google may be cleaning out poor performing sites from its advertising network so it can market the network more effectively to brand advertisers after its acquisition of DoubleClick, which is being reviewed by regulators in Europe, Ms. Wolk said. “Google has had this history of making major changes to the platform that have had terrific impact on monetization,” Ms. Wolk said. “Given the track record, we will give them the benefit of the doubt.” Others went as far as to question the accuracy of comScore’s one-month report. During a Jan. 31 conference call to discuss fourth-quarter earnings, Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, repeatedly told investors that the company had not been affected by the economic slowdown. “I am happy to say that we have not yet seen any negative impact from the rumors of future recessions,” Mr. Schmidt said. Derek Brown, an analyst with Cantor Fitzgerald, said investors appear to be overreacting to data that Mr. Schmidt’s own statements seem to contradict. Mr. Brown noted that while Google’s share decline is significant, other technology stocks that climbed sharply in 2007, like Apple and Research in Motion, are also down sharply, in part, because of concerns about the economy. Google’s rate of growth has slowed markedly in recent years, from 92 percent in 2005, to 73 percent in 2006 and 56 percent last year. Growth in the fourth quarter was 51 percent, slightly shy of analysts expectations. While many believe that the slowing trend is inevitable given Google’s growing size, others worry it is happening faster than anticipated. “The fourth quarter didn’t show the company’s growth falling off a cliff, but it did show a slowdown,” said Mr. Moran, of the Stanford Group. “This is a high flying stock that trades a lot on momentum, and the momentum has turned decidedly negative.”

Google Inc
Advertising and Marketing
comScore Incorporated
Computers and the Internet
Company Reports
Stocks and Bonds


A Farewell to a Home for Art and Artists

Abstract: It was 1970, a year after Steve Cannon’s novel, “Groove, Bang and Jive Around,” was published, that he used proceeds from its sale to buy a three-story townhouse on East Third Street, just east of Avenue C, with a brick facade and a hospitable stoop. Over the decades, that stoop became a gathering spot where Mr. Cannon and friends, including many from the nearby Nuyorican Poets Cafe , held wide-ranging conversations that lasted all night. Those freewheeling discussions moved indoors in 1991, when Mr. Cannon turned parts of the building into a gallery and salon known as A Gathering of the Tribes. There, he and others published magazines and organized readings and art exhibitions. “It became a center for poets, musicians and artists from all over the world,” Mr. Cannon said. “People realized they could be themselves there because it gave the feeling of being at home.” Faced with debt, Mr. Cannon sold the building in 2004, with an agreement that he could continue living and holding events on the second floor. That arrangement began to fray in 2011 , and last year Mr. Cannon, 79 and blind, moved out of his home of more than 40 years. The photographer Gaia Squarci spent several weeks documenting life inside the Tribes gallery. Her images show Mr. Cannon’s comrades arriving for final farewells, helping to pack books and using saws to remove a section of wall that had been painted by the artist David Hammons . Mr. Cannon moved into an apartment a few blocks away. He has continued to organize readings, but they are now held in other places. Friends still visit to work on an anthology of art and poetry that Mr. Cannon is putting together or to discuss their own projects. Sometimes, he said, they reminisce about the good times on Third Street. “It’s the same spirit here,” he said, “Only there’s less room and fewer people stopping by.”

Photography
A Gathering of the Tribes
Steve Cannon
Lower East Side Manhattan
Poetry
Art


England Beats Wales on Opening Day of Six Nations

Abstract: LONDON — England celebrated a centenary by donning retro uniforms and rediscovering a winning form, as it beat Wales, 30-17, at Twickenham on Saturday on the opening day of the Six Nations competition. In the other game Saturday, Ireland, which won all its games in the Six Nations last season, made hard work of beating Italy by a score of 29-11. England first played an international at Twickenham, which was to become its permanent game, against Wales in 1910, and it won that one. On Saturday, wearing uniforms that started the afternoon colored cream, as they did in 1910, it won again. After 119 games between the two countries, England now leads by one victory. The game turned decisively toward England when Wyn Jones, a Welsh forward, received a 10-minute penalty just before halftime. While he was off, England scored two tries, turning a narrow 3-point edge into a 20-point lead. “That really cost us the game,” said Warren Gatland, Wales’s coach. Martin Johnson, his English counterpart, did not entirely agree. Jones’s 10 minutes on the sideline, he said, “didn’t cost them 17 points. We scored them. They didn’t give them to us. Trust me.” Wales fought back with tries by Adam Jones and James Hook. Straining to complete the comeback, it gave away a late interception try, finished by James Haskell, his second touchdown of the game. That settled the match. Both countries had come into the game following awful runs against Southern Hemisphere teams last autumn. For the first 35 minutes, both teams looked far-better coordinated and disciplined in defense. The errors crept in when they had to worry about catching and passing the ball, under pressure from seemingly impenetrable lines of defenders. Until Jones was sent off, the game was trench warfare interrupted by the occasional mortar of a long, hopeful boot forward. “We tended to play too much around the halfway line on a wet and muddy day,” Johnson said Often the 30 players were crammed together in the middle of the field. Long before the end, the grass was broken by two broad bands of mud on either side of the white center line. When Jones tripped Jonny Wilkinson and earned a yellow card after 38 minutes, the teams were tied, 3-3. Wilkinson had kicked one penalty for England. Stephen Jones had kicked one for Wales. But Hook had missed with two longer penalty attempts for Wales. Those misses proved costly. After the trip, Wilkinson picked himself up and booted the penalty to put England ahead. Against 14 men, England then seized the initiative, and spent the last minutes of the first half trying to bash their way over the Welsh line. Deep in injury time, Haskell finally found the hole where Jones might have been, and thumped over. Early in the second half, Danny Care, the England scrum half, faked a pass to his right, and, as an even bigger hole suddenly opened in the shorthanded Welsh defense, scampered right. He ran 20 meters untouched to score. As Jones jogged back on, his time served, Wilkinson kicked the conversion to put England 17 points clear. Wales fought back. Jones provided the pass which allowed Adam Jones, a hairy prop forward, to dive over the line. Stephen Jones then misses a penalty. So when Hook beat four defenders with a combination of pneumatic stiff-arm jabs, fluid swerves and high-stepping power in the tackle, Wales still trailed by three points with nine minutes left. “The momentum was going our way,” said Ryan Jones, the Wales captain. “We didn’t keep it going long enough.” Desperate to create chances, Wales took risks. Stephen Jones threw a greedy pass. Delon Armitage, the England fullback intercepted. Slick inter-passing with Toby Flood and Mathew Tait stripped away the final wisps of Welsh defense leaving Haskell to cruise over the line escorted by two team-mates. Wilkinson converted to take his tally to 15 points on a day when he was flawless, landing all six kicks at goal. “We ultimately found a way to win,” Johnson said. “We’ve had both some tough losses and some tough wins. They turn on small things.” In Dublin, Ireland started its defense of its title with a comfortable but not impressive victory at Croke Park that extended its unbeaten run to 12 test matches. All the tries came in the first half, as Ireland built a 23-8 lead. Jamie Heaslip and Tomas O’Leary touched down for Ireland. Kaine Robertson replied for Italy, which lost all its games in 2009. The Irish were never threatening, or threatened, as the second half became a dour kicking contest “Plenty to improve on but there’s no point in getting frustrated. It’s the first one. Job done,” Ireland’s captain, Brian O’Driscoll, told the news conference.


British Minister Admits Dating Woman in Sex Industry

Abstract: The British minister of culture said on Tuesday that he previously dated a woman who was working in the sex industry and that tabloid newspapers had known her true occupation before he did — raising questions about whether his role as a government minister with oversight of the nation’s news media had been compromised. In a statement issued to the BBC program “Newsnight,” the minister, John Whittingdale , who is a Conservative member of Parliament, called his former relationship “an old story which was a bit embarrassing at the time” and denied that it had affected his role as a government official. “The events occurred long before I took up my present position and it has never had any influence on the decisions I have made as culture secretary,” he said. Before he became a member of the cabinet, Mr. Whittingdale served as the chairman of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee in the House of Commons for 10 years. He was appointed minister of culture in 2015. Mr. Whittingdale said he had met the woman on Match.com and dated her from August 2013 to February 2014. He said the tabloids knew her real occupation. “I only discovered this when I was made aware that someone was trying to sell a story about me to tabloid newspapers,” he told the program, adding, “As soon as I discovered, I ended the relationship.” The admissions raised questions about whether Mr. Whittingdale was able to perform the role of culture minister, who oversees regulation of the news media, and drew criticism from the opposition. “It seems the press were quite deliberately holding a sword of Damocles over John Whittingdale,” Chris Bryant, a member of Parliament and the Labour Party who served as shadow culture secretary until September, said in an interview with the BBC. “He has a perfect right to a private life, but as soon as he knew this, he should have withdrawn from all regulation of the press,” Mr. Bryant added. Mr. Whittingdale’s relationship with the woman, whom he did not name on Tuesday, was reported in a series of articles published this month by Byline Media , a crowd-funded news and opinion website. The site published pictures it said showed the minister and the woman on the London subway, and called the relationship “an open secret” in political and media circles in the British capital. The revelations added to the political woes of Prime Minister David Cameron, who has faced stiff criticism in Parliament and the British media after he and his father were named in the leak of documents called the Panama Papers. The documents revealed how figures across the globe used a Panamanian law firm to set up shell companies to hide vast wealth or avoid taxes. More than half of the 214,000 offshore companies incorporated by the law firm, Mossack Fonseca, were based in the British Virgin Islands.

