Russia Seeks Arrest of Georgian Politician

MOSCOW — Russian authorities issued an arrest warrant for a Georgian politician, Givi Targamadze, on Thursday, charging that he had incited riots in Russia, in particular by helping to organize an anti-government march last May that culminated in a confrontation between protesters and the riot police.

Russian authorities asserted that the large anti-government protests were being orchestrated by foreign powers, but Mr. Targamadze, a longtime lieutenant of President Mikheil Saakashvili, is the first non-Russian to face criminal charges.

Russian television has broadcast what it says is surveillance video showing Mr. Targamadze meeting with a leftist leader, Sergei Udaltsov, and two of his deputies, at one point offering to deliver large sums of money on behalf of a Russian banker now living in exile.

At the time, Mr. Targamadze said no such meeting had taken place and that the footage had been manufactured by the Prosecutorial Investigative Committee and the Federal Security Service, or F.S.B., the successor to the K.G.B.

“It is clear that this was all prepared in the investigative committee and the F.S.B. headquarters,” he told Dozhd, an Internet news site. “It is sold to the media and then very quickly, at lightning speed, the Investigative Committee reacts.”

A spokeswoman for Georgia’s general prosecutor told Interfax on Thursday that Georgia cannot extradite Mr. Targamadze to Russia because it would violate his rights under the country’s Constitution, but that prosecutors could open a criminal case based on Russia’s request.

Russian analysts noted that the Georgian government did not say Mr. Targamadze’s status as a lawmaker gave him immunity from prosecution. Mr. Saakashvili’s party lost a parliamentary election last October to an opposition coalition intent on repairing Tbilisi’s icy relations with Moscow.

Mr. Targamadze could not be reached for comment on Thursday. A spokesman for the United National Movement, the party he belongs to, said he was traveling outside Georgia. Meanwhile, the police in Moscow said they were working to determine who else in Russia may have had contact with Mr. Targamadze.

Foreign interference in Russian politics was a central theme on Thursday when President Vladimir V. Putin met with top officials at the Federal Security Service, congratulating them on “courageous acts to neutralize internal and external enemies.” Mr. Putin reported that 200 foreign intelligence officers had been identified in 2002, and spoke with satisfaction about new measures restricting foreign financing for nonprofit organizations.

“Any direct or indirect interference in our internal affairs — any form of pressure on Russia, its allies and partners — is unacceptable,” he said, according to a transcript.

He urged the F.S.B. to increase pressure on the Internet, which he said was being used to promote extremist ideas.

“To neutralize different types of extremist structures we need to act as resolutely as possible,” he said. “It is necessary to block attempts by radical groups to use information technologies, Internet resources and social networking Web sites for their propaganda,” he said.

He went on to say that Russian civil society was rapidly becoming more engaged and active, but that uncontrolled speech and organizing could pose a risk to the state.

“Citizens’ right to freedom of speech is unshakable and inviolable — however, no one has the right to sow hatred, to stir up society and the country, and put under threat the life, welfare and peace of millions of our citizens.” He offered a similar warning about citizens’ initiatives, saying the rise in activism “obviously will be supported by the state.”

“At the same time, I want to underline — no one has a monopoly on the right to speak in the name of all Russian society, especially structures that are controlled and financed from abroad,” he said.

The head of the F.S.B., Aleksandr Bortnikov, told Mr. Putin that the United States and its allies had increased “geopolitical pressure” on Russia over the past year, noting that “as before, they consider our state as one of their main competitors in the international arena.”

Read More..

Olympian Oscar Pistorius charged with murder

PRETORIA, South Africa (AP) — Paralympic superstar Oscar Pistorius was charged Thursday with the murder of his girlfriend who was shot inside his home in South Africa, a stunning development in the life of a national hero known as the Blade Runner for his high-tech artificial legs.

Reeva Steenkamp, a model who spoke out on Twitter against rape and abuse of women, was shot four times in the predawn hours in the house, in a gated community in the capital, Pretoria, police said.

Hours later after undergoing police questioning, Pistorius left a police station accompanied by officers. He looked down as photographers snapped pictures, the hood on his gray workout jacket pulled up, covering most of his face. His court hearing was originally scheduled for Thursday afternoon but has been postponed until Friday to give forensic investigators time to carry out their work, said Medupe Simasiku, a spokesman for the prosecution.

