Global Health: After Measles Success, Rwanda to Get Rubella Vaccine

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Rwanda has been so successful at fighting measles that next month it will be the first country to get donor support to move to the next stage — fighting rubella too.


On March 11, it will hold a nationwide three-day vaccination campaign with a combined measles-rubella vaccine, hoping to reach nearly five million children up to age 14. It will then integrate the dual vaccine into its national health service.


Rwanda can do so “because they’ve done such a good job on measles,” said Christine McNab, a spokeswoman for the Measles and Rubella Initiative. M.R.I. helped pay for previous vaccination campaigns in the country and the GAVI Alliance is helping to finance the upcoming one.


Rubella, also called German measles, causes a rash that is very similar to the measles rash, making it hard for health workers to tell the difference.


Rubella is generally mild, even in children, but in pregnant women, it can kill the fetus or cause serious birth defects, including blindness, deafness, mental retardation and chronic heart damage.


Ms. McNab said that Rwanda had proved that it can suppress measles and identify rubella, and it would benefit from the newer, more expensive vaccine.


The dual vaccine costs twice as much — 52 cents a dose at Unicef prices, compared with 24 cents for measles alone. (The MMR vaccine that American children get, which also contains a vaccine against mumps, costs Unicef $1.)


More than 90 percent of Rwandan children now are vaccinated twice against measles, and cases have been near zero since 2007.


The tiny country, which was convulsed by Hutu-Tutsi genocide in 1994, is now leading the way in Africa in delivering medical care to its citizens, Ms. McNab said. Three years ago, it was the first African country to introduce shots against human papilloma virus, or HPV, which causes cervical cancer.


In wealthy countries, measles kills a small number of children — usually those whose parents decline vaccination. But in poor countries, measles is a major killer of malnourished infants. Around the world, the initiative estimates, about 158,000 children die of it each year, or about 430 a day.


Every year, an estimated 112,000 children, mostly in Africa, South Asia and the Pacific islands, are born with handicaps caused by their mothers’ rubella infection.


Thanks in part to the initiative — which until last year was known just as the Measles Initiative — measles deaths among children have declined 71 percent since 2000. The initiative is a partnership of many health agencies, vaccine companies, donors and others, but is led by the American Red Cross, the United Nations Foundation, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Unicef and the World Health Organization.


This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 27, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the source of the vaccine and some financing for the campaign. The vaccine and financing is being provided by the GAVI Alliance, not the Measles and Rubella Initiative.




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Penney Reports Big Loss for Fourth Quarter

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NEW YORK (AP) — Boy, it just wasn't J.C. Penney's year.




The mid-priced department store chain on Wednesday reported another much larger-than-expected loss in the fiscal fourth quarter on a nearly 30 percent plunge in revenue in the latest sign that shoppers aren't happy with the changes it's made in the past year.


The results mark a full year of massive quarterly losses and revenue declines that miss Wall Street estimates since J.C. Penney Co. began a turnaround strategy that included ditching most of its coupons and sales events in favor of everyday low prices, bringing in hipper designer brands such as Betsy Johnson and remaking outdated stores.


The quarterly performance also puts additional pressure on CEO Ron Johnson, the former Apple Inc. executive who was brought in about a year ago to turn the stodgy retailer that was losing money into a hip and profitable company that can compete with the likes of Macy's or H&M. In the past year since Johnson rolled out his plan, though, even once loyal customers have strayed away from the 1,100-store chain.


Teresa Cansell, for instance, used to make the 45-mile trek from her farm near Leon, Kan., to a Penney store in Wichita about once a month. But since Penney started making changes last year, she's only been twice. And on her latest trip in December, she walked out empty handed because she couldn't find a leather jacket she wanted.


"I loved the old J.C. Penney. I liked the coupons," Cansell, 53, said. "I used to go to Penney every time I got them in the mail. I would buy a ton of stuff."


Penney's results show that other shoppers feel the same way. During the fourth quarter that ended Feb. 2, Penney's revenue at stores opened at least a year — a figure the retail industry uses to measure of a store's health — dropped 31.7 percent.