Great Britain
Politics
John Whittingdale


Heroin Addiction - Treatment - Naloxone - Medicine and Health

Abstract: Among the growing numbers of researchers and public health officials advocating a daring new strategy to put an injectable antidote for heroin overdoses directly into the hands of addicts, few have the credibility of Mark Kinzly. After 11 years as an addict, Mr. Kinzly cleaned up, began working with needle exchange programs and became a research associate at the Yale School of Public Health. Then came the relapse and the overdose that nearly killed him. “We were watching TV — I think it was the Red Sox beating the Yankees,” Mr. Kinzly, 47, recalled of the evening in 2005 when he passed out in a colleague’s apartment. “Because of our work he knew what to do. He dialed 911 and then injected the naloxone.” Taken in high enough doses, heroin and other opioids suppress the brain’s regulation of breathing and other life-sustaining functions. Naloxone is a chemical that blocks the brain-cell receptors otherwise activated by heroin, acting in minutes to restore normal breathing. Since its approval by the Food and Drug Administration in 1971, naloxone has become a standard treatment for overdoses, used almost exclusively by emergency medical workers. But it has lately become a tool for state and cities struggling to reduce stubbornly high death rates among opiate users. By distributing the drug and syringes to addicts and training them and their partners in preventing, recognizing and treating overdoses, the programs take credit for reversing more than 1,000 overdoses. “From a public health perspective, it’s a no-brainer,” said Dan O’Connell, director of the H.I.V. prevention division in the New York State Health Department, which supports 20 naloxone programs, all but one in New York City. “For someone who is experiencing an overdose, naloxone can be the difference between life and death.” But federal drug officials say distributing naloxone directly to addicts may do more harm than good. “It is not based on good scientific data,” said Dr. Bertha Madras, deputy director for demand reduction at the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. “It’s based on what some people would consider the right thing to do. But the studies supporting it are so sparse it’s painful.” She pointed to a survey in 2003 of addicts in San Francisco. published in The Journal of Urban Health, in which 35 percent said they might feel comfortable using more heroin if they had naloxone on hand, and 62 percent said they might also feel less inclined to call 911. “These were their attitudes,” Dr. Madras said. “I’m taking the stand that in the absence of scientific evidence we don’t engage in policies that would bring more harm than benefit.” Similar concerns were expressed by Dr. H. Westley Clark, director of the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment, a federal agency that finances treatment programs. “Our position is that naloxone should be administered by licensed health care professionals,” Dr. Clark said. Nevertheless, the direct-to-addicts model has spread rapidly since Chicago introduced it in the late 1990s. Baltimore, New York and San Francisco soon adopted the model, and Boston, Philadelphia, Connecticut, Minnesota, New Mexico, Rhode Island and Wisconsin have more recently joined the trend. “The program here has been extremely successful,” said Richard W. Matens, assistant commissioner of health for chronic disease prevention in Baltimore. Overdose deaths there in 2005 were at their lowest level in more than a decade, and Mr. Matens gives at least some credit to the naloxone distribution. The worrisome findings of the San Francisco survey have not been borne out by more recent studies of actual programs that include training in prevention and treatment. A study in 2005 of San Francisco’s pilot program found that of 20 overdoses witnessed by trained addicts, 19 victims received CPR or naloxone from the trainee, and all 20 survived. Knowledge about managing overdoses increased, and heroin use decreased. “Research has shown none of the concerns about naloxone distribution to be true,” said Dr. Sandro Galea, a researcher at the University of Michigan who has written two studies of programs in New York. “It probably is one of the few interventions that truly can reduce the deaths from opioids overdoses.” Dr. Herbert Kleber, who had Dr. Madras’s position in the White House under President George H. W. Bush and now directs the Columbia University substance abuse division, said although he wished the evidence supporting naloxone distribution were stronger, “In terms of lives saved, it’s probably the kind of intervention where there’s a likelihood of more good than harm.” In New York City, the 863 overdose deaths in 2005 made up the fourth leading cause of death among people younger than 65, according to Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, commissioner of health and mental hygiene. “We want people off drugs,” he said. “But until they get off, we’d like them to stay alive. That means not getting H.I.V. and not dying of overdose.” Existing programs focus on reaching urban heroin addicts, but naloxone is equally effective at reversing overdoses from other opioids like OxyContin and methadone. With overdose death rates from such drugs increasing sharply, officials in Wilkes County, N.C., are working on a program to dispense a naloxone nasal spray to users leaving hospital emergency rooms, detoxification centers and jails. The program, Project Lazarus, received approval from the state medical board in November. “Lazarus, biblically speaking, is one who was raised from the dead, and that is essentially what naloxone does for these people,” said the director of the program, the Rev. Fred Brason II. Dr. Sharon Stancliff, medical director of the Harm Reduction Coalition, which operates naloxone distribution and training in New York and San Francisco, conceded that the scientific case was not ironclad. “Right now,” Dr. Stancliff said, “we’re at the point where we know it’s safe. We’re not seeing any bad outcomes. “And we know it’s feasible. We’re just beginning to get really good evidence that it’s associated with a significant reduction in overdose deaths.” Mark Kinzly, who is back in recovery after relapsing in 2005, says he has all the evidence he needs. “This weekend I will go see my 9-year-old son play Pop Warner football,” he said. “I am extremely grateful that the medication was available, and as a result I get to raise my child.”

Drug Abuse and Traffic
Medicine and Health
Hypodermic Needles and Syringes
Heroin
Naloxone


Florida: SeaWorld to Resume Whale Shows

Abstract: SeaWorld will resume its killer whale shows on Saturday, three days after Tilikum, the largest orca in captivity, dragged a trainer to her death in a pool at the Orlando park. The president of SeaWorld Parks and Entertainment, Jim Atchison, said Friday that trainers would not get in the water with the killer whales until after officials review the circumstances of the death of Dawn Brancheau, 40, the veteran trainer who was dragged into the water by Tilikum. The whale will remain an “active, contributing member of the team” at SeaWorld, Mr. Atchison said, and park officials were “evaluating every policy, every procedure we have.”

SeaWorld Adventure Parks
Whales and Whaling
Amusement and Theme Parks
Orlando (Fla)
Deaths (Fatalities)


