U.S. now hindered by distance it kept on Syria conflict

WASHINGTON — With the Syrian civil war apparently near a turning point, Obama administration officials are finding their ability to influence the fast-moving events and growing violence hampered by their reluctance to become too deeply involved during the first 21 months of the conflict.

As the opposition has scored major gains against the regime of President Bashar Assad in recent days, U.S. officials have stepped up diplomatic efforts and begun weighing whether to start providing arms or other military assistance to the rebels.

But at a moment when the future of the strategically key nation may be up for grabs, Washington's power is limited by its weak ties to rebel field commanders who will have a major say in what comes next if Assad is toppled, say diplomats, opposition officials and regional experts.

"We don't have a presence on the ground and we haven't given assistance in any measure to these people," said James Jeffrey, a veteran U.S. diplomat who retired last summer after a final posting as U.S. ambassador to Iraq. "This is going to have an impact on our influence ... and it didn't have to be this way."

Though the administration has provided diplomatic pressure, humanitarian relief and nonlethal aid, it has been unwilling to supply arms or to use U.S. military force to set up a no-fly zone, as it did in the Libyan civil war last year. Officials fear that weapons would end up in the hands of extremists, and they want to limit U.S. military involvement at a time when Americans are war-weary and world powers and Arab states are divided on the conflict.

But it has become clear that, as they plan their approach to the next stage of the war, U.S. officials will have to try to overcome the unhappiness of rebel commanders who don't understand America's unwillingness to provide the military help it gave Libyan rebels last year.

The stakes are high. If the regime falls — by no means a certainty — the United States and its allies will want to move quickly to try to steer Syria toward a moderate, multiethnic government and away from a sectarian bloodbath. U.S. officials and allies are now busy formulating plans to help Syrians form a new government.

The number of extremist fighters in groups such as the Al Qaeda-linked Al Nusra Front has been rising, and if those groups take control of a new government, the geopolitical landscape of the region could change overnight in dangerous ways. Obama, who has been criticized by conservatives for failing to do more in Syria, could face accusations that his policy of limited engagement "lost" Syria.

The issue came up in the presidential campaign, with Republican challenger Mitt Romney saying he would supply arms to the Syrian opposition and Obama advocating a more cautious approach.

"We can't simply suggest that giving heavy weapons to the Syrians is a simple proposition that would lead us to be safer over the long term," the president said in the final debate of the campaign.

The rebel commanders' frustration with the United States has been apparent in recent weeks, in demonstrations that in some cases have shown up on YouTube.

One video shows a Nov. 30 demonstration in the village of Binish in which rebel fighters brandish their weapons and declare that they are fighting to create an Islamist Syria that would not be led by a Western-backed coalition of opposition groups, the newly formed National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces.

"We will not leave the revolution to the coalition that is a game in the hand of America and serves the American project," one of the fighters says in Arabic. "Oh, Obama, listen and listen!"

Though his views may be more radical than those of most opposition fighters, there is widespread unhappiness that America has not done more.

"Syrians have been looking for U.S. leadership, but unfortunately the United States has chosen not to get involved and people here have gotten more and more upset," said Khalid Saleh, an executive board member of the Syrian National Council opposition bloc and a representative to the new coalition. He said he believes the United States could still take a lead role, but he has not seen signs that the administration wants to do so.

He noted that whereas France and Britain have recognized the new coalition as the legitimate government-in-waiting in Syria, the United States has been reluctant to do the same — a sign, in his view, that Washington still wants others to lead the way. U.S. officials are expected to formally recognize the group Wednesday at an international meeting on Syria in Marrakech, Morocco.

Dan Layman, an official with the Syrian Support Group, a Washington-based organization that sends nonlethal supplies to the opposition, said he understands the U.S. reluctance to send arms that could end up in the hands of extremists. But he said some Syrian commanders have complained that they have felt compelled to affiliate themselves with militant groups because those groups have access to weapons that are not being supplied by the West.

"We're concerned that some of these commanders may be moving to the wrong side of the street out of necessity," said Layman, whose group is licensed by the U.S. government and funded mostly by Syrian Americans.

U.S. officials have limited their ties to the rebels since the beginning of the conflict, when they urged demonstrators not to turn to arms.

Though they are in regular contact with military councils — provincial bodies that try to coordinate the patchwork of militias — relationships are not strong with individual groups, said Andrew Tabler, a leading Syria expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. The United States could have built a valuable relationship, for example, with Al Farouq brigade, a nationalist but mainline group, he said.

Though the new coalition has been praised in the West for its inclusiveness and leadership, diplomats acknowledge that it's not clear whether the umbrella group would be strong enough to issue orders to the militias that could hold the most power in a post-Assad Syria.

One unsettling possibility is that Syria could be filled with militias that retain their weapons, as in postrevolutionary Libya, but without goodwill toward the United States or loyalty to a transitional government.