That's on top of hefty drops in the previous three quarters of 26.1 percent in the third, 21.7 percent in the second and 19 percent in the first. And it's steeper than the decline of 26.1 percent Wall Street had expected.


Penney, based in Plano, Texas, also widened its loss to $552 million, or $2.51 per share, up from a loss of $87 million, or 41 cents per share a year ago. Excluding charges related to restructuring and management changes, Penney's adjusted loss for the quarter was $427 million, or $1.95 per share.


Total revenue dropped 28.4 percent to $3.88 billion. Analysts had expected a loss of 23 cents on revenue of $4.08 billion, according to research firm FactSet.


Penney's results for the full year reveal just how much the company is struggling to shore up its business.


For the fiscal year, Penney lost $985 million, or $4.49 per share, compared with a loss of $152 million, or 70 cents per share, in fiscal 2011. And the company's revenue fell nearly a quarter, or 24.8 percent, to $12.98 billion from the previous year's $17.26 billion.


"It's the worst performance I have ever seen by a company in one year," said Walter Loeb, an independent retail consultant.


Wall Street hasn't been any happier than Main Street with Penney's changes.


On the quarterly news of its quarterly results, which were reported after markets were closed for the day, Penney shares fell nearly 9 percent, or $1.89, to $19.27 in after-hour trading.


In total, investors, who initially sent Penney shares soaring 24 percent to about $43 after the company announced the everyday pricing plan in late January of last year, have pushed them down by about half since early last year and the company's ratings are in junk status.


It's not the way Johnson had hoped things would go when he took the top job at Penney in November 2012. A couple of months later, on Feb. 1 of last year, Johnson launched a new pricing that was designed to wean customers off the markdowns they'd become accustomed to, but that ultimately eat into profits.


He got rid of the nearly 600 sales Penney offered at various times throughout the year for a three-tiered strategy that permanently lowered prices on all items in the store by 40 percent, offered monthlong discounts on select items and periodic clearance events throughout the year. He also got rid of the word "sales" from the company's marketing and rolled out colorful ads that featured dogs and children.


But customers weren't responding to the changes, so Johnson had to tweak his strategy. The latest change started this month when Penney began adding back sales events. The company also started putting price tags on half of its merchandise that show customers how much they're saving by shopping at Penney. The chain also rolled out ads to showcase that people can save money by shopping there.


In addition to those changes, Johnson has said that Penney is starting to see some positive results from its makeover of stores with sectioned-off shops that feature different brands. The company said the reception has been warm to the 10 mini-shops that it rolled out this fall, including those for Levi's brand and Penney's new JCP line of casual clothes. Other brands, including Joe Fresh, will be rolled out in coming years.


The worry on Wall Street is that Johnson won't be able to turn around business fast enough to finance the transformation of its stores. But customers like Ricky Rodriguez, from Fort Worth, Texas, offer hope for Penney.


"I feel like the guy section is getting more hip," said the 27-year-old who recently bought a dress shirt for $25 at Penney. "I've been going there every other week."


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The Lede: Video of Fatal Balloon Crash in Egypt Captured by Witness

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Last Updated, 5:59 p.m. As our colleague David Kirkpatrick reports, at least 18 people were killed and three were injured when a high-altitude balloon carrying tourists burst into flames near the Egyptian monuments at Luxor on Tuesday.

According to Egyptian media accounts, the pilot had been pulling a rope to stabilize the balloon as it landed in a field of sugar cane near the southern city of Luxor. A gas hose ripped, the fire began and the pilot and some passengers jumped from the burning balloon before it soared back up into the air and burst into flames.

The Guardian obtained distressing video of the disaster recorded by a passenger in another balloon nearby.

Mohamed Youssef, the pilot of the balloon from which the video of was shot, told the British newspaper that after the fire started when the balloon was close to the ground, “the pilot jumped because the fire was on his body. Another customer near the edge of the balloon jumped.” After those two people jumped from the basket beneath the balloon, Mr. Youssef said, the balloon rose as a result of the loss of weight and the heat. “At 10 to 15 meters, another customer jumped,” he added. “Then it reached 300 feet. Four people jumped. Then the basket separated from the envelope because of the heat. Then it falls to earth.” Mr. Youssef also described the disaster in an interview with the BBC.