South Africans were shocked at the killing. But while Pistorius captured the nation's attention with his Olympic quest, police said there was a recent history of problems involving him. Police spokeswoman Brigadier Denise Beukes said the incidents included "allegations of a domestic nature."

"I'm not going to elaborate on it but there have been incidents (at Pistorius' home)," Beukes said. Police in South Africa do not name suspects in crimes until they have appeared in court but Beukes said that the 26-year-old Pistorius was at his home at the time of the death of Steenkamp and "there is no other suspect involved."

Pistorius' father, Henke, declined to comment when contacted by The Associated Press, only saying "we all pray for guidance and strength for Oscar and the lady's parents."

Neither Pistorius' agent Peet van Zyl nor coach Ampie Louw could be reached while Pistorius' own cellphone went straight to voicemail.

Pistorius' former coach, Andrea Giannini, said he hopes it was "just a tragic accident." Giannini said he believed that Pistorius had been dating Steenkamp for "a few months."

"No matter how bad the situation was, Oscar always stayed calm and positive," Giannini told the AP in Italy. "Whenever he was tired or nervous he was still extremely nice to people. I never saw him violent."

Yet Pistorius had troubles in his personal life. In February 2009, he crashed a speed boat he was piloting on South Africa's Vaal River. Witnesses said he had been drinking before the crash and officers found alcoholic beverages in the wreckage, though they acknowledged at the time they hadn't conducted a blood test on the athlete. Pistorius broke his nose, jaw and several ribs in the crash, as well as damaged his eye socket and required some 180 stitches to his face.

In November, Pistorius also found himself in an altercation with a local coal mining millionaire over a woman, South African media reported. Eventually, the two men involved the South African Police Service's elite Hawks investigative unit before settling the matter.

Pistorius owned firearms and posted a photograph of himself at a shooting range in November 2011 to the social media website Twitter, bragging about his score.

"Had a 96% headshot over 300m from 50shots! Bam!" he tweeted.

Police said that earlier reports that Steenkamp may have been mistaken for a burglar by Pistorius did not come from the police. Several local media outlets initially reported that the shooting may have been accidental.

Capacity Relations, a talent management firm, earlier named model Steenkamp as the victim of the shooting. Police spokeswoman Lt. Col. Katlego Mogale told the AP that officers received a call around 3 a.m. after the shooting.

A 9 mm pistol was recovered and a murder case opened against Pistorius.

Pistorius enjoyed target shooting with his pistol and an online advertisement featuring him for Nike read: "I am a bullet in the chamber." An article in January 2012 in The New York Times Magazine described him talking about how he pulled a pistol to search his home when his alarm went off the night before an interview. At Pistorius' suggestion, he and the journalist went to a nearby target range where they fired at targets with a 9 mm pistol. At one point, Pistorius told the writer: "If you practiced, I think you could be pretty deadly."

Asked how often he went target shooting, Pistorius replied: "Just sometimes when I can't sleep."

Police have still not released the name of the woman, but the publicist for Steenkamp confirmed in a statement that the model was dead.

"We can confirm that Reeva Steenkamp has passed away," Steenkamp's publicist Sarit Tomlinson said. "Our thoughts and prayers go to the Steenkamp family, who have asked to have their privacy respected during this difficult time, everyone is simply devastated. She was the kindest, sweetest human being; an angel on earth and will be sorely missed."

Tomlinson said Steenkamp, known simply as Reeva, was one of FHM's (formerly For Him Magazine) 100 Sexiest Women in the World for two years running, appeared in countless international and national advertisements and was one of the celebrity contestants on the reality show "Tropika Island of Treasure," filmed in Jamaica.

She and Pistorius were first seen publicly together in November at an awards ceremony in Johannesburg. Later, she began mentioning the athlete in public messages on Twitter.

She also tweeted messages urging women to stand up against rape as well as her excitement about Valentine's Day. "What do you have up your sleeve for your love tomorrow?" she tweeted. "It should be a day of love for everyone."

Pistorius made history in London last year when he became the first double-amputee track athlete to compete in the Olympic Games, propelling him to the status of an athletics superstar.

Having had both his legs amputated below the knee before his first birthday because of a congenital condition, he campaigned for years to be allowed to compete against able-bodied athletes. Having initially been banned because of his carbon fiber blades — which critics said gave him an unfair advantage — he was cleared by sport's highest court in 2008 and allowed to run at the top events.

