Investigators find major flaws in L.A. Fire Department data

A long-awaited review of the Los Angeles Fire Department found the agency relied on inaccurate data, which provided the public with an erroneous portrait of the department’s performance that was used to make critical staffing decisions.

“All prior reporting data should not be relied upon until they are properly recalculated and validated,” the task force appointed by Fire Chief Brian Cummings concluded.

While the Fire Department has acknowledged some mistakes in its data, the 32-page report found more widespread problems and delves more deeply into a series of factors that contributed to the faulty figures. Among other things, the experts found systemic flaws in a 30-year-old computerized dispatch network and a lack of adequate training for firefighters assigned to complex data analysis.

INTERACTIVE: Check response times in your L.A. neighborhood

The probe was launched after department officials acknowledged earlier this year that LAFD performance reports released to City Hall leaders and the public made it appear rescuers were getting to emergencies faster than they actually were.

The task force report, scheduled to be discussed Tuesday by the Fire Commission, said the department has corrected the computer-system flaws that led to the inaccurate figures.

“The No. 1 goal was to restore confidence in the Fire Department's statistics in the eyes of the public and city leaders,” said Fire Commissioner Alan Skobin, who helped oversee the report. “We now have the ability to identify and pull out accurate data.”

Still, the report paints a picture of a department woefully behind in using technology to help speed up emergency responses and improve efficiency by analyzing thousands of dispatch records that churn through the department's computer system each day.

The report recommends installing GPS devices on fire units so dispatchers know their location at all times, an upgrade that has been discussed since at least 2009. That could ensure that the closest rescuers are sent to those in need.

The task force also said upgrades or replacement of the aging computer system at the heart of dispatch operations may be needed, as well as hiring professional analysts to scrutinize the data.

Some money has been set aside to help pay for the GPS upgrade and the dispatch system changes. But whether all the changes raised in the report could be funded is unclear, given that the LAFD already is projected to run a $5.2-million deficit in its current budget.

The report’s findings in some ways parallel recent probes by City Controller Wendy Greuel and Jeffrey Godown, an expert brought in by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa as questions grew about the department’s performance figures.

The task force includes members of the chief’s own staff, as well as experts from USC, the RAND Corp. and the Los Angeles Police Department’s COMPSTAT unit, which is recognized for its crime data analysis.

Indeed, the Fire Department hopes to roll out its own version of the LAPD’s data-reporting system, called FIRESTATLA. It would allow managers, elected officials and the public access to regularly updated reports on detailed response times and other statistics by neighborhood, Skobin said. The new system is estimated to cost up to $500,000, he said.

In March, fire officials acknowledged that they had changed the way in which they evaluated response times without telling the public or city officials. Their method made it appear that crews surpassed national standards more frequently than they actually did.

Those faulty statistics were used by Cummings and other top fire officials to push for a new cost-cutting deployment plan that shut down firetrucks and ambulances at more than one-fifth of the city's 106 firehouses. Cummings initially defended the department’s data when questions arose about its accuracy.

Later, he acknowledged that yet another set of numbers used in reports on the proposed deployment changes were projections, not actual response times. Some council members said they might not have voted for the budget cuts had they been aware that projections were used.

ALSO:

Three convicted in Craigslist ad murder

Sheriff's deputy charged with murder in shooting man

Ice rink opens for holidays at Pershing Square downtown

Read More..

EBay's P2P Same-Day Delivery App Launches in NYC

Just in time for Black Friday, eBay is offering New Yorkers a new way to sit out the madness. Instead of waiting in line, shoppers can use the eBay Now same-day delivery app to send eBay couriers to major chain stores to buy for them.

After being beta-tested in San Francisco in recent months, eBay Now is launching today for anyone with an iPhone south of 125th Street in Manhattan or in Brooklyn’s western reaches. Unlike similar offerings being tested by Walmart and Amazon, which rely on their own inventory, eBay Now works more like a peer-to-peer network, connecting shoppers with participating stores nearby while eBay acts as a go-between. And the stores aren’t obscure. Macy’s, Toys”R”Us, Target, and Best Buy are among what eBay says are hundreds of retailers taking part.

Also, unlike Walmart’s and Amazon’s offerings, eBay doesn’t require placing an order before a certain cutoff time. Its network of couriers, which it calls “valets,” are stationed throughout the city, with more personnel clustered around areas with higher concentrations of customers and stores. When a shopper places an order through the location-aware app, it goes out to the valet in the best place to fulfill the order the most quickly. The company promises to make most deliveries in an hour or so, though for now eBay valets have to wait in line at the checkout counter like everyone else. The minimum order is $25, shoppers can only order from one store per delivery, and there’s a $5 delivery fee.