"You could have dozens of militias, battle-tested and brimming with weapons, that don't necessarily consider the authorities in Damascus to be sovereign," said David Schenker, a Pentagon official in the George W. Bush administration who is now with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

paul.richter@latimes.com

Read More..

'Premium Suite' Packs Still More Features Into Samsung's Galaxy S III

Samsung teased users with seven new features for the Galaxy S III, including the ability to check your Facebook newsfeed from the lockscreen, split-screen apps and even more ways to share photos by way of NFC.

Premium Suite will expand the capabilities of what is already one of the most feature-packed handsets on the market. In our review of the S III, we noted that it does so much it can be almost overwhelming, with many redundant and wonky features among the unquestionably innovative and cool tricks. Samsung sees room for a few more.

Samsung announced the features Friday in a blog post and YouTube video, but didn’t say exactly when they’d be available.

Still, Facebook fiends will love the “Facebook Lock Ticker,” which lets you check your Facebook news feed from the lock screen. See something you’re interested in? Tap it and the S III launches the Facebook app so you can “like” and comment right away.

Another new feature lets you change text size when viewing a webpage in “Reader Mode,” allowing you to see just the text and photos of a website, free of ads, site navigation and the other elements that make up a webpage.

The S III already has about half a dozen ways to share a photo, but Samsung doesn’t think that’s enough. Its newest trick, Auto Share Shot, makes it possible to share a photo to any NFC- and S-Beam- (Samsung’s version of Android Beam) enabled devices. That means you no longer have to rely upon everyone being on the same local Wi-Fi network and accepting invitations one by one. Tap your phone against another NFC- or S-Beam-capable device and voilà, you’ve shared a photo.

Samsung also revamped the picture-in-picture-like function called Pop Up Play. “Multi Window” adds the ability to assign an app to each half of the screen, allowing you to run two apps simultaneously. We found Pop Up Play novel, but not terribly useful. It’s difficult to see how this would be any better on the S III’s 4.8-inch display. Still, if you like Pop Up Play, you’ll dig this feature.

Premium Suite also allows users to organize apps by how often they use them, and “Contextual Tag” will automatically tag date, weather and location data in all of your photos, as well as the person in your shot if you have facial recognition turned on.

Finally, Page Buddy (no, we don’t know why it has that name) will work much like Motorola’s Smartactions app. It will automatically launch tasks based on what you’re doing with your S III. For example, plugging in a set of earphones will open the phone’s music app.

Samsung hasn’t said exactly when the Premium Suite update is coming, but we’ll put it to the test once it arrives. Stay tuned.

Read More..

“American Idol” producer Nigel Lythgoe signs with Shine America

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – “American Idol” and “So You Think You Can Dance” executive producer Nigel Lythgoe has entered a multi-year production deal with Shine America.

Under the exclusive deal between Nigel Lythgoe Productions and Shine, Lythgoe will jointly develop and produce entertainment franchises for the global television marketplace with the Shine Group, Shine America CEO Rich Ross said Thursday.

Nigel Lythgoe Productions will continue to be based in Los Angeles. The agreement begins January 1, 2013.

“I am thrilled to be teaming up with Shine to develop new shows for a global audience,” Lythgoe said. “We live in one world and need to create content for that market. I cannot think of a more exciting company to partner with in order to face that challenge.”

“Nigel is clearly one of the world’s leading television producers, with an un-matched track record in TV programming both here in the U.S. and in the UK,” Ross added. “We are thrilled to welcome Nigel and his team to the Shine family and we look forward to developing the next wave of entertainment franchises together.”

Shine America, the U.S. arm of the Shine Group, the production company chaired by Rupert Murdoch‘s daughter Elisabeth Murdoch, produces and distributes a variety of scripted and unscripted programs. Past and current shows include “The Biggest Loser,” “The Office,” “Ugly Betty,” “Tabatha Takes Over,” and adaptations of Shine Group formats “MasterChef” and “Minute to Win It.”

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

The New Old Age Blog: A Son Lost, a Mother Found

My friend Yvonne was already at the front door when I woke, so at first I didn’t realize that my mother was missing.

It was less than a week after my son Spencer died. Since that day, a constant stream of friends had been coming and going, bringing casseroles and soup, love, support and chatter. Mom hated it.

My 94-year-old mother, who has vascular dementia, has been living in my home in upstate New York for the past few years. Like many with dementia, mom is courteous but, underneath, irascible. Pride defines her, especially pride in her Phi Beta Kappa intellect. She hates to be confronted with how she has become, as she calls it, “stupid.”

The parade of strangers confused her. She had to be polite, field solicitous questions, endure mundane comments. She could not remember what was going on or why people were there. It must have been stressful and annoying.

That night, like every night since the state troopers brought the news, I woke hourly, tumbling in panic. As if it were not too late to save my son. Mom knew something was wrong, but she could not remember what. As I overslept that morning, she must have decided enough was enough. She was going home.

