With Graph Search, Facebook Bets on More Sharing

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook’s greatest triumph has been to persuade a seventh of the world’s population to share their personal lives online.

Now the social network is taking on its archrival, Google, with a search tool to mine that personal information, just as people are growing more cautious about sharing on the Internet and even occasionally removing what they have already put up.

Whether Facebook’s more than one billion users will continue to divulge even more private details will determine whether so-called social search is the next step in how we navigate the online world. It will also determine whether Facebook has found a business model that will make it a lot of money.

“There’s a big potential upside for both Facebook and users, but getting people to change their behaviors in relation to what they share will not be easy,” said Andrew T. Stephen, who teaches marketing at the University of Pittsburgh and studies consumer behavior on online social networks.

This week, Facebook unveiled its search tool, which it calls graph search, a reference to the network of friends its users have created. The company’s algorithms will filter search results for each person, ranking the friends and brands that it thinks a user would trust the most. At first, it will mine users’ interests, photos, check-ins and “likes,” but later it will search through other information, including status updates.

“While the usefulness of graph search increases as people share more about their favorite restaurants, music and other interests, the product doesn’t hinge on this,” a Facebook spokesman, Jonathan Thaw, said.

Nevertheless, the company engineers who created the tool — former Google employees — say that the project will not reach its full potential if Facebook data is “sparse,” as they call it. But the company is confident people will share more data, be it the movies they watch, the dentists they trust or the meals that make their mouths water.

The things people declare on Facebook will be useful, when someone searches for those interests, Tom Stocky, one of the creators of Facebook search, said in an interview this week. Conversely, by liking more things, he said, people will become more useful in the eyes of their friends.

“You might be inclined to ‘like’ what you like so when your friends search, they’ll find it,” he said. “I probably would never have liked my dentist on Facebook before, but now I do because it’s a way of letting my friends know.”

Mr. Stocky offered these examples of how more information may be desirable: A single man may want to be discovered when a friend of a friend is searching for eligible bachelors in San Francisco or a restaurant that stays open late may want to be found by a night owl.

“People have shared all this great stuff on Facebook,” Mr. Stocky said. “It’s latent value. We wanted a way to unlock that.”

Independent studies suggest that Facebook users are becoming more careful about how much they reveal online, especially since educators and employers typically scour Facebook profiles.

A Northwestern University survey of 500 young adults in the summer of 2012 found that the majority avoided posting status updates because they were concerned about who would see them. The study also found that many had deleted or blocked contacts from seeing their profiles and nearly two-thirds had untagged themselves from a photo, post or check-in.

“These behavioral patterns seem to suggest that many young adults are less keen on sharing at least certain details about their lives rather than more,” said Eszter Hargittai, an associate professor of communication studies at Northwestern, who led the yet unpublished study among men and women aged 21 and 22.

Also last year, the Pew Internet Center found that social network users, including those on Facebook, were more aggressively pruning their profiles — untagging photos, removing friends and deleting comments.

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IHT Rendezvous: How Far Will Europeans Support France's Counter-Jihad?

LONDON — It did not require a crystal ball to foresee, as Rendezvous did in our 2013 preview, that Mali would be in the news and that France might be the first to intervene there to counter a perceived terrorist threat to Europe.

Less predictable, however, is the extent to which the French can rely on the support of their European allies now that they have decided to go it alone.

The crisis had been building for the best part of a year since mutinous soldiers staged a coup in Bamako, the Malian capital, last March, and separatist Tuareg tribesmen took the opportunity to seize the north of the country. The tribesmen were quickly pushed aside by radical Islamists, including those behind this week’s hostage-taking in neighboring Algeria.

They were poised to extend their rule this month beyond the two-thirds of the country they already control when the French stepped in at the request of the Bamako government.

As early as last April, Alain Juppé, the then French foreign minister, was warning of the “extremely grave threat” posed by the Qaeda-linked insurgents and their aim of establishing a jihadist regime in northern Mali.

In early September, António Guterres, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, was telling readers of the IHT:

If unchecked, the Mali crisis threatens to create an arc of instability extending west into Mauritania and east through Niger, Chad and Sudan to the Horn of Africa and the Gulf of Aden, characterized by extended spaces where state authority is weak and pockets of territorial control are exercised by transnational criminals.