He competed in the 400 meters and on South Africa's 4x400 relay team at the London Games, making history when his selection for South Africa's team was confirmed at the very last minute. He also retained his Paralympic title in the 400 meters in London.

South Africa's Sports Confederation and Olympic committee released a statement on Thursday saying they had been "inundated" with requests for comment but were not in a position to give out any details of the shooting. The International Paralympic Committee also said it wouldn't comment in detail apart from offering its condolences to the victim's family.

South Africa has some of the world's highest murder rates, with nearly 50 people killed each day in the nation of 50 million. It also has high rates of rape, other assaults, robbery and carjackings.

U.N. statistics show South Africa has the second highest rate of shooting deaths in the world, second only to Colombia.

"The question is: Why does this story make the news? Yes, because they are both celebrities, but this is happening on every single day in South Africa," said Adele Kirsten, a member of Gun Free South Africa. "We have thousands of people killed annually by gun violence in our country. So the anger is about that it is preventable."

___

Imray reported from Cape Town, South Africa. Associated Press writer Michelle Faul contributed to this report from Johannesburg.

Read More..

U.S. Approves First Method to Give the Blind Limited Vision

The F.D.A. Approves a Bionic Eye:
The Argus II allows Barbara Campbell, who lost her sight 20 years ago, to see the world through patterns of light. Scientists hope it is the beginning of even more treatments.

The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday approved the first treatment to give limited vision to people who are blind, involving a technology called the “artificial retina.”

With it, people with certain types of blindness can detect crosswalks on the street, burners on a stove, the presence of people or cars, and sometimes even oversized numbers or letters.

The artificial retina is a sheet of electrodes surgically implanted in the eye. The patient is also outfitted with a pair of glasses with an attached camera and a portable video processor. These elements together allow visual signals to bypass the damaged portion of the retina and be transmitted to the brain. The F.D.A. approval covers this integrated system, which the manufacturer calls Argus II.

The approval marks the first milestone in a new frontier in vision research, a field in which scientists are making strides with gene therapy, optogenetics, stem cells and other strategies.

“This is just the beginning,” said Grace Shen, director of the retinal diseases program at the National Eye Institute, which helped finance the artificial retina research and is supporting many other blindness therapy projects. “We have a lot of exciting things sitting in the wings, multiple approaches being developed now to address this.”

With the artificial retina or retinal prosthesis, a blind person cannot see in the conventional sense, but can identify outlines and boundaries of objects, especially when there is contrast between light and dark — fireworks against a night sky or black socks mixed with white ones in the laundry.

“Without the system, I wouldn’t be able to see anything at all, and if you were in front of me and you moved left and right, I’m not going to realize any of this,” said Elias Konstantopolous, 74, a retired electrician in Baltimore, one of about 50 Americans and Europeans who have been using the device in clinical trials for several years. He said it helps him differentiate curbs from asphalt roads, and detect contours, but not details, of cars, trees and people. “When you don’t have nothing, this is something. It’s a lot.”

The F.D.A. approved Argus II, made by Second Sight Medical Products, to treat people with severe retinitis pigmentosa, a group of inherited diseases in which photoreceptor cells, which take in light, deteriorate.

The first version of the implant had a sheet of 16 electrodes, but the current version has 60. A tiny camera mounted on eyeglasses captures images, and the video processor, worn on a belt, translates those images into pixelized patterns of light and dark. The processor transmits those signals to the electrodes, which send them along the optic nerve to the brain.

About 100,000 Americans have retinitis pigmentosa, but initially between 10,000 and 15,000 will likely qualify for the Argus II, according to the company. The F.D.A. says that up to 4,000 people a year can be treated with the device. That number represents people who are older than 25, who once had useful vision, have evidence of an intact inner retinal layer, have at best very limited light perception in the retina, and are so visually impaired that the device would prove an improvement. Second Sight will begin making Argus II available later this year.

But experts said the technology holds promise for other people who are blind, especially those with advanced age-related macular degeneration, the major cause of vision loss in older people, affecting about two million Americans. About 50,000 of them are currently severely impaired enough that the artificial retina would be helpful, said Dr. Robert Greenberg, Second Sight’s president and chief executive.

In Europe, Argus II received approval in 2011 to treat a broader group of people, those with severe blindness caused by any type of outer retinal degeneration, not just retinitis pigmentosa, although it is currently only marketed in Europe for that condition. In the U.S., additional clinical trials need to be completed before the company can seek broader FDA approval.

