Tagliabue holds Saints bounties hearing in DC

WASHINGTON (AP) — Former NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue and lawyers for the league and the players' union have arrived for a hearing in the Saints bounties case.

Tagliabue is overseeing the latest round of player appeals in Washington.

Former Saints assistant Mike Cerullo, a key witness in the NFL's investigation, is scheduled to speak Thursday. Former New Orleans defensive coordinator Gregg Williams is to participate in Friday's session.

Two Saints players who were suspended, linebacker Jonathan Vilma and defensive end Will Smith, had said they plan to attend when Williams is there.

Vilma's lawyer attended Thursday's hearing at an office building.

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Cost of Brand-Name Prescription Medicines Soaring





The price of brand-name prescription medicines is rising far faster than the inflation rate, while the price of generic drugs has plummeted, creating the largest gap so far between the two, according to a report published Wednesday by the pharmacy benefits manager Express Scripts.




The report tracked an index of commonly used drugs and found that the price of brand-name medicines increased more than 13 percent from September 2011 to this September, which it said was more than six times the overall price inflation of consumer goods. Generic drug prices dipped by nearly 22 percent.


The drop in the price of generics “represents low-hanging fruit for the country to save money on health care,” said Dr. Steve Miller, the chief medical officer of Express Scripts, which manages the drug benefits for employers and insurers and also runs a mail-order pharmacy.


The report was based on a random sample of six million Express Scripts members with prescription drug coverage.


The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the trade group representing brand-name manufacturers, criticized the report, saying it was skewed by a handful of high-priced specialty drugs that are used by a small number of patients and overlooked the crucial role of major drug makers.


“Without the development of new medicines by innovator companies, there would be neither the new treatments essential to progress against diseases nor generic copies,” Josephine Martin, executive vice president of the group, said in a statement.


The report cited the growth of specialty drugs, which treat diseases like cancer and multiple sclerosis, as a major reason for the increase in spending on branded drugs. Spending on specialty medicines increased nearly 23 percent during the first three quarters of 2012, compared with the same period in 2011. All but one of the new medicines approved in the third quarter of this year were specialty drugs, the report found, and many of them were approved to treat advanced cancers only when other drugs had failed.


Stephen W. Schondelmeyer, a professor of pharmaceutical economics at the University of Minnesota, said the potential benefits of many new drugs did not always match the lofty price tags. “Increasingly it’s going to be difficult for drug-benefit programs to make decisions about coverage and payment and which drugs to include,” said Mr. Schondelmeyer, who conducts a similar price report for AARP. He also helps manage the drug benefit program for the University of Minnesota.


“We’re going to be faced with the issue that any drug at any price will not be sustainable.”


Spending on traditional medicines — which treat common ailments like high cholesterol and blood pressure — actually declined by 0.6 percent during the period, the report found. That decline was mainly because of the patent expiration of several blockbuster drugs, like Lipitor and Plavix, which opened the market for generic competitors. But even as the entry of generic alternatives pushed down spending, drug companies continued to raise prices on their branded products, in part to squeeze as much revenue as possible out of an ever-shrinking portfolio, Dr. Miller said.


Drug makers are also being pushed by companies like Express Scripts and health insurers, which are increasingly looking for ways to cut costs, said C. Anthony Butler, a pharmaceuticals analyst at Barclays. “I think they’re pricing where they can but what they keep telling me is they’re under significant pressure” to keep prices low, he said.


Express Scripts earns higher profits from greater use of generic medicines than brand name drugs sold through their mail-order pharmacy, Mr. Butler said. “There’s no question that they would love for everybody to be on a generic,” he said.


Dr. Miller acknowledged that was true but said that ultimately, everyone wins. “When we save people money, that’s when we make money,” he said. “We don’t shy away from that.”


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Medicare Is Faulted in Electronic Medical Records Conversion





The conversion to electronic medical records — a critical piece of the Obama administration’s plan for health care reform — is “vulnerable” to fraud and abuse because of the failure of Medicare officials to develop appropriate safeguards, according to a sharply critical report to be issued Thursday by federal investigators.