Brazen Robbery at Brussels Airport Nets $50 Million in Diamonds

Abstract: BRUSSELS — They arrived at Brussels Airport armed with automatic weapons and dressed in police uniforms aboard two vehicles equipped with blue police lights. But their most important weapon was information: the eight hooded gangsters who on Monday evening seized diamonds worth tens of millions of dollars from a passenger plane preparing to depart for Switzerland knew exactly when to strike — just 18 minutes before takeoff. Forcing their way through the airport’s perimeter fence, the thieves raced, police lights flashing, to Flight LX789, which had just been loaded with diamonds from a Brink’s armored van from Antwerp, Belgium, and was getting ready for an 8:05 p.m. departure for Zurich. “There is a gap of only a few minutes” between the loading of valuable cargo and the moment the plane starts to move, said Caroline De Wolf, a spokeswoman for the Antwerp World Diamond Centre , an industry body that promotes the diamond business in Belgium. “The people who did this knew there was going to be this gap and when.” They also knew they had to move swiftly in a secure airport zone swarming with police officers and security guards. Waving guns that the Brussels prosecutors’ office described as “like Kalashnikovs,” they calmly ordered ground staff workers and the pilot, who was outside the plane making a final inspection, to back off and began unloading scores of gem-filled packets from the cargo hold. Without firing a shot, they then sped away into the night with a booty that the Antwerp Diamond Centre said was worth around $50 million but which some Belgian news media reported as worth much more. The thieves’ only error: they got away with 120 packets of diamonds but left some gems behind in their rush. “They were very, very professional,” said the Brussels prosecutor Ine Van Wymersch, who said the whole operation lasted barely five minutes. The police, she added, are now examining whether the thieves had inside information. “This is an obvious possibility,” she said. Passengers, already on board the plane awaiting takeoff, had no idea anything was amiss until they were told to debark because their Zurich-bound flight, operated by Helvetic Airways, had been canceled. “I am certain this was an inside job,” said Doron Levy, an expert in airport security at a French risk management company, Ofek. The theft, he added, was “incredibly audacious and well organized,” and beyond the means of all but the most experienced and strong-nerved criminals. “In big jobs like this we are often surprised by the level of preparation and information: they know so much they probably know the employees by name.” He said the audacity of the crime recalled in some ways the so-called Pink Panther robberies, a long series of brazen raids on high-end jewelers in Geneva, London and elsewhere attributed to criminal gangs from the Balkans. But he said the military precision of Monday’s diamond robbery and the targeting of an airport suggested a far higher level of organization than the cruder Pink Panther operations. Image Brussels Airport security staff place barriers along a fence after thieves reportedly made off with millions of dollars worth of diamonds. Credit Julien Warnand/European Pressphoto Agency The police have yet to make any arrests related to the airport robbery, said the prosecutor, but have found a burned-out white van that they believe may have been used by the robbers. It was found near the airport late on Monday. Scrambling to crack a crime that has delivered an embarrassing blow to the reputation of Brussels Airport and Antwerp’s diamond industry, the Belgian police are now looking into possible links with earlier robberies at the same airport. The airport, which handles nearly daily deliveries of diamonds to and from Antwerp, the world’s leading diamond trading center, has been targeted on three previous occasions since the mid-1990s by thieves using similar methods to seize gems and other valuables. Most of the culprits in those robberies have been caught. Jan Van Der Cruysse, a spokesman for the airport, insisted that security was entirely up to international standards, but “what we face is organized crime with methods and means not addressed in aviation security measures as we know them today.” Precautions intended to combat would-be bombers and other threats, he added, could not prevent commando-style raids by heavily armed criminals. “This involves much more than an aviation security problem.” The robbery also signaled how vulnerable sprawling airport complexes can still be despite a steady tightening of security measures since the attacks in the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. Most of these have been aimed at screening passengers inside the terminal buildings, not at securing the tarmac outside. “This will give everyone a cold shower, everyone from the Homeland Security Department in the U.S. to the airline transport industry and insurance companies worldwide,” said John Shaw of SW Associates, a risk management company in Paris. “You have to rethink the whole game — how to approach security on a large static target like an airport.” The robbery has also rattled Antwerp’s diamond industry at a time when the city, a diamond trading and cutting hub for centuries, is struggling to fend off a challenge from low-wage diamond cutters in India and elsewhere. “The fact that this happened is a big problem for us. We have our No. 1 position to defend. Security is obviously very important,” said Ms. De Wolf of the Antwerp World Diamond Centre. “We are shocked by the fact this could ever happen. We are all wondering, ‘How is this possible?’ ” Diamonds traded in Antwerp last year, she said, had a total value of $51.9 billion, accounting for 80 percent of the world’s rough diamond trade and 50 percent of trade in polished gems. Ms. De Wolf said Monday’s robbery was the biggest she could recall. Helvetic Airways, an independent Swiss airline that operated the plane hit by the robbery, said security for valuable cargo is normally the responsibility of the airport and the security company hired to transport valuable cargo to the plane. The airline’s spokesman in Zurich declined to comment further. Diamonds bought in Antwerp for either cutting or sale abroad are usually taken to Brussels Airport, about 25 miles away, under police escort in armored security vans hired from Brinks and other companies. “We take security very seriously,” Ms. De Wolf said. “We are all in shock.”

Brussels
Diamond
Robbery
Airport security
Belgium


A Hands-On, Intuitive Feel for the City

Abstract: Robert Clark, 46 Custom software developer FAVORITE WALK South along any of the avenues in Manhattan, from 96th Street to the Battery. Why He Walks “I thought it would be really interesting to walk all the streets of New York, to get a feel for the streets and neighborhoods, to see how alike or different they were. “I started it in 2004. I’ve walked all the north and south avenues from 96th street down. I’m working now on the cross streets. “It’s a great thing to do. You get a hands-on, intuitive feel for the city. You come to realize that Manhattan is not flat, even though it has been flattened. You walk by some unexpected stuff, like a store that just sells buttons. It gives you lots of only-in-New York moments.”


At U.S. Olympic Trials, Two Marathoners Use Teamwork to Become Teammates

Abstract: LOS ANGELES — At the United States Olympic marathon trials on Saturday, the runners confirmed that women are far stronger when they stay in formation. The midday race through the sweltering downtown streets had runners staggering through the final switchbacks and stuffing cold, wet washcloths into their mouths for relief. But in the end, Amy Cragg won the women’s race, followed by Desiree Linden and Shalane Flanagan. On the men’s side, Galen Rupp dominated, with Meb Keflezighi finishing second and Jared Ward third. Cragg, 32, and Flanagan, 34, the defending trials champion, who train together in Portland, Ore., broke from the pack halfway through the race and built a commanding lead, oblivious to any competition. In matching Nike uniforms and visors, they mirrored each other as they covered almost the entire race in a synchronized pace until the final mile, when Flanagan’s pace slowed and Linden closed in and overtook her for second. Draped in an American flag, Cragg urged Flanagan to the finish, where she collapsed into Cragg’s arms and was carried to a wheelchair. Cragg had slowed her pace significantly to sustain her flagging partner, and she came close to sacrificing her victory to ensure that they both finished in the top three and qualified for the Olympic team. Image Meb Keflezighi, right, and Dathan Ritzenhein at the trials. Keflezighi placed second behind Galen Rupp. Credit Joshua Blanchard/Getty Images “When I realized she was in trouble, I told her, ‘One step at a time, one mile at a time, just get to the next water station,’ ” said Cragg, who finished in 2 hours 28 minutes 20 seconds. “At first I thought she was just going through a bad patch, which is common in marathons. Then I looked at her and saw she was turning bright red. So I kept her calm. I knew no matter how bad she was hurting, she could make it happen, but I knew I needed to help.” The effort was a striking departure from the marathon trials in 2000, when training in American distance running was fragmented. Both of the top finishers that year had trained in isolation — the woman, Chris Clark, mostly on a treadmill in Alaska — and failed to make the “A” standard, meaning the United States sent only one male and one female representative that year to the Olympics. They both finished far from the top. In contrast, despite the arduous conditions on Saturday, the top three women, all older than 30, ran the sixth-, seventh- and eighth-fastest times in the history of the trials. Linden finished in 2:28:54 and Flanagan in 2:29:19. “In 2000, American distance running hit rock bottom, and it was clear that in this sport we need each other, and that we’re stronger when we train together,” said Mary Wittenberg, the chief executive of Virgin Sport, who organized the 2007 men’s Olympic marathon trials in New York. “What we saw today proved that, both before the race, when Shalane and Amy talked consistently about how they were going to run as a team no matter what, and during it, when they took off together like it was just another training run.” The trials are a rare forum for teamwork and strategy, when third place means almost as much as first place because the top three qualify for the Olympics. In this case, the camaraderie had been well rehearsed over several months of training, after Flanagan, the fastest marathoner going into the trials, encouraged Cragg four months ago to move to Portland to prepare for the trials with her. They sustained each other through rough patches in Saturday’s race, checking in and trading positions when the other’s strength waned. When Cragg saw Flanagan succumbing to heat exhaustion, she ran to get water bottles and slowed her pace to report on the field. “On the third loop, I said I’m handling this for us; the goal is not to get on the team just ourselves,” Cragg said. “Both of us have to be there.” The teamwork resulted in redemption for Cragg, who finished fourth at the last Olympic marathon trials. It is the first time a woman has gone from a fourth-place finish to a first. The men’s race was far more competitive, with the top two finishers emerging from a crowded field that had no clear front-runner for more than half the race. It was the first marathon for Rupp, 29, who won a silver medal in the Olympic 10-kilometer race in 2012, but it was the 24th for Keflezighi, a four-time Olympian who won the silver medal in the marathon in the Athens Games in 2004. Keflezighi, who turns 41 in May, will be the oldest American Olympic marathoner ever. Rupp won his debut marathon in 2:11:12, faster than the rest of the field by more than a minute. Rupp, the American record holder in the 10,000 meters, is the first runner to win the trials with a half-marathon qualifying time. He had announced only two weeks ago that he would compete, and he emerged as a favorite. Ward, 27, who wrote his master’s thesis on “optimal pace strategy in a marathon,” won the United States Marathon Championships last year. The field for the event was the largest ever, with 166 men and 202 women at the start. It was also the hottest such race in history, with a starting temperature of 66 degrees. The temperature was a good indicator of the prize the athletes battled for on Saturday — another sweltering marathon, at the Rio Games in August.