In a cold sky, the sun blazed over tall pines. As I opened the door, the dogs raced out to greet Yvonne and her two housecleaners. Yvonne often brags about her cleaning duo. They were her gift to me. They were going to clean my house before the funeral reception, which was scheduled for later that week. This was a very big gift because, like my mother before me, I am a very bad housekeeper.

Mom’s door was shut. I cautioned the housecleaners to avoid her room as I showed them around. Yvonne went to the kitchen to listen to the 37 unheard messages on my answering machine; the housecleaners went out to their van to get their instruments of dirt removal.

I ducked into Mom’s room to warn her about the upcoming noise. The bed was unmade; the floor was littered with crumpled tissues; the room was empty.

Normally, I would have freaked out right then. I knew Mom was not in the house, because I had just shown the whole house to the cleaners. Although Mom doesn’t wander like some dementia patients, she does on occasion run away. But I could not muster a shred of anxiety.

“Yvonne,” I called, “did you see my mother outside?”

Yvonne popped her head into the living room, eyebrows raised.“Outside? No!” She was alarmed. “Is she missing?”

“Yeah,” I said wearily, “I’ll look.” I stepped out onto the front porch, tightening the belt of my bathrobe and turning up the collar. Maybe she had walked off into the woods. The dogs danced around my legs, wanting breakfast.

I had no space left in my body to care. Either we would find her, or we would not. Either she was alive, or she was not. My child was gone. How could I care about anything ever again?

Then I saw my car was missing. My mouth fell open and my eyeballs rolled up to the right, gazing blindly at the abandoned bird’s nest on top of the porch light: What had I done with the keys?

Mom likes to run away in the car when she is angry. She used to do it a lot when my father was still alive — every time they fought. Since Mom took off in my car almost a year ago, after we had had a fight, I’d kept the keys hidden. Except for this week; this week, I had forgotten.

I was reverting to old habits. I had left the doors unlocked and the keys in the cupholder next to the driver’s seat. Exactly like Mom used to do.

“Uh-oh,” I said aloud. Mom was still capable of driving, even though she did not know where she was going. I just really, really hoped that she didn’t hurt anybody on the road. I pulled out my cellphone, about to call the police.

“Celia!” Yvonne shouted from the kitchen. She hurried up behind me, excited. “They found your mother. There are two messages on your machine.”

At that very moment, Mom was holed up at the College Diner in New Paltz, a 20-minute drive over the mountain, through the fields, left over the Wallkill River and away down Main Street.

Yvonne called the diner. They promised to keep the car keys until someone arrived. By that time, Yvonne had to go to work. She drove my friend Elizabeth to the diner, and Elizabeth drove Mom home in my car.

Half an hour later, they walked in the front door. Mom’s cheeks were rouged by the chill air and her eyes sparkled, her white hair riffing with static electricity. “Hello, hello,” she sang out. “Here we are.” She was wearing the flannel nightgown and robe I had dressed her in the night before. It was covered by her oversized purple parka, and her bare feet were shoved into sneakers.

I started laughing as soon as I saw her. I couldn’t help it. Elizabeth and Mom started laughing too. “You had a big adventure,” I said, hugging them both. “How are you?”

“I’m just marvelous,” said my mother. Mom always feels great after doing something rakish. We settled her on the sofa with her feet on the ottoman. By the time I got her blanket tucked in around her shoulders, she had fallen asleep.

Elizabeth couldn’t stop laughing as she described the scene. “Your mother was holding court in this big booth. She was sitting there in her nightgown and her parka, talking to everybody, with this plate of toast and coffee and, like, three of the staff hovering around her.”

The waitress said Mom seemed “a little disoriented” when she got there. Mom said she was meeting a friend for breakfast, but since she was wearing a nightgown and didn’t know whom she was meeting or where she lived, the staff thought there might be a problem. They convinced Mom to let them look in the glove compartment of the car, where they found my name and number.

It was then that I realized I was laughing – something I’d thought I would never be able to do again. “Elizabeth, Elizabeth, I’m laughing,” I said.

“Ha, ha, ha,” laughed Elizabeth, holding her belly.

“Ha, ha, ha,” I laughed, rolling on the floor.

And she who gave me life, who had suffered the death of my child and the extinction of her own intellect, snoozed on: oblivious, jubilant, still herself, still mine.

Read More..

U.S. spy agencies to detail cyber attacks from abroad

WASHINGTON — The U.S. intelligence community is nearing completion of its first detailed review of cyber spying against American targets from abroad, including an attempt to calculate U.S. financial losses from hacker attacks based in China, officials said.

The National Intelligence Estimate, the first involving cyber espionage, also will seek to determine how large a role the Chinese government plays in directing or coordinating digital attacks aimed at stealing U.S. intellectual property, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a classified undertaking.

