Media Decoder Blog: In Wake of Restructuring, NBC News President Quits

8:30 p.m. | Updated

The longest-serving president of any of the three network news divisions, Steve Capus of NBC News, stepped down from his position on Friday, six months after Comcast restructured its news units in a way that diminished his authority.

Pat Fili-Krushel, chairwoman of the NBCUniversal News Group, said in a brief telephone interview on Friday that she would “cast a wide net” while searching for a successor to Mr. Capus. In the interim, the leaders of the news division will report directly to her.

Ms. Fili-Krushel became Mr. Capus’s boss last July when Steve Burke, the chief executive of NBCUniversal, consolidated all of NBC’s news units — NBC News, the cable news channels MSNBC and CNBC, and its stake in the Weather Channel — under a new umbrella, the NBCUniversal News Group. Mr. Burke asked Ms. Fili-Krushel, one of his most trusted lieutenants, to run it, while keeping Mr. Capus and the heads of the other units in place.

Ms. Fili-Krushel worked early in her career at HBO and Lifetime. A veteran of the Walt Disney Company, where she helped program ABC, and  Time Warner, where she was an administrator, she is by her own admission not a journalist.  But now she is, by default, the highest-ranking woman in the American television news industry — not just at the moment, but in the history of the medium. The heads of the news divisions at ABC and CBS are men, as are the heads of the Fox News Channel, CNN, and Bloomberg.

Ms. Fili-Krushel has kept a low public profile, but has been a forceful presence behind the scenes, recently moving from her office on the 51st floor of 30 Rockefeller Center, near Mr. Burke’s, to a new one on the third floor, where NBC News is based. On Friday, she said she had spent her first six months “learning, listening and getting to know the players here.” She called the News Group an “unbelievably strong organization.”

Though Mr. Capus’s exit saddened many at NBC News on Friday, it came as little surprise. He had previously reported directly to Mr. Burke, but after the restructuring he reported to Ms. Fili-Krushel, and he made no secret of his unhappiness with the change. His contract had a clause that allowed him to leave in the event that he no longer reported to Mr. Burke, according to two people with direct knowledge of the arrangement at NBC, and he decided to exercise that right after months of contemplation. The people insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized by the network to speak publicly.

Mr. Capus told Ms. Fili-Krushel of his intent to leave last Friday. It is likely that he would have left sooner, but a series of major news stories kept him busy late last year — including Hurricane Sandy, the presidential election and the school shooting in Newtown, Conn. Mr. Capus also oversaw the network’s response to the kidnapping of Richard Engel and an NBC News crew in Syria last month.

“It has been a privilege to have spent two decades here, but it is now time to head in a new direction,” he wrote in an e-mail to staff members on Friday afternoon.

Mr. Capus guided NBC through a revolutionary time in news-gathering and distribution. He maintained the news division’s profitability, managed tensions between NBC News and its increasingly liberal cable channel MSNBC, and fostered new business ventures like an in-house production company and an annual education summit. Last year, he unwound an old deal with Microsoft to give the news division complete control over its Web site, now named NBCNews.com, for the first time.

Ms. Fili-Krushel wrote in a separate e-mail to staff members that “NBC News is America’s leading source of television news and Steve has been a big part of that success.”

NBC News is the producer of the most popular evening newscast in the country. But its single biggest source of profits, the morning show “Today,” fell to second place last year, behind ABC’s “Good Morning America,” for the first time since the 1990s. The decline caused widespread anxiety inside the news division and speculation that Mr. Capus would be relieved of his duties.

Inside NBC, both Mr. Capus and the executive producer of “Today,” Jim Bell, received much of the blame for the botched removal of Ann Curry from “Today” last June, which worsened the show’s already tenuous position in the ratings. Ms. Fili-Krushel was put in charge just a few weeks later.

Mr. Bell was replaced at “Today” last fall and is now the executive producer for NBC Olympics. Savannah Guthrie is now the co-host of “Today,” and Ms. Curry is a national and international correspondent for the network, but is rarely seen. Mr. Capus’s exit was seen by some at the network as the last shoe that had to drop.

In his e-mail to staff members, Mr. Capus called it an “extremely difficult decision to walk away,” noting that he started at NBC as a producer 20 years ago this month. He did not make any mention of what he would do next. “Journalism is, indeed, a noble calling, and I have much I hope to accomplish in the next phase of my career,” he wrote.

“Today” continues to lose to ABC’s “Good Morning America” among total viewers, but lately it has won a few weeks in the 25- to 54-year-old demographic that advertisers covet.

“NBC Nightly News” has more successfully fended off ABC’s “World News,” despite an aggressive push by ABC. Mr. Capus said, “NBC News has grown in all key metrics — from ratings and reputation to profitability.”

A version of this article appeared in print on 02/02/2013, on page B2 of the NewYork edition with the headline: In Wake of Restructuring, NBC News President Quits.

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Ferrol Sams, Doctor Turned Novelist, Dies at 90

Ferrol Sams, a country doctor who started writing fiction in his late 50s and went on to win critical praise and a devoted readership for his humorous and perceptive novels and stories that drew on his medical practice and his rural Southern roots, died on Tuesday at his home in Lafayette, Ga. He was 90.

The cause, said his son Ferrol Sams III, also a doctor, was that he was “slap wore out.”

“He lived a full life,” his son said. “He didn’t leave anything in the tank.”

Dr. Sams grew up on a farm in the rural Piedmont area of Georgia, seven mud-road miles from the nearest town. He was a boy during the Depression; books meant escape and discovery. He read “Robinson Crusoe,” then Mark Twain and Charles Dickens. One of his English professors at Mercer University, in Macon, suggested he consider a career in writing, but he chose another route to examining the human condition: medical school.

When he was 58 — after he had served in World War II, started a medical practice with his wife, raised his four children and stopped devoting so much of his mornings to preparing lessons for Sunday school at the Methodist church — he began writing “Run With the Horsemen,” a novel based on his youth. It was published in 1982.

“In the beginning was the land,” the book begins. “Shortly thereafter was the father.”

In The New York Times Book Review, the novelist Robert Miner wrote, “Mr. Sams’s approach to his hero’s experiences is nicely signaled in these two opening sentences.”

He added: “I couldn’t help associating the gentility, good-humored common sense and pace of this novel with my image of a country doctor spinning yarns. The writing is elegant, reflective and amused. Mr. Sams is a storyteller sure of his audience, in no particular hurry, and gifted with perfect timing.”

Dr. Sams modeled the lead character in “Run With the Horsemen,” Porter Osborne Jr., on himself, and featured him in two more novels, “The Whisper of the River” and “When All the World Was Young,” which followed him into World War II.

Dr. Sams also wrote thinly disguised stories about his life as a physician. In “Epiphany,” he captures the friendship that develops between a literary-minded doctor frustrated by bureaucracy and a patient angry over past racism and injustice.

Ferrol Sams Jr. was born Sept. 26, 1922, in Woolsey, Ga. He received a bachelor’s degree from Mercer in 1942 and his medical degree from Emory University in 1949. In his addition to his namesake, survivors include his wife, Dr. Helen Fletcher Sams; his sons Jim and Fletcher; a daughter, Ellen Nichol; eight grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren.

Some critics tired of what they called the “folksiness” in Dr. Sams’s books. But he did not write for the critics, he said. In an interview with the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame, Dr. Sams was asked what audience he wrote for. Himself, he said.

“If you lose your sense of awe, or if you lose your sense of the ridiculous, you’ve fallen into a terrible pit,” he added. “The only thing that’s worse is never to have had either.”

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Ferrol Sams, Doctor Turned Novelist, Dies at 90

Ferrol Sams, a country doctor who started writing fiction in his late 50s and went on to win critical praise and a devoted readership for his humorous and perceptive novels and stories that drew on his medical practice and his rural Southern roots, died on Tuesday at his home in Lafayette, Ga. He was 90.

The cause, said his son Ferrol Sams III, also a doctor, was that he was “slap wore out.”

“He lived a full life,” his son said. “He didn’t leave anything in the tank.”

Dr. Sams grew up on a farm in the rural Piedmont area of Georgia, seven mud-road miles from the nearest town. He was a boy during the Depression; books meant escape and discovery. He read “Robinson Crusoe,” then Mark Twain and Charles Dickens. One of his English professors at Mercer University, in Macon, suggested he consider a career in writing, but he chose another route to examining the human condition: medical school.

When he was 58 — after he had served in World War II, started a medical practice with his wife, raised his four children and stopped devoting so much of his mornings to preparing lessons for Sunday school at the Methodist church — he began writing “Run With the Horsemen,” a novel based on his youth. It was published in 1982.

“In the beginning was the land,” the book begins. “Shortly thereafter was the father.”

In The New York Times Book Review, the novelist Robert Miner wrote, “Mr. Sams’s approach to his hero’s experiences is nicely signaled in these two opening sentences.”

He added: “I couldn’t help associating the gentility, good-humored common sense and pace of this novel with my image of a country doctor spinning yarns. The writing is elegant, reflective and amused. Mr. Sams is a storyteller sure of his audience, in no particular hurry, and gifted with perfect timing.”

Dr. Sams modeled the lead character in “Run With the Horsemen,” Porter Osborne Jr., on himself, and featured him in two more novels, “The Whisper of the River” and “When All the World Was Young,” which followed him into World War II.

Dr. Sams also wrote thinly disguised stories about his life as a physician. In “Epiphany,” he captures the friendship that develops between a literary-minded doctor frustrated by bureaucracy and a patient angry over past racism and injustice.

Ferrol Sams Jr. was born Sept. 26, 1922, in Woolsey, Ga. He received a bachelor’s degree from Mercer in 1942 and his medical degree from Emory University in 1949. In his addition to his namesake, survivors include his wife, Dr. Helen Fletcher Sams; his sons Jim and Fletcher; a daughter, Ellen Nichol; eight grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren.