The service fits eBay’s effort to re-brand itself as more than an auction site. The company wants people to think of eBay as a place to get anything and everything. And as the distinctions between offline and online retail fall away, eBay also wants shoppers to feel like they can get their stuff whenever, wherever, and however they want.

Short of opening their own stores, the network of retailers participating in eBay Now give eBay a surrogate physical footprint, and a way to approximate the immediacy of walking into an actual store. In a way, eBay Now doesn’t stray that far from the company’s roots: Just think of the stores as typical eBay sellers, except with more inventory.

Launching eBay Now in New York also invites the inevitable comparisons to famous dotcom-bubble failure Kozmo.com, which used bike messengers to bring New Yorkers just about anything in about an hour. Unlike Kozmo, however, same-day delivery isn’t eBay’s core business. Kozmo also didn’t charge a delivery fee or require a minimum order amount. (Also, eBay’s couriers use their own cars.)

As a company that survived the first dotcom bust and sees tens of billions of dollars in transactions move across its network each year, eBay has no doubt done the math to figure out how same-day fits into their business plans. EBay Now isn’t so much a reinvention as a small-scale investment in new infrastructure — infrastructure eBay needs to have in place as the anytime, anywhere, any way model of retail catalyzed by smartphones evolves from novelty to norm.

Read More..

French mayor ends hunger strike after crisis aid

PARIS (Reuters) – A French mayor who went on hunger strike a week ago to demand emergency aid for his town ended his protest on Thursday and packed up the tent he had been sleeping in outside parliament after the government met his demands.

“I regret that things came to that but it was necessary,” Stephane Gatignon, mayor of Sevran, a poor town on the outskirts of Paris, told Reuters.

Gatignon slept six nights on the pavement outside the National Assembly to press his demand for 5 million euros ($ 6.4 million) of rescue aid, saying the economic crisis was pushing Sevran and dozens of other poor towns to the brink of ruin.

France’s cash-strapped government is seeking to slash its deficit in line with broader efforts to end a debt crisis that has plagued Europe for three years.

While the government is urging local authorities to do their part, it will increase aid to many of the poorest towns next year in a budget package that the lower house of parliament approved this week.

Gatignon said the government had indicated it was willing to deploy those funds in a way that would satisfy his demands. The office of urban affairs minister Francois Lamy did not respond to requests for comment.

The Sevran mayor looked weary but relieved after six days of consuming nothing but sugary tea.

“Today it’ll be a bit of broth, then some soup and slowly back to normal eating,” Gatignon said.

(Reporting by Emile Picy and Brian Love; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall and Robin Pomeroy)

Celebrity News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

I Was Misinformed: The Time She Tried Viagra

I have noticed, in the bragging-rights department, that “he doesn’t need Viagra” has become the female equivalent of the male “and, I swear, she’s a real blonde.” Personally, I do not care a bit. To me, anything that keeps you happy and in the game is a good thing.

But then, I am proud to say, I was among the early, and from what I gather, rare female users.

It happened when the drug was introduced around 1998. I was 50, but after chemotherapy for breast cancer — and later, advanced ovarian cancer — I was, hormonally speaking, pretty much running on fumes. Whether this had diminished my sex drive I did not yet know. One may have Zorba-esque impulses when a cancer diagnosis first comes in; but a treatment that leaves you bald, moon-faced and exhausted knocks that out of your system pretty fast.

But by 1998, the cancer was gone, my hair was back and I was ready to get back in the game. I was talking to an endocrinologist when I brought up Viagra. This was not to deal with the age-related physical changes I knew it would not address, it was more along the feminist lines of equal pay for equal work: if men have this new sex drug, I want this new sex drug.

“I know it’s supposed to work by increasing blood flow,” I told the doctor, “But if that’s true for men, shouldn’t it be true for women, too?”

“You’re the third woman who asked me that this week,” he said.

He wrote me a prescription. I was not seeing anyone, so I understood that I would have to do both parts myself, but that was fine. I have a low drug threshold and figured it might be best the first time to fly solo. My memory of the directions are hazy: I think there was a warning that one might have a facial flush or headaches or drop dead of a heart attack; that you were to take a pill at least an hour before you planned to get lucky, and, as zero hour approached, you were supposed to help things along by thinking beautiful thoughts, kind of like Peter Pan teaching Wendy and the boys how to fly.

But you know how it is: It’s hard to think beautiful thoughts when you’re wondering, “Is it happening? Do I feel anything? Woof, woof? Hello, sailor? Naaah.”