Eventually, Dr. Greenberg said, the plan is to implant electrodes not in the eye, but directly into the brain’s visual cortex. “That would allow us to address blindness from all causes,” he said.

Read More..

Judge Clears Transocean Plea in Gulf Spill

HOUSTON – A federal judge in New Orleans approved on Thursday Transocean’s agreement with prosecutors to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge and pay $400 million in criminal penalties for its role in the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil well blowout that left 11 workers dead and resulted in a yearlong moratorium on deepwater drilling.

The Switzerland-based owner and operator of the ill-fated Deepwater Horizon oil rig was charged with negligently discharging oil into the gulf.

“I believe the plea agreement is reasonable and is accepted,” said United States District Judge Jane Triche Milazzo. No witnesses came to court to object to the agreement, and Judge Milazzo said she received no letters of opposition.

Transocean’s criminal fine is the second highest assessed for an environmental disaster, but it pales in comparison with the $1.26 billion in criminal fines that BP was assessed for the same accident that spewed millions of barrels of crude oil into the gulf, soiling hundreds of miles of beaches in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

Various government and independent reports have concluded that Transocean’s crew was negligent in interpreting pressure tests that might otherwise have made certain that the well casing and cement would not have leaked oil and gas. In court filings, the government reiterated its contention that BP supervisors had ultimate responsibility for supervising the testing.

In a statement made when the agreement was reached last month, Transocean said it represented a “a positive step forward” and company lawyers in a filing said Transocean “accepts responsibility” for criminal conduct.

The company has also agreed to pay $1 billion in civil penalties, and will be on probation for five years. Much of the money Transocean has agreed to pay will go toward research for oil spill prevention and response and to restoration of coastal natural habitat including the restitution of barrier islands off the coast of Louisiana.

Now, the long legal process surrounding the 2010 accident will focus again on BP.

BP, which has already pleaded guilty to 11 counts of felony manslaughter and other charges and agreed to pay a total of $4.5 billion in fines and penalties, is scheduled to return to court again on Feb. 25. Unless it reaches a settlement before then with the Justice Department, it faces as much as $21 billion in civil fines for what the government claims was gross negligence for the discharge of an estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil over 87 days.

BP has so far strongly contested the claim that it was grossly negligent and it maintains that the government’s estimates for the amount of oil spilled has been exaggerated. BP executives have publicly and privately said they do not expect to settle out of court, and government rhetoric describing the company’s responsibilities has become more heated in recent months.

BP is also facing potential damages of more than $30 billion from claims made by the gulf states and local governments for property and economic damages. The company has already been forced to divest roughly $38 billion of assets to survive its long legal saga.

Read More..

Obama to Open Trade Talks With E.U.

BRUSSELS — Embarking on what could be the biggest trade agreement ever in its economic sweep, officials from the United States and the European Union indicated Wednesday that they had already resolved some of the stickiest issues behind closed doors.

But the sheer ambition of the trade negotiations, which aim not only to eliminate import duties but also synchronize regulations governing products like cars, drugs and medical devices, leaves plenty of room for the talks to bog down in the type of parochial concerns that have derailed past efforts at a trans-Atlantic trade pact.

Ron Kirk, the U.S. Trade Representative, said by telephone Wednesday that this time things would be different. Already, he said, preliminary discussions between him and top E.U. officials have made “very good progress” on issues that have stymied trade relations for years, like health and safety standards applied to food. A final agreement is possible before the end of 2014, he said.

But, Mr. Kirk acknowledged, “we’ve still got a lot of work ahead of us.”

President Barack Obama endorsed a trade pact during his State of the Union address Tuesday, answering pleas from European leaders desperate for a way to speed up economic growth. Though Mr. Obama devoted only a single sentence to the topic, it was the green light that proponents of a trade deal had been hoping for.

“And tonight, I’m announcing that we will launch talks on a comprehensive Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with the European Union,” Mr. Obama said, giving the potential pact a name. He added, “Because trade that is fair and free across the Atlantic supports millions of good-paying American jobs.”

European officials on Wednesday agreed with Mr. Kirk that the timing is favorable for an agreement. And officials in both Brussels and Washington noted that the rising economic might of China gave them further incentive. A broad trade agreement could help ensure that Americans and Europeans, and not the Chinese government, would set standards on product safety or protection of intellectual property in years to come.