The Pentagon requested the estimate more than a year ago, and it sparked a broad review of evidence and analysis from the 17 U.S. intelligence agencies. The document has been submitted to the National Intelligence Council, which coordinates such efforts, but it was unclear whether the council had reached or approved final conclusions. The study is expected to be given to policymakers early next year.

U.S. intelligence agencies monitor daily digital assaults from hackers based in China who seek to steal intellectual property from American and other Western companies, current and former intelligence officials said. Intelligence analysts disagree over the extent to which the intrusions are organized by Chinese authorities, but the CIA and National Security Agency have traced cyber attacks and thefts to Chinese military and intelligence agencies.

"We know much more about who is doing this than we did even two years ago," one official involved in the effort said. "We have traced attacks back to a desk in a [People's Liberation Army] office building."

Some analysts believe the Chinese government has a broad policy of encouraging theft of intellectual property through cyber attacks, but that it leaves the details to intelligence services, state-owned companies and freelancers. As a result, at least some of the attacks appear poorly orchestrated.

U.S. officials have raised concerns about cyber espionage with Chinese officials. Beijing has denied any involvement.

Obama administration officials have publicly warned in recent months about threats to national security from cyber attacks, but they have tiptoed around the issue of who is to blame. "It's no secret that Russia and China have advanced cyber capabilities," Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said in a speech on Oct. 11 in New York.

Russia engages in cyber espionage against government targets, as does China, the United States, Israel, France and other nations. But Russia does not systematically steal corporate secrets from U.S. companies to aid its own national companies, U.S. intelligence officials say.

Last week, the congressionally sponsored U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission alleged that China has "an elaborate strategy for obtaining America's advanced technology by subterfuge, either stealing it outright or by requiring U.S. companies to turn over technology to Chinese business partners as a condition for investment and market access in China."

Part of that strategy relies on computer attacks, the commission said.

"In 2012, Chinese state-sponsored actors continued to exploit U.S. government, military, industrial and nongovernmental computer systems," the report said. "The volume of exploitation attempts yielded enough successful breaches to make China the most threatening actor in cyberspace."

Losses from the theft of U.S. intellectual property through cyber attacks and theft are difficult to quantify but are believed to be in the billions of dollars a year.

In one recent case, Brian Milburn, who runs Solid Oak Software Inc. in Santa Barbara, sued the Chinese government and nine companies for $2.2 billion in January 2010 in federal court in Santa Ana, alleging that his Cybersitter child-monitoring software had been pirated and illegally sold to 57 million users in China. The lawsuit was settled for an undisclosed amount in April, though the Chinese government did not participate in the settlement.

As the lawsuit unfolded, Milburn was targeted for harassment by Chinese hackers thought to have been tracked by U.S. intelligence, according to his Los Angeles lawyer, Gregory Fayer. He said the hackers blocked orders on the Cybersitter website, costing Milburn tens of thousands of dollars in lost sales.

"The guys they put on us were the virtual Chinese A-Team of hackers," Milburn said in a phone interview Thursday. "They were the most patient people I've ever seen. They basically used the same techniques against me that they would use for cyber espionage."

ken.dilanian@latimes.com

Read More..

How Trusting in Vice Led to John McAfee's Downfall



By now, you are aware of John McAfee. If there’s one thing that the sexagenarian millionaire antivirus founder seems to love more than teenage girls, it’s publicity. And he is extremely adroit at getting it. His misadventures in Central America have eaten the media whole. Even now, in the hospital where he was taken after suffering chest pain, he is surrounded by a crush of media.

He’s a natural story, as I learned firsthand earlier this year. Charming and good-looking, he peppers his speech in Virginia-accented “sirs.” It’s disarming, like some patrician version of neuro-linguistic programming. Combined with his wild stories, it means reporters love to talk to him.

And of course, he is a media magnet for other reasons too, all related to his bizarre lifestyle. His relocation to Belize. His fights with that nation’s government. His coterie of young women. The armed gang members he associates with. The allegations of drug use. The McAfee story, with its drugs and guns and prostitutes and allegations of police corruption, seemed tailor-made for Vice, a publication that revels in all of those subjects on a regular basis. It is as if some hipster god reached down and extended a smelly, fickle finger of fate to Vice editor-in-chief Rocco Castoro, muttering “here’s a cool story, bro.”

Naturally, Vice scuttled down to Belize, and traveled with McAfee as he fled the country, penning a blog post titled “We Are With John McAfee Right Now, Suckers.”

Vice is just the most recent media crew McAfee has latched onto. And if the past is prologue, it won’t go well. The chummy relationship McAfee tends to enjoy with his contacts in the media almost always goes south. He’s previously attached his media ambitions on Jeff Wise, only to then smear him, and then subsequently apologize. Wired’s own Joshua Davis also enjoyed his attentions, and when McAfee first went on the lam, he gave Davis exclusive interviews. This lasted until Davis wrote stories McAfee didn’t like, at which point the old man in the jungle claimed it had all been a ruse and quit talking to Davis.