Mike Spencer/Wilmington Star-News, via Associated Press

Celeste Stephens, a nurse, leads a session on electronic records at New Hanover Regional Medical Center in Wilmington, N.C.







Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services

Marilyn Tavenner, acting administrator for Medicare.






The use of electronic medical records has been central to the aim of overhauling health care in America. Advocates contend that electronic records systems will improve patient care and lower costs through better coordination of medical services, and the Obama administration is spending billions of dollars to encourage doctors and hospitals to switch to electronic records to track patient care.


But the report says Medicare, which is charged with managing the incentive program that encourages the adoption of electronic records, has failed to put in place adequate safeguards to ensure that information being provided by hospitals and doctors about their electronic records systems is accurate. To qualify for the incentive payments, doctors and hospitals must demonstrate that the systems lead to better patient care, meeting a so-called meaningful use standard by, for example, checking for harmful drug interactions.


Medicare “faces obstacles” in overseeing the electronic records incentive program “that leave the program vulnerable to paying incentives to professionals and hospitals that do not fully meet the meaningful use requirements,” the investigators concluded. The report was prepared by the Office of Inspector General for the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees Medicare.


The investigators contrasted the looser management of the incentive program with the agency’s pledge to more closely monitor Medicare payments of medical claims. Medicare officials have indicated that the agency intends to move away from a “pay and chase” model, in which it tried to get back any money it has paid in error, to one in which it focuses on trying to avoid making unjustified payments in the first place.


Late Wednesday, a Medicare spokesman said in a statement: “Protecting taxpayer dollars is our top priority and we have implemented aggressive procedures to hold providers accountable. Making a false claim is a serious offense with serious consequences and we believe the overwhelming majority of doctors and hospitals take seriously their responsibility to honestly report their performance.”


The government’s investment in electronic records was authorized under the broader stimulus package passed in 2009. Medicare expects to spend nearly $7 billion over five years as a way of inducing doctors and hospitals to adopt and use electronic records. So far, the report said, the agency has paid 74, 317 health professionals and 1,333 hospitals. By attesting that they meet the criteria established under the program, a doctor can receive as much as $44,000 for adopting electronic records, while a hospital could be paid as much as $2 million in the first year of its adoption. The inspector general’s report follows earlier concerns among regulators and others over whether doctors and hospitals are using electronic records inappropriately to charge more for services, as reported by The New York Times last September, and is likely to fuel the debate over the government’s efforts to promote electronic records. Critics say the push for electronic records may be resulting in higher Medicare spending with little in the way of improvement in patients’ health. Thursday’s report did not address patient care.


Even those within the industry say the speed with which systems are being developed and adopted by hospitals and doctors has led to a lack of clarity over how the records should be used and concerns about their overall accuracy.


“We’ve gone from the horse and buggy to the Model T, and we don’t know the rules of the road. Now we’ve had a big car pileup,” said Lynne Thomas Gordon, the chief executive of the American Health Information Management Association, a trade group in Chicago. The association, which contends more study is needed to determine whether hospitals and doctors actually are abusing electronic records to increase their payments, says it supports more clarity.


Although there is little disagreement over the potential benefits of electronic records in reducing duplicative tests and avoiding medical errors, critics increasingly argue that the federal government has not devoted enough time or resources to making certain the money it is investing is being well spent.


House Republicans echoed these concerns in early October in a letter to Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of health and human services. Citing the Times article, they called for suspending the incentive program until concerns about standardization had been resolved. “The top House policy makers on health care are concerned that H.H.S. is squandering taxpayer dollars by asking little of providers in return for incentive payments,” said a statement issued at the same time by the Republicans, who are likely to seize on the latest inspector general report as further evidence of lax oversight. Republicans have said they will continue to monitor the program.