Some critics tired of what they called the “folksiness” in Dr. Sams’s books. But he did not write for the critics, he said. In an interview with the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame, Dr. Sams was asked what audience he wrote for. Himself, he said.

“If you lose your sense of awe, or if you lose your sense of the ridiculous, you’ve fallen into a terrible pit,” he added. “The only thing that’s worse is never to have had either.”

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Washington Post Joins List of News Media Hacked by the Chinese

SAN FRANCISCO — The question is no longer who has been hacked. It’s who hasn’t?

The Washington Post can be added to the growing list of American news organizations whose computers have been penetrated by Chinese hackers.

After The New York Times reported on Wednesday that its computers as well as those of Bloomberg News had been attacked by Chinese hackers, The Wall Street Journal said on Thursday that it too had been a victim of Chinese cyberattacks.

According to people with knowledge of an investigation at The Washington Post, its computer systems were also attacked by Chinese hackers in 2012. A former Post employee said there had been hacking attempts at the Washington Post for at least four years, but none targeted the company’s newsroom. Then, last year, newsroom computers were found to be communicating with Web servers that were traced back to China, according to people with knowledge of the Post investigation who declined to speak on the record.

Jennifer Lee, a spokeswoman for the Post Company, said that the “company did not have anything to share at this time.”

Security experts said that in 2008, Chinese hackers began targeting American news organizations as part of an effort to monitor coverage of Chinese issues.

In a report for clients in December, Mandiant, a computer security company, said that over the course of several investigations it found evidence that Chinese hackers had stolen e-mails, contacts and files from more than 30 journalists and executives at Western news organizations, and had maintained a “short list” of journalists for repeated attacks.

Among those targeted were journalists who had written about Chinese leaders, political and legal issues in China and the telecom giants Huawei and ZTE.

The Times reported on Wednesday that Bloomberg L.P. was also attacked by Chinese hackers after its Bloomberg News unit published an article last June about the wealth accumulated by relatives of Xi Jinping, China’s vice president at the time. Mr. Xi became general secretary of the Communist Party in November and is expected to become president in March.

The secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, said on Thursday that a global effort was needed to establish rules for cyberactivity. In her final meeting with reporters, Mrs. Clinton addressed a question about China’s efforts to infiltrate computer systems at The New York Times. “We have seen over the last years an increase in not only the hacking attempts on government institutions but also nongovernmental ones,” she said, adding that the Chinese “are not the only people who are hacking us.”

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India Ink: Five Accused in Delhi Gang Rape Case Plead 'Not Guilty'

The five men accused in a brutal  gang rape that led to nationwide protests entered not guilty pleas Saturday to the 13 charges filed against them.

The charges  —  including gang rape, murder, kidnapping and conspiracy  —  stem from the Dec. 16 rape and murder of a physiotherapy student. Reports of the attack led to days of protests in India over the violent treatment of women.

A trial for the five suspects  —  Ram Singh, Mukesh Singh, Pawan Gupta, Vinay Sharma and Akshay Thakur  — is scheduled to begin Tuesday in Saket District Court Complex in New Delhi.

V.K. Anand, defense counsel for the brothers Ram Singh and Mukesh Singh said in a telephone interview that “All the five accused have pleaded not guilty.”

“The charges being framed is one thing,” Mr. Anand said,  “but proving the charges is another.”

Pretrial arguments for the five suspects were completed on Wednesday. On Monday, the sixth accused was declared officially a juvenile by the Indian Juvenile Justice Board, meaning the maximum sentence he could receive is three years in a detention facility. If they are convicted, the five on trial could face the death penalty. The Supreme Court dismissed a plea to transfer the New Delhi gang rape trial outside the city on Tuesday. The trial, which is being carefully watched by the country, has brought about renewed debate on the challenges facing the Indian legal system.

According to the local news channel IBN Live, 86 witnesses will be examined during the course of the trial.

Pamposh Raina contributed to this post.

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DealBook: Dutch Government Takes Control of SNS Reaal

The Dutch government took control of one of the country’s biggest financial institutions, SNS Reaal, after the troubled company failed to find a private-sector buyer.

The Dutch finance minister, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, said the government would spend 3.7 billion euros, or $5 billion, in taxpayer money to clean up the bank, which has struggled for years with unprofitable real estate loans. The government will also require the country’s top three banks — ING, ABN Amro and Rabobank — to contribute 1 billion euros next year in a one-time payment, he said.

The moves comes as Europe continues to deal with a sluggish economic and debt problems. Last year, Spain took over Bankia, a mortgage lender also hurt by property deals.

Problems at SNS Reaal, which is based in Utrecht, had intensified in the last two weeks as depositors began losing faith, fearing talks with potential buyers would fail. The company had been reportedly negotiating possible investments with CVC Capital Partners and other funds in the hope of averting disaster.

Mr. Dijsselbloem, the finance minister, said in a statement that the takeover ‘‘was made necessary by the extreme situation’’ of the bank and the ‘‘serious and immediate threat posed by that situation to the stability of the financial system.’’

Shareholders and subordinated bondholders of SNS Reaal will be wiped out, effective immediately, Mr. Dijsselbloem said. The holders of senior debt will be repaid and depositors will not lose their money.

Three top executives of SNS Reaal said in a statement that they were stepping down, as ‘‘they do not want to and cannot take responsibility for the nationalization scenario.’’ The three — Ronald Latenstein, the bank’s chief executive, Rob Zwartendijk, the chairman, and Ference Lamp, the chief financial officer — said they had done ‘‘everything in their power’’ to avoid a bailout.

‘‘The persons in question do not advocate the chosen solution, but respect the choice of the Ministry of Finance,’’ according to a statement.

The announcement is the latest in a spate of recent bad news about European banks. On Thursday, Deutsche Bank posted a surprise fourth-quarter loss of 2.2 billion euros, and problems continue at Monti dei Paschi di Siena, which received a bailout from the Italian government last year.

The case of SNS Reaal also adds urgency to efforts to set up procedures to identify and wind down terminally ill banks in a way that does not burden taxpayers.

The move also signaled the transfer of another of the Netherlands’ biggest financial institutions into state hands. The Dutch business of ABN Amro was nationalized in October 2008 after the collapse of Lehman Brothers sent the world financial system into shock.

ABN Amro had been taken over and split up by Royal Bank of Scotland, Fortis and Santander in a 2007 deal that has since come to epitomize the worst excesses of the credit bubble. Both Royal Bank of Scotland and Fortis, once the biggest Belgian financial house, were laid low by the debt burdens they took on for the ABN Amro deal when the credit crisis struck.

The ABN Amro deal also marred SNS Reaal, which needed a bailout in 2008 after it acquired the broken-up lender’s property business. That bailout has not been fully repaid.

As part of the deal announced Friday, the state will forgive 800 million euros of the unpaid bailout loans, inject 2.2 billion euros into SNS and write off 700 million euros from the bank’s property portfolio. ING estimated that its share of the cost of bailing out SNS Reaal would come to 300 million to 350 million euros, but said the impact on its finances would be limited.

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This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 1, 2013

An earlier version of the article incorrectly spelled the name of the nationalized company. It is SNS Reaal, not SNS Reall.

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The New Old Age Blog: Caregiving, Laced With Humor

“My grandmother, she’s not a normal person. She’s like a character when she speaks. Every day she’s playing like she’s an actress.”

These are words of love, and they come from Sacha Goldberger, a French photographer who has turned his grandmother, 93-year-old Frederika Goldberger, into a minor European celebrity.

In the photos, you can see the qualities grandson and grandmother have in common: a wicked sense of humor, an utter lack of pretension and a keen taste for theatricality and the absurd.

This isn’t an ordinary caregiving relationship, not by a long shot. But Sacha, 44 years old and unmarried, is deeply devoted to this spirited older relation who has played the role of Mamika (“my little grandmother,” translated from her native Hungarian) in two of his books and a photography exhibition currently underway in Paris.

As for Frederika, “I like everything that my grandson does,” she said in a recent Skype conversation from her apartment, which also serves as Sacha’s office. “I hate not to do anything. Here, with my grandson, I have the feeling I am doing something.”

Their unusual collaboration began after Frederika retired from her career as a textile consultant at age 80 and fell into a funk.

“I was very depressed because I lived for working,” she told me in our Skype conversation.

Sacha had long dreamed of creating what he calls a “Woody Allen-like Web site with a French Jewish humor” and he had an inspiration. What if he took one of the pillars of that type of humor, a French man’s relationship with his mother and grandmother, and asked Frederika to play along with some oddball ideas?

This Budapest-born baroness, whose family had owned the largest textile factory in Hungary before World War II, was a natural in front of the camera, assuming a straight-faced, imperturbable comic attitude whether donning a motorcycle helmet and goggles, polishing her fingernails with a gherkin, wearing giant flippers on the beach, lighting up a banana, or dressed up as a Christmas tree with a golden star on her head. (All these photos and more appear in “Mamika: My Mighty Little Grandmother,” published in the United States last year.)

“It was like a game for us, deciding what crazy thing we were going to do next, how we were going to keep people from being bored,” said Sacha, who traces his close relationship with his grandmother to age 14, when she taught him how to drive and often picked him up at school. “Making pictures was a very good excuse to spend time together.”

“He thought it was very funny to put a costume on me,” said Frederika. “And I liked it.”

People responded enthusiastically, and before long Sacha had cooked up what ended up becoming the most popular character role for Frederika: Super Mamika, outfitted in a body-hugging costume, tights, a motorcycle helmet and a flowing cape.