So, did the international community, and Europe in particular, react too slowly to the escalating crisis? Or has France acted precipitously in opting for a military solution to contain the threat?

David Rohde writes elsewhere on Rendezvous that regional experts believe the French had to act.

But, as French troops launched ground operations this week in support of local forces, how far are France’s European allies prepared to be sucked into a potential Malian quagmire?

Germany, Denmark and Britain are among European Union partners that have offered logistical support in Mali.

However, as David Cameron, the British prime minister, assured Parliament when he announced the offer of transport aircraft to assist the French mission, there was no question of putting British boots on the ground.

The government of Chancellor Angela Merkel is being even more cautious, limiting its assistance to supplying planes to airlift African troops from the regional ECOWAS alliance.

“Under no circumstances does Germany want to become involved in a messy conflict with no clear end in sight,” Germany’s Der Spiegel commented, “particularly not in an election year.”

Germany held out against intervention in Libya in 2011, eventually spearheaded by France and Britain, siding with Russia in a crucial United Nations vote in defiance of its European allies.

Libya underlined the lack of a common foreign policy, let alone a common defense policy, among the 27 European partners who now face a new crisis in North Africa.

Facing recriminations from some in France that it was only its soldiers who were doing the fighting, European foreign ministers agreed on Thursday to speed up the dispatch of more than 200 military personnel to train Malian government forces to confront the Islamists.

But that was an option that had been on the table since October, when European Union officials said the alliance was considering such a move.

The E.U. also stressed that the trainers, due to be deployed by mid-February at the latest, would not be involved in combat operations.

Commenting on the outcome of Thursday’s meeting, Christophe Giltay of Belgium’s RTL broadcaster, said, “More and more French people are asking themselves if the Europeans have really understood the gravity of the situation.”

Alexandra de Hoop Scheffer and Martin Michelot of the Washington-based German Marshall Fund of the United States wrote this week that “the glacial pace at which decisions are taken at the national level to support France’s efforts in Mali only underscores the need for European leaders to be willing to discuss common security issues.”

Catherine Ashton, the European Union foreign policy chief, said on Thursday some of France’s partners were “willing to help and support France in every way and they did not rule in or rule out any aspect of that, including military support.”

But, according to the German Marshall Fund experts: “The French military is nevertheless facing the hard reality of acting on its own, with very little support from other European allies.”

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DealBook: Morgan Stanley's $481 Million 4th-Quarter Profit Beats Estimates

8:23 a.m. | Updated

Morgan Stanley reported adjusted earnings for the fourth quarter on Friday that beat analyst estimates, driven by gains in wealth management and stock trading.

Including charges, the firm had a fourth-quarter profit of $481 million, or 25 cents a share. That compares with a per-share loss of 15 cents in the year-ago period. The results seem to please investors. Morgan Stanley shares are up 6.4 percent in premarket trading.

The results, however, were affected by one-time accounting charges related to the firm’s credit spreads. Excluding those charges, the firm had a profit of 45 cents a share. That handily beat the estimates of analysts polled by Thomson Reuters, which had estimated a profit of 27 cents a share.

Morgan Stanley’s revenue came in at $7 billion in the fourth quarter, up 23 percent from the year-ago period.

Morgan Stanley’s chief executive, James P. Gorman, said in a release that Morgan Stanley had reached a “pivot point” in its turnaround strategy, which has been underway since the financial crisis when the firm’s operations were badly damaged. “Our firm is now poised to reach the returns of which it is capable on behalf of our shareholders,” he said.

The results are good news for Mr. Gorman, who has been working since the financial crisis to retool Morgan Stanley by shifting its focus away from potentially riskier businesses like trading and into steadier less capital-intensive areas like wealth management. While he has notched some successes, the company still faces challenges.

Notably, the firm has reduced the size of its fixed department in the wake of ratings downgrades and new regulatory requirements, both of which have forced it to hold more capital against riskier trading activities, reducing profitability. This month, it laid off 1,600 employees, many of them in fixed income.

Excluding the debt charge, institutional securities, which included fixed income and banking, had revenue of $3.5 billion, compared with $1.9 billion in the same quarter in 2011. The fixed income sales and trading unit reported adjusted revenue of $811 million, compared with a loss of $493 million in the year-ago period.