In her letter in response, which has not been made public, Ms. Sebelius dismissed the idea of suspending the incentive program, arguing that it “would be profoundly unfair to the hospitals and eligible professionals that have invested billions of dollars and devoted countless hours of work to purchase and install systems and educate staff.” She said Medicare was trying to determine whether electronic records had been used in any fraudulent billing but she insisted that the current efforts to certify the systems and address the concerns raised by the Republicans and others were adequate.


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Bombings Are Said to Kill Dozens Near Syria’s Capital


Francisco Leong/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images


Rebels celebrated on top of a downed Syrian jet in Daret Azzeh, 20 miles west of Aleppo, on Wednesday.







DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Syrian state media said on Wednesday that 34 people and possibly many more had died in twin car bombings in a suburb populated by minorities only a few miles from the center of Damascus, the capital, as the civil war swirls from north to south claiming ever higher casualties. One estimate by the government’s opponents put the death toll at 47.




There were also reports from witnesses in Turkey and antigovernment activists in Syria that for the second successive day insurgents had shot down a government aircraft in the north of the country, offering further evidence that the rebels are seeking a major shift by challenging the government’s dominance of the skies. It was not immediately clear how the aircraft, apparently a plane, had been brought down.


Video posted on the Internet by rebels showed wreckage with fires still burning around it. The aircraft appeared to show a tail assembly clearly visible jutting out of the debris. Such videos are difficult to verify, particularly in light of the restrictions facing reporters in Syria. However, the episode on Wednesday seemed to be confirmed by other witnesses.


“We watched a Syrian plane being shot down as it was flying low to drop bombs,” said Ugur Cuneydioglu, who said he observed the incident from a Turkish border village in southern Hatay Province. “It slowly went down in flames before it hit the ground. It was quite a scene,” Mr. Cuneydioglu said.


Video posted by insurgents on the Internet showed a man in aviator coveralls being carried away. It was not clear if the man was alive but the video said he had been treated in a makeshift hospital. A voice off-camera says, “This is the pilot who was shelling residents’ houses.”


The aircraft was said to have been brought down while it was attacking the town of Daret Azzeh, 20 miles west of Aleppo and close to the Turkish border. The town was the scene of a mass killing last June, when the government and the rebels blamed each other for the deaths and mutilation of 25 people. The video posted online said the plane had been brought down by “the free men of Daret Azzeh soldiers of God brigade.”


On Tuesday, Syrian rebels said they shot down a military helicopter with a surface-to-air missile outside Aleppo and they uploaded video that appeared to confirm that rebels have put their growing stock of heat-seeking missiles to effective use.


In recent months, rebels have used mainly machine guns to shoot down several Syrian Air Force helicopters and fixed-wing attack jets. In Tuesday’s case, the thick smoke trailing the projectile, combined with the elevation of the aircraft, strongly suggested that the helicopter was hit by a missile.


Rebels hailed the event as the culmination of their long pursuit of effective antiaircraft weapons, though it was not clear if the downing on Tuesday was an isolated tactical success or heralded a new phase in the war that would present a meaningful challenge to the Syrian government’s air supremacy. In Damascus, the official SANA news agency said the explosions in Jaramana outside the city at around 7 a.m. were the work of “terrorists,” the word used by the authorities to denote rebel forces seeking the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad. Photographs on the SANA Web site showed wreckage and flames in what looked like a narrow alleyway with cars covered in chunks of debris from damaged buildings. The agency said the bombings were in the main square of Jaramana, which news reports said is largely populated by members of the Christian and Druse minorities. Residents said the neighborhood was home to many families who have fled other parts of Syria because of the conflict and to some Palestinian families. The blasts caused “huge material damage to the residential buildings and shops,” SANA said.


The photographs on the Web site showed shattered windows at the Abou Samra coffee house and gurneys laden with injured people clogging what seemed to be a hospital corridor.


SANA said two bombings in other neighborhoods caused minor damage. Activists reported that there were four explosions and said they were all “huge.”


Footage broadcast on Syria’s private Addounia channel and state television showed damage scarring gray six-story apartment houses above tangles of wrecked cars as ambulances arrived to transport the wounded and rescuers spraying rubble with fire hoses. The camera panned over bloodstained sidewalks.