The Egyptian television channel Youm 7 broadcast video of the wreckage, which was also shown in images posted online by witnesses.

Video Youm 7 footage of the crash scene.

An Egyptian witness, Mahmoud Mohamed Salem, took photographs of the crash scene, showing remnants of the balloon and the covered remains of victims, and posted them on Twitter and Facebook.

Several other witnesses described the aftermath of the disaster to news organizations, including France 24 and The Telegraph.

An American photographer, Christopher Michel, was on a balloon trip nearby and posted a series of serene shots of the balloons above Luxor before the accident on his Web site and Twitter feed.

“I heard the explosion just prior to our landing,” Mr. Michel explained in a telephone interview with The Telegraph. He added that over the subsequent hour he and others near the scene started to realize there had been fatalities.

In responses to other photographers who disagreed with his decision to make his photographs on the balloon trip available to news organizations without charge, Mr. Michel wrote that he did not want to profit from the tragedy.

Hot air balloon accidents in Egypt have been documented before in videos and in this report in the Daily Telegraph in 2009.

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Experts: Pistorius violated basic firearms rules

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JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Even if Oscar Pistorius is acquitted of murder, firearms and legal experts in South Africa believe that, by his own account, the star athlete violated basic gun-handling regulations and exposed himself to a homicide charge by shooting into a closed door without knowing who was behind it.


Particularly jarring for firearms instructors and legal experts is that Pistorius testified that he shot at a closed toilet door, fearing but not knowing for certain that a nighttime intruder was on the other side. Instead of an intruder, Pistorius' girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp was in the toilet cubicle. Struck by three of four shots that Pistorius fired from a 9 mm pistol, she died within minutes. Prosecutors charged Pistorius with premeditated murder, saying the shooting followed an argument between the two. Pistorius said it was an accident.


South Africa has stringent laws regulating the use of lethal force for self-protection. In order to get a permit to own a firearm, applicants must not only know those rules but must demonstrate proficiency with the weapon and knowledge of its safe handling, making it far tougher to legally own a gun in South Africa than many other countries where a mere background check suffices.


Pistorius took such a competency test for his 9 mm pistol and passed it, according to the South African Police Service's National Firearms Center. Pistorius' license for the 9 mm pistol was issued in September 2010. The Olympic athlete and Paralympic medalist should have known that firing blindly, instead of at a clearly identified target, violates basic gun-handling rules, firearms and legal experts said.


"You can't shoot through a closed door," said Andre Pretorius, president of the Professional Firearm Trainers Council, a regulatory body for South African firearms instructors. "People who own guns and have been through the training, they know that shooting through a door is not going to go through South African law as an accident."


"There is no situation in South Africa that allows a person to shoot at a threat that is not identified," Pretorius added. "Firing multiple shots, it makes it that much worse. ...It could have been a minor — a 15-year-old kid, a 12-year-old kid — breaking in to get food."


The Pistorius family, through Arnold Pistorius, uncle of the runner, has said it is confident that the evidence will prove that Steenkamp's death in the predawn hours of Feb. 14 was "a terrible and tragic accident."


In an affidavit to the magistrate who last Friday freed him on bail, Pistorius said he believed an intruder or intruders had gotten into his US$560,000 (€430,000) two-story house, in a guarded and gated community with walls topped by electrified fencing east of the capital, Pretoria, and were inside the toilet cubicle in his bathroom. Believing he and Steenkamp "would be in grave danger" if they came out, "I fired shots at the toilet door" with the pistol that he slept with under his bed, he testified.


Criminal law experts said that even if the prosecution fails to prove premeditated murder, firing several shots through a closed door could bring a conviction for the lesser but still serious charge of culpable homicide, a South African equivalent of manslaughter covering unintentional deaths through negligence.