Without an agreement, “we would be forced to accept Chinese standards,” Karel De Gucht, the trade commissioner who is expected to lead the talks on behalf of Europe, said during an interview. “That’s what it is about.”

José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission — the Union’s administrative arm — said at a news conference here that a trade pact would bolster the economies of the United States and Europe.

“Both of us need growth, and both us also have budgetary difficulties,” Mr. Barroso said. “Trade is the most economic way of promoting growth.”

But Mr. De Gucht, interviewed later, added a note of caution. “The low-hanging fruit doesn’t exist here any more,” he said. “All the easy topics are off the table.”

European leaders, including Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, have been pushing for a trade deal as a low-cost way of stimulating their struggling economies. Mr. Obama’s statement Tuesday will help put to rest complaints by some Europeans that the U.S. president has not paid enough attention to his country’s largest trading partner.

“A deal will create jobs on both sides of the Atlantic and make our countries more prosperous,” Mr. Cameron said in statement. “Breaking down the remaining trade barriers and securing a comprehensive deal will require hard work and bold decisions on both sides.”

Between them, the United States and Europe account for about half of global economic output and one-third of world trade. Trade in goods between the Union and America totaled $646 billion last year, according to U.S. government figures.

According to Mr. Kirk, the trade representative, the Union is the best customer for U.S. exports, buying $459 billion in goods and services and supporting 2.4 million American jobs.

“I don’t know if I would call it the biggest trade agreement in the history of the planet,” Mr. Kirk said, “but it is really a very big deal.”

Read More..

Barry Bonds seeks dismissal of felony conviction

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A lawyer for Barry Bonds has urged a federal appeals court to toss out the slugger's obstruction of justice conviction.

Dennis Riordan (REAR-den) argued Wednesday before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that Bonds' was never specifically charged with the crime he was convicted of. A jury in April 2011 found Bonds guilty of obstruction for saying he was a "celebrity child" when asked about injecting steroids.

That particular exchange wasn't included in the indictment.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Merry Chan argued that the indictment charged Bonds generally with obstruction and allowed jurors to convict him if they determined any of his testimony was designed to mislead.

The three-judge panel was not expected to rule Wednesday.

Read More..

Well: Straining to Hear and Fend Off Dementia

At a party the other night, a fund-raiser for a literary magazine, I found myself in conversation with a well-known author whose work I greatly admire. I use the term “conversation” loosely. I couldn’t hear a word he said. But worse, the effort I was making to hear was using up so much brain power that I completely forgot the titles of his books.

A senior moment? Maybe. (I’m 65.) But for me, it’s complicated by the fact that I have severe hearing loss, only somewhat eased by a hearing aid and cochlear implant.

Dr. Frank Lin, an otolaryngologist and epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, describes this phenomenon as “cognitive load.” Cognitive overload is the way it feels. Essentially, the brain is so preoccupied with translating the sounds into words that it seems to have no processing power left to search through the storerooms of memory for a response.

---

Katherine Bouton speaks about her own experience with hearing loss.

A transcript of this interview can be found here.

---

Over the past few years, Dr. Lin has delivered unwelcome news to those of us with hearing loss. His work looks “at the interface of hearing loss, gerontology and public health,” as he writes on his Web site. The most significant issue is the relation between hearing loss and dementia.

In a 2011 paper in The Archives of Neurology, Dr. Lin and colleagues found a strong association between the two. The researchers looked at 639 subjects, ranging in age at the beginning of the study from 36 to 90 (with the majority between 60 and 80). The subjects were part of the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging. None had cognitive impairment at the beginning of the study, which followed subjects for 18 years; some had hearing loss.

“Compared to individuals with normal hearing, those individuals with a mild, moderate, and severe hearing loss, respectively, had a 2-, 3- and 5-fold increased risk of developing dementia over the course of the study,” Dr. Lin wrote in an e-mail summarizing the results. The worse the hearing loss, the greater the risk of developing dementia. The correlation remained true even when age, diabetes and hypertension — other conditions associated with dementia — were ruled out.

In an interview, Dr. Lin discussed some possible explanations for the association. The first is social isolation, which may come with hearing loss, a known risk factor for dementia. Another possibility is cognitive load, and a third is some pathological process that causes both hearing loss and dementia.