So now he’s with Vice. In a blog post he later deleted, he claimed they would tell his real story. That Vice would show once and for all whether or not he is a drug-crazed madman. Instead, he’s in a hospital in Guatemala after having been detained by police, and facing likely deportation.

Oddly, Vice directly contributed to McAfee’s capture by revealing his location in the metadata of a photo it published. This was deeply stupid. People have been pointing out the dangers of inadvertently leaving GPS tags in cellphone pictures for years and years. Vice is the same publication that regularly drops in on revolutions and all manner of criminals. They should have known better.

Then, it followed up this egregiously stupid action with a far worse one. Vice photographer Robert King apparently lied on his Facebook page and Twitter in order to protect McAfee. Like McAfee, he claimed that the geodata in the photo had been manipulated to conceal their true location.

This explanation, of course, made no damn sense at all. If McAfee and King were trying to conceal their location by spreading disinformation, why immediately admit to it?

Shortly thereafter, McAfee copped to lying, and admitted to being in Guatemala. King deleted his tweet and Facebook status update. McAfee blamed the disclosure on a Vice “technician,” but regardless of whether it was a technician who screwed up, or King, or Castoro, or some intern, the photo that revealed his whereabouts in Guatemala appeared in Vice. And that photo, effectively, forced McAfee out of hiding.

But the coverup, as always, is worse than the crime. In claiming the geodata had been manipulated when it had not, Vice was no longer just documenting. Now it was actively aiding a fugitive wanted for questioning in the murder investigation of his neighbor Gregory Faull, who was shot dead at his own home.

McAfee had claimed that his plan was to leave the country temporarily, to get his traveling companion and lover Sam out, and then to return to Belize to fight from the inside without turning himself in. But once his location was blown, he had to get a brand-new plan. He would seek asylum in Guatemala. He hired a lawyer, Telésforo Guerra, formerly the attorney general of Guatemala. Vice crowed that McAfee had “just hired the best lawyer in the country.” Take that, suckers.

Vice documented how this attorney, also Sam’s uncle, was able to hook McAfee up with a tailor. He promised McAfee he could make the tailor actually sew faster. McAfee promised publicity in return. Vice rolled cameras.

And then, like that, it was over. King again took to social media to report the arrest, claiming McAfee had been taken into custody by “Guatemalan Federalizes.” Vice posted footage of McAfee being taken into police custody by Guatemala’s National Civil Police and Interpol.

Today, Guatemala’s president denied McAfee asylum. Guatemala is kicking McAfee out of the country, back to Belize. Afterwards, his lawyer claimed McAfee had two heart attacks. ABC reports he has been hospitalized. It’s hard not to wonder if this, too, is part of the plan. If there is a plan.

Though his offer of a $25,000 reward for information about the real killers strikes obvious O.J. Simpson chords, there’s so far no public evidence — aside from his flight — that he anything to do with the murder.

He may have shot his neighbor in the head. He may have ordered one of the gangsters in his employ to do so. He may have had a “will no one rid me of this troublesome priest” moment that caused one of his hangers-on to take it upon himself or herself to kill Faul. He and his entourage may have had nothing to do with it whatsoever. He may be completely innocent.

Nobody knows.

McAfee is clearly sleazy, likely crazy, and possibly even a murderer. But he also would be a free man right now were it not for Vice’s screw up.

As Alan Rules pointed out on Twitter, Vice could come out of this looking good either way. If McAfee turns out to be innocent, it is there to document it and even attempted to help him win his freedom. If he’s guilty, they helped bring him to justice, and have an action-packed documentary to boot. And if he dies? Well. The camera is ready.

Vice promises more footage. That it will continue to pick over John McAfee until he is free or dead or imprisoned, all of which now seem equally likely. And ultimately it offers an implicit promise that it can play by a different set of rules, one that allows it to burn sources and lie to readers. Maybe this is the media partner McAfee has truly wanted all along. Cool story, bro.

Read More..

“Breaking Bad,” dominates Writers Guild TV nominations

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Dark drug drama “Breaking Bad” dominated television nominations for the annual Writers Guild Awards on Thursday, with “Modern Family” leading the way in the comedy category.

A trio of HBO newcomers – Lena Dunham‘s “Girls,” Aaron Sorkin‘s “The Newsroom,” and political satire “Veep” – will compete in the new series category, along with network comedy “The Mindy Project” and country music drama “Nashville,” the Writers Guild of America (WGA) announced.

“Girls,” the story of three 20-somethings navigating life and love in New York City, also won a nomination in the best comedy series slot, along with established shows “30 Rock,” “Parks and Recreation,” “Louie” and Emmy darling “Modern Family.”

The Writers Guild recognizes achievements in the writing of U.S. television, radio, news and animation, rather than actors or directors. The Guild will announce its nominations in the movie field in January.