Marathon
2016 Summer Olympics
Amy Cragg
Galen Rupp


Roche Breast Cancer Drug Perjeta Appears to Greatly Extend Patients’ Lives

Abstract: A drug used to treat advanced breast cancer has had what appears to be unprecedented success in prolonging lives in a clinical trial, researchers reported on Sunday. Patients who received the drug — Perjeta, from the Swiss drug maker Roche — had a median survival time nearly 16 months longer than those in the control group. That is the longest amount of time for a drug used as an initial treatment for metastatic breast cancer, the researchers said, and it may be one of the longest for the treatment of any cancer. Most cancer drugs prolong survival in patients with metastatic disease for a few months at most. Metastasis means the cancer has spread to other parts of the body. “We’ve never seen anything like this before,” said Dr. Sandra M. Swain of the MedStar Washington Hospital Center in Washington, the lead author of the study. “It’s really unprecedented to have this survival benefit.” The results were being presented on Sunday in Madrid at the annual meeting of the European Society for Medical Oncology. Dr. Swain has been a paid speaker for the company. Previous analyses of the clinical trial established that Perjeta, known generically as pertuzumab, increased survival by a statistically significant amount. But until now it was not known by how much, because patients had not been followed long enough. Two experts not involved in the study, Dr. Edith A. Perez of the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla., and Dr. Harold J. Burstein of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, said the results were impressive. “Usually we see two months of improvement,” Dr. Perez said. Perjeta, like the better-known Roche drug Herceptin, or trastuzumab, blocks the action of a protein called HER2, which spurs the growth of some breast tumors. Perjeta is meant to be used with Herceptin for the roughly 20 percent of breast cancers characterized by an abundance of HER2. Perjeta was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2012 and is already considered the standard of care in the United States. Still, the results could lead to increased use of the drug. Only about half of the eligible women are being treated with the drug in the United States, according to Edward Lang Jr., a spokesman for Roche. And doctors say use is lower in many countries where cost is more of an issue. In the United States, Perjeta costs about $5,900 a month and Herceptin about $5,300 a month, Mr. Lang said. He said Perjeta was priced lower than some other new cancer medicines because it has to be used with Herceptin. Some recently approved cancer drugs cost more than $10,000 a month. Roche reported Perjeta sales of 388 million Swiss francs, or about $408 million, in the first half of this year, with about $250 million of that coming from the United States. The trial, sponsored by Roche, involved 808 patients around the world with previously untreated HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer. Half of them received Perjeta, Herceptin and the chemotherapy drug docetaxel. The other half received Herceptin, docetaxel and a placebo in place of Perjeta. The median survival time for those who received Perjeta was 56.5 months, or about four and a half years, compared with 40.8 months for those in the control group, a difference of 15.7 months. By another measure, known as the hazard ratio, use of Perjeta reduced the risk of dying 32 percent. Use of Perjeta delayed the progression or worsening of the cancer only about six months in the trial. Experts said it was not clear why the drug extended lives so much longer than that. Those receiving Perjeta had higher rates of diarrhea and rash and a lowering of white blood cell counts. The labels for both Perjeta and Herceptin contain warnings that the drugs can cause cardiac dysfunction and heart failure. But in the study, patients who received Perjeta did not experience any more of these problems than those in the control group. Dr. Perez and Dr. Burstein, the experts not involved in the study, said in separate interviews that they were also cheered by a nearly 41-month median survival in the control group. When Herceptin was approved in the late 1990s, people taking that drug lived a median of about 25 months. The experts said doctors now use Herceptin for a longer time and can better manage patients.

Breast cancer
Pharmaceuticals
Clinical trial
Herceptin
Genentech


Thai Army Reinforces Areas Near Protesters

Abstract: BANGKOK — After two consecutive nights of gunfire in Bangkok’s central business district, the Thai army on Wednesday built sandbag bunkers in upscale neighborhoods and reinforced what officials described as a peacekeeping presence near areas occupied by protesters seeking to overthrow the Thai government. In the fog of Thailand’s power struggle it remained unclear Wednesday who was behind the shooting, which left a number of people injured. Five people, including four children, were killed in separate attacks over the weekend. The police on Wednesday arrested two armed, active-duty navy commandos who were headed to the protest area, in what was at least the second time this year that navy personnel with apparent links to protesters were arrested. In January, a group of heavily armed members of the Royal Thai Navy Seals, an elite unit, was arrested while carrying identity cards issued by protesters. The commandos arrested Wednesday were stopped during a routine traffic check, said Nattapat Padungchan, a police officer in the Bangkok district where the arrests took place. Mr. Nattapat said the men had two handguns, ammunition and identity cards issued by the protesters that described them as “guards.” The head of Thailand’s army this week warned that further violence would lead to Thailand’s “collapse” and criticized those calling for the use of force to overthrow the government. But the political leanings of the country’s navy, which has a separate command structure from the army, are not fully known. The head of the Navy Seals publicly criticized the government in January, saying the public does not trust the country’s leaders anymore. The protesters are seeking to replace the government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra with an unelected “people’s council” and an appointed prime minister. They blocked elections earlier this month in Bangkok and southern Thailand, leaving the country with only a caretaker administration. A top law enforcement official this week warned of civil war. Most parts of Bangkok are unaffected by the turmoil but protesters control key intersections and have hundreds of self-appointed guards who frisk pedestrians and block traffic. Eric Clapton, the British rock legend, canceled a concert scheduled for Sunday “due to recent events,” according to an announcement Wednesday by the local promoter, an apparent reference to the firefights and grenade attacks, one of which struck a central shopping area. Protesters urged the police Wednesday to investigate attacks against them but they have also hampered police work by disabling or blocking many of the city’s security cameras. The governor of Bangkok, Sukhumbhand Paribatra, has come under criticism for failing to provide security in the city but in a measure of the complexity of the political crisis, he is a leading member of the Democrat Party, which is allied with the protesters. One of the largest parks in the city, Lumpini, is being used as a camping ground by protesters from southern Thailand. The city government has provided large toilet trucks for them. Sonthi Boonyaratglin, a former head of the Thai army, painted an ominous picture of the Thai power struggle in a television interview on Tuesday. Both sides are armed with well-trained professionals drawn from the military, police and special forces in the country, he said. “They can throw grenades, shoot at people or anything — for what? — it’s for self-gratification or to make the other side change its stance,” he said. Mr. Sonthi, who said he had once trained the special forces who are among those fighting on both sides, led the 2006 coup against Ms. Yingluck’s brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, who is the main target of the protesters’ anger over his domination of Thai politics. Mr. Sonthi said he was skeptical that the current army chief, Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha, would lead a coup. But analysts say the army may be forced to intervene in the case of widespread bloodshed. Protesters, many of whom have hoped for a coup, still appear to have powerful allies among business leaders, government agencies and the judiciary. A string of court decisions has broadly been on the side of the protesters. In addition, allegations of mismanagement in a rice subsidy scheme are being aggressively pursued against Ms. Yingluck by the country’s anti-corruption commission, an investigation that could lead to her being barred from politics. A civil court in Bangkok last week said the protests were “peaceful” and barred the government from dispersing demonstrators. The judges said they were basing their decision on a previous ruling by the country’s constitutional court that justified the protests because they “stemmed from the public’s lack of confidence in the country’s administration by the government.” Both decisions have stirred outrage in northeastern Thailand, the country’s most populous region and the base of the government’s support.