In a study last month, Dr. Lin and colleagues looked at 1,984 older adults beginning in 1997-8, again using a well-established database. Their findings reinforced those of the 2011 study, but also found that those with hearing loss had a “30 to 40 percent faster rate of loss of thinking and memory abilities” over a six-year period compared with people with normal hearing. Again, the worse the hearing loss, the worse the rate of cognitive decline.

Both studies also found, somewhat surprisingly, that hearing aids were “not significantly associated with lower risk” for cognitive impairment. But self-reporting of hearing-aid use is unreliable, and Dr. Lin’s next study will focus specifically on the way hearing aids are used: for how long, how frequently, how well they have been fitted, what kind of counseling the user received, what other technologies they used to supplement hearing-aid use.

What about the notion of a common pathological process? In a recent paper in the journal Neurology, John Gallacher and colleagues at Cardiff University suggested the possibility of a genetic or environmental factor that could be causing both hearing loss and dementia — and perhaps not in that order. In a phenomenon called reverse causation, a degenerative pathology that leads to early dementia might prove to be a cause of hearing loss.

The work of John T. Cacioppo, director of the Social Neuroscience Laboratory at the University of Chicago, also offers a clue to a pathological link. His multidisciplinary studies on isolation have shown that perceived isolation, or loneliness, is “a more important predictor of a variety of adverse health outcomes than is objective social isolation.” Those with hearing loss, who may sit through a dinner party and not hear a word, frequently experience perceived isolation.

Other research, including the Framingham Heart Study, has found an association between hearing loss and another unexpected condition: cardiovascular disease. Again, the evidence suggests a common pathological cause. Dr. David R. Friedland, a professor of otolaryngology at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, hypothesized in a 2009 paper delivered at a conference that low-frequency loss could be an early indication that a patient has vascular problems: the inner ear is “so sensitive to blood flow” that any vascular abnormalities “could be noted earlier here than in other parts of the body.”

A common pathological cause might help explain why hearing aids do not seem to reduce the risk of dementia. But those of us with hearing loss hope that is not the case; common sense suggests that if you don’t have to work so hard to hear, you have greater cognitive power to listen and understand — and remember. And the sense of perceived isolation, another risk for dementia, is reduced.

A critical factor may be the way hearing aids are used. A user must practice to maximize their effectiveness and they may need reprogramming by an audiologist. Additional assistive technologies like looping and FM systems may also be required. And people with progressive hearing loss may need new aids every few years.

Increasingly, people buy hearing aids online or from big-box stores like Costco, making it hard for the user to follow up. In the first year I had hearing aids, I saw my audiologist initially every two weeks for reprocessing and then every three months.

In one study, Dr. Lin and his colleague Wade Chien found that only one in seven adults who could benefit from hearing aids used them. One deterrent is cost ($2,000 to $6,000 per ear), seldom covered by insurance. Another is the stigma of old age.

Hearing loss is a natural part of aging. But for most people with hearing loss, according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, the condition begins long before they get old. Almost two-thirds of men with hearing loss began to lose their hearing before age 44. My hearing loss began when I was 30.

Forty-eight million Americans suffer from some degree of hearing loss. If it can be proved in a clinical trial that hearing aids help delay or offset dementia, the benefits would be immeasurable.

“Could we do something to reduce cognitive decline and delay the onset of dementia?” he asked. “It’s hugely important, because by 2050, 1 in 30 Americans will have dementia.

“If we could delay the onset by even one year, the prevalence of dementia drops by 15 percent down the road. You’re talking about billions of dollars in health care savings.”

Should studies establish definitively that correcting hearing loss decreases the potential for early-onset dementia, we might finally overcome the stigma of hearing loss. Get your hearing tested, get it corrected, and enjoy a longer cognitively active life. Establishing the dangers of uncorrected hearing might even convince private insurers and Medicare that covering the cost of hearing aids is a small price to pay to offset the cost of dementia.

---

Katherine Bouton is the author of the new book, “Shouting Won’t Help: Why I — and 50 Million Other Americans — Can’t Hear You,” from which this essay is adapted.

---

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 12, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the location of the Medical College of Wisconsin. It is in Milwaukee, not Madison.

Read More..

DealBook: Societe Generale to Restructure After 4th-Quarter Loss

5:05 a.m. | Updated

PARIS – Société Générale, one of the largest French banks, posted a larger fourth-quarter loss on Wednesday than the market had expected and said it would restructure to cut costs and simplify operations.