“Breaking Bad,” starring Bryan Cranston as a teacher turned drug kingpin and now in its fifth and final season, picked up five nods on Wednesday, including best drama series and four for individual episodes.

The show is likely to face stiff competition from psychological thriller “Homeland,” which won the WGA’s award for best new drama last year and has since bagged an Emmy and Golden Globe.

“Mad Men,” lavish Prohibition-era show “Boardwalk Empire,” and fantasy series “Game of Thrones,” round out the competition for best drama series.

In longer form television, miniseries “Hatfields and McCoys” – about a 100 year-old family feud – was nominated along with TV film “Hemingway and Gelhorn” and “Political Animals.”

The WGA will hand out its awards in all categories on February 17 at simultaneous ceremonies in both New York and Los Angeles.

(Reporting By Jill Serjeant; editing by Andrew Hay)

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Extended Use of Breast Cancer Drug Suggested

The widely prescribed drug tamoxifen already plays a major role in reducing the risk of death from breast cancer. But a new study suggests that women should be taking the drug for twice as long as is now customary, a finding that could upend the standard that has been in place for about 15 years.

In the study, patients who continued taking tamoxifen for 10 years were less likely to have the cancer come back or to die from the disease than women who took the drug for only five years, the current standard of care.

“Certainly, the advice to stop in five years should not stand,” said Prof. Richard Peto, a medical statistician at Oxford University and senior author of the study, which was published in The Lancet on Wednesday and presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

Breast cancer specialists not involved in the study said the results could have the biggest impact on premenopausal women, who account for a fifth to a quarter of new breast cancer cases. Postmenopausal women tend to take different drugs, but some experts said the results suggest that those drugs might be taken for a longer duration as well.

“We’ve been waiting for this result,” said Dr. Robert W. Carlson, a professor of medicine at Stanford University. “I think it is especially practice-changing in premenopausal women because the results do favor a 10-year regimen.”

Dr. Eric P. Winer, chief of women’s cancers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, said that even women who completed their five years of tamoxifen months or years ago might consider starting on the drug again.

Tamoxifen blocks the effect of the hormone estrogen, which fuels tumor growth in estrogen receptor-positive cancers that account for about 65 percent of cases in premenopausal women. Some small studies in the 1990s suggested that there was no benefit to using tamoxifen longer than five years, so that has been the standard.

About 227,000 cases of breast cancer are diagnosed each year in the United States, and an estimated 30,000 of them are in premenopausal women with estrogen receptor-positive cancer and prime candidates for tamoxifen. But postmenopausal women also take tamoxifen if they cannot tolerate the alternative drugs, known as aromatase inhibitors.

The new study, known as Atlas, included nearly 7,000 women with ER-positive disease who had completed five years of tamoxifen. They came from about three dozen countries. Half were chosen at random to take the drug another five years, while the others were told to stop.

In the group assigned to take tamoxifen for 10 years, 21.4 percent had a recurrence of breast cancer in the ensuing 10 years, meaning the period 5 to 14 years after their diagnoses. The recurrence rate for those who took only five years of tamoxifen was 25.1 percent.

About 12.2 percent of those in the 10-year treatment group died from breast cancer, compared with 15 percent for those in the control group.

There was virtually no difference in death and recurrence between the two groups during the five years of extra tamoxifen. The difference came in later years, suggesting that tamoxifen has a carry-over effect that lasts long after women stop taking it.

Whether these differences are big enough to cause women to take the drug for twice as long remains to be seen.

“The treatment effect is real, but it’s modest,” said Dr. Paul E. Goss, director of breast cancer research at the Massachusetts General Hospital.

Tamoxifen has side effects, including endometrial cancer, blood clots and hot flashes, which cause many women to stop taking the drug. In the Atlas trial, it appears that roughly 40 percent of the patients assigned to take tamoxifen for the additional five years stopped prematurely.

Some 3.1 percent of those taking the extra five years of tamoxifen got endometrial cancer versus 1.6 percent in the control group. However, only 0.6 percent of those in the longer treatment group died from endometrial cancer or pulmonary blood clots, compared with 0.4 percent in the control group.

“Over all, the benefits of extended tamoxifen seemed to outweigh the risks substantially,” Trevor J. Powles of the Cancer Center London, said in a commentary published by The Lancet.

Dr. Judy E. Garber, director of the Center for Cancer Genetics and Prevention at Dana-Farber, said many women have a love-hate relationship with hormone therapies.

“They don’t feel well on them, but it’s their safety net,” said Dr. Garber, who added that the news would be welcomed by many patients who would like to stay on the drug. “I have patients who agonize about this, people who are coming to the end of their tamoxifen.”