This week Morgan Stanley and other Wall Street firms notified employees of their 2012 compensation. Morgan Stanley set aside $15.62 billion for compensation, or about 60 percent of its 2012 revenue. This compares with 2011, when just 51 percent of revenue was allotted for compensation and benefits.

The high ratio of compensation as a percentage of revenue could raise eyebrows on Wall Street. In 2010, Mr. Gorman said that Morgan Stanley’s compensation rate of 62 percent that year was a “historic high” that no one on his management team “will ever see again.” He indicated that the rate should be no higher than 50 percent.

Earlier this week, Goldman Sachs posted profit of $5.60 a share, which outpaced analyst expectations. Citigroup, Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase have also recently reported stronger year-over-year earnings.

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The Neediest Cases: Medical Bills Crush Brooklyn Man’s Hope of Retiring

Andrea Mohin/The New York Times

John Concepcion and his wife, Maria, in their home in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. They are awaiting even more medical bills.

Retirement was just about a year away, or so John Concepcion thought, when a sudden health crisis put his plans in doubt.

For the past 100 years, The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund has provided direct assistance to children, families and the elderly in New York. To celebrate the 101st campaign, an article will appear daily through Jan. 25. Each profile will illustrate the difference that even a modest amount of money can make in easing the struggles of the poor.

Last year donors contributed $7,003,854, which was distributed to those in need through seven New York charities.

2012-13 Campaign

Previously recorded:

$6,865,501

Recorded Wed.:

16,711

*Total:

$6,882,212

Last year to date:

$6,118,740

*Includes $1,511,814 contributed to the Hurricane Sandy relief efforts.

“I get paralyzed, I can’t breathe,” he said of the muscle spasms he now has regularly. “It feels like something’s going to bust out of me.”

Severe abdominal pain is not the only, or even the worst, reminder of the major surgery Mr. Concepcion, 62, of Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, underwent in June. He and his wife of 36 years, Maria, are now faced with medical bills that are so high, Ms. Concepcion said she felt faint when she saw them.

Mr. Concepcion, who is superintendent of the apartment building where he lives, began having back pain last January that doctors first believed was the result of gallstones. In March, an endoscopy showed that tumors had grown throughout his digestive system. The tumors were not malignant, but an operation was required to remove them, and surgeons had to essentially reroute Mr. Concepcion’s entire digestive tract. They removed his gall bladder, as well as parts of his pancreas, bile ducts, intestines and stomach, he said.

The operation was a success, but then came the bills.

“I told my friend: are you aware that if you have a major operation, you’re going to lose your house?” Ms. Concepcion said.

The couple has since received doctors’ bills of more than $250,000, which does not include the cost of his seven-day stay at Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan. Mr. Concepcion has worked in the apartment building since 1993 and has been insured through his union.

The couple are in an anxious holding pattern as they wait to find out just what, depending on their policy’s limits, will be covered. Even with financial assistance from Beth Israel, which approved a 70 percent discount for the Concepcions on the hospital charges, the couple has no idea how the doctors’ and surgical fees will be covered.

“My son said, boy he saved your life, Dad, but look at the bill he sent to you,” Ms.  Concepcion said in reference to the surgeon’s statements. “You’ll be dead before you pay it off.”

When the Concepcions first acquired their insurance, they were in good health, but now both have serious medical issues — Ms. Concepcion, 54, has emphysema and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and Mr. Concepcion has diabetes. They now spend close to $800 a month on prescriptions.

Mr. Concepcion, the family’s primary wage earner, makes $866 a week at his job. The couple had planned for Mr. Concepcion to retire sometime this year, begin collecting a pension and, after getting their finances in order, leave the superintendent’s apartment, as required by the landlord, and try to find a new home. “That’s all out of the question now,” Ms. Concepcion said. Mr. Concepcion said he now planned to continue working indefinitely.

Ms. Concepcion has organized every bill and medical statement into bulging folders, and said she had spent hours on the phone trying to negotiate with providers. She is still awaiting the rest of the bills.

On one of those bills, Ms. Concepcion said, she spotted a telephone number for people seeking help with medical costs. The number was for Community Health Advocates, a health insurance consumer assistance program and a unit of Community Service Society, one of the organizations supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. The society drew $2,120 from the fund so the Concepcions could pay some of their medical bills, and the health advocates helped them obtain the discount from the hospital.