The bank reported a net loss of 476 million euros ($640 million), compared with a profit of 100 million euros in the period a year earlier. Analysts surveyed by Reuters had expected a net loss of about 237 million euros.

Profit was hurt by a charge of 686 million euros as the bank revalued its own debt, an accounting obligation as the market for those securities improved. It also set aside 300 million euros as a provision against legal costs, and it wrote down 380 million euros of good will in its investment banking business, mostly on the Newedge Group, a brokerage in which it owns a 50 percent stake.

Excluding the one-time items, it said fourth-quarter net income would have been about 537 million euros.

Under Frédéric Oudéa, its chairman and chief executive, Société Générale has been working to emerge from the financial crisis as a leaner institution. It said that from mid-2011 to the end of 2012, it disposed of 16 billion euros of loan portfolio assets from the corporate and investment banking unit, and an additional 19 billion euros of other assets.

The bank’s restructuring, and an improvement in sentiment in the euro zone economy, have helped to restore its market standing. After a difficult 2011 that was marred by questions about Société Générale’s exposure to Greece, the bank’s shares have rallied, gaining 49 percent in the last year.

In a research note to investors, Andrew Lim, a banking analyst at Espirito Santo in London, said that while “management has dealt convincingly with concerns about weak capital adequacy and liquidity in 2012, Société Générale is still struggling to convince investors that it can achieve improved returns.”

Shares in Société Générale, based in Paris, fell 3.5 percent in morning trading on Wednesday.

Société Générale said on Wednesday that Philippe Heim would take over as chief financial officer. Mr. Heim succeeds Bertrand Badré, who is leaving to take a position as managing director for finance at the World Bank. The bank also said Jacques Ripoll, the bank’s asset management chief, “has decided to pursue his career outside the group.”

The restructuring measures announced on Wednesday aim to focus the bank on three core businesses: French retail banking; international retail banking and financial services; and corporate and investment banking and private banking.

The Société Générale group employs about 160,000 employees around the world, and it was not immediately clear if the announcement of a new organization meant the bank would follow the lead of other large global institutions with a round of layoffs.

“There will be review processes to define the target organizations for each entity in the weeks to come,” the bank said. “The organization proposals will be addressed in the framework of an enhanced employee dialogue in keeping with agreements with trade unions and the procedures for consulting with worker councils.”

Mr. Oudéa said in a statement that the purpose of the changes was “to make our organization more efficient and flexible.”

Société Générale said its Tier 1 capital ratio, a measure of the bank’s ability to withstand financial shocks, stood at 10.7 percent at the end of December, up 1.65 percentage points from a year earlier. The French firm said it expected to attain a Core Tier 1 capital target under the accounting rules known as the Basel III regime of 9 percent to 9.5 percent by the end of 2013.

The French bank published its latest results a little more than five years after Jérôme Kerviel, a trader in the bank’s equity derivatives business, built unauthorized positions that led to a 4.9 billion euro loss for Société Générale.

Mr. Kerviel’s conviction on charges of breach of trust and forgery was upheld in October by the Paris Court of Appeals. He also was ordered to serve a three-year prison term, pending appeal, and to repay the bank for the full amount of the 4.9 billion euro loss.

On Tuesday, Mr. Kerviel told the French radio station RTL that he was challenging the repayment order in a labor court, saying he had been ordered to pay without a third-party expert being allowed to study the damages. He added that he was suing Société Générale for an amount equivalent to the 4.9 billion euro trading loss.

Read More..

The Lede: Australian Report on Israel's 'Prisoner X' Suggests Melbourne Man Was Mossad Agent

Part of an Australian television report on the mystery of Israel’s “Prisoner X” broadcast on Tuesday.

Last Updated, 2:53 p.m. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported on Tuesday that a man referred to in Israel as “Prisoner X,” who was jailed and died under mysterious circumstances in 2010, might have been an Australian-born Israeli who worked for Israel’s secret service, the Mossad.

According to the ABC, an unnamed source “with connections to Israel’s security establishment” claimed that the prisoner — whose detention and suicide at the high-security Ayalon Prison outside Tel Aviv was briefly reported on an Israeli news site in December 2010 despite a gag order — was named Ben Alon. That same month, the network reported, a man from suburban Melbourne, Ben Zygier, who had emigrated to Israel 12 years ago and changed his name to Ben Alon, died in Israel.