As Foreign Fighters Flood Syria, Fears of a New Extremist Haven

Abstract: BEIRUT, Lebanon — As foreign fighters pour into Syria at an increasing clip, extremist groups are carving out pockets of territory that are becoming havens for Islamist militants, posing what United States and Western intelligence officials say may be developing into one of the biggest terrorist threats in the world today. Known as fierce fighters willing to employ suicide car bombs, the jihadist groups now include more than 6,000 foreigners, counterterrorism officials say, adding that such fighters are streaming into Syria in greater numbers than went into Iraq at the height of the insurgency there against the American occupation. Many of the militants are part of the Nusra Front, an extremist group whose fighters have gained a reputation over the past several months as some of the most effective in the opposition. But others are assembling under a new, even more extreme umbrella group, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, that is merging some Syrians with fighters from around the world — Chechnya, Pakistan, Egypt and the West, as well as Al Qaeda in Iraq, the Sunni insurgent group that rose to prominence in the fight against the American occupation in the years after the 2003 invasion. The concern is that a new affiliate of Al Qaeda could be emerging from those groups. It was the fear of militants coming to dominate the opposition that caused the United States and its Western allies to hold off providing lethal aid to the Syrian opposition, at least until now. But as a result, counterterrorism analysts say, they lost a chance to influence the battle in Syria. Even Congressional supporters of the C.I.A.'s covert program to arm moderate elements of the Syrian opposition fear the delivery of weapons, set to begin this month, will be too little, too late. The stakes are high. American intelligence officials said this week that Ayman al-Zawahri, the overall leader of Al Qaeda in Pakistan, has had regular communications with the Nusra Front in Syria, reflecting how favorably the Qaeda leadership views the long-term potential for Syria as a safe haven. Juan Zarate, a former senior counterterrorism official in the George W. Bush administration, said that Syria lay in the center of an arc of instability, stretching from Iran through North Africa, and “in that zone, you may have the regeneration and resurrection of a new brand of Al Qaeda.” Image A fighter from Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria earlier this year. Credit Hamid Khatib/Reuters In Syria, the battle lines have hardened in recent months. The Syrian government, backed by Iran and Hezbollah, has seized new momentum and retaken territory in the south and east from the rebels. At the same time, power within the badly fractured opposition, numbering about 1,200 groups, has steadily slipped into the hands of the jihadists based in the northeast, where this week they seized a strategic airport in the area. They also hold sway in the provincial capital of Raqqa. The idea that Syria could supplant Pakistan as the primary haven for Al Qaeda someday, should the government fall, is a heavy blow to the Western-backed Syrian opposition and its military arm, the Free Syrian Army. It plays directly into the hands of Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, whose government has sought to portray itself as the only alternative to Islamic extremism and chaos, and has made the prospect of full-on American support even more remote than it already was. Mr. Assad’s argument “began as a fiction during the period of peaceful, unarmed protests but is now a reality” because of Mr. Assad’s own efforts to divide the country as well as the success of the extremists, Hussein Ibish, a senior fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine , wrote in a recent essay that appeared in The National. In Raqqa recently, a commander of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria sipped coffee after breaking the Ramadan fast, wearing a Pakistani-style outfit. The commander, Abu Omar, was Syrian, a member of a tribe in the area, but he described his movement’s goals as reaching far beyond the country’s borders. He did not speak of attacking the United States. But he threatened Russia, and he spoke of a broad-based battle against Shiite-led Iran and its quest to dominate the region, and said Sunnis from across the world were justified in flocking to Syria to fight because of the government’s reliance on Shiite fighters from Lebanon and Iraq. He rejected calls from some in the Syrian opposition to keep the fighting focused inside Syria and aimed at toppling Mr. Assad. “We have one enemy,” Iran, he said, “and we should fight this enemy as one front and on different fronts.” He also seemed to suggest that Russia would be a legitimate target for its role in supporting Mr. Assad and for its brutal suppression of Muslim militants in the Caucasus. Image Rebel fighters near the Menagh air base last month. Credit Hamid Khatib/Reuters “Russia is killing Muslims in southern Muslim republics and sends arms and money to kill Muslims in Syria as well,” he said. “I swear by God that Russia will pay a big price for its dirty role in the Syrian war.” The leader of the Free Syrian Army, Gen. Salim Idris, recently accused the jihadists of working for or receiving aid from the Assad government, not a completely far-fetched proposition, given that Western officials widely believe the Assad government played a major role in funneling Syrians and other foreigners into Iraq during the insurgency there. Some rank-and-file rebels say that government artillery and warplanes attack them fiercely while largely leaving jihadist positions alone. Free Syrian Army fighters have clashed with jihadist groups in recent weeks over weapons and supplies, and civilian anti-Assad activists have struggled with them over their efforts to impose religious rules on society. The groups have kidnapped and imprisoned dozens of activists. Yet the lines dividing the Free Syrian Army from jihadist groups are fluid, and the conflicts have not stopped F.S.A. leaders from working with their fighters, whose fierceness on the battlefield is undisputed. That has helped create a divergence between statements by exile opposition leaders rejecting extremists and their ideology and actions by ground commanders eager for any help they can get. “We are getting big accusations that we are implementing foreign agendas to divide the Syrian rebel groups or we are agents for the Assad regime,” Abu Omar said. “But we are the ones who made the big military operations against the Assad regime. When we fight any military position we get it or die for God’s sake.” This week, the jihadist group Jaish al-Muhajireen wal Ansar, or the Army of Emigrants and Supporters, led by a fighter from the Caucasus known as Abu Omar al-Shesheni — the Chechen — worked with Free Syrian Army battalions to take the Menagh air base in Aleppo Province after 10 months of trying. What appeared to turn the battle around, said Charles Lister, an analyst with IHS Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Center , were the relentless suicide vehicle bombings on the walls of the base — five or six times in the past two weeks, he said. Image A view of the disputed airport, which combined forces of the Free Syrian Army and a jihadist group captured this week. Credit Hamid Khatib/Reuters After the battle, Col. Abdul Jabbar al-Okaidi, the head of the United States-backed opposition’s Aleppo military council, appeared in a video alongside Abu Jandal, a leader of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. In camouflage, Colonel Okaidi offered thanks to “our brothers al-Muhajireen wal Ansar and others,” adding: “We’re here to kiss every hand pressed on the trigger.” He then ceded the floor to Abu Jandal and a mix of jihadist and Free Syrian Army leaders, who stood together, each praising his men, like members of a victorious basketball team. Such cooperation has complicated efforts to isolate the jihadists within the insurgency, where commanders of all political stripes realize they have little choice but to collaborate with any ally available. “There’s an awful lot of pragmatism on the ground,” Mr. Lister said. “There’s a realization that without extensive coordination on the ground this could go on for years and years or the opposition could be defeated, so no matter what the long-term objective, it might be still worth it in the medium term to coordinate across groups.” But that same pragmatism, Mr. Ibish said, suggests there is hope that many of the Syrians fighting alongside extremists are not ideologically committed to those groups’ goal of an Islamic state, and could peel away from it if offered an alternative. The extremist ideology, he said, “runs counter to most traditional culture and lived realities of modern Syria, which is a heterogeneous and typically tolerant society.” Abu Omar, in Raqqa, laid out his vision for the future: women must cover their hair, but are not required to cover their faces; bars and nightclubs and eating during the Ramadan fast are forbidden. “Everyone is free in his house but not free to break God’s law in public,” he said “The Shariah law is the best justice, not the Western democracy which gives us bad regimes like Assad’s.”

Syria
Arab Spring
Terrorism
Al Qaeda
Free Syrian Army
Al Nusra Front


Italy Approves Same-Sex Civil Unions

Abstract: ROME — After decades of struggle by gay rights groups, and months of contested political negotiations, the Italian Parliament on Wednesday evening gave final approval to a law recognizing civil unions of same-sex couples. The vote — 372 to 51, with 99 abstentions — was followed by long applause in the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of Parliament. At the Trevi Fountain in Rome, people with rainbow flags gathered to celebrate. It was a historic occasion for a nation that is still dominated by the Roman Catholic Church, which opposed the measure, and where traditional family norms are still strong. It was also a victory for Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who supported the bill. Nearly every Western country has legalized same-sex marriage or some form of civil union for gays and lesbians. Italy was perhaps the most prominent exception, and the issue has generated considerable controversy . Proponents of same-sex unions have complained that the law falls short of granting full equality to same-sex couples. In particular, it does not recognize same-sex marriages. It will not allow someone in a same-sex civil union to legally adopt his or her partner’s biological child. A so-called stepchild adoption provision was opposed by center-right parties and by the church and was ultimately dropped from the legislation. The Senate approved the bill in February, but a final vote in the lower house was required for the legislation to take effect. Earlier on Wednesday, the government won a vote of confidence, 369 to 193, that it had called on Tuesday, tying its fate to the legislation. Advocates called the lower house decision historic. “The wall erected mostly by the Vatican against civil rights in this country has fallen, so it is a historically and politically important moment,” said Franco Grillini, the honorary president of Arcigay, an advocacy group, and a gay-rights advocate. At the same time, same-sex couples in Italy wanted marriage equality, a right held by their counterparts in the United States and many Western European countries, and he said that struggle would continue. It has been nearly 30 years since lawmakers first proposed giving legal recognition to civil unions in Italy. The Vatican under Pope Francis, while expressing more liberal positions on some social issues, has kept up steadfast opposition to legal recognition of same-sex couples, influencing some italian lawmakers. Mr. Renzi pledged early on that his government would right what was widely seen as an injustice. There was pressure, too, from the European Court of Human Rights, which ruled last July that Italy’s failure to recognize same-sex unions violated the European Convention on Human Rights. A first draft of the law — it also grants certain new civil rights, like access to public housing, to all unmarried couples, including heterosexual ones — was watered down when the Senate adopted it in February, after it lost the support of a crucial party faction, and the government had to scramble for votes among more conservative lawmakers. The scrapping of the stepchild adoption clause was part of the resulting compromise. Some scholars said the controversy revealed Italian lawmakers to be more conservative than their constituents. “The Italian population metabolized the recognition of same-sex couples some time ago,” said Chiara Saraceno, a noted sociologist who retired as a professor of sociology at the University of Turin, citing a 2009 study that confirmed that a “wide majority” of Italians favored legal recognition of same-sex partnerships, though not gay marriage. Italian lawmakers “have always lagged behind when it comes to family issues,” Professor Saraceno said, whether because of traditionalist viewpoints or fear of irritating the church. “The Italian population is ready for this,” she said of the legislation. While many supporters said on Wednesday that the new law was better than nothing, many remained bitter. “This law is born as an old law, that should have been voted 20 years ago,” when civil unions began to be legally recognized in other countries, said Michela Marzano of the Democratic Party, who noted the law’s shortcomings. “Italy remains a culturally backward country where the only possible family” is still the traditional one, she said. “It prefers to penalize children rather than recognize the multifaceted families that already exist.” President Sergio Mattarella has a month to sign the legislation, a step that is usually a formality.