Neither one knows what the next step will be, however, and the stress has been eating at them.

“How do we get out of this?” Mr. Concepcion asked. “There is no way out. Here I am trying to save to retire. They’re going to put me in the street.”

Read More..

The Neediest Cases: Medical Bills Crush Brooklyn Man’s Hope of Retiring

Andrea Mohin/The New York Times

John Concepcion and his wife, Maria, in their home in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. They are awaiting even more medical bills.

Retirement was just about a year away, or so John Concepcion thought, when a sudden health crisis put his plans in doubt.

For the past 100 years, The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund has provided direct assistance to children, families and the elderly in New York. To celebrate the 101st campaign, an article will appear daily through Jan. 25. Each profile will illustrate the difference that even a modest amount of money can make in easing the struggles of the poor.

Last year donors contributed $7,003,854, which was distributed to those in need through seven New York charities.

2012-13 Campaign

Previously recorded:

$6,865,501

Recorded Wed.:

16,711

*Total:

$6,882,212

Last year to date:

$6,118,740

*Includes $1,511,814 contributed to the Hurricane Sandy relief efforts.

“I get paralyzed, I can’t breathe,” he said of the muscle spasms he now has regularly. “It feels like something’s going to bust out of me.”

Severe abdominal pain is not the only, or even the worst, reminder of the major surgery Mr. Concepcion, 62, of Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, underwent in June. He and his wife of 36 years, Maria, are now faced with medical bills that are so high, Ms. Concepcion said she felt faint when she saw them.

Mr. Concepcion, who is superintendent of the apartment building where he lives, began having back pain last January that doctors first believed was the result of gallstones. In March, an endoscopy showed that tumors had grown throughout his digestive system. The tumors were not malignant, but an operation was required to remove them, and surgeons had to essentially reroute Mr. Concepcion’s entire digestive tract. They removed his gall bladder, as well as parts of his pancreas, bile ducts, intestines and stomach, he said.

The operation was a success, but then came the bills.

“I told my friend: are you aware that if you have a major operation, you’re going to lose your house?” Ms. Concepcion said.

The couple has since received doctors’ bills of more than $250,000, which does not include the cost of his seven-day stay at Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan. Mr. Concepcion has worked in the apartment building since 1993 and has been insured through his union.

The couple are in an anxious holding pattern as they wait to find out just what, depending on their policy’s limits, will be covered. Even with financial assistance from Beth Israel, which approved a 70 percent discount for the Concepcions on the hospital charges, the couple has no idea how the doctors’ and surgical fees will be covered.

“My son said, boy he saved your life, Dad, but look at the bill he sent to you,” Ms.  Concepcion said in reference to the surgeon’s statements. “You’ll be dead before you pay it off.”

When the Concepcions first acquired their insurance, they were in good health, but now both have serious medical issues — Ms. Concepcion, 54, has emphysema and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and Mr. Concepcion has diabetes. They now spend close to $800 a month on prescriptions.

Mr. Concepcion, the family’s primary wage earner, makes $866 a week at his job. The couple had planned for Mr. Concepcion to retire sometime this year, begin collecting a pension and, after getting their finances in order, leave the superintendent’s apartment, as required by the landlord, and try to find a new home. “That’s all out of the question now,” Ms. Concepcion said. Mr. Concepcion said he now planned to continue working indefinitely.

Ms. Concepcion has organized every bill and medical statement into bulging folders, and said she had spent hours on the phone trying to negotiate with providers. She is still awaiting the rest of the bills.

On one of those bills, Ms. Concepcion said, she spotted a telephone number for people seeking help with medical costs. The number was for Community Health Advocates, a health insurance consumer assistance program and a unit of Community Service Society, one of the organizations supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. The society drew $2,120 from the fund so the Concepcions could pay some of their medical bills, and the health advocates helped them obtain the discount from the hospital.

Neither one knows what the next step will be, however, and the stress has been eating at them.

“How do we get out of this?” Mr. Concepcion asked. “There is no way out. Here I am trying to save to retire. They’re going to put me in the street.”

Read More..

DealBook: Michael Dell’s Empire in a Buyout Spotlight

The computer empire of Michael S. Dell spreads across a campus of low-slung buildings in Round Rock, Tex.