After about an hour, however, I was aware of a dramatic change. I had developed a red flush on my face; I was a hot tomato, though not the kind I had planned. I had also developed a horrible headache. The sex pill had turned into a bad joke: Not now, honey, I have a headache.

I put a cold cloth on my head and went to sleep. But here’s where it got good: When I slept, I dreamed; one of those extraordinary, sensual, swimming in silk sort of things. I woke up dazed and glowing with just one thought: I gotta get this baby out on the highway and see what it can do.

A few months later I am fixed up with a guy, and after a time he is, under the Seinfeldian definition of human relations (Saturday night date assumed) my official boyfriend. He is middle aged, in good health. How to describe our romantic life with the delicacy a family publication requires? Perhaps a line from “Veronika, der Lenz ist da” (“Veronica, Spring Is Here”), a song popularized by the German group the Comedian Harmonists: “Veronika, der Spargel Wächst” (“Veronica, the asparagus are blooming”). On the other hand, sometimes not. And so, one day, I put it out there in the manner of sport:

“Want to drop some Viagra?” I say.

Here we go again, falling into what I am beginning to think is an inevitable pattern: lying there like a lox, or two loxes, waiting for the train to pull into the station. (Yes, I know it’s a mixed metaphor, but at least I didn’t bring in the asparagus.) So there we are, waiting. And then, suddenly, spring comes to Suffolk County. It’s such a presence. I’m wondering if I should ask it if it hit traffic on the L.I.E. We sit there staring.

My reaction is less impressive. I don’t get a headache this time. And romantically, things are more so, but not so much that I feel compelled to try the little blue pills again.

Onward roll the years. I have a new man in my life, who is 63. He does have health problems, for which his doctor prescribes an E.D. drug. I no longer have any interest in them. My curiosity has been satisfied. Plus I am deeply in love, an aphrodisiac yet to be encapsulated in pharmaceuticals.

We take a vacation in mountain Mexico. We pop into a drugstore to pick up sunscreen and spot the whole gang, Cialis, Viagra, Levitra, on a shelf at the checkout counter. No prescription needed in Mexico, the clerk says. We buy all three drugs and return to the hotel. I try some, he tries some. In retrospect, given the altitude and his health, we are lucky we did not kill him. I came across an old photo the other day. He is on the bed, the drugs in their boxes lined up a in a semi-circle around him. He looks a bit dazed and his nose is red.

Looking at the picture, I wonder if he had a cold.

Then I remember: the flush, the damn flush. If I had kids, I suppose I would have to lie about it.

Read More..

Wal-Mart Inquiry Reflects Alarm on Corruption

Wal-Mart on Thursday reported that its investigation into violations of a federal antibribery law had extended beyond Mexico to China, India and Brazil, some of the retailer’s most important international markets.

The disclosure, made in a regulatory filing, suggests Wal-Mart has uncovered evidence into potential violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, as the fallout continues from a bribery scheme involving the opening of stores in Mexico that was the subject of a New York Times investigation in April.

The announcement underscores the degree to which Wal-Mart recognizes that corruption may have infected its international operations, and reflects a growing alarm among the company’s internal investigators. People with knowledge of the matter described how a relatively routine compliance audit rapidly transformed into a full-blown investigation late last year — involving hundreds of lawyers and three former federal prosecutors — when the company learned that The Times was examining problems with its operations in Mexico.

A person with direct knowledge of the company’s internal investigation cautioned that Thursday’s disclosure did not mean Wal-Mart had concluded it had paid bribes in China, India and Brazil. But it did indicate that the company had found enough evidence to justify concern about its business practices in the three countries — concerns that go beyond initial inquiries and that are serious enough that shareholders needed to be told.

A Wal-Mart spokesman declined to elaborate on the filing.

The Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission, with Wal-Mart’s cooperation, are also looking into the company’s compliance with the antibribery law.

The Times reported in April that seven years ago, Wal-Mart had found credible evidence that its Mexican subsidiary had paid bribes in its effort to build more stores, a violation of the corrupt practices act, and that an internal investigation had been suppressed by executives at the company’s Arkansas headquarters.

Wal-Mart has so far spent $35 million on a compliance program that began in the spring, and has more than 300 outside lawyers and accountants working on it, the company said. It has spent $99 million in nine months on the current investigation.

Consequences of the expanding investigation could include slower expansion overseas and the identification of even more problems. The company said in the filing on Thursday that new inquiries had begun in countries “including but not limited to” China, India and Brazil.

While the disclosure did not specify the nature of the possible bribery problems in the three countries, it “clearly will cause more scrutiny on every real estate project being considered, and one would think at the minimum it will slow down the process as more controls need to be passed through,” said Colin McGranahan, an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein.