His grandmother was a super hero of sorts, because she had helped save 10 people from the Nazis during World War II, said Sacha. He also traced inspiration to Stan Lee, a Jewish artist who created the X-Men, The Hulk and the Fantastic Four for Marvel comics. “I wanted to ask what happens to these super heroes when they get old in these photographs with my grandmother.”

Lest this seem a bit trivial to readers of this blog, consider this passage from Sacha’s introduction to “Mamika: My Might Little Grandmother”:

In a society where youth is the supreme value; where wrinkles have to be camouflaged; where old people are hidden as soon as they become cumbersome, where, for lack of time or desire, it is easier to put our elders in hospices rather than take care of them, I wanted to show that happiness in aging was also possible.

In our Skype conversation, Sacha confessed to anxiety about losing his grandmother, and said, “I always was very worried about what would happen if my grandmother disappeared. Because she is exceptional.”

“I am not normal,” Frederika piped up at his side, her face deeply wrinkled, her short hair beautifully coiffed, seemingly very satisfied with herself.

“So, making these pictures to me is the best thing that could happen,” Sacha continued, “because now my grandma is immortal and it seems everyone knows her. I am giving to everybody in the world a bit of my grandma.”

This wonderful expression of caring and creativity has expanded my view of intergenerational relations in this new old age. What about you?

Read More..

The New Old Age Blog: Caregiving, Laced With Humor

“My grandmother, she’s not a normal person. She’s like a character when she speaks. Every day she’s playing like she’s an actress.”

These are words of love, and they come from Sacha Goldberger, a French photographer who has turned his grandmother, 93-year-old Frederika Goldberger, into a minor European celebrity.

In the photos, you can see the qualities grandson and grandmother have in common: a wicked sense of humor, an utter lack of pretension and a keen taste for theatricality and the absurd.

This isn’t an ordinary caregiving relationship, not by a long shot. But Sacha, 44 years old and unmarried, is deeply devoted to this spirited older relation who has played the role of Mamika (“my little grandmother,” translated from her native Hungarian) in two of his books and a photography exhibition currently underway in Paris.

As for Frederika, “I like everything that my grandson does,” she said in a recent Skype conversation from her apartment, which also serves as Sacha’s office. “I hate not to do anything. Here, with my grandson, I have the feeling I am doing something.”

Their unusual collaboration began after Frederika retired from her career as a textile consultant at age 80 and fell into a funk.

“I was very depressed because I lived for working,” she told me in our Skype conversation.

Sacha had long dreamed of creating what he calls a “Woody Allen-like Web site with a French Jewish humor” and he had an inspiration. What if he took one of the pillars of that type of humor, a French man’s relationship with his mother and grandmother, and asked Frederika to play along with some oddball ideas?

This Budapest-born baroness, whose family had owned the largest textile factory in Hungary before World War II, was a natural in front of the camera, assuming a straight-faced, imperturbable comic attitude whether donning a motorcycle helmet and goggles, polishing her fingernails with a gherkin, wearing giant flippers on the beach, lighting up a banana, or dressed up as a Christmas tree with a golden star on her head. (All these photos and more appear in “Mamika: My Mighty Little Grandmother,” published in the United States last year.)

“It was like a game for us, deciding what crazy thing we were going to do next, how we were going to keep people from being bored,” said Sacha, who traces his close relationship with his grandmother to age 14, when she taught him how to drive and often picked him up at school. “Making pictures was a very good excuse to spend time together.”

“He thought it was very funny to put a costume on me,” said Frederika. “And I liked it.”

People responded enthusiastically, and before long Sacha had cooked up what ended up becoming the most popular character role for Frederika: Super Mamika, outfitted in a body-hugging costume, tights, a motorcycle helmet and a flowing cape.

His grandmother was a super hero of sorts, because she had helped save 10 people from the Nazis during World War II, said Sacha. He also traced inspiration to Stan Lee, a Jewish artist who created the X-Men, The Hulk and the Fantastic Four for Marvel comics. “I wanted to ask what happens to these super heroes when they get old in these photographs with my grandmother.”

Lest this seem a bit trivial to readers of this blog, consider this passage from Sacha’s introduction to “Mamika: My Might Little Grandmother”:

In a society where youth is the supreme value; where wrinkles have to be camouflaged; where old people are hidden as soon as they become cumbersome, where, for lack of time or desire, it is easier to put our elders in hospices rather than take care of them, I wanted to show that happiness in aging was also possible.

In our Skype conversation, Sacha confessed to anxiety about losing his grandmother, and said, “I always was very worried about what would happen if my grandmother disappeared. Because she is exceptional.”

“I am not normal,” Frederika piped up at his side, her face deeply wrinkled, her short hair beautifully coiffed, seemingly very satisfied with herself.

“So, making these pictures to me is the best thing that could happen,” Sacha continued, “because now my grandma is immortal and it seems everyone knows her. I am giving to everybody in the world a bit of my grandma.”

This wonderful expression of caring and creativity has expanded my view of intergenerational relations in this new old age. What about you?

Read More..

Gadgetwise Blog: Q&A: Reformatting a Kindle Fire

I want to pass my old Kindle Fire to a friend since I got a new model. How do I make sure all of my personal content is erased before I give the old Kindle away?

The Kindle software includes a setting that wipes the tablet and returns it to the state it was in when you first took it out of the box. Before you start the process, though, check that the Kindle has a good battery charge so it does not conk out in the middle of erasing itself, and make sure you have any personal files you need on the device backed up elsewhere.

Next, tap the gear-shaped icon for the Settings menu. On the Settings menu, tap the More icon, scroll down and then tap Device. At the bottom of the Device screen, tap the option called Reset to Factory Defaults. In the Factory Data Reset box that pops up, tap the Erase Everything button.

When you tap Erase Everything, the Kindle does just that — it deregisters the tablet with your Amazon account and deletes any personal files you have copied to it. It also wipes out any movies, books, music, apps and other content you purchased on the device. (Although your personal files are erased, any Amazon purchases you made on the Kindle are backed up to Amazon’s cloud servers and can be used with the new Kindle registered to your account.)

Once the Kindle finishes erasing itself, it should reboot. When the tablet finishes restarting, you should see the Welcome screen that invites you to set up the Kindle Fire as a new device.

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IHT Rendezvous: How Do You Prevent Food Waste?

Between 1.2 billion and 2 billion tons of the 4 billion tons of food produced around the world every year never gets eaten, according to a new survey by a group of British engineers.

That means that up to half of all food produced for human consumption is thrown away.

“The amount of food wasted and lost around the world is staggering. This is food that could be used to feed the world’s growing population — as well as those in hunger today,” said Tim Fox, Head of Energy and Environment at the Institute of Mechanical Engineers and one of the authors of the report in a statement.

Waste occurs at practically every step in food production: in the field, during transportation, while in storage, during distribution and in homes.

For example, as much as a third of all vegetables grown in Britain are never harvested because the they don’t look appealing enough for supermarkets to buy them, according to the report. (The authors also blamed supermarkets that promote large-quantity food purchases that often lead to wasted “expired” food at home.)

In developing countries, food waste is often the result of inadequate storage and distribution systems. In India, for instance, 21 million tons of wheat are wasted after being harvested but before they reach consumers.

The U.K.-based group of experts released the report, Global Food: Waste Not. Want Not., earlier this month. The institution says 60 to 100 percent more food could be saved by eliminating loss and waste.

In British homes alone, seven million tons of food, or 30 to 50 percent of the food purchased, is thrown out, according to the report.

Besides money, consumers are wasting clean water, labor and land.

Join the sustainability conversation.  What do you do to ensure that food is not thrown out?

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DealBook: Blackstone's Quarterly Profit Jumps 43%

The revival of the private equity industry remains in full swing, as the Blackstone Group reported a 43 percent jump in fourth-quarter earnings over a year ago.

The alternative investment giant said on Thursday that it earned about $670 million for the quarter, as almost all of its businesses showed gains. For the year, the firm earned about $2 billion, up 30 percent.

That profit, reported as economic net income and includes unrealized gains from investments, amounts to 59 cents a share. That handily beat the average analyst estimate of 47 cents a share, according to Capital IQ.

Blackstone also reported $493.8 million in distributable earnings, an 177 percent gain from the year-ago period. The metric, which is becoming popular among publicly traded private equity shops, tracks how much these firms pay out to their limited partners

Over all, Blackstone’s assets under management rose 26 percent in the fourth quarter, to $210.2 billion.

Thursday’s announcement could augur well for other private equity firms preparing their latest quarterly results. The industry has continued to benefit from low interest rates and improvements in the stock and credit markets, which have bolstered the value of Blackstone’s holdings and brightened the outlook for deal activity.

Stephen A. Schwarzman, Blackstone’s co-founder and chief executive, praised the results as the firm’s best since becoming a publicly company over five years ago.

“We’ve generated consistently strong investment performance for our limited partner investors across market cycles since our inception 28 years ago, and 2012 was no exception,” he said in a statement.

The strongest performers at Blackstone included its fund of hedge funds business, whose profit leaped 163 percent, and its core private equity arm, where profit rose 86 percent. The only laggard appeared to be real estate, the firm’s biggest division, where profits fell 2 percent despite an increase in assets under management.

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Well: Waiting for Alzheimer's to Begin

My gray matter might be waning. Then again, it might not be. But I swear that I can feel memories — as I’m making them — slide off a neuron and into a tangle of plaque. I steel myself for those moments to come when I won’t remember what just went into my head.

I’m not losing track of my car keys, which is pretty standard in aging minds. Nor have I ever forgotten to turn off the oven after use, common in menopausal women. I can always find my car in the parking lot, although lots of “normal” folk can’t.