But his financial empire — estimated at $16 billion — occupies the 21st floor of a dark glass skyscraper on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.

It is there that MSD Capital, started by Mr. Dell 15 years ago to manage his fortune, has quietly built a reputation as one of the smartest investors on Wall Street. By amassing a prodigious portfolio of stocks, companies, real estate and timberland, Mr. Dell has reduced his exposure to the volatile technology sector and branched out into businesses as diverse as dentistry and landscaping.

Now, Mr. Dell is on the verge of making one of the biggest investments of his life. The 47-year-old billionaire and his private equity backers are locked in talks to acquire Dell, the company he started with $1,000 as a teenager three decades ago, in a leveraged buyout worth more than $20 billion. MSD could play a role in the Dell takeover, according to people briefed on the deal.

The private equity firm Silver Lake has been in negotiations to join with Mr. Dell on a transaction, along with other potential partners like wealthy Asian investors or foreign funds. Mr. Dell would be expected to roll his nearly 16 percent ownership of the company into the buyout, a stake valued at about $3.5 billion. He could also contribute additional personal money as part of the buyout.

That money is managed by MSD, among the more prominent so-called family offices that are set up to handle the personal investments of the wealthy. Others with large family offices include Bill Gates, whose Microsoft wealth financed the firm Cascade Investment, and New York’s mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg, who set up his firm, Willett Advisors, in 2010 to manage his personal and philanthropic assets.

“Some of these family offices are among the world’s most sophisticated investors and have the capital and talent to compete with the largest private equity firms and hedge funds,” said John P. Rompon, managing partner of McNally Capital, which helps structure private equity deals for family offices.

A spokesman for MSD declined to comment for this article. The buyout talks could still fall apart.

In 1998, Mr. Dell, then just 33 years old — and his company’s stock worth three times what it is today — decided to diversify his wealth and set up MSD. He staked the firm with $400 million of his own money, effectively starting his own personal money-management business.

To head the operation, Mr. Dell hired Glenn R. Fuhrman, a managing director at Goldman Sachs, and John C. Phelan, a principal at ESL Investments, the hedge fund run by Edward S. Lampert. He knew both men from his previous dealings with Wall Street. Mr. Fuhrman led a group at Goldman that marketed specialized investments like private equity and real estate to wealthy families like the Dells. And Mr. Dell was an early investor in Mr. Lampert’s fund.

Mr. Fuhrman and Mr. Phelan still run MSD and preside over a staff of more than 100 overseeing Mr. Dell’s billions and the assets in his family foundation. MSD investments include a stock portfolio, with positions in the apparel company PVH, owner of the Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger brands, and DineEquity, the parent of IHOP and Applebee’s.

Among its real estate holdings are the Four Seasons Resort Maui in Hawaii and a stake in the New York-based developer Related Companies.

MSD also has investments in several private businesses, including ValleyCrest, which bills itself as the country’s largest landscape design company, and DentalOne Partners, a collection of dental practices.

Perhaps MSD’s most prominent deal came in 2008, in the middle of the financial crisis, when it joined a consortium that acquired the assets of the collapsed mortgage lender IndyMac Bank from the federal government for about $13.9 billion and renamed it OneWest Bank.

The OneWest purchase has been wildly successful. Steven Mnuchin, a former Goldman executive who led the OneWest deal, has said that the bank is expected to consider an initial public offering this year. An I.P.O. would generate big profits for Mr. Dell and his co-investors, according to people briefed on the deal.

Another arm of MSD makes select investments in outside hedge funds. Mr. Dell invested in the first fund raised by Silver Lake, the technology-focused private equity firm that might now become his partner in taking Dell private.
MSD’s principals have already made tidy fortunes. In 2009, Mr. Fuhrman, 47, paid $26 million for the Park Avenue apartment of the former Lehman Brothers chief executive Richard S. Fuld. Mr. Phelan, 48, and his wife, Amy, a former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader, also live in a Park Avenue co-op and built a home in Aspen, Colo.

Both are influential players on the contemporary art scene, with ARTNews magazine last year naming each of them among the world’s top 200 collectors. MSD, too, has dabbled in the visual arts. In 2010, MSD bought an archive of vintage photos from Magnum, including portraits of Marilyn Monroe and Mahatma Gandhi, and has put the collection on display at the University of Texas, Mr. Dell’s alma mater.