Emily Behrend, who is a few months from finishing her five years on tamoxifen, said she would definitely consider another five years. “If it can keep the cancer away, I’m all for it,” said Ms. Behrend, 39, a single mother in Tomball, Tex. She is taking the antidepressant Effexor to help control the night sweats and hot flashes caused by tamoxifen.

Cost is not considered a huge barrier to taking tamoxifen longer because the drug can be obtained for less than $200 a year.

The results, while answering one question, raise many new ones, including whether even more than 10 years of treatment would be better still.

Perhaps the most important question is what the results mean for postmenopausal women. Even many women who are premenopausal at the time of diagnosis will pass through menopause by the time they finish their first five years of tamoxifen, or will have been pushed into menopause by chemotherapy.

Postmenopausal patients tend to take aromatase inhibitors like anastrozole or letrozole, which are more effective than tamoxifen at preventing breast cancer recurrence, though they do not work for premenopausal women.

Mr. Peto said he thought the results of the Atlas study would “apply to endocrine therapy in general,” meaning that 10 years of an aromatase inhibitor would be better than five years. Other doctors were not so sure.

The Atlas study was paid for by various organizations including the United States Army, the British government and AstraZeneca, which makes the brand-name version of tamoxifen.

Read More..

Senate Passes Russian Trade Bill, With a Human Rights Caveat

WASHINGTON — The Senate voted on Thursday to finally eliminate cold war-era trade restrictions on Russia, but at the same time it condemned Moscow for human rights abuses, threatening to further strain an already delicate relationship with the Kremlin.

The Senate bill, which passed the House last month, now goes to President Obama, who has opposed using United States trade policy to make a statement about the Russian government’s treatment of its people.

But with such overwhelming support in Congress — the measure passed the Senate 92 to 4 and the House 365 to 43 — the White House has had little leverage to press its case.

And President Obama has shown little desire to pick a fight in which he would appear to be siding with the Russians on such an issue.

In a statement issued after the Senate vote, the White House mentioned the human rights component of the bill only in passing, instead emphasizing that the president was looking forward to signing a measure that would level the playing field for American workers.

The most immediate effect of the bill would be to formally normalize trade relations with Russia after nearly 40 years. Since the 1970s, commerce between Russia and the United States has been subject to restrictions that were intended to punish Communist nations that kept their citizens from emigrating freely.

While presidents have waived the restrictions since the cold war ended — allowing them to remain on the books as a symbolic sore point with the Russians — the issue took on new urgency this summer after Russia joined the World Trade Organization. As part of its pact with the trade group, Russia lowered tariffs for other member countries, but only those that granted it normal trade status.

By some estimates, American exports to Russia are expected to double after its trade status is revised.

But another effect of the bill — and one that has Russian officials furious with Washington — will be to require that the federal government freeze the assets of Russians implicated in human rights abuses and deny them visas.

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill were inspired to attach those provisions to the trade legislation because of the case of Sergei L. Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who sustained serious injuries and died in a Moscow detention center in 2009 after he accused government officials of a tax fraud scheme.

During the Senate debate, it was Mr. Magnitsky’s case, and not Russia’s trade status, that occupied most of the time.

One by one, Democratic and Republican senators alike rose to denounce Russian officials for their disregard for basic freedoms.

“This culture of impunity in Russia has been growing worse and worse,” said Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona. “There are still many people who look at the Magnitsky Act as anti-Russia. I disagree,” he added. “Ultimately passing this legislation will place the United States squarely on the side of the Russian people and the right side of Russian history, which appears to be approaching a crossroads.”

In Moscow, the denunciation was swift, and legislators promised retaliation with a proposal of their own that would freeze the bank accounts of American human rights violators.

“This initiative is intended to restrict the rights of Russian citizens, which we consider completely unjust and baseless,” said Konstantin Dolgov, the Russian foreign ministry’s human rights envoy, in comments to the Interfax news agency in Brussels. “This is an attempt to interfere in our internal affairs, in the authority of Russia’s investigative and judicial organs, which continue to investigate the Magnitsky case.”

Russian officials have said that Mr. Magnitsky is not the hero his supporters make him out to be, and they have pursued posthumous tax evasion charges against him. And lately the case has taken some more unusual turns. One witness was recently found dead in Britain.

Initially the Senate faced some pressure to pass a bill that punished human rights violators from all nations, not just those who are Russian. But the House bill applied only to Russia. And the Senate followed suit, as supporters of the bill wanted something that would pass quickly and not require a complicated back-and-forth with the House.

But Senator Ben Cardin, a Democrat from Maryland who wrote the bill that would apply internationally to all nations, said the United States position on human rights abusers was unambiguous. “This bill is our standard,” he said. “The world is on notice.”

Ellen Barry contributed reporting from Moscow.

Read More..

Jazz legend Dave Brubeck dies at 91

Dave Brubeck's pioneering style in pieces such as "Take Five" caught listeners' ears with exotic, challenging rhythms.