International growth is critical to Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, and Brazil, India, China and Mexico together make up the largest portion of the company’s foreign locations.

Wal-Mart’s international division had been on a growth binge, though that has been slowing lately. In third-quarter results reported Thursday, the company said international sales rose 2.4 percent to $33.2 billion, making up about 29 percent of the company’s overall sales.

More than half of Wal-Mart’s 10,150 stores are international. Mexico has 2,230 stores. Brazil has 534, China, 384.

C. Douglas McMillon, chief executive of Walmart International, said in June that he did not expect the investigation to hinder international growth. “Only time will tell,” he said.

Wal-Mart’s expanding investigation began in spring 2011 as a relatively routine audit of how well its foreign subsidiaries were complying with its anticorruption policies. It is keeping the Justice Department and the S.E.C. apprised of the investigation.

The review was initiated by Jeffrey J. Gearhart, Wal-Mart’s general counsel, who had seen news reports about how Tyson Foods had been charged with relatively minor violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. He decided it made sense to test Wal-Mart’s internal defenses against corruption.

The audit began in Mexico, China and Brazil, the countries Wal-Mart executives considered the most likely source of problems. Wal-Mart hired the accounting firm KPMG and the law firm Greenberg Traurig to conduct the audit. The firms conducted interviews and spot checks of record systems to check whether Wal-Mart’s subsidiaries were carrying out required compliance procedures.

Charlie Savage, Vikas Bajaj and Andrew Downie contributed reporting.

Read More..

October home sales hit 3-year high; prices up 17% year over year

Consumer columnist David Lazarus talks with real estate reporter Alejandro Lazo, DataQuick analyst Andrew LePage and Bill McBride of the Calculated Risk blog about the strong October real estate numbers.

Southern California's real estate market bucked the typical fall slowdown last month, with buyers snapping up pricier homes and sales roaring up 18% over the prior month.

Sales hit a three-year high for an October, rising 25% from the same month last year. The median sale price for a Southland house last month was $315,000, equal to September and up 17% from October 2011, according to real estate research firm DataQuick.

A decline in the number of foreclosed homes has caused a shortage of inventory in entry-level neighborhoods, pushing up home prices. Demand from investors also remains strong, with these buyers snapping up a near-record level of homes last month.

"There is a growing appreciation of the fact that we've come to a sort of a point of inflection in the housing market," Stuart Gabriel, director of UCLA's Ziman Center for Real Estate, said. "The housing market, for a large number of factors, is perceived as having turned a corner."

The region's median hit bottom at $247,000 in April 2009 and has slowly crawled its way up since. The median is the point at which half the homes in the area sold for more and half for less.

Quiz: Test your knowledge of business news

The rebound stems from more people chasing fewer homes. Interest rates remain near record-low levels, luring buyers. Investors with cash have poured into the market looking for cheap properties to flip or rent. And foreclosure resales have sunk to a five-year low, tightening the supply of cheap homes.

An estimated 21,075 newly built and previously owned houses and condominiums sold throughout the region last month. Coastal markets saw the biggest increases in sales — though every county posted double-digit gains compared with October last year. Orange County saw the biggest surge, with sales up 41%. Ventura rose 35%, San Diego, 31%, Los Angeles, 25%, San Bernardino, 18% and Riverside 13%.

Absentee buyers — investors and some second-home buyers — snapped up a near-record 28% of homes throughout the Southland last month. These investors paid a median $245,000, a 23% increase from October last year.

A recent report by real estate website Zillow showed that many investors and others are paying market value for foreclosed homes in the region, erasing the discount between foreclosed homes and regular properties. Discounts were marginal on bank-owned homes in September, with the discount in the Inland Empire just 2% and in the Los Angeles area 4% in September, Zillow said.

Bruce Norris, president of Norris Group, an investment company in Riverside that buys foreclosed homes, said he expects prices to increase in coming years as the Obama administration has encouraged banks to curtail foreclosures. That will push up prices, he said.

"It is policy driven," Norris said. "Since the policy is going to continue … you are about to see a pretty substantial price increase within the next two years."

Indeed, the high level of affordability ushered in by the housing crash could erode quickly in California. This week the California Assn. of Realtors reported that homes in the state are getting less affordable as property values rise. The group estimated that 49% of home buyers in the third quarter could afford a median-priced house in California, a decline from 51% last quarter. The rise in prices is offsetting the benefit to home shoppers from low mortgage interest rates.

Christopher Thornberg, a principal at Beacon Economics and one of the first to call attention to the housing bubble, said home shoppers should expect expensive housing in the Golden State for the foreseeable future. The reason: Construction of new homes remains highly expensive for builders.