Just as the investment firms Rockefeller & Company (the Rockefellers, diversifying their oil fortune) and Bessemer Trust (the Phippses, using the name of the steelmaking process that formed the basis of their wealth) started out as investment vehicles for a single family, MSD has recently shown signs of morphing into a traditional money management business with clients beside Mr. Dell.

Last year, for the fourth time, an MSD affiliate raised money from outside investors when it collected about $1 billion for a stock-focused hedge fund, MSD Torchlight Partners. A 2010 fund investing in distressed European assets also manages about $1 billion. The Dell family is the anchor investor in each of the funds, according to people briefed on the investments.

MSD has largely remained below the radar, though its name emerged a decade ago in the criminal trial of the technology banker Frank Quattrone on obstruction of justice charges. Prosecutors introduced an e-mail that Mr. Fuhrman sent to Mr. Quattrone during the peak of the dot-com boom in which he pleaded for a large allotment of a popular Internet initial public offering.

“We know this is a tough one, but we wanted to ask for a little help with our Corvis allocation,” Mr. Fuhrman wrote. “We are looking forward to making you our ‘go to’ banker.”

The e-mail, which was not illegal, was meant to show the quid pro quo deals that were believed to have been struck between Mr. Quattrone and corporate chieftains like Mr. Dell — the bankers would give executives hot I.P.O.’s and the executives, in exchange, would hold out the possibility of giving business to the bankers. (Mr. Quattrone’s conviction was reversed on appeal.)

The MSD team has also shown itself to be loyal to its patron in other ways.

On the MSD Web site, in the frequently asked questions section, the firm asks and answers queries like “how many employees do you have” and “what kind of investments do you make.”

In the last question on the list, MSD asks itself, “Do you use Dell computer equipment?” The answer: “Exclusively!”

---

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 18, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated when an MSD affiliate raised money from outside investors for a hedge fund. It was last year, not earlier this year. The article also misstated which hedge fund and its focus. It was MSD Torchlight Partners, a stock-focused hedge fund, not MSD Energy Partners, an energy-focused hedge fund.

A version of this article appeared in print on 01/18/2013, on page B1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Michael Dell’s Empire In a Buyout Spotlight.

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U.N. Refugee Agency Warns of Crisis in Mali

GENEVA — As French and African troops prepare to escalate their offensive against Islamist forces in the north of Mali, the United Nations refugee agency said on Friday it was preparing for around 700,000 people to flee the violence, many to neighboring countries. The U.N. believes more than 400,000 refugees could flee to neighboring countries and another 300,000 are likely to be displaced internally “in the next several months,” Melissa Fleming a spokeswoman for the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, said.

These will be in addition to around 376,000 who have fled the turmoil in the past year, she said, including 147,000 who went to Mauritania, Niger and Burkina Faso and around 229,000 the Malian government estimates are displaced within the country.

Malians arriving in neighboring countries since the start of French airstrikes a week ago said they feared the strict application of Muslim Shariah law by Islamist rebels. They have given accounts of executions and amputations and reported that children as young as 10 had been recruited to join the rebel groups.

Some families handed over children to the rebels for religious reasons but the parents of most of the children were attracted by promised payments of around $700, according to a report to the U.N. Human Rights Council detailing serious abuses, including executions, torture and rape committed by armed groups in northern Mali. It also reported similar atrocities in areas under the control of the Malian Army.

The report, compiled by human rights experts who visited Mali and neighboring countries in November, says combatants of one armed group, the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad, were reported to have executed 94 soldiers from a group of 153 it had captured.

Women in northern Mali have suffered harassment and sexual violence from armed groups applying extreme interpretations of Shariah, the report added. It cited the case of a 22-year-old woman raped by six armed men for not wearing a veil in her home. The report said girls as young as 12, had been forced to marry members of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and other militant groups and subjected to days of gang rape before being abandoned after a “divorce.”

Malian soldiers were alleged to have executed nine Tuareg rebels in northern Mali in February and 16 pilgrims in September, the report said. It expressed alarm at mounting tension among ethnic groups in Mali and warned of possible reprisals against Tuareg and Arab communities believed to be linked to armed Islamist groups.