Rather, I suddenly can’t remember the name of someone with whom I’ve worked for years. I cover by saying “sir” or “madam” like the Southerner I am, even though I live in Vermont and grown people here don’t use such terms. Better to think I’m quirky than losing my faculties. Sometimes I’ll send myself an e-mail to-do reminder and then, seconds later, find myself thrilled to see a new entry pop into my inbox. Oops, it’s from me. Worse yet, a massage therapist kicked me out of her practice for missing three appointments. I didn’t recall making any of them. There must another Nancy.

Am I losing track of me?

Equally worrisome are the memories increasingly coming to the fore. Magically, these random recollections manage to circumnavigate my imagined build-up of beta-amyloid en route to delivering vivid images of my father’s first steps down his path of forgetting. He was the same age I am now, which is 46.

“How old are you?” I recall him asking me back then. Some years later, he began calling me every Dec. 28 to say, “Happy birthday,” instead of on the correct date, Dec. 27. The 28th had been his grandmother’s birthday.

The chasms were small at first. Explainable. Dismissible. When he crossed the street without looking both ways, we chalked it up to his well-cultivated, absent-minded professor persona. But the chasms grew into sinkholes, and eventually quicksand. When we took him to get new pants one day, he kept trying on the same ones he wore to the store.

“I like these slacks,” he’d say, over and over again, as he repeatedly pulled his pair up and down.

My dad died of Alzheimer’s last April at age 73 — the same age at which his father succumbed to the same disease. My dad ended up choosing neurology as his profession after witnessing the very beginning of his own dad’s forgetting.

Decades later, grandfather’s atrophied brain found its way into a jar on my father’s office desk. Was it meant to be an ever-present reminder of Alzheimer’s effect? Or was it a crystal ball sent to warn of genetic fate? My father the doctor never said, nor did he ever mention, that it was his father’s gray matter floating in that pool of formaldehyde.

Using the jarred brain as a teaching tool, my dad showed my 8-year-old self the difference between frontal and temporal lobes. He also pointed out how brains with Alzheimer’s disease become smaller, and how wide grooves develop in the cerebral cortex. But only after his death — and my mother’s confession about whose brain occupied that jar — did I figure out that my father was quite literally demonstrating how this disease runs through our heads.

Has my forgetting begun?

I called my dad’s neurologist. To find out if I was in the earliest stages of Alzheimer’s, he would have to look for proteins in my blood or spinal fluid and employ expensive neuroimaging tests. If he found any indication of onset, the only option would be experimental trials.

But documented confirmation of a diseased brain would break my still hopeful heart. I’d walk around with the scarlet letter “A” etched on the inside of my forehead — obstructing how I view every situation instead of the intermittent clouding I currently experience.

“You’re still grieving your father,” the doctor said at the end of our call. “Sadness and depression affect the memory, too. Let’s wait and see.”

It certainly didn’t help matters that two people at my father’s funeral made some insensitive remarks.

“Nancy, you must be scared to death.”

“Is it hard knowing the same thing probably will happen to you?”

Maybe the real question is what to do when the forgetting begins. My dad started taking 70 supplements a day in hopes of saving his mind. He begged me to kill him if he wound up like his father. He retired from his practice and spent all day in a chair doing puzzles. He stopped making new memories in an all-out effort to preserve the ones he already had.

Maybe his approach wasn’t the answer.

Just before his death — his brain a fraction of its former self — my father managed to offer up a final lesson. I was visiting him in the memory-care center when he got a strange look on his face. I figured it was gas. But then his eyes lit up and a big grin overtook him, and he looked right at me and said, “Funny how things turn out.”

An unforgettable moment?

I can only hope.

---

Nancy Stearns Bercaw is a writer in Vermont. Her book, “Brain in a Jar: A Daughter’s Journey Through Her Father’s Memory,” will be published in April 2013 by Broadstone.

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Well: Waiting for Alzheimer's to Begin

My gray matter might be waning. Then again, it might not be. But I swear that I can feel memories — as I’m making them — slide off a neuron and into a tangle of plaque. I steel myself for those moments to come when I won’t remember what just went into my head.

I’m not losing track of my car keys, which is pretty standard in aging minds. Nor have I ever forgotten to turn off the oven after use, common in menopausal women. I can always find my car in the parking lot, although lots of “normal” folk can’t.

Rather, I suddenly can’t remember the name of someone with whom I’ve worked for years. I cover by saying “sir” or “madam” like the Southerner I am, even though I live in Vermont and grown people here don’t use such terms. Better to think I’m quirky than losing my faculties. Sometimes I’ll send myself an e-mail to-do reminder and then, seconds later, find myself thrilled to see a new entry pop into my inbox. Oops, it’s from me. Worse yet, a massage therapist kicked me out of her practice for missing three appointments. I didn’t recall making any of them. There must another Nancy.

Am I losing track of me?

Equally worrisome are the memories increasingly coming to the fore. Magically, these random recollections manage to circumnavigate my imagined build-up of beta-amyloid en route to delivering vivid images of my father’s first steps down his path of forgetting. He was the same age I am now, which is 46.

“How old are you?” I recall him asking me back then. Some years later, he began calling me every Dec. 28 to say, “Happy birthday,” instead of on the correct date, Dec. 27. The 28th had been his grandmother’s birthday.

The chasms were small at first. Explainable. Dismissible. When he crossed the street without looking both ways, we chalked it up to his well-cultivated, absent-minded professor persona. But the chasms grew into sinkholes, and eventually quicksand. When we took him to get new pants one day, he kept trying on the same ones he wore to the store.

“I like these slacks,” he’d say, over and over again, as he repeatedly pulled his pair up and down.

My dad died of Alzheimer’s last April at age 73 — the same age at which his father succumbed to the same disease. My dad ended up choosing neurology as his profession after witnessing the very beginning of his own dad’s forgetting.

Decades later, grandfather’s atrophied brain found its way into a jar on my father’s office desk. Was it meant to be an ever-present reminder of Alzheimer’s effect? Or was it a crystal ball sent to warn of genetic fate? My father the doctor never said, nor did he ever mention, that it was his father’s gray matter floating in that pool of formaldehyde.

Using the jarred brain as a teaching tool, my dad showed my 8-year-old self the difference between frontal and temporal lobes. He also pointed out how brains with Alzheimer’s disease become smaller, and how wide grooves develop in the cerebral cortex. But only after his death — and my mother’s confession about whose brain occupied that jar — did I figure out that my father was quite literally demonstrating how this disease runs through our heads.

Has my forgetting begun?

I called my dad’s neurologist. To find out if I was in the earliest stages of Alzheimer’s, he would have to look for proteins in my blood or spinal fluid and employ expensive neuroimaging tests. If he found any indication of onset, the only option would be experimental trials.

But documented confirmation of a diseased brain would break my still hopeful heart. I’d walk around with the scarlet letter “A” etched on the inside of my forehead — obstructing how I view every situation instead of the intermittent clouding I currently experience.

“You’re still grieving your father,” the doctor said at the end of our call. “Sadness and depression affect the memory, too. Let’s wait and see.”

It certainly didn’t help matters that two people at my father’s funeral made some insensitive remarks.

“Nancy, you must be scared to death.”

“Is it hard knowing the same thing probably will happen to you?”

Maybe the real question is what to do when the forgetting begins. My dad started taking 70 supplements a day in hopes of saving his mind. He begged me to kill him if he wound up like his father. He retired from his practice and spent all day in a chair doing puzzles. He stopped making new memories in an all-out effort to preserve the ones he already had.

Maybe his approach wasn’t the answer.

Just before his death — his brain a fraction of its former self — my father managed to offer up a final lesson. I was visiting him in the memory-care center when he got a strange look on his face. I figured it was gas. But then his eyes lit up and a big grin overtook him, and he looked right at me and said, “Funny how things turn out.”

An unforgettable moment?

I can only hope.

---

Nancy Stearns Bercaw is a writer in Vermont. Her book, “Brain in a Jar: A Daughter’s Journey Through Her Father’s Memory,” will be published in April 2013 by Broadstone.

Read More..

Chinese Hackers Infiltrate New York Times Computers

SAN FRANCISCO — For the last four months, Chinese hackers have persistently attacked The New York Times, infiltrating its computer systems and getting passwords for its reporters and other employees.

The New York Times published an article in October about the wealth of the family of China's prime minister, Wen Jiabao, in both English and Chinese.

After surreptitiously tracking the intruders to study their movements and help erect better defenses to block them, The Times and computer security experts have expelled the attackers and kept them from breaking back in.

The timing of the attacks coincided with the reporting for a Times investigation, published online on Oct. 25, that found that the relatives of Wen Jiabao, China’s prime minister, had accumulated a fortune worth several billion dollars through business dealings.

Security experts hired by The Times to detect and block the computer attacks gathered digital evidence that Chinese hackers, using methods that some consultants have associated with the Chinese military in the past, breached The Times’s network. They broke into the e-mail accounts of its Shanghai bureau chief, David Barboza, who wrote the reports on Mr. Wen’s relatives, and Jim Yardley, The Times’s South Asia bureau chief in India, who previously worked as bureau chief in Beijing.

“Computer security experts found no evidence that sensitive e-mails or files from the reporting of our articles about the Wen family were accessed, downloaded or copied,” said Jill Abramson, executive editor of The Times.

The hackers tried to cloak the source of the attacks on The Times by first penetrating computers at United States universities and routing the attacks through them, said computer security experts at Mandiant, the company hired by The Times. This matches the subterfuge used in many other attacks that Mandiant has tracked to China.

The attackers first installed malware — malicious software — that enabled them to gain entry to any computer on The Times’s network. The malware was identified by computer security experts as a specific strain associated with computer attacks originating in China. More evidence of the source, experts said, is that the attacks started from the same university computers used by the Chinese military to attack United States military contractors in the past.