"Why would it stop?" he said. "The economy is growing. Short of a fiscally led second recession, there is no reason in the world that it's going to do anything but to continue."

The region's lowest-cost areas — often those the most starved for inventory these days — posted the weakest sales numbers last month, according to DataQuick. The number of homes that sold below $200,000 in the region dropped 11% from October last year. Sales in these markets have slowed because of the drop in foreclosures, while increased demand has pushed up prices.

Sales of previously foreclosed-upon homes made up just 16% of the resale market last month, a drop from 17% last month and 33% in October 2011. Foreclosure resales peaked at 57% in February 2009.

In the meantime, sales surged in several mid- and higher-cost neighborhoods throughout Southern California in October, DataQuick said. Sales of homes between $300,000 and $800,000 increased 42% year over year. Sales of homes costing more than $500,000 were up 55% and sales of homes more than $800,000 rose 52%.

Bill McBride, lead writer for the housing blog Calculated Risk, said that with the upswing in prices homeowners are encouraged to keep their homes off the market.

"Why is there no inventory? I ask every real estate agent that, just to hear what they tell me. And they say people don't have enough equity in their homes and so they aren't listing them," McBride said. "That is a solid argument. But I also think the people are sensing that prices are going up and there is no urgency to sell."

alejandro.lazo@latimes.com

Read More..

'Shirtless' FBI Agent Who Hunted Petraeus Helped Stop LA Bombing

The FBI agent responsible for the downfall of two of the military’s most respected generals helped stop a terrorist from bombing Los Angeles International Airport and shot a man who attacked him with a knife at the gates of a military base. And he kicked off an investigation that not only upended Washington, it has many wondering if the FBI exceeded its authority.

Meet Frederick W. Humphries II — finally. Humphries, identified by The New York Times, is the mystery Florida-based FBI agent central to the ongoing scandal that brought down CIA Director David Petraeus and threatens the career of the Afghanistan war commander. At nearly every key moment in the tawdry sex scandal, Humphries has been there, lurking in the shadows, sometimes without his shirt on. No wonder colleagues interviewed by the Times described him as “obsessive.” Even before anyone knew who he was, someone set up a parody Twitter account for him, @shirtlessFBIguy.

In 1999, Humphries used his French language skills to find and stop Ahmed Ressam from bombing LAX airport in what would come to be known as the Millennium Plot, according to a Seattle Times piece. Described as “wiry [and] high-energy,” the former Army officer unraveled the cover story of a member of the Millennium Plot by calling bull on the operative’s fake Quebecois accent. Eleven years later, Humphries would shoot and kill a “disturbed knife-wielding man” who attacked him at the gates of MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa.

Humphries knew Tampa socialite Jill Kelley, an unofficial “ambassador” between Tampa and MacDill, home of U.S. Central Command, run in 2010 and 2011 by Petraeus and Gen. John Allen, now the commander of the Afghanistan war. When Kelley started receiving harassing e-mails this summer, Kelley asked her FBI friend Humphries to look into it. Humphries agreed, but soon found himself taken off the case, according to the Times. That would prove to be a fateful move.

The FBI has broad authorities over cyber-stalking investigations. “When something of this nature comes to our attention,” spokesman Paul Bresson tells Danger Room, “we work in close coordination with prosecutors to evaluate the facts and circumstances with respect to jurisdiction and potential violations of federal law.”

Not everyone is buying that the FBI would normally take up the case of a socialite receiving unwanted, nasty e-mails. “This is highly irregular. Highly, highly irregular. With a case of e-mail harassment, we’d normally say: we’re kind of busy, contact your local police,” a former federal prosecutor tells Danger Room. “You know that old cliche ‘let’s not make a federal case out of it?’ Well, in this case, it rings true.”

In any case, the feds did make a federal case out of it — just without Humphries. But Humphries didn’t let the case go. He sent shirtless pictures of himself to Kelley, something a lawyer for a law-enforcement guild who spoke with Humphries described to the Times as a “joke” that the national media have misunderstood. Still, his friends characterized him as “passionate” and “kind of an obsessive type.” It showed.

Humphries did not take kindly to being removed from a case he kickstarted. Evidently, he knew that the FBI expanded the case from cyber-harassment to one determining whether Paula Broadwell, Petraeus’ mistress who harassed Kelley, received classified information from Petraeus. Humphries was convinced there was a Bureau cover-up to protect Obama, and in late October went to Rep. Dave Reichert, a Washington state Republican with whom Reichert had worked previously. Reichert — who would not respond to Danger Room’s queries — took Humphries to Rep. Eric Cantor, the GOP majority leader, on October 27.