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DealBook: Facing Legal Costs, Citigroup Disappoints in 4th Quarter

Citigroup, which has been working to cut costs and unload troubled assets, continues to struggle under the weight of its mortgage woes.

The bank reported fourth quarter profit of $1.2 billion or 38 cents a share, significantly below analysts estimates. Excluding one-time time items, earnings amounted to 69 cents a share.

Ahead of the bank’s quarterly earnings, analyst estimated earnings at 96 cents a share, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters. Last year, the bank posted profit of $956 million, or 31 cents a share.

The disappointing quarter relates to the ongoing legal problems, as the bank works to clean up the mortgage mess stemming from the financial crisis. In the fourth quarter, Citigroup had $1.3 billion of legal costs and related expenses.

Citigroup has also faced increasing pressure from shareholders to buoy its returns. As part of that push, the bank has been working through a glut of soured loans and unloading less profitable business lines while systematically reducing costs. In December, the bank announced it would cut 11,000 jobs world wide, part of a much larger contraction.

“Our bottom line earnings reflect an environment that remains challenging,” Michael Corbat, the chief executive of Citigroup, said in a statement. “It will take some time to work through the challenges of the current environment but realizing our core earnings potential, as well as improving our returns on assets and tangible equity, are critical goals going forward.”

Beneath the headline numbers, Citigroup did experience gains in some of its businesses.

The bank has been focusing on developing countries, where there is comparatively more growth opportunities than in the United States. Within the global consumer banking group, revenue from international operations increased 4 percent to $4.9 billion in the fourth quarter. Revenue in North America rose 3 percent to $5.3 billion.

Citigroup’s securities and banking group also improved, on the strength of investment banking, equities and fixed income. The unit reported net income of $629 million for the quarter, compared with a $158 million loss.

The fourth quarter earnings are the first under Mr. Corbat’s leadership.

In October, the bank’s powerful chairman, Michael O’Neill, abruptly ousted Vikram S. Pandit as chief executive. Since taking the reins of the bank, Mr. Corbat has vowed to continue revamp the bank, focusing on its core businesses and exiting less profitable areas.

Such efforts have weighed on the bank’s bottom line in the short term. In the fourth quarter, Citigroup’s operating expenses rose 5 percent to $13.8 billion.

Along with its strategic moves, Citigroup also paid for its legal problems. Like rivals, the bank faces claims that it used shoddy documents in foreclosure proceedings that may have led to wrongful evictions.

Earlier this month, Citigroup, along with nine other banks, agreed earlier this month to sign on to an $8.5 billion settlement with the Federal Reserve and the Comptroller of the Currency. The settlement will allow Citigroup to move beyond an expensive review of loans mandated by regulators in 2011.

The costs related to that settlement amounted to $305 million in the latest quarter. Citigroup, however, did not provide any granularity on what accounted for the remainder of the bank’s increased legal costs.

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The New Old Age Blog: Officials Say Checks Won't Be in the Mail

The jig is up.

Two years ago, the Treasury Department initiated its Go Direct campaign to persuade people still receiving paper checks for their Social Security, Veterans Affairs, S.S.I. and other federal benefits to switch to direct deposit.

“At that point, we were issuing approximately 11 million checks each month,” or about 15 percent of the total, Walt Henderson, director of the campaign, told me.

After putting notices in every monthly check envelope, circulating public service announcements and putting the word out through banks, senior centers, the Red Cross, AARP and other organizations, the Treasury Department has since shrunk that number to five million monthly checks.

That means 93 percent of those getting federal benefits are using direct deposit or, if they prefer or lack a bank account, a Direct Express debit card that gets refilled each month and can be used anywhere that accepts MasterCard.

“So people have been getting the word and making the switch,” Mr. Henderson said. Now, federal officials are pushing the last holdouts to convert to direct deposit by March 1.

Although officials say the change is not optional, the jig isn’t entirely up. If you or your older relative does not respond to their pleading, “we’re not going to interrupt their payments,” Mr. Henderson said. But the department will start sending letters urging people to switch.

The major motive is financial: shifting the last paper checks to direct deposit or a debit card (only 2 percent of recipients go that route) will save $1 billion over the next decade, the department estimates.