The blasts seemed initially at least to shift the focus of the fighting from the north, where insurgents have claimed string of tactical breakthroughs in recent days, to areas ringing Damascus.


In the north in recent days, the insurgents also claimed to have seized air bases and a hydroelectric dam, apparently seeking both to expand their communications lines and to counter the government’s supremacy in the air.


The death toll from Wednesday’s bombings was not immediately confirmed. An activist group, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, initially said that 29 people had died but revised the figure later to 47, of whom 38 had been identified. Of the 120 injured, the rebel group said, 23 people were in serious condition, meaning that the tally could climb higher.


The explosions reflected the dramatic shift since Syria’s uprising began in March 2011 as a peaceful protest centered on the southern town of Dara’a. It has since spread across the land in a full-blown civil war pitting government forces against a rebel army of Army defectors, disaffected civilians and what the authorities say are foreign jihadists.


Hala Droubi reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Alan Cowell from Paris. Sebnem Arsu contributed reporting from Istanbul, and Hania Mourtada from Beirut, Lebanon.



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German lawmakers condemn Google campaign against copyright law












BERLIN (Reuters) – Senior German politicians have denounced as propaganda a campaign by Google to mobilize public opinion against proposed legislation to let publishers charge search engines for displaying newspaper articles.


Internet lobbyists say they are worried the German law will set a precedent for other countries such as France and Italy that have shown an interest in having Google pay publishers for the right to show their news snippets in its search results.












Lawmakers in Berlin will debate the bill in the Bundestag (lower house) on Thursday. Google says the law would make it harder for users to retrieve information via the Internet.


Google launched its campaign against the bill on Tuesday with advertisements in German newspapers and a web information site called “Defend your web”.


“Such a law would hit every Internet user in Germany,” Stefan Tweraser, country manager for Google Germany, said in a statement. “An ancillary copyright means less information for consumers and higher costs for companies.”


The campaign has caused outrage among some members of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right coalition.


“The campaign initiated by Google is cheap propaganda,” said conservative lawmakers Guenter Krings and Ansgar Heveling.


“Under the guise of a supposed project for the freedom of the Internet, an attempt is being made to coopt its users for its own lobbying,” the two said in a statement.


Supporters of the law argue that newspaper publishers should be able to benefit from advertising revenues earned by search engines using their content.


Under the plans, publishers would get a bigger say over how their articles are used on the Internet and could charge search engines for showing articles or extracts.


German Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, a member of the Free Democrats (FDP) who share power in Merkel’s government, said she was astonished that Google was trying to monopolize opinion-making. She is responsible for the law.


“PANIC MONGERING”


Germany’s newspaper industry, suffering from economic slowdown and keen to get its hands on any revenues it can, backs the plans and railed against Google’s campaign.


“The panic mongering from Google has no justification,” Germany’s BDZV newspaper association said in a statement.


“The argument from search engine companies that Internet searching and retrieval will be made more difficult is not serious. Private use, reading, following links and quoting will be possible, just as before.”


Internet lobbyists in Brussels fear the European Commission is sympathetic to publisher demands for a piece of Google’s profits online. Recent statements, they say, are proof.


“Consumers are not the only ones facing difficulties,” Michel Barnier, the EU’s internal market commissioner, said in a speech on November 7. “Think of newspaper publishers who see the content they produce being used by others to attract consumers on the net and generate advertising revenues.”


French newspapers and magazines want Google to pay them for linking to their articles on Google. The French government has named a mediator to negotiate with the press and Google to try to get a deal by the end of the year.


If no deal emerges, President Francois Hollande’s government will ask parliament to draft a law modifying copyright laws to protect the press from appropriation of its content online, according to a letter signed by two ministers on November 28.


(Additional reporting by Harro ten Wolde in Frankfurt, Claire Davenbport in Brussels and Leila Abboud in Paris; Writing by Madeline Chambers, Editing by Gareth Jones and)


Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News


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Bonds, Clemens, Sosa on Hall ballot for first time

NEW YORK (AP) — Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Sammy Sosa are listed on the baseball Hall of Fame ballot for the first time, setting up an election sure to become a referendum on the Steroids Era.