Gay and Lesbian LGBT
Same-Sex Marriage,Gay Marriage
Italy
Matteo Renzi
Catholic Church
Legislation
Legislature
European Court of Human Rights


China Steps Up Pressure On Japan in Island Dispute

Abstract: BEIJING — A modest-looking twin-propeller Chinese aircraft loaded with radar and other surveillance equipment swooped low over the waters close to disputed islands in the East China Sea on Thursday, the latest move by China to increase the pressure on Japan over who owns the uninhabited island chain. By itself, the less than 30-minute flight by the nine-year-old plane into what Japan considers its airspace did not amount to much. Japanese F-15 jets were sent in response, but the Chinese plane had left by the time they got to the area. But the Chinese sortie was part of a steady escalation in the air, on the sea and in public statements by China against Japan, a strategy that analysts say was fixed upon three months ago to take back the islands known as Diaoyu in China and the Senkaku in Japan. The strategy, they say, is being overseen by the new leader, Xi Jinping. Just days before the Chinese plane ventured into Japanese airspace, four Chinese warships, returning from an exercise elsewhere, entered waters near the islands, cruised along for five hours and then left, Chinese state news media said. Chinese law enforcement boats have been patrolling the waters close to the islands regularly since September, but the appearance of the Chinese Navy near the islands on three occasions, combined with the incursion by the plane, adds new dangers to the dispute, analysts said. In effect, they say, the Chinese authorities are trying to unilaterally change the status quo of the islands, which have been administered by Japan for decades, attempting to use the air and naval patrols as evidence of their own longstanding claim. “China is now challenging Japan’s effective control of the islands with ships on the water and planes in the air,” said M. Taylor Fravel, associate professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The goal was to deter Japan from trying to develop the islands, he said, but there was an inherent risk that an accident at sea or in the air between the two sides could spiral out of control with unforeseen consequences. Japan, which itself regularly patrols the islands, argues that the Chinese have no case. Japanese officials say the Chinese started making a claim to the islands only in the early 1970s, after evidence emerged that the seabeds nearby might hold rich oil and natural gas deposits. The latest dispute over the islands began months ago, when the right-wing governor of Tokyo suggested that his city might buy some of them back from a Japanese family to bolster Japan’s control by erecting structures on them. The central government then bought the islands, saying it was trying to reduce tensions and would not build structures there, but China viewed the purchase as a provocation. The stepped-up pressure by China has come as the Japanese prepare to go to the polls on Sunday in an election that is likely to return to power the former prime minister, Shinzo Abe, of the conservative Liberal Democratic Party. Although Mr. Abe in the past has tried to improve relations with China, he is also known as a hawk and has campaigned on strengthening Japan’s defense forces against China’s mounting challenges. The Japanese Navy is considered one of the world’s most sophisticated, but China is increasing its naval capacity. In China, Mr. Xi was appointed as head of a powerful interagency group formed in September at the top of the Chinese government to oversee the country’s maritime disputes. That was two months before he assumed the leadership of the Communist Party and before he became the civilian head of the military at the 18th Party Congress. That means that for three months now, Mr. Xi has had a critical say in how China conducts its strategy with Japan, Western and Chinese analysts say. At the same time, China has put greater focus on its growing maritime capacities. The outgoing leader, Hu Jintao, said in a farewell address that China aimed to become a maritime power. A highlight of Mr. Xi’s just-finished tour of southern China was a visit to one of China’s most advanced destroyers, the Haikou, which often patrols the South China Sea, another disputed area off China’s shores. The dispute with Japan carries great resonance with the Chinese public. The older generation recalls the history of the 1894-95 Sino-Japanese war when Japan humiliated China at sea and annexed the islands. Many people also remember the brutal World War II Japanese occupation of China. The younger generation bristles with the themes of a revised 1990s nationalistic school curriculum even as they buy Japanese cars, electronics and fashion. The economic fallout from the dispute has hurt Japan, but may not leave China unscathed, either. Japanese economists say that Japanese auto sales in China, where top-tier Japanese brands were something of a status symbol, slumped precipitously in September and October. There has been a slight recovery since those lows, they said. Some Japanese manufacturers in China, including Toyota and Sony, suspended production after anti-Japanese protests related to the islands, and laid off Chinese employees who demanded higher wages when they returned. Some Chinese economists have warned the government that large-scale boycotts of Japanese goods could lead to huge job losses in a softening Chinese economy. With little prospect of a return to more normal relations anytime soon, some Japanese factories in China are beginning to seek alternative locations in Southeast Asia, such as Myanmar, where wages are lower and employees are less demanding, according to Japanese surveys. As the dispute drags on, China’s words and actions in international forums have escalated, too. The foreign minister, Yang Jiechi, wrote in an article in The People’s Daily last week that China would “resolutely fight against the Japanese side” over what he called the illegal purchase of the islands. On Friday, China submitted documents to the United Nations detailing its claims to the continental shelf in the East China Sea, another step toward establishing what it says are its legal rights. In mid-September, as the islands dispute intensified, a vice minister of foreign affairs, Le Yucheng, foreshadowed China’s unfolding game plan. Referring to the claims that would be handed to the United Nations, he said: “All these are proclamations of China’s sovereignty.” China, he said, “will take tit-for-tat measures to protect our territory as the situation develops.”

International Relations
China
Japan
East China Sea
Senkaku Islands


Knicks Look for Next Option at Point Guard

Abstract: GREENBURGH, N.Y., Dec. 4 — Having moved from shock to shared grief to quiet resolve, the Knicks will resume their season Wednesday evening with a point guard yet to be named. Stephon Marbury, the regular starting point guard, spent Tuesday with his family, mourning his father, Donald, who died of a heart attack Sunday. The burial will be Thursday morning in Brooklyn, and Knicks players and coaches will be in attendance. Marbury’s teammates spent Tuesday preparing for a road game Wednesday against the Nets. Coach Isiah Thomas would not name a starting point guard, nor would he even rule out Marbury, whose absence is considered likely. Donald Marbury, the patriarch of Coney Island’s most famous basketball dynasty, died after being stricken during the Knicks’ game against the Phoenix Suns. He was taken by ambulance at halftime, complaining of chest pains. Marbury learned of his father’s death after the game. The Knicks could start Nate Robinson, Mardy Collins or Jamal Crawford in Marbury’s place. But Thomas, who has appeared emotionally drained for the last few days, was not ready to talk about his options. “We’ll wait and see what happens,” Thomas said, leaving the door open for Marbury to play Wednesday. “We miss him and we grieve with he and his family. He’s in our thoughts and in our prayers. Today, we had a solid practice and tried to do some things, just in case he’s not here. We’ll move on from there.” When Marbury will return to the Knicks is uncertain, but he has to be considered doubtful for a two-game set against the 76ers, at Philadelphia on Friday, then at Madison Square Garden on Saturday. Thomas said he spoke to Marbury by phone Monday but did not elaborate. The relationship between the two was strained last month when Thomas threatened to bench Marbury, who responded by leaving the team for a day. The bond between Marbury and Knicks fans has also been tested; he has been booed in five straight home games. In the short term, the tension will give way to empathy, which might give Marbury the space to rebuild those relationships. Thomas was not prepared to consider such matters. “Whatever we have to deal with in-house, we’ll keep that in-house,” he said, referring to his relationship with Marbury. “My job is to motivate him and get the best out of him and every player that we have.” Asked if he hoped the fans would ease up on Marbury, Thomas paused before answering. “It’s a terrible time that any individual has to go through,” he said, “and I just hope that we give him the proper amount of time to grieve and go through his significant loss.” Since trading for Marbury in January 2004, the Knicks have gone 7-24 (.226) in games he has missed. They are 112-166 (.403) in the games he has played. The Knicks have no true point guard to replace Marbury. Collins started three games after Thomas benched Marbury last month. But Collins is young and limited, and has hardly played since then. He missed the last two games because of a sprained ankle, although he practiced Tuesday and should be in uniform against the Nets. Robinson’s situation is murkier. Thomas raved about him throughout training camp and opened the season with Robinson as his first guard off the bench. He did not play in the last two games. He averaged 16 minutes in the previous four games. Thomas insisted that Robinson’s recent two-game benching was merely a product of “matchups,” indicating that Robinson’s height (5 feet 9 inches) would have been a detriment against the Bucks and the Suns. “Most teams now, they play with bigger guards, and you have to have a bigger defensive guard out there,” said Thomas, who has lately leaned on the 6-2 Fred Jones. “I just didn’t think he could guard Michael Redd, and I thought Barbosa would have been a tough matchup for him also.” Thomas’s explanation was odd, given that Robinson routinely guards taller players. In any case, he would have lined up against the Bucks’ point guard Mo Williams (who is 6-1), not the shooting guard Redd. Robinson played 26 minutes against the Suns and Leandro Barbosa last month, and last season played 50 minutes in an overtime victory over the Bucks. Asked about Robinson’s role against the Nets, Thomas said it would depend on “how the game goes.” Thomas added: “I’m confident in the guys, that they can handle it. They may not be able to handle it for 40 games, but definitely capable of handling it for one or two games.”