Johannesburg attorney Martin Hood, who specializes in firearm law, said South African legislation allows gun owners to use lethal force only if they believe they are facing an immediate, serious and direct attack or threat of attack that could either be deadly or cause grievous injury.


According to Pistorius' own sworn statement read in court, he "did not meet those criteria," said Hood, who is also the spokesman for the South African Gun Owners' Association.


"If he fired through a closed door, there was no threat to him. It's as simple as that," he added. "He can't prove an attack on his life ... In my opinion, at the very least, he is guilty of culpable homicide."


The Associated Press emailed a request for comment to Vuma, a South African reputation management firm hired by the Pistorius family to handle media questions about the shooting.


The firm replied: "Due to the legal sensitivities around the matter, we cannot at this stage answer any of your questions as it might have legal implications for a case that still has to be tried in a court of law." Vuma said on Monday it referred the AP's questions to Pistorius' legal team, which by Tuesday had not replied.


Culpable homicide covers unintentional deaths ranging from accidents with no negligence, like a motorist whose brakes fail, killing another road user, "to where it verges on murder or where it almost becomes intentional," said Hood. Sentences — ranging from fines to prison — are left to courts to determine and are not set by fixed guidelines.


The tough standards for legally acquiring a gun were instituted in part because of a wave of weapons purchases after the end of racist white rule in 1994, said Rick De Caris, a former legal director in the South African police. Under South Africa's white-minority apartheid regime, gun owners often learned how to handle firearms during military service. Many of the new gun owners had little or no firearms training, which brought tragic results, De Caris said.


"People were literally shooting themselves when cleaning a firearm," said De Caris, who helped draft the Firearms Control Act of 2000.


Prospective gun owners must now take written exams that include questions on the law, have to show they can safely handle and shoot a gun and are required to hit a target the size of a glossy magazine in 10 of 10 shots from seven meters (23 feet), said Pretorius of the Professional Firearm Trainers Council.


In his affidavit, Pistorius said he wasn't wearing his prosthetic limbs "and felt extremely vulnerable" after hearing noise from the toilet.


"I grabbed my 9 mm pistol from underneath my bed. On my way to the bathroom, I screamed words to the effect for him/them to get out of my house and for Reeva to phone the police. It was pitch-dark in the bedroom and I thought Reeva was in bed," he testified.


Legal experts said they are puzzled why Pistorius apparently didn't first fire a warning shot to show the supposed intruder he was armed. Also unanswered is why, after he heard noise in his bathroom that includes the toilet cubicle, Pistorius still went toward the bathroom — toward the perceived danger — rather than retreat back into his bedroom.


"He should have tried to get out of the situation," said Hood, the attorney.


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Advanced Breast Cancer May Be Rising Among Young Women, Study Finds

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The incidence of advanced breast cancer among younger women, ages 25 to 39, may have increased slightly over the last three decades, according to a study released Tuesday.


But more research is needed to verify the finding, which was based on an analysis of statistics, the study’s authors said. They do not know what may have caused the apparent increase.


Some outside experts questioned whether the increase was real, and expressed concerns that the report would frighten women needlessly.


The study, published in The Journal of the American Medical Association, found that advanced cases climbed to 2.9 per 100,000 younger women in 2009, from 1.53 per 100,000 women in 1976 — an increase of 1.37 cases per 100,000 women in 34 years. The totals were about 250 such cases per year in the mid-1970s, and more than 800 per year in 2009.


Though small, the increase was statistically significant, and the researchers said it was worrisome because it involved cancer that had already spread to organs like the liver or lungs by the time it was diagnosed, which greatly diminishes the odds of survival.


For now, the only advice the researchers can offer to young women is to see a doctor quickly if they notice lumps, pain or other changes in the breast, and not to assume that they cannot have breast cancer because they are young and healthy, or have no family history of the disease.


“Breast cancer can and does occur in younger women,” said Dr. Rebecca H. Johnson, the first author of the study and medical director of the adolescent and young adult oncology program at Seattle Children’s Hospital.