The 37-player ballot was announced Wednesday.

More than 600 longtime members of the Baseball Writers' Association of America will vote through next month. Candidates need 75 percent for induction, and the results will be announced Jan. 9.

Bonds is the all-time home run champion with 762 and won a record seven MVP awards. Clemens set a record with seven Cy Young trophies and Sosa hit 609 homers. The voters will now decide whether drug allegations that tainted their huge numbers should keep them out of Cooperstown.

Craig Biggio, Mike Piazza and Curt Schilling are among the 24 first-time eligibles. Jack Morris, Jeff Bagwell and Tim Raines are the top holdover candidates.

The upcoming election is certain to fuel the most polarizing Hall discussion since career hits leader Pete Rose's betting troubles put him on baseball's permanently ineligible list, barring him from the BBWAA ballot.

While many continued to debate whether Rose should be enshrined, it was moot because there is currently no way he can be considered.

On deck, though, are some of the game's biggest names — along with a lot of the sport's biggest baggage.

Bonds, Clemens and Sosa each posted monster statistics, though their accomplishments were shadowed by accusations they used performance-enhancing drugs. And as baseball keeps trying to rid itself of PEDs, their impact on HRs, RBIs and Ws remains a prickly problem.

Bonds was baseball's premier slugger on his generation and Clemens ranks ninth in career wins with 354. Sosa is eighth on the home run chart with 609.

Fans, players and Hall of Fame members have all chimed in about whether stars who supposedly juiced up should make it to Cooperstown.

Many of those opposed say drug cheats should never be afforded baseball's highest individual honors. Others on the opposite side claim the use of PEDs was pervasive in the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s, and shouldn't disqualify candidates.

If recent voting for the Hall is any indication, the odds are solidly stacked against Bonds, Clemens and Sosa.

Mark McGwire is 10th on the career home run list with 583, but has never received even 24 percent in his six tries. Big Mac has admitted to using steroids and human growth hormone.

Rafael Palmeiro is among only four players with 500 homers and 3,000 hits, yet has gotten a high of 12.6 percent in his two years on the ballot. Palmeiro drew a 10-day suspension in 2005 after a positive test for performance-enhancing drugs, and said the result was due to a vitamin vial given to him by teammate Miguel Tejada.

Biggio topped the 3,000-hit mark — which always has been considered an automatic credential for Cooperstown — and spent his entire career with the Houston Astros.

Schilling was 216-146 and won three World Series championships, including his "bloody sock" performance for the Boston Red Sox in 2004.

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F.D.A. May Tap Experts on Energy Drinks


The Food and Drug Administration said in a letter released on Tuesday that it was likely to seek advice from outside experts to help determine whether energy drinks posed particular risks to teenagers or people with underlying health problems.


The letter appears to signal a change in the agency’s approach to the drinks, which contain high levels of caffeine.


Previously, F.D.A. officials have said that they were investigating possible risks posed by popular products like 5-Hour Energy, Monster Energy and Red Bull. But an agency spokeswoman, Shelly Burgess, said the new letter was the first time that the F.D.A. had said it might turn to outside experts.


The F.D.A. letter, which was released Tuesday by Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois and Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, follows disclosures that the agency received reports of 18 deaths and over 150 injuries that mentioned the possible involvement of energy drinks.


The filing of such reports with the F.D.A. does not prove that a product was responsible for a death or an injury. Energy drink makers have said their products are safe and were not responsible for the health problems.


The officials said a review of the drinks might be “greatly enhanced by also engaging specialized expertise” from an outside group, like the Institute of Medicine, which is part of the National Academy of Sciences.


Industry analysts said the letter indicated that the F.D.A. did not plan any immediate actions on energy drinks, an interpretation that set off a rally on Tuesday in the stock of Monster Beverage, the producer of Monster Energy. Company shares closed at $51.97, up over 13 percent. Any regulatory outcome is likely to be “benign,” Judy Hong, an analyst at Goldman Sachs, said in a note to investors, according to Bloomberg News.