Basketball
New York Knicks
Athletics and Sports


Gunfire and Bombs Kill 4 G.I.’s in 24 Hours

Abstract: KABUL, Afghanistan — Four United States soldiers died fighting in Afghanistan during a 24-hour period, NATO said Monday, as the Obama administration continued deliberations on increasing the number of American forces here. Three of the soldiers were killed Sunday in southern Afghanistan, one by insurgents firing small arms and two by a roadside bomb. The fourth died in eastern Afghanistan on Monday in a roadside bombing. American soldiers are primarily fighting in southern and eastern Afghanistan. NATO gave no further details in a statement on the deaths. Afghan officials, meanwhile, reported that three Afghan Army soldiers had been killed by a roadside bomb in southern Helmand Province in the Musa Qala district, according to The Associated Press, but it was not clear if there was any connection between the Afghan deaths and the American fatalities. Meanwhile, two Afghan ministers suspected of embezzlement have been summoned for investigation, according to Deputy Attorney General Fazel Ahmad Faqiryar, Reuters reported Monday, and other officials were also subjects of the inquiry. The ministers were not identified by name. The United States has about 68,000 soldiers in Afghanistan, and the White House is considering increases suggested by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top American and NATO commander in Afghanistan, of up to 40,000 soldiers. If that number is sent, American commanders will be able to bolster forces in the southern provinces of Kandahar and Helmand, which are at the epicenter of the insurgency by the Taliban, while also sending more troops to eastern Afghanistan and committing troops to train Afghan forces, according to military analysts in Washington. It was not clear when the administration would announce its decision on troop levels. At his inauguration last week for a second term of office after elections tainted by vote-rigging and festering corruption within his government, President Hamid Karzai said that it would take up to five years for Afghan forces to assume the primary responsibility for their country’s security. Last Friday, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said the United States could start holding Afghanistan’s government accountable for corruption by withholding money for projects “where we control the flow of dollars.” Apart from American forces, other NATO countries have around 35,000 troops in Afghanistan. Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain has said he will urge other NATO countries to increase that number by 5,000, but there has been a reluctance among the allies to commit reinforcements. According to icasualties.org , a Web site that tracks casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, American forces lost 59 service members in October, making it the deadliest month in the war that began with the overthrow of the Taliban government in late 2001. The latest deaths brought to 16 the number of Americans killed this month.

United States Defense and Military Forces


A Junior Champion at 14, and a Rising Talent for 2018

Abstract: BOSTON — As he sat in one of the bright yellow TD Garden arena chairs, Nathan Chen, who last week became the junior champion in men’s singles at the United States figure skating championships, said he was not thinking about the 2018 Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. Sort of. “It’s ultimately a goal,” he said, as pairs skaters glided to and fro on the ice before him. He stared ahead, having swapped his show clothes for jeans and a hoodie and a North Face jacket. “It’s in the back of my head.” At 14, Chen shattered the national junior record last week with his overall score of 223.93 points. His routine included moves in a cowboy outfit to a mix of “Porgy and Bess” and “Chattanooga Choo Choo.” The performance melted hearts and any chance his competitors had at defeating him. His closest rival was more than 30 points behind Chen, as he dominated the short program and the free skate. As many of the contenders for the Sochi 2014 team could attest, many Olympic dreams start at this event, in the stands or in the junior ranks, especially among rising talents like Chen. “I was pretty happy with what I did,” he said, noting that the routine was designed to “get me out of my comfort zone.” Training for the next Olympics would take Chen back to his roots. He started skating at 3 in Salt Lake City at one of the practice rinks used for the 2002 Winter Games when following his two brothers to hockey practice. He told his mother, Hetty Wang, he wanted to be a goalie and she reasoned that either way, he would need to skate well. “I just put them on,” he said of his skates, “and from that moment on, I knew I liked it.” Chen, the youngest of five children, is a first-generation American, his parents immigrating from Beijing, so his father could attend college in Utah; he later worked as a research scientist there. As Chen’s skating progressed, he began to work with a local coach. Lessons were pared down at one point when his father lost his job. When Chen resumed training, he became connected with Rafael Arutyunyan, who coaches the top skaters Adam Rippon and Ashley Wagner. Hoping to improve his jumps, Chen began making occasional visits to California for practice sessions with Arutyunyan. Those visits turned into Chen and his mother moving from Salt Lake City to California, where he could train full time, with his father and a sibling remaining in Salt Lake City. Chen now skates in the morning and is home-schooled in the afternoon. “On the ice, he’s very strict,” Chen said of his coach. “He likes working on technique. He’s a great coach.” At first, Chen said he was somewhat intimidated to be training with skaters like Rippon and Wagner, but now counts them as friends and inspirations. He also admires Patrick Chan, the 2013 world champion from Canada. “They’re all really good skaters and nice people,” he said. Chen said he had rid his diet of junk food like potato chips and soda in favor of fresh foods. Also trained in gymnastics and ballet, he said those skill sets had helped him on the ice, but had also provided the occasional break from training. “It’s a great foundation,” he said. “And it helps you get out of skating for a bit.” The sacrifice, Chen and his mother said, has paid off. His confidence and mastery of elements on the ice is improving, and when he is not skating, Chen says he still has time to bike and read. One of his siblings attends college nearby, and traveling to competitions, including last week’s in Boston, has meant visiting siblings along the East Coast, as well. “It’s worked out really well,” Chen’s mother said. Chen’s next challenge — beyond plotting his Olympic course — will be the world junior figure skating championships in March in Sofia, Bulgaria. “You worry about each element at a time,” he said.

2018 Winter Olympics
Pyeongchang
US Figure Skating Championships
Figure skating
Nathan Chen


Wal-Mart Will Expand In-Store Medical Clinics

Abstract: Moving to upgrade its walk-in medical clinic business, Wal-Mart is set to announce on Thursday plans for several hundred new clinics at its stores, using a standardized format and jointly branded with hospitals and medical groups. The first of the new Clinic at Wal-Mart walk-in centers, as they will be called, is to open in Little Rock, Ark., in April and be run by nurse practitioners employed by the St. Vincent Health System, a three-hospital group in central Arkansas. Wal-Mart also says it plans to brand 200 of the new clinics with RediClinics, one of the Revolution Health companies of Steven Case, the AOL co-founder. Those are to be operated in partnership with various local health care providers. RediClinic, which already operates 13 clinics in Wal-Mart stores, plans to open one of the new units in Atlanta in April and another in Dallas next summer. “We have learned that people are willing to receive their health care from the front of a store or the back of a drugstore,” said Dr. John Agwunobi, a medical doctor who is a Wal-Mart senior vice president. “But customers also have said they would rather it be delivered by a trusted name, a local health care practice, a trusted local provider of care.” In all, Wal-Mart plans to have 400 store clinics by 2010, including current units that will be converted to the new brand as their leases come up for renewal. The company currently has 78 in-store clinics around the country, but has had uneven performance in some cases. Wal-Mart does not operate any clinics itself but is seeking local hospitals and medical practices as partners, said Deisha Galberth, a Wal-Mart spokeswoman. Walk-in medical clinics are a growing industry, with numerous competitors that include big-box retailers, drugstores and even grocery chains around the country. Industry executives say 1,500 to 1,800 clinics will be open by the end of the year. Propelled by the drugstore chains CVS and Walgreens, by far the biggest sponsors of the clinics to date, more than 700 clinics have opened in the last 15 months. But the business model is unproven so far. Few, if any, clinics are profitable, according to industry analysts, and only a handful have broken even on daily operations. Most have been open a year or less, and executives say it takes up to three years for a clinic to become profitable enough to recover start-up costs. Medical societies are inclined to be skeptical of the clinics. The American Academy of Pediatrics opposes them, saying they add to fragmentation in the health care system. Dr. Edward Zissman, a pediatrician in central Florida, said he had qualms about hospitals that hook up with the clinics. “Putting their name on a product that I don’t think has the highest quality,” he said, “is going to cost them dearly with physicians.” The American Academy of Family Physicians and the American Medical Association have set forth principles for clinics to observe, including sending patients’ medical record to their doctors and finding doctors for patients who do not already have them. Most states require varying degrees of physician supervision of the clinic nurses. Clinic operators say they are complying. Many patients have said they like the convenience of the walk-in clinics’ weekend and evening hours, the short waiting times to see a nurse practitioner , and the posted price lists for a limited menu of care like tests and prescriptions for sore throats and ear infections and seasonal flu shots. The typical customer is a mother with runny-nosed children in tow. About one in five customers pay cash. Wal-Mart says 55 percent of patients at its store clinics do not have health insurance , like 47 million other Americans. “The clinics are the latest big example of how you could think about consumers and what their needs are, rather than a health care system exclusively designed around the needs of providers,” said Margaret Laws, director of an innovations program at the California Health Care Foundation, an independent group that finances health policy research. Wal-Mart, for its part, rents store space to clinics operated by eight independent clinic companies and two hospital systems: Aurora Health in Wisconsin and North Broward Hospital District in Florida. The company plans to convert all of them to the Clinic at Wal-Mart brand as those leases expire, Ms. Galberth said. Wal-Mart sets standards of service but the quality of care is “clearly within the domain of the provider,” Dr. Agwunobi said. “The customer will always be able to trust that the partner we have chosen is fully licensed and in compliance with all local and regulatory rules and standards.” Wal-Mart’s rebranding effort comes in the wake of one notable failure in its clinic business. Last month CheckUps, a clinic operator headed by Jack D. Tawil, a New York businessman, ran out of money and closed its operations in 23 Wal-Mart stores in four Southern states. It was not the first unhappy business experience for Mr. Tawil, who had not previously worked in health care. In 2003, he became entangled in a legal dispute with the London department store Harrods over the use of its name on a line of watches he was selling. The case ended with Mr. Tawil defaulting and being ordered to pay Harrods $4.68 million. He was able to avoid making that payment by filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection in the United States, according to federal bankruptcy court records in New York. Mr. Tawil said in a telephone interview that he had found new investors for CheckUps and hoped to reopen in the same Wal-Mart stores, starting next month. Wal-Mart has said that with or without CheckUps the clinics will reopen. But even if they do reopen under CheckUps, at least some of the nurses will not be going back to work there, according to Nikki Leimer, owner of a nursing employment agency in Mandeville, La., that is suing CheckUps over money the agency says it is owed. In the future, said Dr. Agwunobi, the Wal-Mart executive, “We are going to want to know that the local health care providers can keep their promises.”