In the strait-laced Eisenhower 1950s, Dave Brubeck seemed, on one hand, deeply conventional. He didn't drink, smoke or take drugs. He favored expressions like "baloney!" and "you bet" over ruder alternatives. He had a prodigious work ethic that had been ground into him by his cowboy father on the family's California cattle ranch.

But rebellion was in Brubeck's soul. Schooled in piano by his musically gifted mother, he became a jazz man — outwardly square but quintessentially cool — whose genius at marrying spontaneity and unorthodox rhythms with classical forms became an enduring legacy.

Brubeck, the pianist and composer who pushed the boundaries of jazz for six decades and became one of the genre's most popular artists, died Wednesday, a day before his 92nd birthday.

The jazz maestro, who had a history of heart trouble, became unresponsive on his way to a medical appointment, said his longtime manager and producer Russell Gloyd. Brubeck's son, who was in the car with him, rushed him to a hospital in Norwalk, Conn., where he was pronounced dead.

Jazz guitarist Kenny Burrell called Brubeck "a true musical giant. He helped to keep jazz at a truly high level and he was very consistent in both his performance and composition."

He was best known for his work with his classic Dave Brubeck Quartet, which included longtime musical partner Paul Desmond on alto saxophone, Eugene Wright on bass and Joe Morello on drums. Brubeck's innovative ideas generated an enthusiastic response from a new audience of young listeners — as well as the players most directly connected with his music.

"When Dave is playing his best, it's a profoundly moving thing to experience, emotionally and intellectually," Desmond said in 1952 in the jazz publication Down Beat. "It's completely free, live improvisation ... the vigor and force of simple jazz, the harmonic complexities of Bartok and Milhaud, the form [and much of the dignity] of Bach and, at times, the lyrical romanticism of Rachmaninoff."

In the late 1950s, the group began exploring unusual rhythmic meters. By the end of the decade, the album "Time Out" had reached No. 2 on the pop music album charts, and a single off the album — with "Take Five" on one side and "Blue Rondo a la Turk" on the other — became the first jazz recording to sell more than a million copies.

Written by Desmond, "Take Five" became a universally recognized jazz classic despite the offbeat 5/4 meter.

The group's popularity began to climb in the mid-1950s when a series of live college recordings — "Jazz Goes to College," "Jazz Goes to Junior College" and "Jazz Goes to Oberlin" — was released. Brubeck appeared on the cover of Time magazine in 1954, only the second such honor for a jazz artist. (Louis Armstrong was first.)

The New Yorker described the quartet as "the world's best-paid, most widely traveled, most highly publicized, and most popular small group now playing improvised syncopated music."

But Brubeck's fascination with groundbreaking elements not generally included in the jazz styles of the '50s also made his music a target of widespread disparagement from jazz critics, who often referred to a "heavy-handed, bombastic approach" to piano improvising. The words directly contradicted another critical view, which identified the music of Brubeck and Desmond as another example of the "effete, laid-back, West Coast cool jazz" style."

Most of the criticism failed to recognize the complex range of elements — from stride piano to a Bach canon — that could course through a single piece. Brubeck often cited the positive response his music received from legendary jazz figures including Duke Ellington, Miles Davis and Charles Mingus, among others.

David Warren Brubeck was born Dec. 6, 1920, in Concord, northeast of Oakland. His father, Howard "Pete" Brubeck, was a cattle rancher, his mother, Elizabeth Ivey Brubeck, a pianist and music teacher. When he was 11, the family moved to a 45,000-acre ranch near Ione, in the Sierra foothills.

His older brothers Howard and Henry became classical musicians, but Dave preferred ranching and improvising pop songs on the piano. As a teenager, he played at dances on weekends.

Brubeck started out studying veterinary medicine at what is now the University of the Pacific in Stockton but switched to music at the suggestion of his science advisor. He managed to earn a bachelor's degree without learning to properly read music.

He was drafted into the Army after graduation in 1942, marrying his college sweetheart, Iola Marie Whitlock, just before he was sent to France in 1944.

His wife, who frequently wrote lyrics for his projects, survives him along with his daughter Catherine, his sons Darius, Chris, Dan and Matthew, 10 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. Another son, Michael, died several years ago.

Discharged from the military in 1946, Brubeck went to Mills College in Oakland, studying with French composer Darius Milhaud and forming the Brubeck Octet, a musically adventurous group with an imaginative and avant-garde repertoire. Brubeck's trio, which he led from 1949 to 1951, provided a different, more intimate forum for his far-reaching ideas. The group, which included bassist Ron Crotty and drummer/vibist Cal Tjader, played standards and Brubeck's originals.

In 1951, Brubeck added Desmond to his trio. It was the beginning of a journey into national visibility that established Brubeck and Desmond as significant jazz figures. The quartet, which remained together until 1967 and was briefly reunited in 1976, a year before Desmond died, became the most important vehicle for Brubeck's playing and innovative musical ideas.

Read More..