Security experts found evidence that the hackers stole the corporate passwords for every Times employee and used those to gain access to the personal computers of 53 employees, most of them outside The Times’s newsroom. Experts found no evidence that the intruders used the passwords to seek information that was not related to the reporting on the Wen family.

No customer data was stolen from The Times, security experts said.

Asked about evidence that indicated the hacking originated in China, and possibly with the military, China’s Ministry of National Defense said, “Chinese laws prohibit any action including hacking that damages Internet security.” It added that “to accuse the Chinese military of launching cyberattacks without solid proof is unprofessional and baseless.”

The attacks appear to be part of a broader computer espionage campaign against American news media companies that have reported on Chinese leaders and corporations.

Last year, Bloomberg News was targeted by Chinese hackers, and some employees’ computers were infected, according to a person with knowledge of the company’s internal investigation, after Bloomberg published an article on June 29 about the wealth accumulated by relatives of Xi Jinping, China’s vice president at the time. Mr. Xi became general secretary of the Communist Party in November and is expected to become president in March. Ty Trippet, a spokesman for Bloomberg, confirmed that hackers had made attempts but said that “no computer systems or computers were compromised.”

Signs of a Campaign

The mounting number of attacks that have been traced back to China suggest that hackers there are behind a far-reaching spying campaign aimed at an expanding set of targets including corporations, government agencies, activist groups and media organizations inside the United States. The intelligence-gathering campaign, foreign policy experts and computer security researchers say, is as much about trying to control China’s public image, domestically and abroad, as it is about stealing trade secrets.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 31, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the year that the United States and Israel were said to have started a cyberattack that caused damage at Iran’s main nuclear enrichment plant, and the article misstated the specific type of attack. The attack was a computer worm, not a virus, and it started around 2008, not 2012.

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U.N. Panel Says Israeli Settlement Policy Violates Law

GENEVA — Israel has used the expansion of Jewish settlements to pursue a creeping annexation of the occupied Palestinian territories and committed multiple violations of international law in its treatment of Palestinians, the United Nations Human Rights Council said in a report on Thursday that called for an immediate halt to all settlement activity.

Presenting its findings after a nearly six-month investigation, the panel of three women jurists led by a French judge, Christine Chanet, said Israel’s settlements had clearly violated the Geneva Conventions which prohibit a state from transferring its own civilian population into territory it has occupied.

Israel “must cease all settlement activities without preconditions” and begin the withdrawal of all settlers from the occupied territories, the jurists said their report, which is to be debated at the Human Rights Council in March.

The panel examined 67 submissions from academics, diplomats, Israeli civil society and Palestinians, Ms. Chanet said, but Israel refused to cooperate with the mission which was unable to visit the West Bank and instead went to the Jordanian capital, Amman, to hear testimony.

The Human Rights Council voted a year ago to investigate the impact of settlements on Palestinian rights, which prompted Israel to break off cooperation and castigate the panel as a political platform used “to bash and demonize Israel.” The report came two days after Israel boycotted the council’s review of Israel’s human rights record, becoming the first country to withhold cooperation from a process in which all 193 United Nations member states have previously engaged.

The United States also opposed creating the fact-finding mission on the grounds that “it does not advance the cause of peace and will distract the parties from efforts to resolve the issues that divide them.”

Washington has opposed Israel’s creation of further settlements and construction in East Jerusalem as “unhelpful” and an obstacle to a two-state solution of the Palestinian issue.

Reviewing Israel’s settlements policy since 1967, the panel said that Israel, with the full knowledge and compliance of successive governments, had established some 250 settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since 1967 which now have an estimated 520,000 settlers and are growing much faster than the population of Israel. The result is “a mesh of construction and infrastructure leading to a creeping annexation that prevents the establishment of a contiguous and viable Palestinian state and undermines the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination,” the report said.

These actions fall under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, the panel said, and if Palestine ratified the Rome Statute that created the court, Israel could be called to account for “gross violations of human rights law and serious violations of international humanitarian law,” the report said.

The settlements are maintained through “a system of total segregation” between the settlers, who enjoy a preferential legal status, and the rest of the population, the report said. It found Palestinian rights to freedom of movement, equality, due process of law and access to education, water, housing and natural resources “are being violated consistently and on a daily basis.”

The panel reported that violence and intimidation by “a small minority” of settlers continued with impunity and expressed grave concern at the high number of children who are detained. They were “invariably mistreated, denied due process and fair trial,” the report said and many were transferred to detention centers in Israel, also a violation of international law.

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DealBook: McClendon, Under Fire, to Retire at Chesapeake Energy

9:15 p.m. | Updated

HOUSTON — Aubrey K. McClendon, Chesapeake Energy’s daring and innovative co-founder, will step down as chief executive on April 1 after months of scrutiny over how he mixed his personal finances and those of the corporation.

Mr. McClendon’s retirement, announced by the company on Tuesday, comes as the national boom in natural gas drilling, which he helped set in motion, is fading, diminishing Chesapeake’s prospects.

Over the past decade, Mr. McClendon aggressively explored for gas and outbid competitors in one shale field after another. Not only did his small Oklahoma company become the nation’s second biggest gas producer after Exxon Mobil, but Mr. McClendon also assembled a trophy room of assets that included a piece of the Oklahoma Thunder basketball team, a winery and a $12 million collection of antique maps.

In the end, a downturn in natural gas prices, caused in large part by the industry’s exuberant drilling, dealt a huge blow to the company’s balance sheet and to Mr. McClendon’s personal fortune.

Mr. McClendon borrowed heavily — more than $800 million — to finance his participation in an unusual compensation plan that allowed him to invest alongside his company in every well it drilled, sharing both in profits and expenses. Last year, the Securities and Exchange Commission opened an inquiry into Mr. McClendon’s finances, and a shareholder rebellion led to his removal as chairman in June and a reshuffling of the board.

Chesapeake, which borrowed extensively to finance its expansion spree, has been forced to unload $12 billion in valuable oil and gas fields over the last year as it tried to pay off its crushing debts. Last September, the company still had $19 billion in debt, according to Philip Weiss, a senior oil company analyst at Argus.

“He really built this company from nothing and made it into something meaningful,” Mr. Weiss said, “but in the end, I think it’s the right thing for the company and its shareholders” for him to leave. “The company needs a financial guy to bring spending under control.”

Investors appeared to agree, sending Chesapeake’s shares up more than 10 percent in after-hours trading.

The roots of Mr. McClendon’s sudden departure lay partly in a shake-up of Chesapeake’s board last summer, in which the company replaced more than half of its directors. Four of those board members were nominated by two major investors, Southeastern Asset Management and the investor Carl C. Icahn; an independent chairman was also appointed.

In recent weeks, Chesapeake’s board concluded that the company’s stock was suffering from Mr. McClendon’s presence, according to a person briefed on the matter. Shares in the company have fallen 14 percent over the last 12 months.

“Aubrey and the board have agreed that the time has come for the company to select a new leader,” Chesapeake’s chairman, Archie W. Dunham, said in a statement.

The company said the board’s review of Mr. McClendon’s financial dealings “to date has not revealed improper conduct.”

Mr. McClendon, 53, agreed to retire from the company on April 1 and will continue serving as chief executive until a successor is appointed.

“I am extremely proud of what we have built over the last quarter of a century,” he said in a statement. “While I have certain philosophical differences with the new board, I look forward to working collaboratively with the company and the board to provide a smooth transition.”

When gas prices were still high four years ago, Chesapeake’s stock price soared, and Mr. McClendon had a net worth of more than $1 billion. He bought homes in Hawaii, Colorado and Bermuda.

But as the price of gas fell by more than two-thirds over the last few years, Chesapeake lost more than two-thirds of its value as well.

Pressure on Mr. McClendon began last April after news reports revealed that he had obtained personal loans using minority stakes in company-owned wells as collateral. Reuters reported that he had personally borrowed more than $1 billion from EIG Global Energy Partners, a firm that also invested in Chesapeake, raising questions over conflict of interest.

Mr. McClendon was a larger-than-life figure in an industry filled with them. His dealings stretched across the globe as he negotiated partnerships with the Norwegian oil company Statoil, China’s CNOOC and France’s Total, shepherding the foreign oil giants into joint ventures in shale fields around the country.

“It’s an end of an era,” said Fadel Gheit, a senior oil analyst at Oppenheimer. “He was a maverick in the true sense of the word, and he represented both the good and the bad in corporate America. He was the risk-taker, a true visionary, but obviously there were excesses.”

Mr. Icahn, now one of the company’s largest shareholders, was generous in his praise.

“Aubrey has every right to be proud of the company he has built, the world-class team of people at Chesapeake and the collection of assets he has assembled, which in my opinion are the best portfolio of energy assets in the country,” he said.

A version of this article appeared in print on 01/30/2013, on page B1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Under Fire, Chesapeake Co-Founder Is to Depart.

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The New Old Age Blog: For Some Caregivers, the Trauma Lingers

Recently, I spoke at length to a physician who seems to have suffered a form of post-traumatic stress after her mother’s final illness.

There is little research on this topic, which suggests that it is overlooked or discounted. But several experts acknowledge that psychological trauma of this sort does exist.

Barry Jacobs, a clinical psychologist and author of “The Emotional Survival Guide for Caregivers” (The Guilford Press, 2006), often sees caregivers who struggle with intrusive thoughts and memories months and even years after a loved one has died.

“Many people find themselves unable to stop thinking about the suffering they witnessed, which is so powerfully seared into their brains that they cannot push it away,” Dr. Jacobs said.

Flashbacks are a symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder, along with feelings of numbness, anxiety, guilt, dread, depression, irritability, apathy, tension and more. Though one symptom or several do not prove that such a condition exists — that’s up to an expert to determine — these issues are a “very common problem for caregivers,” Dr. Jacobs said.