But Dr. Johnson noted that there is no evidence that screening helps younger women who have an average risk for the disease and no symptoms. “We’re certainly not advocating that young women get mammography at an earlier age than is generally specified,” she said.


Expert groups differ about when screening should begin; some say at age 40, others 50.


Breast cancer is not common in younger women; only 1.8 percent of all cases are diagnosed in women from 20 to 34, and 10 percent in women from 35 to 44. However, when it does occur, the disease tends to be more deadly in younger women than in older ones. Researchers are not sure why.


The researchers analyzed data from SEER, a program run by the National Cancer Institute to collect cancer statistics on 28 percent of the population of the United States. The study also used data from the past when SEER was smaller.


The study is based on information from 936,497 women who had breast cancer from 1976 to 2009. Of those, 53,502 were 25 to 39 years old, including 3,438 who had advanced breast cancer, also called metastatic or distant disease.


Younger women were the only ones in whom metastatic disease seemed to have increased, the researchers found.


Dr. Archie Bleyer, a clinical research professor in radiation medicine at the Knight Cancer Institute at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland who helped write the study, said scientists needed to verify the increase in advanced breast cancer in young women in the United States and find out whether it is occurring in other developed Western countries. “This is the first report of this kind,” he said, adding that researchers had already asked colleagues in Canada to analyze data there.


“We need this to be sure ourselves about this potentially concerning, almost alarming trend,” Dr. Bleyer said. “Then and only then are we really worried about what is the cause, because we’ve got to be sure it’s real.”


Dr. Johnson said her own experience led her to look into the statistics on the disease in young women. She had breast cancer when she was 27; she is now 44. Over the years, friends and colleagues often referred young women with the disease to her for advice.


“It just struck me how many of those people there were,” she said.


Dr. Donald A. Berry, an expert on breast-cancer data and a professor of biostatistics at the University of Texas’ M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, said he was dubious about the finding, even though it was statistically significant, because the size of the apparent increase was so small — 1.37 cases per 100,000 women, over the course of 30 years.


More screening and more precise tests to identify the stage of cancer at the time of diagnosis might account for the increase, he said.


“Not many women aged 25 to 39 get screened, but some do, but it only takes a few to account for a notable increase from one in 100,000,” Dr. Berry said.


Dr. Silvia C. Formenti, a breast cancer expert and the chairwoman of radiation oncology at New York University Langone Medical Center, questioned the study in part because although it found an increased incidence of advanced disease, it did not find the accompanying increase in deaths that would be expected.


A spokeswoman for an advocacy group for young women with breast cancer, Young Survival Coalition, said the organization also wondered whether improved diagnostic and staging tests might explain all or part of the increase.


“We’re looking at this data with caution,” said the spokeswoman, Michelle Esser. “We don’t want to invite panic or alarm.”


She said it was important to note that the findings applied only to women who had metastatic disease at the time of diagnosis, and did not imply that women who already had early-stage cancer faced an increased risk of advanced disease.


Dr. J. Leonard Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, said he and an epidemiologist for the society thought the increase was real.


“We want to make sure this is not oversold or that people suddenly get very frightened that we have a huge problem,” Dr. Lichtenfeld said. “We don’t. But we are concerned that over time, we might have a more serious problem than we have today.”


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DealBook: Tribune Hire Banks to Weigh a Sale of Its Newspapers

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4:43 p.m. | Updated

The Tribune Company has hired investment banks to weigh a sale of its top newspapers, including The Chicago Tribune and The Los Angeles Times, the media conglomerate said on Tuesday.

The media company, which emerged from bankruptcy late last year, has retained JPMorgan Chase and Evercore Partners as advisers, a spokesman for Tribune said.

The spokesman, Gary Weitman, added that the move was prompted by unsolicited expressions of interest in the newspapers from various suitors.

“Hiring outside financial advisors will help us determine whether that interest is credible, allow us to consider all of our options, and fulfill our fiduciary responsibility to our shareholders and employees,” he said in the statement.