Although the Australian state broadcaster published video and a complete transcript of the 28-minute report online, Israeli news sites removed articles describing the ABC investigation after editors were summoned to an emergency meeting by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, Reuters reported.

The Israeli media/censor killed press coverage of the ██████ █ affair today. Want to know what it’s about? http://t.co/cdV7N7BS

— Michael Omer-Man (@MikeOmerMan) 12 Feb 13

As the Israeli journalist Noam Sheizaf explained in a post for the Tel Aviv news blog +972, reporters in Israel have been trying to skirt the gag order for more than two years. On Tuesday, he reported:

The Israeli media published short stories based on the Australian piece this morning. Usually, the Israeli military censor allows Hebrew stories on secret issues if they are based on foreign sources. The assumption is that the information has already been made available, so there is little point in keeping it secret. Around noon the stories on the dead prisoner disappeared from the Haaretz, Globes and Walla sites.

An urgent meeting with the editors of the Israeli papers was later called by the Prime Minister’s Office. The so-called “editors’ committee” is an informal Israeli institution in which newspapers editors were given access to secret information in exchange for refraining from publishing it. According to a report in Haaretz, the meeting was called regarding an affair which “severely embarrasses” a government institution or person.

Trevor Bormann, the ABC journalist who led the investigation broadcast Tuesday on the network’s current affairs program “Foreign Correspondent,” explained what Israeli journalists are up against in his report:

Foreign Correspondent has obtained details of a gag order issued in late June 2010 under the case name “Israel versus John Doe.” In it, Judge Hila Gerstl, of the Petach Tikva District Court bans any public mention or hint of Prisoner X, Mr X, cell number 15 in Ayalon Prison, the conditions there, or anything about being held in that cell. As an indication of how sensitive the issue was, the judge ruled that even mention of the existence of the order was prohibited.

Concerns about censorship, and the reported secret detention of an Israeli citizen who somehow managed to hang himself in a high-security prison, prompted a stream of questions for Israel’s justice minister on Tuesday in the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament, Haaretz reported.

“I cannot answer these questions because the matter does not fall under the authority of the Justice Minister,” Yaakov Ne’eman, the justice minister, said. “But there is no doubt that if true, the matter must be looked into.”

As Mr. Bormann noted in his ABC report, relations between Israel and several other nations became strained in early 2010 when it emerged that “Mossad had used the identities of dual nationals living in Israel, including four Australians,” on forged passports used by suspects in the assassination of a Hamas official in Dubai.

During its investigation, Mr. Bormann added, ABC producers lodged a freedom of information request with Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade asking for any documents relating to Ben Zygier, also known as Ben Alon. In response, he reported:

D.F.A.T. told us there were documents relating to his imprisonment and death but we weren’t entitled to see them because their release could have a substantial adverse impact on the proper and efficient conduct of consular operations. But curiously in their response to me D.F.A.T. referred constantly to a Mr. Allen. When I asked for clarification, a department official told me that Ben Zygier, also known as Ben Alon, also carried an Australian passport bearing the name Ben Allen.

Writing on Twitter, Israeli bloggers and journalists have tried to draw attention to the Australian report, sharing a copy of program posted on YouTube and photographs of the man identified as Ben Zygier by the ABC.

All Israeli media sites are now trying to hint to their readers about the Prisoner X story, following the removal of items by censorship

— noam sheizaf (@nsheizaf) 12 Feb 13

Apparently this is prisoner X: https://t.co/QV7MLDmX context http://t.co/DWUyAm4j

— noam sheizaf (@nsheizaf) 12 Feb 13

Read More..

Wrestling body reacts to Olympic rejection

LAUSANNE, Switzerland (AP) — The governing body of wrestling says the IOC's move to drop the sport is an "aberration" against a founding event of the Olympics.

Known by its French initials FILA, the organization says it is "greatly astonished" by the IOC executive board decision.

FILA says it will take "all necessary measures" to convince IOC members to maintain wrestling's Olympic status when they meet in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in September.

Still, FILA President Raphael Martinetti faces criticism when his ruling board meets this weekend in Thailand.

Russian federation leader Mikhail Mamiashvili says FILA is the problem, and Martinetti's tasks include defending "wrestling's place before the IOC."

German official Jannis Zamanduridis says "a piece of the Olympic idea is dying with this decision."

Read More..