Dolores Gallagher-Thompson, a professor of psychiatry at the Stanford University School of Medicine who treats many caregivers, said there was little evidence that caregiving on its own caused post-traumatic stress. But if someone is vulnerable for another reason — perhaps a tragedy experienced earlier in life — this kind of response might be activated.

“When something happens that the individual perceives and reacts to as a tremendous stressor, that can intensify and bring back to the forefront of consciousness memories that were traumatic,” Dr. Gallagher-Thompson said. “It’s more an exacerbation of an already existing vulnerability.”

Dr. Judy Stone, the physician who was willing to share her mother’s end-of-life experience and her powerful reaction to it, fits that definition in spades.

Both of Dr. Stone’s Hungarian parents were Holocaust survivors: her mother, Magdus, called Maggie by family and friends, had been sent to Auschwitz; her father, Miki, to Dachau. The two married before World War II, after Maggie left her small village, moved to the city and became a corset maker in Miki’s shop.

Death cast a long shadow over the family. During the war, Maggie’s first baby died of exposure while she was confined for a time to the Debrecen ghetto. After the war, the family moved to the United States, where they worked to recover a sense of normalcy and Miki worked as a maker of orthopedic appliances. Then he died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 50.

“None of us recovered from that,” said Dr. Stone, who traces her interest in medicine and her lifelong interest in fighting for social justice to her parents and trips she made with her father to visit his clients.

Decades passed, as Dr. Stone operated an infectious disease practice in Cumberland, Md., and raised her own family.

In her old age, Maggie, who her daughter describes as “tough, stubborn, strong,” developed macular degeneration, bad arthritis and emphysema — a result of a smoking habit she started just after the war and never gave up. Still, she lived alone, accepting no help until she reached the age of 92.

Then, in late 2007, respiratory failure set in, causing the old woman to be admitted to the hospital, then rehabilitation, then assisted living, then another hospital. Maggie had made her preferences absolutely clear to her daughter, who had medical power of attorney: doctors were to pursue every intervention needed to keep her alive.

Yet one doctor sent her from a rehabilitation center to the hospital during respiratory crisis with instructions that she was not to be resuscitated — despite her express wishes. Fortunately, the hospital called Dr. Stone and the order was reversed.

“You have to be ever vigilant,” Dr. Stone said when asked what advice she would give to families. “You can’t assume that anything, be it a D.N.R. or allergies or medication orders, have been communicated correctly.”

Other mistakes were made in various settings: There were times that Dr. Stone’s mother had not received necessary oxygen, was without an inhaler she needed for respiratory distress, was denied water or ice chips to moisten her mouth, or received an antibiotic that can cause hallucinations in older people, despite Dr. Stone’s request that this not happen. “People didn’t listen,” she said. “The lack of communication was horrible.”

It was a daily fight to protect her mother and make sure she got what she needed, and “frankly, if I hadn’t been a doctor, I think I would have been thrown out of there,” she said.

In the end, when it became clear that death was inevitable, Maggie finally agreed to be taken off a respirator. But rather than immediately arrange for palliative measures, doctors arranged for a brief trial to see if she could breathe on her own.

“They didn’t give her enough morphine to suppress her agony,” Dr. Stone recalled.

Five years have passed since her mother died, and “I still have nightmares about her being tortured,” the doctor said. “I’ve never been able to overcome the feeling that I failed her — I let her down. It wasn’t her dying that is so upsetting, it was how she died and the unnecessary suffering at the end.”

Dr. Stone had specialized in treating infectious diseases and often saw patients who were critically ill in intensive care. But after her mother died, “I just could not do it,” she said. “I couldn’t see people die. I couldn’t step foot in the I.C.U. for a long, long time.”

Today, she works part time seeing patients with infectious diseases on an as-needed basis in various places — a job she calls “rent a doc” — and blogs for Scientific American about medical ethics. “I tilt at windmills,” she said, describing her current occupations.

Most important to her is trying to change problems in the health system that failed her mother and failed her as well. But Dr. Stone has a sense of despair about that: it is too big an issue, too hard to tackle.

I’m grateful to her for sharing her story so that other caregivers who may have experienced overwhelming emotional reactions that feel like post-traumatic stress realize they are not alone.

It is important to note that both Dr. Jacobs and Dr. Gallagher-Thompson report successfully treating caregivers beset by overwhelming stress. It is hard work and it takes time, but they say recovery is possible. I’ll give a sense of treatment options they and others recommend in another post.

Read More..

The New Old Age Blog: For Some Caregivers, the Trauma Lingers

Recently, I spoke at length to a physician who seems to have suffered a form of post-traumatic stress after her mother’s final illness.

There is little research on this topic, which suggests that it is overlooked or discounted. But several experts acknowledge that psychological trauma of this sort does exist.

Barry Jacobs, a clinical psychologist and author of “The Emotional Survival Guide for Caregivers” (The Guilford Press, 2006), often sees caregivers who struggle with intrusive thoughts and memories months and even years after a loved one has died.

“Many people find themselves unable to stop thinking about the suffering they witnessed, which is so powerfully seared into their brains that they cannot push it away,” Dr. Jacobs said.

Flashbacks are a symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder, along with feelings of numbness, anxiety, guilt, dread, depression, irritability, apathy, tension and more. Though one symptom or several do not prove that such a condition exists — that’s up to an expert to determine — these issues are a “very common problem for caregivers,” Dr. Jacobs said.

Dolores Gallagher-Thompson, a professor of psychiatry at the Stanford University School of Medicine who treats many caregivers, said there was little evidence that caregiving on its own caused post-traumatic stress. But if someone is vulnerable for another reason — perhaps a tragedy experienced earlier in life — this kind of response might be activated.

“When something happens that the individual perceives and reacts to as a tremendous stressor, that can intensify and bring back to the forefront of consciousness memories that were traumatic,” Dr. Gallagher-Thompson said. “It’s more an exacerbation of an already existing vulnerability.”

Dr. Judy Stone, the physician who was willing to share her mother’s end-of-life experience and her powerful reaction to it, fits that definition in spades.

Both of Dr. Stone’s Hungarian parents were Holocaust survivors: her mother, Magdus, called Maggie by family and friends, had been sent to Auschwitz; her father, Miki, to Dachau. The two married before World War II, after Maggie left her small village, moved to the city and became a corset maker in Miki’s shop.

Death cast a long shadow over the family. During the war, Maggie’s first baby died of exposure while she was confined for a time to the Debrecen ghetto. After the war, the family moved to the United States, where they worked to recover a sense of normalcy and Miki worked as a maker of orthopedic appliances. Then he died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 50.

“None of us recovered from that,” said Dr. Stone, who traces her interest in medicine and her lifelong interest in fighting for social justice to her parents and trips she made with her father to visit his clients.

Decades passed, as Dr. Stone operated an infectious disease practice in Cumberland, Md., and raised her own family.

In her old age, Maggie, who her daughter describes as “tough, stubborn, strong,” developed macular degeneration, bad arthritis and emphysema — a result of a smoking habit she started just after the war and never gave up. Still, she lived alone, accepting no help until she reached the age of 92.

Then, in late 2007, respiratory failure set in, causing the old woman to be admitted to the hospital, then rehabilitation, then assisted living, then another hospital. Maggie had made her preferences absolutely clear to her daughter, who had medical power of attorney: doctors were to pursue every intervention needed to keep her alive.

Yet one doctor sent her from a rehabilitation center to the hospital during respiratory crisis with instructions that she was not to be resuscitated — despite her express wishes. Fortunately, the hospital called Dr. Stone and the order was reversed.

“You have to be ever vigilant,” Dr. Stone said when asked what advice she would give to families. “You can’t assume that anything, be it a D.N.R. or allergies or medication orders, have been communicated correctly.”

Other mistakes were made in various settings: There were times that Dr. Stone’s mother had not received necessary oxygen, was without an inhaler she needed for respiratory distress, was denied water or ice chips to moisten her mouth, or received an antibiotic that can cause hallucinations in older people, despite Dr. Stone’s request that this not happen. “People didn’t listen,” she said. “The lack of communication was horrible.”

It was a daily fight to protect her mother and make sure she got what she needed, and “frankly, if I hadn’t been a doctor, I think I would have been thrown out of there,” she said.

In the end, when it became clear that death was inevitable, Maggie finally agreed to be taken off a respirator. But rather than immediately arrange for palliative measures, doctors arranged for a brief trial to see if she could breathe on her own.

“They didn’t give her enough morphine to suppress her agony,” Dr. Stone recalled.

Five years have passed since her mother died, and “I still have nightmares about her being tortured,” the doctor said. “I’ve never been able to overcome the feeling that I failed her — I let her down. It wasn’t her dying that is so upsetting, it was how she died and the unnecessary suffering at the end.”

Dr. Stone had specialized in treating infectious diseases and often saw patients who were critically ill in intensive care. But after her mother died, “I just could not do it,” she said. “I couldn’t see people die. I couldn’t step foot in the I.C.U. for a long, long time.”

Today, she works part time seeing patients with infectious diseases on an as-needed basis in various places — a job she calls “rent a doc” — and blogs for Scientific American about medical ethics. “I tilt at windmills,” she said, describing her current occupations.

Most important to her is trying to change problems in the health system that failed her mother and failed her as well. But Dr. Stone has a sense of despair about that: it is too big an issue, too hard to tackle.

I’m grateful to her for sharing her story so that other caregivers who may have experienced overwhelming emotional reactions that feel like post-traumatic stress realize they are not alone.

It is important to note that both Dr. Jacobs and Dr. Gallagher-Thompson report successfully treating caregivers beset by overwhelming stress. It is hard work and it takes time, but they say recovery is possible. I’ll give a sense of treatment options they and others recommend in another post.