Cantor and his staff met with Humphries shortly after Reichert made the introduction. But they did not know what his motivations were. Nor could they judge Humphries’ credibility. Worse, they had no idea the FBI had Petraeus under investigation in the first place. After conferencing, they decided the prudent thing to do was to take the information from the investigation to FBI Director Robert Mueller’s office. They did so on October 31, around the same time that FBI agents interviewed Petraeus and reportedly told him he was not under suspicion of leaking classified information.

A week later, on November 6 — election day — Mueller informed James Clapper, the director of national intelligence and Petraeus’ boss, of the investigation. The House Judiciary Committee has written to Mueller to determine, among other things, why Mueller waited a week, and why he informed neither the relevant congressional oversight committees or the White House. (Mueller on Wednesday briefed the leaders of the House and Senate intelligence committees.) But Clapper essentially sealed Petraeus’ fate, urging him to deliver the resignation from the CIA that ultimately came on Friday.

There are questions about whether the FBI has exceeded its bounds in the case Humphries launched. While the FBI has wide latitude to investigate potential leaks of classified intelligence — the focus of the ongoing inquiry into Broadwell that brought Petraeus down — it is far less clear what authority the FBI had to give the Pentagon flirtatious emails between Allen and Kelley that came to agents’ attention in the course of that inquiry.

The Pentagon, whose inspector general is now investigating Allen, says there is no evidence Allen gave Kelley classified material or otherwise compromised national security. Under the Uniformed Code of Military Justice, adultery is a crime. But a Defense official on Tuesday told reporters that Allen denies cheating on his wife, and the emails contain some “flirtatious” exchanges between the two. Yet while the so-called “Plain Sight Doctrine” holds that investigators can pursue evidence of a crime that they encounter in an unrelated investigation, flirtation is not evidence of adultery.

While many of the facts of Allen’s case have yet to be determined, some legal experts wonder if the FBI was required to ignore the emails between Allen and Kelley.

“Whether the supposed basis for the investigation was cyber-harassment, disclosure of classified information, or the vulnerability of the CIA chief to blackmailing, it’s difficult to see how a military commander’s flirtatious emails are relevant,” says Rachel Levinson-Waldman, a lawyer who studies information sharing between national-security agencies at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice. In such a case, the FBI is usually required to “minimize” — that is, ignore or destroy — information on unrelated parties that it inadvertently collected. In practice, though, Levinson-Waldman cautions, FBI officials have strong incentives to hold on to such material, for fear of jeopardizing potential future investigations.

The FBI, argues the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Kurt Opsahl, appears to have engaged in “a series of stretches,” to get from investigating Broadwell to turning over Allen’s communications with Kelley to the Defense Department. “I don’t see how that email [traffic] is necessary or how there’s any kind of probable cause to believe there’s any link to the crimes the FBI was investigating,” Opsahl says.

In a statement released by his military lawyer late Wednesday, Allen vowed “to fully cooperate with the Inspector General Investigators” while his nomination to be NATO commander is officially on hold. There’s a possibility that Allen will be vindicated. But if he’s not, he has overzealous FBI investigators to thank — including Humphries, who started it all.

Read More..

NBC names new “Today” show chiefs

(Reuters) – Comcast‘s NBC has appointed two executives to take charge of the “Today” show, a day after the television network announced that longtime producer Jim Bell would be leaving to take a larger role in the sports division.

Don Nash, a broadcast producer who has worked on NBC’s morning show for 23 years, will become the executive producer, reporting to Alexandra Wallace, who has been named executive in charge of the show.

The reshuffling is part of NBC efforts to revive the “Today” show, which has been in a back-and-forth ratings war with ABC’s “Good Morning America” ever since ABC snapped NBC’s 16-year unbeaten streak earlier in the year.

“Today” is one of NBC’s most profitable TV shows, generating $ 485 million in ad revenues in 2011, up 6.6 percent from 2010, according to Kantar Media, which provides data to advertisers. Rival “Good Morning America” took in $ 299 million last year.

NBC said on Tuesday that former executive producer Bell would be leaving the morning show to become a full-time executive producer of the Olympics. The network has a contract to broadcast the Olympics in the United States for the next four games in Russia, Brazil, South Korea and an unnamed host city in 2020.

Bell, who has headed the show since 2005, was blamed this year for the controversial firing of Ann Curry as anchor alongside Matt Lauer.

Reuters had previously reported in August that Bell was in line for a kind of uber-producing sports role like the one Dick Ebersol – NBC’s longtime Olympics executive producer and former sports chief who served as a mentor to Bell – played for the network.