Tribune’s move comes as little surprise. Speculation has been swirling around the media industry for some time that a number of potential suitors had emerged for the company’s holdings. That group may include News Corporation, which is in the middle of spinning off its newspaper holdings from its far bigger Fox entertainment operations. That new company may consider acquisitions as a way to gain more clout and reap cost savings.

Another potential buyer is Aaron Kushner, who owns a group of newspapers that include the Orange County Register and who has been publicly vocal about his interest in the Tribune properties.

Peter Liguori, Tribune’s recently appointed chief executive, told The Los Angeles Times last month that he had not ruled out a sale of the company’s newspaper brands but added that he wasn’t “going into this job with a fire-sale sign.”

Tribune is considered likely to hold onto its newspapers, which also include The Baltimore Sun and The Hartford Courant, if the price it fetches is not high enough.

A sale would help Tribune focus more on its bigger broadcasting operations, which includes WGN America and 24 stations across the country. Mr. Liguori himself is a television veteran, having formerly worked in News Corp.’s TV division and at Discovery Communications.

Tribune filed for bankruptcy protection in 2008, just one year after the media concern was taken over by the billionaire Samuel Zell in a deal that relied heavily on borrowed money.

The company emerged from Chapter 11 protection on Dec. 31, under the control of the investment firms Oaktree Capital and Angelo, Gordon, as well as JPMorgan.

It left bankruptcy in relatively healthy financial condition, reporting about $9.8 billion in assets and $1.3 billion in liabilities as of Dec. 30.

Evercore was hired earlier this month to advise The New York Times Company as it considers a sale of its New England media assets, principally The Boston Globe.

Shares in Tribune, which trade over the counter, were up 1.3 percent on Tuesday at $53.50. That values the media conglomerate at about $3 billion.

News of the hiring of the banks was reported earlier by CNBC.

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Skepticism Surrounds Resumption of Nuclear Talks With Iran

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ALMATY, Kazakhstan — Talks between Iran and six world powers over its nuclear program resume here on Tuesday after a break of eight months, but there is a general atmosphere of gloom about their prospects for success, even if narrowly defined.




Since talks in Moscow last June, Iran has continued to increase its stockpile of uranium enriched to 20 percent purity, has begun to install a new generation of centrifuges and has not yet completed an agreement on inspection of suspect military sites with the International Atomic Energy Agency, a deal originally advertised as all but done last May.


With presidential elections in Iran scheduled for June, senior Western diplomats involved with these talks expressed skepticism that Tehran’s chief negotiator, Saeed Jalili, would be willing to make compromises that could be portrayed as weakness at home.


Mr. Jalili is the personal representative of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, considered the dominant voice on the nuclear issue. Ayatollah Khamenei has recently expressed continued mistrust of the United States and its intentions, saying that he would not allow the kind of bilateral talks between Washington and Tehran that most analysts think would be crucial to any resolution.


At the same time, Iran has taken some of its stockpile of 20 percent enriched uranium and converted it into reactor fuel, which cannot easily be turned back. The conversion means that Iran now has less of the uranium needed to make a bomb, reducing the sense of urgency among the six powers, and Israel, that its nuclear program needs to be slowed.


But the total Iranian stockpile of 20 percent enriched uranium has nonetheless grown since November to 167 kilograms from 135 kilograms, according to the most recent I.A.E.A. report — closer to, if still significantly below, the 240 kilograms or 250 kilograms many experts consider necessary, once enriched further, to produce a nuclear weapon.


Iran denies that its nuclear program has any military aim. The six world powers, the so-called P5-plus-1 group, which are the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — and Germany, want Iran to obey Security Council resolutions ordering it to suspend enrichment and open itself up fully to I.A.E.A. inspectors, to ensure that there is no effort to build a nuclear weapon.


To press Iran to comply, the Security Council, the United States and the European Union have created an increasingly painful set of economic sanctions on Iran, as part of a dual-track strategy — negotiations and sanctions. Iran has for its part insisted that as a precondition for serious negotiations, the world should lift all the sanctions and recognize Iran’s “right to enrich,” which Iran asserts it has as a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.