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Canon Forecast Falls Short of Expectations

TOKYO — Canon expects a 26.6 percent increase in operating profit this year as it cuts costs and increases revenue — but the projection Wednesday still fell short of analysts’ expectations.

Canon, a camera and printer maker considered a leader in profitability in corporate Japan with its aggressive cost-cutting, is angling for a foothold in the growing market for mirrorless cameras with interchangeable lenses, where it faces stiff competition from Sony, Olympus and Nikon.

Canon’s operating profit for the three months that ended Dec. 31 fell 17.9 percent, to ¥77.7 billion, or $853 million, below the average estimate of ¥100.9 billion among seven analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

“Both its full-year earnings and forecast are below market consensus, so the results were seen as negative,” said Makoto Kikuchi, the chief executive of Myojo Asset Management. “Investors have bought Canon on overly high expectations that a weaker yen will lift its bottom line, but such excitement should recede.”

Demand for compact cameras is shrinking as consumers shift to smartphones, while stretched budgets among customers in Europe have eroded sales of Canon’s office printers. And the company, which derives 80 percent of its revenue from overseas, was badly hit by the firmness of the Japanese currency last year. Canon officials said Wednesday that economic recovery in India and China, as well as aggressive economic stimulus policies in Japan, were likely to support the company’s earnings.

The company set its exchange rate assumptions for the business year ending in December at ¥85 to the dollar and ¥115 to the euro, weaker than the average last year of ¥79.96 per dollar and ¥102.8 per euro.

As one of the first blue-chip Japanese companies to report quarterly results, Canon is often seen as a barometer for technology sector earnings.

The company forecast a full-year operating profit of ¥410 billion for the current year through December, compared with the average expectation of a ¥443.3 billion profit among 21 analysts, according to Thomson Reuters StarMine.

Canon’s shares have fallen about 1 percent since the start of last year, underperforming the Nikkei average’s gain of 31 percent. The shares slipped to a three-year low in July, when Canon cut its outlook on fears of shrinking demand in China.

The stock ended nearly 3 percent higher Wednesday before the earnings announcement.

Xerox, with which Canon competes for a share of the global printer market, overshot expectations with its quarterly earnings and maintained its full-year targets as it restructures parts of its business and commits to further cost cuts.

Nikon is due to report its results next Wednesday, with Sony following the next day.

 

 

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India Ink: No Knowledge of Pakistan Complaints, Indian Officials Say

Following the recent killings of Indian and Pakistani soldiers near the Kashmir border, a local newspaper reported classified United Nations documents show that the cycle of violence between troops of the two countries has continued despite the cease-fire in 2003.

The Hindu, a national English-language daily newspaper, said Wednesday that Pakistan has repeatedly complained to the United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan about the killings of at least 18 of its soldiers, including four beheadings, by Indian forces between 2000 and 2011. The United Nations group was set up in 1949 to monitor cease-fire violations between the two countries.

In the worst flare-up since the 2003 cease-fire, Indian and Pakistani troops exchanged gunfire near the Line of Control earlier this month, resulting in deaths on both sides. At the time, India accused Pakistan of beheading one of its soldiers, a charge Pakistan denies.

Among the complaints it filed, Pakistan alleged in 2003 that Indian forces decapitated one of its soldiers, the Hindu said.

The Hindu also reported that Pakistan also complained that Indian forces decapitated two civilians during a massacre in the village of Bandala in 1998, which claimed 22 civilian lives.

Sitanshu Kar, spokesman for the Indian Ministry of Defense, said that he had no knowledge of Pakistan’s complaints to the United Nations group, and that he had not been contacted for The Hindu article. “It’s the first time I’m hearing about this,” he said. “I have not seen any such document.”

Syed Akbaruddin, the spokesman for the India’s Ministry of External Affairs, said that India did not have any formal exchange with the United Nations Military Observer Group. “We feel that Unmogip has outlived its relevance,” he said. The country’s relationship with the organization ended after India and Pakistan entered the 1972 Simla Agreement, in which both countries said they would resolve their disputes bilaterally.

Mr. Akbaruddin added that Pakistan had not raised these complaints directly with India. “Frankly, this is not a discussion we have had diplomatically,” he said.

An official at the United Nations organization’s office in Srinagar refused to comment on the report, or whether such complaints by Pakistan had been received. Calls made to the group’s office in Delhi were not answered.

A spokesman for the Indian Army was not immediately available for comment.

Lt. Gen. Baljit Singh Jaswal, who from October 2009 to December 2010 led the Northern Command, which supervises troops in Jammu and Kashmir, said that India had engaged in no cross-border violations during that time.

General Jaswal, now retired, added that Pakistan had violated the cease-fire “numerous times” and that India had exchanged retaliatory fire.

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DealBook: Former Jefferies Trader Is Charged With Fraud

Federal prosecutors charged a former senior trader at the Jefferies Group on Monday with defrauding his clients — and the government — while selling them mortgage-backed securities after the financial crisis.

Jesse C. Litvak, the former Jefferies trader, is accused of generating more than $2 million in revenue for Jefferies by overcharging his customers through deceitful conduct. Those who are said to have been his victims include some of the world’s largest investment firms, including Soros Fund Management, Magnetar Capital, BlackRock and Wellington Management.

The government was also a victim in this case, prosecutors said, because Mr. Litvak’s clients were managing money that was part of the Treasury Asset Relief Program, or TARP, the $700 billion bailout fund. As part of a public-private investment program, the Treasury picked nine private firms to invest in toxic mortgage-backed securities and help remove them from the clogged balance sheets of the large banks.

While the alleged violations — cheating brokerage clients by misrepresenting the prices of securities — might typically prompt the loss of a job or civil lawsuits, such conduct rarely, if ever, rises to the level of a federal criminal prosecution.

The case demonstrates the aggressive prosecutorial stance of the special inspector general for TARP, or Sigtarp, which led the investigation. The office, now led by Christy Romero, has been responsible for criminal cases filed against 121 individuals.

“Illegally profiting from a federal program designed to assist our nation in recovering from one of our worst economic crises is reprehensible,” said David B. Fein, the United States attorney in Connecticut, whose office brought the charges. The Securities and Exchange Commission filed a parallel civil action in the case.

Federal agents arrested Mr. Litvak, 38, early Monday morning at his apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. He made an appearance in Federal District Court in Bridgeport, Conn., and was released on $1 million bail. Mr. Litvak, who worked at RBS Greenwich Capital earlier in his career, joined Jefferies in 2008 and was fired in December 2011.

“Jesse Litvak did not cheat anyone out of a dime,” said Patrick J. Smith, Mr. Litvak’s lawyer at DLA Piper, in a statement. “In fact, most of these trades turned out to be hugely profitable. Jesse looks forward to the trial in this case so that his name can be cleared and he can get on with his career.”

While the market for mortgage-backed securities is complex and opaque, the charges against Mr. Litvak are rather simple. Prosecutors said that he deceived his customers about the prices of the securities that he sold to them. The indictment said that Mr. Litvak deployed the scheme in part to increase the size of his year-end bonus.

In some cases, they said, Mr. Litvak would lie about the price at which his firm had bought a security so he could resell it to another customer at a higher price and earn more money for the firm. In other instances, the government said, he created a fake seller to give the impression that he was arranging a trade between two customers, when in fact he was selling the security out of his firm’s inventory at a high price.

“The kind of false claims made by Litvak were unfit for a used-car lot, let alone a marketplace for mortgage-backed securities,” said George S. Canellos, the S.E.C.’s deputy director of enforcement.

Mr. Smith, the lawyer for Mr. Litvak, said that the trades were transactions between sophisticated market participants and that the profits that Jefferies earned on each trade were well within industry norms for the mortgage-backed securities market.

Mr. Litvak wants Jefferies to pay his legal fees related to the government’s investigation, and he has filed papers in the Delaware Court of Chancery demanding compensation from the bank. Jefferies has refused to reimburse him, arguing that it fired Mr. Litvak for cause. Richard Khaleel, a spokesman for Jefferies, declined to comment.

The case first showed up on the government’s radar after one of Mr. Litvak’s customers, AllianceBernstein, complained to Jefferies that the bank had overcharged it for mortgage-backed securities, according to people briefed on the case. According to records from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, or Finra, Jefferies settled the case with AllianceBernstein for $2.2 million.

Court papers depict Mr. Litvak as an exuberant salesman, frequently communicating with instant messages and peppering his communications with slang. When Mr. Litvak reported to a client, Wellington Management, about a sham purchase, he wrote “winner winner chicken dinner.” Another time, the complaint said, Mr. Litvak gave a customer a false report on the price of a security that he sold to a hedge fund, York Capital Management. “We are doneski gorgeous!” he wrote.

A version of this article appeared in print on 01/29/2013, on page B1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Ex-Trader For Jefferies Is Charged With Fraud.

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Rescuer Appears for New York Downtown Hospital

Manhattan’s only remaining hospital south of 14th Street, New York Downtown, has found a white knight willing to take over its debt and return it to good health, hospital officials said Monday.

NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, one of New York City’s largest academic medical centers, has proposed to take over New York Downtown in a “certificate of need” filed with the State Health Department. The three-page proposal argues that though New York Downtown is projected to have a significant operating loss in 2013, it is vital to Lower Manhattan, including Wall Street, Chinatown and the Lower East Side, especially since the closing of St. Vincent’s Hospital after it declared bankruptcy in 2010.

The rescue proposal, which would need the Health Department’s approval, comes at a precarious time for hospitals in the city. Long Island College Hospital, just across the river in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, has been threatened with closing after a failed merger with SUNY Downstate Medical Center, and several other Brooklyn hospitals are considering mergers to stem losses.

New York Downtown has been affiliated with the NewYork-Presbyterian health care system while maintaining separate operations.