(Reporting By Liana B. Baker; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Alzheimer’s Tied to Mutation Harming Immune Response

Alzheimer’s researchers and drug companies have for years concentrated on one hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease: the production of toxic shards of a protein that accumulate in plaques on the brain.

But now, in a surprising coincidence, two groups of researchers working from entirely different starting points have converged on a mutated gene involved in another aspect of Alzheimer’s disease: the immune system’s role in protecting against the disease. The mutation is suspected of interfering with the brain’s ability to prevent the buildup of plaque.

The discovery, researchers say, provides clues to how and why the disease progresses. The gene, known as TREM2, is only the second found to increase Alzheimer’s risk substantially in older people.

“It points very specifically to a potential metabolic pathway that you could intervene in to change the course of Alzheimer’s disease,” said William Thies, chief medical and scientific officer of the Alzheimer’s Association.

Much work remains to be done before scientists understand precisely how the newly discovered gene mutation leads to Alzheimer’s, but already there are some indications from studies in mice. When the gene is not mutated, white blood cells in the brain spring into action, gobbling up and eliminating the plaque-forming toxic protein, beta amyloid. As a result, Alzheimer’s can be staved off or averted.

But when the gene is mutated, the brain’s white blood cells are hobbled, making them less effective in their attack on beta amyloid.

People with the mutated gene have a threefold to fivefold increase in the likelihood of developing Alzheimer’s disease in old age.

The intact gene, says John Hardy of University College London, “is a safety net.” And those with the mutation, he adds, “are living life without a safety net.” Dr. Hardy is lead author of one of the papers.

The discovery also suggests that a new type of drug could be developed to enhance the gene’s activity, perhaps allowing the brain’s white blood cells to do their work.

“The field is in desperate need of new therapeutic agents,” said Alison Goate, an Alzheimer’s researcher at Washington University in St. Louis who contributed data to Dr. Hardy’s study. “This will give us an alternative approach.”

The fact that two research groups converged on the same gene gives experts confidence in the findings. Both studies were published online Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine. “Together they make a good case that this really is an Alzheimer’s gene,” said Gerard Schellenberg, an Alzheimer’s researcher at the University of Pennsylvania who was not involved with the work.

The other gene found to raise the odds that a person will get Alzheimer’s, ApoE4, is much more common and confers about the same risk as the mutated version of TREM2. But it is still not clear why ApoE4, discovered in 1993, makes Alzheimer’s more likely.

Because the mutations in the newly discovered gene are rare, occurring in no more than 2 percent of Alzheimer’s patients, it makes no sense to start screening people for them, Dr. Thies said. Instead, the discovery provides new clues to the workings of Alzheimer’s disease.

To find the gene, a research group led by Dr. Kari Stefansson of deCODE Genetics of Iceland started with a simple question.

“We asked, ‘Can we find anything in the genome that separates those who are admitted to nursing homes before the age of 75 and those who are still living at home at 85?’ ” he said.

Scientists searched the genomes of 2,261 Icelanders and zeroed in on TREM2. Mutations in that gene were more common among people with Alzheimer’s, as well as those who did not have an Alzheimer’s diagnosis but who had memory problems and might be on their way to developing Alzheimer’s.

The researchers confirmed their results by looking for the gene in people with and without Alzheimer’s in populations studied at Emory University, as well as in Norway, the Netherlands and Germany.

The TREM2 connection surprised Dr. Stefansson. Although researchers have long noticed that the brain is inflamed in Alzheimer’s patients, he had dismissed inflammation as a major factor in the disease.

“I was of the opinion that the immune system would play a fairly small role, if any, in Alzheimer’s disease,” Dr. Stefansson said. “This discovery cured me of that bias.”

Meanwhile, Dr. Hardy and Rita Guerreiro at University College London, along with Andrew Singleton at the National Institute on Aging, were intrigued by a strange, rare disease. Only a few patients had been identified, but their symptoms were striking. They had crumbling bones and an unusual dementia, sclerosing leukoencephalopathy.

“It’s a weird disease,” Dr. Hardy said.

He saw one patient in her 30s whose brain disease manifested in sexually inappropriate behavior. Also, her bones kept breaking. The disease was caused by mutations that disabled both the copy of TREM2 that she had inherited from her mother and the one from her father.

Eventually the researchers searched for people who had a mutation in just one copy of TREM2. To their surprise, it turned out that these people were likely to have Alzheimer’s disease.

They then asked researchers around the world who had genetic data from people with and without Alzheimer’s to look for TREM2 mutations.

“Sure enough, they had good evidence,” Dr. Hardy said. The mutations occurred in one-half of 1 percent of the general population but in 1 to 2 percent of patients with Alzheimer’s disease.