The negotiations have been tedious, with Iran appearing to be playing for time, diplomats say. The six powers had asked for a resumption of these talks as early as December, but Iran rejected dates and sites before finally suggesting and agreeing upon Almaty. The choice pleased Western diplomats for its symbolic value, since Kazakhstan, when it became independent of the Soviet Union, freely relinquished the nuclear weapons it had inherited from Moscow. American officials are holding up Kazakhstan, one of the world’s largest producers of uranium and a maker of nuclear fuel, as an example to Iran of the benefits of peaceful nuclear energy and compliance with the I.A.E.A.


President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan appealed to Tehran in a New York Times Op-Ed article in March 2012 to abandon what he suggested was its pursuit of nuclear power status. “Kazakhstan’s experience shows that nations can reap huge benefits from turning their backs on nuclear weapons,” he wrote.


While expectations are low, the six hope to leave here with some momentum and signs of Iranian willingness to engage in what all have agreed should be a reciprocal and step-by-step process of lifting sanctions in return for Iranian actions to comply.


“Iran needs to understand that there is an urgent need to make concrete and tangible progress” in these talks, said Michael Mann, the spokesman for Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s foreign policy chief and chairwoman of the P5-plus-1 group.


Mr. Mann said that the six powers have together “prepared a good and updated offer for the talks which we believe is balanced and a fair basis for constructive talks” and that is “also responsive to Iranian ideas.”


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AP source: Tom Brady gets 3-year extension

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A person familiar with the contract tells The Associated Press that Tom Brady has received a three-year extension from the New England Patriots worth about $27 million.


The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the extension has not been announced.


The 35-year-old two-time league MVP was signed through 2014, and has said he wants to play five more years. By redoing his contract Monday, Brady also has cleared nearly $15 million from New England's salary cap.


The three-time Super Bowl champion will make far less in those three seasons than the going rate for star quarterbacks. Brady currently has a four-year, $72 million deal with $48 million guaranteed.


Sports Illustrated first reported the extension.


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Books: Gauging Faces and Bodies in the Botox Age

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You never know what a little vanity will do for a person’s health. Some people bloom in their quest for physical improvement, others wither, and a few are completely destroyed. Despite centuries’ worth of efforts to penetrate the complicated thickets where health and beauty intertwine, there is always more to explore, as two new books make clear.




Dr. Eric Finzi, a dermatologist in the Washington area, has produced what may be the first authorized biography of botulinum toxin, the fearsome poison that, bottled into mild-mannered Botox, enhances foreheads everywhere. This little molecule does its good work by paralyzing muscles: In the forehead it inactivates the frown-producing corrugators, while used elsewhere on the head and body it can alleviate migraine headaches, stop problem sweating and ease the spasticity associated with a range of neurological diseases.


But even those who know all about the drug’s physical effects will be intrigued by Dr. Finzi’s narrative, because it turns out that cosmetic Botox may not be all about vanity after all. Research studies, including some by Dr. Finzi, have found that the substance appears to alleviate depression more safely and perhaps more effectively than the usual treatments.


That result at first seems trivial and obvious: If you stop frowning at people, they’ll like you more  and treat you better, and you won’t feel so blue. But the process turns out to be considerably more sophisticated and complicated, because it appears to apply even to people without visible frown lines.


Dr. Finzi calls it “noncosmetic cosmetic surgery” and traces the postulated mechanism to some of the lesser-known work of William James and Charles Darwin. Both thinkers argued that facial expressions are not just the outward manifestations of emotion, but vital links in the unconscious neurological processes that create emotion. In other words, if you cannot smile, you will never be as happy as if you could, and if you cannot frown, you will be unable to experience the full intensity of the negative emotions manifested by frowning, depression included.


This “facial feedback hypothesis” has found some modern confirmation in a study showing that injections of Botox into the forehead seem to inhibit activation of the amygdala, the brain structure thought to regulate all gut-wrenching emotion.


Dr. Finzi expands his narrative with a discussion of the subtleties of common facial expressions, including homage to interested parties like Norman Cousins and his idea that laughter could cure disease.