In Canada, however, the use of an outside panel led to limits on caffeine levels in energy drinks.


In their letter, F.D.A. officials indicated that an outside review would focus on the possible risks posed by high levels of caffeine, a stimulant, to certain groups. They reiterated that daily consumption of significant levels of caffeine, which is found in products like coffee and tea, is safe.


“Areas of particular focus would include such matters as the vulnerability of certain populations to stimulants and the incidence and consequence of excessive consumption” of energy drinks, especially by young people, F.D.A. officials wrote.


In Canada, an expert panel made several recommendations, including arguing that such beverages be labeled “stimulant drug-containing drinks.”


Health Canada, that country’s counterpart to the F.D.A., did not adopt many of the group’s recommendations, but it has put in place new rules limiting caffeine levels in cans of energy drinks to 180 milligrams.


Some larger-size cans of energy drinks sold in the United States, like the 24-ounce can of Monster Energy and the 20-ounce can of Red Bull, have caffeine levels above that limit.


An eight-ounce cup of coffee, depending on how it is made, can contain from 100 to 150 milligrams of caffeine.


In the new letter, F.D.A. officials also said that studies that had examined other ingredients, like taurine, that are often used in energy drinks had determined those substances were safe. The agency also said that a survey suggested that energy drinks constitute a small portion of the caffeine consumed in this country, even by teenagers.


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Ex-NASA Scientist’s Data Fears Come True





In 2007, Robert M. Nelson, an astronomer, and 27 other scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory sued NASA arguing that the space agency’s background checks of employees of government contractors were unnecessarily invasive and violated their privacy rights.




Privacy advocates chimed in as well, contending that the space agency would not be able to protect the confidential details it was collecting.


The scientists took their case all the way to the Supreme Court only to lose last year.


This month, Dr. Nelson opened a letter from NASA telling him of a significant data breach that could potentially expose him to identity theft.


The very thing he and advocates worried about had occurred. A laptop used by an employee at NASA’s headquarters in Washington had been stolen from a car parked on the street on Halloween, the space agency said.


Although the laptop itself was password protected, unencrypted files on the laptop contained personal information on about 10,000 NASA employees — including details like their names, birth dates, Social Security numbers and in some cases, details related to background checks into employees’ personal lives.


Millions of Americans have received similar data breach notices from employers, government agencies, medical centers, banks and retailers. NASA in particular has been subject to “numerous cyberattacks” and computer thefts in recent years, according to a report from the Government Accountability Office, an agency that conducts research for Congress.


Even so, Dr. Nelson, who recently retired from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a research facility operated by the California Institute of Technology under a contract with NASA, stands out as a glaring example of security lapses involving personal data, privacy advocates say.


“To the extent that Robert Nelson looks like millions of other people working for firms employed by the federal government, this would seem to be a real problem,” said Marc Rotenberg, the executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, an advocacy group which filed a friend-of-the-court brief for Dr. Nelson in the Supreme Court case.


In a 2009 report titled “NASA Needs to Remedy Vulnerabilities in Key Networks,” the Government Accountability Office noted that the agency had reported 1,120 security incidents in fiscal 2007 and 2008 alone.


It also singled out an incident in 2009 in which a NASA center reported the theft of a laptop containing about 3,000 unencrypted files about arms traffic regulations and wind tunnel tests for a supersonic jet.


“NASA had not installed full-disk encryption on its laptops at all three centers,” the report said. “As a result, sensitive data transmitted through the unclassified network or stored on laptop computers were at an increased risk of being compromised.” Other federal agencies have had similar problems. In 2006, for example, the Department of Veteran’s Affairs reported the theft of an employee laptop and hard drive that contained personal details on about 26.5 million veterans. Last year, the G.A.O. cited the Internal Revenue Service for weaknesses in data control that could “jeopardize the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of financial and sensitive taxpayer information.”