Medicine and Health
Wal-Mart Stores Inc
Retail Stores and Trade
Doctors
Health Insurance and Managed Care
Hospitals
Arkansas
Revolution Health Group


Millions of Gallons of Hazardous Chemicals Injected Into Wells, Report Says

Abstract: WASHINGTON — Oil and gas companies injected hundreds of millions of gallons of hazardous or carcinogenic chemicals into wells in more than 13 states from 2005 to 2009, according to an investigation by Congressional Democrats. The chemicals were used by companies during a drilling process known as hydraulic fracturing, or hydrofracking, which involves the high-pressure injection of a mixture of water, sand and chemical additives into rock formations deep underground. The process, which is being used to tap into large reserves of natural gas around the country, opens fissures in the rock to stimulate the release of oil and gas. Hydrofracking has attracted increased scrutiny from lawmakers and environmentalists in part because of fears that the chemicals used during the process can contaminate underground sources of drinking water. “Questions about the safety of hydraulic fracturing persist, which are compounded by the secrecy surrounding the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing fluids,” said the report, which was written by Representatives Henry A. Waxman of California, Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts and Diana DeGette of Colorado. The report, released late Saturday, also faulted companies for at times “injecting fluids containing chemicals that they themselves cannot identify.” The inquiry over hydrofracking, which was initiated by the House Energy and Commerce Committee when Mr. Waxman led it last year, also found that 14 of the nation’s most active hydraulic fracturing companies used 866 million gallons of hydraulic fracturing products — not including water. More than 650 of these products contained chemicals that are known or possible human carcinogens, regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act, or are listed as hazardous air pollutants, the report said. A request for comment from the American Petroleum Institute about the report received no reply. Matt Armstrong, an energy attorney from Bracewell & Giuliani that represents several companies involved in natural gas drilling, faulted the methodology of the congressional report released Saturday and an earlier report by the same lawmakers. "This report uses the same sleight of hand deployed in the last report on diesel use -- it compiles overall product volumes, not the volumes of the hazardous chemicals contained within those products," he said. "This generates big numbers but provides no context for the use of these chemicals over the many thousands of frac jobs that were conducted within the timeframe of the report." Some ingredients mixed into the hydraulic fracturing fluids were common and generally harmless, like salt and citric acid. Others were unexpected, like instant coffee and walnut hulls, the report said. Many ingredients were “extremely toxic,” including benzene, a known human carcinogen, and lead. Companies injected large amounts of other hazardous chemicals, including 11.4 million gallons of fluids containing at least one of the toxic or carcinogenic B.T.E.X. chemicals — benzene, toluene, xylene and ethylbenzene. The companies used the highest volume of fluids containing one or more carcinogens in Colorado, Oklahoma and Texas. The report comes two and a half months after an initial report by the same three lawmakers that found that 32.2 millions of gallons of fluids containing diesel, considered an especially hazardous pollutant because it contains benzene, were injected into the ground during hydrofracking by a dozen companies from 2005 to 2009, in possible violation of the drinking water act. A 2010 report by Environmental Working Group , a research and advocacy organization, found that benzene levels in other hydrofracking ingredients were as much as 93 times higher than those found in diesel. The use of these chemicals has been a source of concern to regulators and environmentalists who worry that some of them could find their way out of a well bore — because of above-ground spills, underground failures of well casing or migration through layers of rock — and into nearby sources of drinking water. These contaminants also remain in the fluid that returns to the surface after a well is hydrofracked. A recent investigation by The New York Times found high levels of contaminants, including benzene and radioactive materials, in wastewater that is being sent to treatment plants not designed to fully treat the waste before it is discharged into rivers. At one plant in Pennsylvania, documents from the Environmental Protection Agency revealed levels of benzene roughly 28 times the federal drinking water standard in wastewater as it was discharged, after treatment, into the Allegheny River in May 2008. The E.P.A. is conducting a national study on the drinking water risks associated with hydrofracking, but assessing these risks has been made more difficult by companies’ unwillingness to publicly disclose which chemicals and in what concentrations they are used, according to internal e-mails and draft notes of the study plan. Some companies are moving toward more disclosure, and the industry will soon start a public database of these chemicals. But the Congressional report said that reporting to this database is strictly voluntary, that disclosure will not include the chemical identity of products labeled as proprietary, and that there is no way to determine if companies are accurately reporting information for all wells. In Pennsylvania, the lack of disclosure of drilling ingredients has also incited a heated debate among E.P.A. lawyers about the threat and legality of treatment plants accepting the wastewater and discharging it into rivers.

Hydraulic Fracturing
Hazardous and Toxic Substances
Natural Gas
Water Pollution
Wells
House Committee on Energy and Commerce
American Petroleum Institute
Environmental Protection Agency


Mark Zuckerberg Covers His Laptop Camera. You Should Consider It, Too.

Abstract: Mark Zuckerberg is one of the most powerful men in the world because billions of people give Facebook, which he founded, free access to their personal data. In return, users receive carefully curated snapshots of his life: baby photos, mundane office tours and the occasional 5K. On Tuesday, observers were reminded that Mr. Zuckerberg, 32, is not just a normal guy who enjoys running and quiet dinners with friends. In a photo posted to his Facebook account, he celebrated the growing user base of Instagram, which is owned by Facebook. An eagle-eyed Twitter user named Chris Olson noticed that in the image’s background, his laptop camera and microphone jack appeared to be covered with tape. Other publications, including Gizmodo , used the tweet to raise the question: Was this paranoia, or just good practice? 3 things about this photo of Zuck: Camera covered with tape Mic jack covered with tape Email client is Thunderbird pic.twitter.com/vdQlF7RjQt — Chris Olson (@topherolson) June 21, 2016 The taped-over camera and microphone jack are usually a signal that someone is concerned, perhaps only vaguely, about hackers’ gaining access to his or her devices by using remote-access trojans — a process called “ratting.” (Remote access is not limited to ratters: According to a cache of National Security Agency documents leaked by Edward J. Snowden, at least two government-designed programs were devised to take over computer cameras and microphones .) Security experts supported the taping, for a few good reasons: • The first is that Mr. Zuckerberg is a high-value target. “I think Zuckerberg is sensible to take these precautions,” Graham Cluley , an online security expert and consultant, wrote in an email Wednesday. “As well as intelligence agencies and conventional online criminals who might be interested in targeting his billions, there are no doubt plenty of mischievous hackers who would find it amusing to spy upon such a high-profile figure.” • The second is that covering photo, video and audio portals has long been a basic and cheap security safeguard. “Covering the camera is a very common security measure,” Lysa Myers, a security researcher at the data security firm ESET, said in an email. “If you were to walk around a security conference, you would have an easier time counting devices that don’t have something over the camera.” • Third, Mr. Zuckerberg is not immune to security breaches. A recent hacking of his Twitter and LinkedIn accounts shows that he most likely committed two basic privacy faux pas: He may have used the same password across several websites and did not use two-factor authentication . Judging from his photo, however, it appears that Mr. Zuckerberg was taking simple precautions to protect himself from anyone who may try to gain remote access. The practice is fairly technologically simple: Hackers trick people into clicking on links or unfamiliar websites containing malware that allows them access to the devices. Mr. Zuckerberg is not the only high-profile case: James Comey, the director of the F.B.I., told students at Kenyon College in April that he also puts tape over his computer’s webcam, for surprisingly simple reasons, according to NPR: “I saw something in the news, so I copied it,” Mr. Comey said. “I put a piece of tape — I have obviously a laptop, personal laptop — I put a piece of tape over the camera. Because I saw somebody smarter than I am had a piece of tape over their camera.” People who are not billionaires or high-ranking government officials are not without risk, said Stephen Cobb, a senior security researcher at ESET. “For people who are not C.E.O.s, the threat is people scanning the internet for accessible webcams for a range of motives, from voyeurism to extortion,” Mr. Cobb wrote in an email. Experts don’t have a good estimate for how often such attacks occur, but according to a 2015 report released by the nonprofit Digital Citizens Alliance, the practice is a growing problem for consumers, especially young women. The report also said that trojans account for some 70 percent of all malware. “They’ve been one of the most popular types of malware on every operating system, for quite a long time,” Ms. Myers, of ESET, said. “The best ways to protect against them are to update all your software on your machine regularly, and use reputable security software, including anti-malware and a firewall.”

Mark E Zuckerberg
Hacker (computer security)
Camera
Computer security
Laptop
Facebook