But the book’s major focus is the frown: Dr. Finzi offers anecdotes suggesting that taming overactive corrugators may save marriages and boost careers, and then, spinning some of the still largely debatable theories linking depression and anger with chronic disease, he postulates that Botox treatments may someday prove to help forestall heart disease and cancer.


That’s quite a set of achievements for one bad little molecule, gram for gram the most potent toxin we know. Dr. Finzi is no stylist, but the momentum of his argument keeps the reader with him for the duration (and undoubtedly quite a few overactive corrugators will be soothed into submission as a result).


The complexities of the face almost pale in comparison with those of the torso, as Abigail C. Saguy makes clear in “What’s Wrong With Fat?” “Once you put down this book you will never hear the word ‘obesity’ the same way again,” she promises, and she is absolutely correct.


Dr. Saguy, a sociologist at U.C.L.A., methodically teases out all the overtones of the loaded words we use to describe big bodies. These bodies are, after all, neither good nor bad, just big.


But “fat” often implies the coexistence of sloth, gluttony and self-indulgence. “Obesity” equals disease to medical professionals, while in the world of public health it is a raging epidemic with substantial global mortality. Those immersed in the conventional ideals of beauty see being overweight as an aesthetic disaster, but others find it sexually irresistible, and to activists “fat” has become a rallying cry, with weight-based discrimination a violation of social justice as deplorable as that stemming from race or gender.


In fact, the concept of bigness has become so laden with overtones good and bad — guilt, blame, fear, anger and desire, among others — that finding a value-free way to describe men and women who are larger than average has become almost impossible. “Heavy,” “plus-size,” “corpulent” and “fleshy” all carry weighty implications in one sphere or another.


Dr. Saguy analyzes it all, and asks why. She winds up paying particular attention to the debate in the medical world over the actual health consequences of being fat: Studies keep confounding the reigning supposition that thin is best with evidence that modestly overweight may be even better. Meanwhile, those who are larger than average are routinely blamed for their size, a phenomenon augmented by deplorably simplistic media coverage (unlike anorexia, interestingly enough, which is remarkably free of the same connotations of personal fault).


Much of Dr. Saguy’s text is academic and requires some determination to penetrate, but she also provides immensely readable nuggets, notably a brief discussion of her experiences attending an annual convention of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance, where, seven months pregnant, she underwent a funhouse-mirror body-image transformation worthy of Alice in Wonderland. Like Dr. Finzi’s narrative deficiencies, hers fade into unimportance in the face of fascinating and illuminating material.


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Media Decoder Blog: Online Piracy Alert System to Begin This Week

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The Copyright Alert System, a program of escalating warnings and prods against people suspected of online copyright infringement, is finally going into effect this week, more than a year and a half after the plan was announced as part of an agreement between the entertainment industry and five major Internet service providers.

The Center for Copyright Information, the organization created to administer the system, announced on Monday that the Internet providers would begin putting it in place “over the course of the next several days,” though it gave no specifics. The Internet companies are AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Verizon and Time Warner Cable.

In the alert system, media companies monitor online traffic through a third party and can complain to Internet providers if a file is downloaded illegally. The suspected violator is then given the first of six warnings, some of which carry “educational” messages and must be acknowledged. After the fifth and sixth warnings, the customer’s Internet speed can be slowed to a crawl.

The Center for Copyright Information says it will not ask for repeat offenders’ Internet access to be blocked, but most service providers have the right to do that if a customer violates its terms of service. The findings can be contested for a $35 fee, to be refunded if an appeal is successful.

The introduction of the alert system has been notably slow. Nearly a year passed before the group had a leader in place, and its own prediction failed when it said in October that the system would be coming in two months. Part of the reason for that might be the relationships between media companies and Internet service providers, which in the past have often been adversarial over issues of piracy and control.

So-called graduated response programs like the Copyright Alert System have been tried in other countries, with mixed results. France’s Hadopi law, passed in 2009, set up a system of three “strikes,” culminating in a fine. More than a million warnings have been issued through that plan, but a recent government report said that its effects were “hard to evaluate precisely.”

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