Also last year, the Securities and Exchange Commission warned its employees that their confidential financial information, like brokerage transactions, might have been compromised because an agency contractor had granted data access to a subcontractor without the S.E.C.’s authorization.


In a phone interview, Dr. Nelson, the astronomer, said he planned to hold a news conference on Wednesday morning in which he would ask members of Congress to investigate NASA’s data collection practices and the recent data breach.


Robert Jacobs, a NASA spokesman, said the agency’s data security policy already adequately protected employees and contractors because it required computers to be encrypted before employees took them off agency premises. “We are talking about a computer that should not have left the building in the first place,” Mr. Jacobs said. “The data would have been secure had the employee followed policy.”


The government argued in the case Dr. Nelson filed that a law called the Privacy Act, which governs data collection by federal agencies, provided the scientists with sufficient protection. The case reached the Supreme Court, which upheld government background checks for employees of contractors. The roots of Dr. Nelson’s case against NASA date back to 2004 when the Department of Homeland Security, under a directive signed by President George Bush, required federal agencies to adopt uniform identification credentials for all civil servants and contract employees. As part of the ID card standardization process, the department recommended agencies institute background checks.


Several years later, when NASA announced it intended to start doing background checks at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Dr. Nelson and other scientists there objected.


Those security checks could have included inquiries into medical treatment, counseling for drug use, or any “adverse” information about employees such as sexual activity, or participation in protests, said Dan Stormer, a lawyer representing Dr. Nelson.


But Dr. Nelson and other long-term employees of the lab challenged the legality of those checks, arguing that they violated their privacy rights. NASA, they said, had not established a legitimate need for such extensive investigations about low-risk employees like themselves who did not have security clearances or handle confidential information. Dr. Nelson, for example, specializes in solar system science — concerning, for example, Jupiter’s moon Io and Titan, a moon of Saturn — and publishes his work in scientific journals


“It was an invitation to an open-ended fishing expedition,” Dr. Nelson said of the background checks.


In friend of the court briefs for Dr. Nelson, privacy groups cited many data security problems at federal agencies, arguing that there was a risk that NASA was not equipped to protect the confidential details it was collecting about employees and contractors.


In 2008, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco temporarily halted the background checks, saying that the case had raised important questions about privacy rights. But last year, the Supreme Court upheld the background investigations of employees of government contractors.


Dr. Nelson said he retired from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory last June rather than submit to a background check. He now works as a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute of Tucson.


NASA has contracted with ID Experts, a data breach company, to help protect employees whose data was contained on the stolen laptop against identity theft. Mr. Jacobs, the NASA spokesman, said the agency has encrypted almost 80 percent of its laptops and plans to encrypt the rest by Dec. 21. He added that he too received a letter from NASA warning that his personal information might have been compromised by the laptop theft.


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Protesters Gather Again in Cairo Streets to Denounce Morsi





CAIRO — Thousands of people flowed into the streets of Cairo, the Egyptian capital, Tuesday afternoon for a day of protest against President Mohamed Morsi’s attempt to assert broad new powers for the duration of the country’s political transition, dismissing his efforts just the night before to reaffirm his deference to Egyptian law and courts.




By early Tuesday afternoon in Cairo, a dense crowd of hundreds had gathered outside the headquarters of a trade group for lawyers, and thousands more had filed in around a small tent city in Tahrir Square. In an echo of the chants against Hosni Mubarak, Egyptian’s ousted president, almost two years ago, they shouted, “Leave, leave!” and “Bring down the regime!” They also denounced the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group allied with Mr. Morsi.


A few blocks away, in a square near the American Embassy and the Interior Ministry headquarters, groups of young men resumed a running battle that began nine days ago, throwing rocks and tear gas canisters at riot police officers. Although those clashes grew out of anger over the deaths of dozens of protesters in similar clashes one year ago, many of the combatants have happily adopted the banner of protest against Mr. Morsi as well.