But safety enters the picture, too. One reason some beneficiaries resist direct deposit, Mr. Henderson said, is that they fear their electronic deposits can be hacked or diverted. Having grown up in a predigital age, perhaps they feel safer with a check in their hands.

But they probably aren’t. In 2011, the Treasury Department received 440,000 reports of lost or stolen benefits checks. With direct deposit, “there’s no check lingering unattended in a mailbox,” Mr. Henderson noted.

The greater reason for sticking with paper is probably simple inertia. “It’s human nature to procrastinate,” he said.

But unless you or your relatives want a series of letters from the Treasury Department, it is probably time for the last fence-sitters to get with the program.

They don’t need to use a computer. People can switch to direct deposit, or get the debit card, at their banks or the local Social Security office. More simply, they can call a toll-free number, (800) 333-1795, and have agents walk them through the change. Or they can sign up online at www.GoDirect.org.

They will need:

1. Their Social Security number.
2. The 12-digit federal benefit number found on their checks.
3. The amount of the most recent check.
4. And, for direct deposit, a bank or credit union routing number, usually found on the front of a check. They can have direct deposit to a savings account, too.

A caution for New Old Age readers: If you think your relative has not switched because he or she is cognitively impaired and can no longer handle his finances, you can be designated a representative payee and receive monthly Social Security or S.S.I. payments on your relative’s behalf. This generally requires a visit to your local Social Security office, documentation in hand.

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Paula Span is the author of “When the Time Comes: Families With Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions.”

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The New Old Age Blog: Officials Say Checks Won't Be in the Mail

The jig is up.

Two years ago, the Treasury Department initiated its Go Direct campaign to persuade people still receiving paper checks for their Social Security, Veterans Affairs, S.S.I. and other federal benefits to switch to direct deposit.

“At that point, we were issuing approximately 11 million checks each month,” or about 15 percent of the total, Walt Henderson, director of the campaign, told me.

After putting notices in every monthly check envelope, circulating public service announcements and putting the word out through banks, senior centers, the Red Cross, AARP and other organizations, the Treasury Department has since shrunk that number to five million monthly checks.

That means 93 percent of those getting federal benefits are using direct deposit or, if they prefer or lack a bank account, a Direct Express debit card that gets refilled each month and can be used anywhere that accepts MasterCard.

“So people have been getting the word and making the switch,” Mr. Henderson said. Now, federal officials are pushing the last holdouts to convert to direct deposit by March 1.

Although officials say the change is not optional, the jig isn’t entirely up. If you or your older relative does not respond to their pleading, “we’re not going to interrupt their payments,” Mr. Henderson said. But the department will start sending letters urging people to switch.

The major motive is financial: shifting the last paper checks to direct deposit or a debit card (only 2 percent of recipients go that route) will save $1 billion over the next decade, the department estimates.

But safety enters the picture, too. One reason some beneficiaries resist direct deposit, Mr. Henderson said, is that they fear their electronic deposits can be hacked or diverted. Having grown up in a predigital age, perhaps they feel safer with a check in their hands.

But they probably aren’t. In 2011, the Treasury Department received 440,000 reports of lost or stolen benefits checks. With direct deposit, “there’s no check lingering unattended in a mailbox,” Mr. Henderson noted.

The greater reason for sticking with paper is probably simple inertia. “It’s human nature to procrastinate,” he said.

But unless you or your relatives want a series of letters from the Treasury Department, it is probably time for the last fence-sitters to get with the program.

They don’t need to use a computer. People can switch to direct deposit, or get the debit card, at their banks or the local Social Security office. More simply, they can call a toll-free number, (800) 333-1795, and have agents walk them through the change. Or they can sign up online at www.GoDirect.org.

They will need:

1. Their Social Security number.
2. The 12-digit federal benefit number found on their checks.
3. The amount of the most recent check.
4. And, for direct deposit, a bank or credit union routing number, usually found on the front of a check. They can have direct deposit to a savings account, too.

A caution for New Old Age readers: If you think your relative has not switched because he or she is cognitively impaired and can no longer handle his finances, you can be designated a representative payee and receive monthly Social Security or S.S.I. payments on your relative’s behalf. This generally requires a visit to your local Social Security office, documentation in hand.

---

Paula Span is the author of “When the Time Comes: Families With Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions.”

Read More..