“We are looking forward to having them become a sixth campus so the people in that community can continue to have a community hospital that continues to serve them,” Myrna Manners, a spokeswoman for NewYork-Presbyterian, said.

Fred Winters, a spokesman for New York Downtown, declined to comment.

Presbyterian’s proposal emphasized that it would acquire New York Downtown’s debt at no cost to the state, a critical point at a time when the state has shown little interest in bailing out failing hospitals.

The proposal said that if New York Downtown were to close, it would leave more than 300,000 residents of Lower Manhattan, including the financial district, Greenwich Village, SoHo, the Lower East Side and Chinatown, without a community hospital. In addition, it said, 750,000 people work and visit in the area every day, a number that is expected to grow with the construction of 1 World Trade Center and related buildings.

The proposal argues that New York Downtown is essential partly because of its long history of responding to disasters in the city. One of its predecessors was founded as a direct result of the 1920 terrorist bombing outside the J. P. Morgan Building, and the hospital has responded to the 1975 bombing of Fraunces Tavern, the 1993 and 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, and, this month, the crash of a commuter ferry from New Jersey.

Like other fragile hospitals in the city, New York Downtown has shrunk, going to 180 beds, down from the 254 beds it was certified for in 2006, partly because the more affluent residents of Lower Manhattan often go to bigger hospitals for elective care.

The proposal says that half of the emergency department patients at New York Downtown either are on Medicaid, the program for the poor, or are uninsured.

NewYork-Presbyterian would absorb the cost of the hospital’s maternity and neonatal intensive care units, which have been expanding because of demand, but have been operating at a deficit of more than $1 million a year, the proposal said.

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Gadgetwise Blog: Q&A: How to Set Up Twitter Lists

Is there a way to filter my Twitter feed to see all of the sports-related people and sites I follow into one group?

Twitter lets you create “lists” of the people and sites that you follow, and you can organize these lists by topic — like sports, weather, humor, news and so on. When you select a list you have made, you just see tweets from the people you specifically added to it, and not from everybody on your main Twitter feed.

To set up a list, log into your Twitter account on the Web. On the left side of your profile page, click Lists and then click the Create List button. Give your list a name and save it.

To add users you already follow, click the Following link to see the full list of accounts you have added to your Twitter feed. Click the drop-down menu next to a username and select “Add or remove from lists.” In the box that appears, turn on the checkbox next to the name of the list you just created and then close the box.

When you have finished adding all the accounts you want on a list, you can see the finished collection by clicking the Lists button on your Twitter page and selecting the name of the list. Standalone Twitter programs for the computer usually have a List button in the toolbar or menus for viewing your user compilations. On the Twitter app for Android or iOS, tap the Me icon, flick down the screen and tap Lists to see your groupings.

Lists can be private (meaning only you can see them) or public so that others can share and subscribe to them. Twitter has detailed instructions for using lists on its site.

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IHT Rendezvous: As Asia Grows, So Do Prizes

BEIJING — A new Asian prize that pays more than the Nobel Prize will launch next year, joining an expanding list of cash-rich awards in the region as prosperity and philanthropy grow. Yet one prize – China’s Confucius Peace Prize – set up in 2010 in apparently outraged response to the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to the jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo – seems to be unable to establish itself. In fact, as one commentator wrote in the state-run Global Times late last year, “the award has been widely mocked.”

That is unlikely to happen to the Tang Prize, set up by Samuel Yin, a multibillionaire from Taiwan who has pledged to give away nearly all his wealth.

The new prize will award $1.7 million every other year to winners in each of four fields: sustainable development, biopharmaceutical science, Sinology, and the rule of law, Science magazine reported. The money will be divided into two parts, an award and a research fund, with the bulk going to the award.

Mr. Yin, head of Ruentex Group, is Taiwan’s seventh-richest person, according to Forbes magazine, worth about $3.1 billion from diversified investments including a hypermarket, insurance and Taiwanese real estate.

The award, announced on Monday in Taipei, “lengthens the list of rich science prizes funded by Asian philanthropists,” Science magazine reported. “Run Run Shaw, a Hong Kong media mogul, in 2002 established the Shaw Prize, which annually confers $1 million for work in astronomy, life science and medicine, and mathematical sciences.”

“Three other major science prizes in Japan hand out about $550,000 to each winner annually,” including the Kyoto Prize (technology, basic science, arts and philosophy), the Japan Prize (environment, energy and infrastructure, and health care and medical technology), and the Blue Planet Prize (environmental research.)

Mr. Yin hopes the new prize will “encourage more research that is beneficial to the world and humankind, promote Chinese culture, and make the world a better place,” according to a press release.

Academia Sinica, which oversees Taiwan’s premier research labs, will be responsible for the nomination and selection process, Science reported. The prize is named after the Tang dynasty, a high point in Chinese civilization and multiculturalism.

Yet if awarding prizes for science is relatively straightforward, awarding prizes for peace is far more controversial, as the ongoing debacle with the Confucius Peace Prize shows.

Its travails have been widely reported, with this story in Time magazine summing up some of the major issues, which include “wacky” nominee lists and a controversial founder, the Peking University professor and staunch Chinese ultra-nationalist Kong Qingdong, who claims to be a 73rd-generation offspring of Confucius himself and who early last year caused a storm of controversy after calling Hong Kong people “dogs” and “thieves.”

Time said the prize, awarded by “an obscure mainland group” (the China International Peace Research Center) was “a clumsy attempt to divert attention from the fact that the world’s most famous peace prize had just gone to a jailed Chinese dissident.” The government has reportedly dissociated itself from the award.

In 2010 and 2011 it was awarded, respectively, to a Taiwanese politician, Lien Chan, and to the Russian leader Vladimir V. Putin. Neither showed up for the ceremony.

Instead, wrote Xue Lei, a research fellow at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies in the Global Times, “the award was given to a terrified small child” who was supposed to represent Mr. Lien, and to “two Russian hotties, supposed to represent Russian President Vladimir Putin,” all of which “just added to the entertainment value.”

Now, it appears to be slipping below the radar altogether.

Only a determined search of the Chinese internet showed up a report, dated Dec. 28, that suggested that last year a prize committee of 39 “experts and scholars” had in fact picked two winners for the 2012 award: Yuan Longping, known as “the father of hybrid rice,” a well-known scientist who for decades has worked to increase rice yields; and Kofi Annan, the former secretary-general of the United Nations.

But as the report on clubkdnet, an online chat forum, said, “there are no photographs on the internet of them receiving their prizes.”

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DealBook: Iceland Wins Major Case Over Failed Bank

More than four years after its banking system collapsed, Iceland won a landmark court case on Monday over its refusal to cover the losses of British and Dutch depositors who lost money in Icesave, a failed Icelandic bank.

In a judgment issued in Luxembourg, the court of the European Free Trade Association, or EFTA, cleared Iceland of complaints that it violated rules governing the protection of depositors drawn up by the European Union. While Iceland is not a member of the Union, it is bound by most of its rules as a member of EFTA.

The case has attracted widespread attention because it touches on issues of cross-border banking that have been at the center of the European Union’s efforts to ensure the future stability of its financial system.

The court ruling on Monday represents a major victory for Iceland. Unlike Ireland, which also experienced a catastrophic bank failure, Iceland declined to use taxpayer money to bail out foreign bondholders and depositors. This set off a bitter dispute with Britain, which used antiterrorism rules to take control of assets held in Britain by Icesave’s parent, Landsbanki.

The Icelandic government tried twice to settle the Icesave debts. But the country’s voters, asked to approve settlement plans in two separate referendums, rejected the proposals. Foreign holders of bonds issued by Landsbanki and two other failed Icelandic banks lost some $85 billion.

“It is a considerable satisfaction that Iceland’s defense has won the day in the Icesave case,” the Icelandic government said in a statement issued by the Foreign Ministry in Reykjavik. The ruling in Luxembourg, it added, “brings to a close an important stage in a long saga” and “Icesave is now no longer a stumbling block to Iceland economic recovery.”

Iceland’s economy is improving. Fitch recently raised its rating on the nation’s bonds, noting that its ‘‘unorthodox crisis policy response has succeeded in preserving sovereign creditworthiness.’’

Still, the Icesave saga has left an acrimonious legacy.

In a recent interview with British television, Iceland’s president, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, denounced Britain’s “eternal shame’” for invoking the terrorism laws. ‘”We were there together with Al Qaeda and the Taliban on that list,” he said. “We have not forgotten that in Iceland.”

Icesave collapsed in October 2008 along with its parent bank and the rest of the banking sector. Caught in the wreckage were some 350,000 people in Britain and the Netherlands who, lured by unusually high interest rates, had put their money into Icesave accounts.

The Icelandic government guaranteed the deposits of Icelanders who had money in failed banks. But it declined to cover the losses of foreigners with online accounts operated by Icesave, a move that prompted complaints of illegal discrimination to the court in Luxembourg.

The case against Iceland, which was bought by the Surveillance Authority of the European Free Trade Association, revolved around interpretation of a European Union directive requiring that deposits in the region’s banks be covered equally by deposit guarantee schemes. Britain and the Netherlands supported the case.

But the court ruled that the directive on guaranteeing bank deposits did not oblige the Icelandic authorities to ensure payment to depositors in Britain and the Netherlands ‘‘in a systemic crisis of the magnitude experienced in Iceland.’’ Iceland argued that all Icesave depositors would eventually get their money back but that the government, confronted in 2008 with a total breakdown of the financial system, did not have the means to offer immediate payment to all claims.

The court also cleared Iceland of complaints that it violated nondiscrimination rules when it protected domestic depositors by moving their accounts to solvent new banks but reneged on protecting foreign depositors. The government statement issued on Monday assured depositors that ‘‘Icesave claims will be paid out in full’’ by the estate of Landsbanki.

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