“That is a big effect,” Dr. Hardy said.

Read More..

Obama Meets C.E.O.’s as Fiscal Reckoning Nears

Luke Sharrett for The New York Times

Ursula M. Burns, chief of Xerox, said the president discussed few specifics of a potential agreement but emphasized that “we cannot go over the fiscal cliff.”

WASHINGTON — President Obama extended an olive branch to business leaders Wednesday, seeking their support as he prepared to negotiate with Congressional Republicans over the fiscal impasse in Washington.

If Congress and the president cannot reach a deal to reduce the deficit by January, more than $600 billion in tax increases and spending cuts will go into effect immediately — a prospect many chief executives and others warn could tip the economy back into recession.

Even so, Mr. Obama has some fence-mending to do before he can count on any serious backing from the business community.

“The president brought up that he hadn’t always had the best relationship with business, and he didn’t think he deserved that, but he understood that’s where things were and wanted it to be better,” said David M. Cote, chief executive of Honeywell. He was one of a dozen corporate leaders invited to meet Mr. Obama at the White House for 90 minutes Wednesday afternoon, after the president’s first news conference since the election.

While Mr. Obama did not present a detailed plan at Wednesday’s meeting or reveal what he would propose in terms of new corporate taxes, he strongly reiterated that he would not allow tax cuts for the middle class to expire. The president, according to attendees and aides, said he was committed to a balanced approach of reductions in entitlements and other government spending and increases in revenue.

With time running out, many observers expect the president and Republican leaders in Congress to come up with a short-term compromise that prevents the full slate of tax increases and spending cuts from hitting in January. That would give both sides more time to come up with a far-reaching deal on entitlement spending, even as they work on a broad tax overhaul later next year.

One corporate official briefed on the meeting said that the chief executives came away with a sense that Mr. Obama was poised to present a more formal proposal in the next few days, but that he did not press them for support on particular policies. “It was more of a back and forth,” he said.

The chief executives from some of the country’s biggest and best-known companies, including Procter & Gamble and I.B.M., were not unified on everything, according to one who was interviewed after the meeting.

Many of the executives who described the meeting would speak only on condition of anonymity.

The outreach to business comes as both the White House and corporate America maneuver ahead of the year-end deadline, as well as the beginning of Mr. Obama’s second term. Many executives were put off by what they saw as antibusiness rhetoric coming from the White House in his first term, and many also oppose tax increases on the rich that Mr. Obama favors but would hit them personally.

Both sides have plenty to gain from a better relationship. Business leaders want to buffer their image after the recession and the financial crisis, while Mr. Obama would gain valuable leverage if he could persuade even a few chief executives to come out in favor of higher taxes on people with incomes over $250,000.

Lloyd C. Blankfein, chief executive of Goldman Sachs, publicly endorsed higher tax rates in an opinion article published in The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday.

“I believe that tax increases, especially for the wealthiest, are appropriate, but only if they are joined by serious cuts in discretionary spending and entitlements,” he wrote.

While Mr. Blankfein and other Wall Street leaders have been speaking out about the dangers of the fiscal impasse, only one executive from the financial services industry, Kenneth I. Chenault of American Express, was at Wednesday’s meeting.

Afterward, the corporate leaders seemed pleased with the tone of the meeting but cautious about the prospect of finding common ground with the White House on the budget choices facing Congress and the president.

“I’d say everybody came away feeling pretty good about the whole discussion,” Mr. Cote said. “Now, all of us are C.E.O.’s, so we’ve learned not to confuse words with results. And that’s what we still need to see.”

Ursula M. Burns, chief executive of Xerox, who was also at the meeting, said afterward that it was clear that “we’re going to have to work through some sticking points.” But while “we didn’t get into too many specifics,” she said, it was also made clear that “we cannot go over the fiscal cliff.”

Ms. Burns’s comments about the potentially dire consequences of the fiscal impasse echoed those of other chief executives, including many in the Business Roundtable, which began an ad campaign Tuesday calling on lawmakers to resolve the issue quickly. The Campaign to Fix the Debt, a new group with a $40 million budget and the support of many Fortune 500 chiefs, began its own ad campaign on Monday.

Michael T. Duke, chief executive of Wal-Mart Stores, warned in a statement after the meeting that “before the end of the year, Washington needs to find an agreement to avoid the fiscal cliff.” He said Walmart customers “are working hard to adapt to the ‘new normal,’ but their confidence is still very fragile. They are shopping for Christmas now, and they don’t need uncertainty over a tax increase.”

 

Helene Cooper reported from Washington and Nelson D. Schwartz from New York. Jackie Calmes contributed reporting from Washington.

Read More..