Egyptian television had captured the growing polarization of the country on Monday in split-screen coverage of two simultaneous funerals, each for a teenage boy killed in clashes set off by disputes over the new president’s powers. Thousands of supporters of Mr. Morsi and his allies in the Muslim Brotherhood marched through the streets of the Nile Delta city of Damanhour to bury a 15-year-old killed outside a Brotherhood office during an attack by protesters. And in Tahrir Square here in Cairo, thousands gathered to bury a 16-year-old killed in clashes with riot police officers and to chant slogans blaming Mr. Morsi for his death. “Morsi killed him,” the boy’s father said in a video statement circulated over the Internet.


“Now blood has been spilled by political factions, so this is not going to go away,” said Rabab el-Mahdi, a professor at the American University in Cairo and a left-leaning activist, adding that these were the first deaths rival factions had blamed on each other and not on the security forces of the Mubarak government since the uprising began last year. Still larger crowds were expected in the evening, as marchers from around the city headed for the square. Many schools and other businesses had closed in anticipation of bedlam, and on Monday, the Brotherhood called off a rival demonstration in support of the president, saying it wanted to avoid violence.


Egypt’s Supreme Judicial Council met again on Tuesday to consider its response to the president, and the leader of Al Azhar, a center of Sunni Muslim learning that is regarded as the pre-eminent moral authority here, met with groups of political leaders in an effort to resolve the battle over the president’s decree and the deadlock in the constitutional assembly, which is trying to draw up a new constitution.


But even as Mr. Morsi met with top judges Monday night in an effort to resolve the crisis, a coalition of opposition leaders held a news conference to declare that preserving the role of the courts was only the first step in a broader campaign against what Abdel Haleem Qandeil, a liberal intellectual, called “the miserable failure of the rule of the Muslim Brothers.” Mr. Morsi “unilaterally broke the contract with the people,” he declared. “We have to be ready to stand up to this group, protest to protest, square to square, and to confront the bullying.”


Mr. Morsi’s effort to remove the last check on his power over the political transition had brought the country’s fractious opposition groups together for the first time in a united front against the Brotherhood. But the show of unity papered over deep divisions between groups and even within them, said Ms. Mahdi of the American University.


“This is not a united front, and I am inside it,” she said. “Every single political group in the country is now divided over this — is this decree revolutionary justice or building a new dictatorship? Should we align ourselves with folool” — the colloquial term for the remnants of the old political elite — “or should we be revolutionary purists? Is it a conflict between the Muslim Brotherhood and the pro-Mubarak judiciary, or is this the beginning of a fascist regime in the making?”


Mayy El Sheikh contributed reporting.



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Nintendo says more than 400,000 Wii Us sold in US












NEW YORK (AP) — Nintendo has sold more than 400,000 of its new video game console, the Wii U, in its first week on sale in the U.S., the company said Monday.


The Wii U launched on Nov. 18 in the U.S. at a starting price of $ 300. Nintendo said the sales figure, based on internal estimates, is through Saturday, or seven days later.












The Wii U is the first major game console to launch in six years. It comes with a new touch-screen controller that promises to change how people play games by offering different people in the same room a different experience, depending on the controller used.


Six years ago, Nintendo Co. sold 475,000 of the original Wii in that console’s first seven days in stores, according to data from the NPD Group. The original Wii remains available, and Nintendo said it sold more than 300,000 of them last week, along with roughly 250,000 handheld Nintendo 3DS units and about 275,000 of the Nintendo DS.


At this early stage, demand isn’t the only factor dictating how many consoles are sold. Supply is, too. This means it’s likely that more people wanted to buy the Wii U in the first week than those who were able to. The original Wii was in short supply more than a year after it went on sale.


As of Monday afternoon, the website of Best Buy Co. was sold out of the Wii U. Video game retailer GameStop Corp. said there was at least a three day wait for a deluxe Wii U, which costs $ 350, has more memory and comes with a game called “Nintendo Land.” GameStop still had the basic, $ 300 version available.


Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter estimates that Nintendo will ship 1 million to 1.5 million Wii Us in the U.S. through the end of January.


Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News


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