When Phones Come Out Long Before the Turkey





ATLANTA — Caleb J. Spivak will be busier with his phone than his fork this Thanksgiving.




Mr. Spivak, 23, is spending the holiday with his boyfriend’s family in Kennesaw, Ga. His mother will be in Virginia with his grandmother. His sister will be in Ohio, his father and brother in Florida. And his friends will be all over the country.


So he’ll post photographs of dinner to show his tight inner circle on Facebook, send out more general Thanksgiving cheer to his 11,000 Twitter followers and post images of the prettiest dishes to Instagram.


To stay close to his mother, he will use the videoconferencing feature on his phone to talk to her as he sits down to eat.


Multiply Mr. Spivak’s social media activity by that of the millions of others who will be using the platforms to record their Thanksgivings, and this year’s holiday could be the most documented in history.


“This year, more than ever before, we will see how we get along as a national family,” said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project in Washington. All of the strengths and weaknesses of the American family will be on full display, he said.


Not long ago, pulling out a phone to send a photograph of Thanksgiving dinner or a text about the proceedings was considered rude, a violation of the “eat it, don’t tweet it” rule.


But almost 40 percent of the 234 million Americans over the age of 13 with a mobile phone now use a social network, according to the analyst group comScore, and the numbers are growing fast. Instagram, the darling of people who love to share pictures of what they’re eating, has more than doubled its members to more than 100 million in less than a year, according to Facebook, the company that bought Instagram this spring. Facebook says Thanksgiving is one of its busiest days of the year.


At Twitter, as the holiday approached, the words “turkey,” “Thanksgiving” and “thankful” have been appearing in those 140-word posts more and more each year. In 2011, use of “thankful” alone was up 263 percent on the network from 2010, and more than a thousandfold from a non-holiday, the company said.


“People are sharing on such a scale for common experiences like Thanksgiving,” said Mor Naaman, a professor at Rutgers University and the founder of Mahaya, a social media start-up. “The potential is just mind-blowing.”


Mr. Naaman, along with others who research humanities, social sciences and media trends, says the development of such a vast pool of documentation has staggering possibilities for understanding American culture — at least once they figure out how to harness and make sense of it.


“There is a lot of information that will be available and ready to mine like never before,” he said. “When do the family arguments start? How many people watch the football games? How much do people drink?”


The desire to share a common experience will bring out Sarah Han’s phone with regularity as she and her boyfriend prepare dinner for her extended family in their new house in Oakland, Calif.


Her mother used to take pictures constantly, many of which ended up in a photo album. Sending images of her meal to her followers through Instagram isn’t any different, she says, except that no one has to paste photographs into a book.


And instant photo-sharing creates something a traditional collection of snapshots cannot.


“It is kind of cool when you are on Instagram, and you see a common thread throughout an event,” said Ms. Han, 34, who works as a producer for The Bold Italic, an online magazine in San Francisco.


She cited a double rainbow that recently arced across the city’s skyline.


“Literally within five minutes, everyone’s photos were of a double rainbow,” she said. “The same thing will happen this Thanksgiving. You’ll see everyone’s table setting and turkey and see how everyone does it differently.”


Of course, not everyone is thrilled that Thanksgiving is becoming something to document constantly and share obsessively. The argument is as old as the mobile phone: by trying to stay connected, we end up being less connected.


“The problem is when the cellphones come out, people will take a picture, but then they’ll check Facebook and check e-mail, and it becomes an obsession that distracts everyone,” said Dr. Gwenn Schurgin O’Keeffe, a pediatrician who writes often about the effects of technology on family life.


Once, people took a photograph and had the patience to get it developed, reliving the moment well after it was over.


“So document the moment, and then worry about passing it around later,” she said. “You don’t need these instant updates of, ‘Oh, look, Grandma’s eating cranberries.’ ”


Sharing that shot of your partner trying to carve the turkey means an instant connection for families celebrating apart.


Most of Rebecca Palsha’s family doesn’t live in Anchorage, where she is a television reporter. She will use social media to keep them close as she and her husband, another journalist, prepare dinner for 10 this year.


Still, she realizes there comes a point where the moment might be better simply experienced.


“At some point, you have to put your phone away,” she said. “You have to realize when it’s time to talk to people here instead of people who aren’t with you.”


Mr. Spivak, a social media manager for Atlantic Station, a planned urban community in Atlanta, disagrees.


“It’s not that you’re missing out on real life,” he said. “Maybe now this is what’s becoming real life.”


Robbie Brown contributed reporting.



Read More..

Documents Show F.D.A.’s Failures in Meningitis Outbreak





Newly released documents add vivid detail to the emerging portrait of the Food and Drug Administration’s ineffective and halting efforts to regulate a Massachusetts company implicated in a national meningitis outbreak that has sickened nearly 500 people and killed 34.




In the documents, released on Tuesday in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, the agency would threaten to bring the full force of its authority down on the company, only to back away, citing lack of jurisdiction.


The company, the New England Compounding Center, at times cooperated with F.D.A. inspectors and promised to improve its procedures, and at other times challenged the agency’s legal authority to regulate it, refused to provide records and continued to ship a drug in defiance of the agency’s concerns.


Some of the documents were summarized last week by Congressional committees that held hearings on the meningitis outbreak. Republicans and Democrats criticized the F.D.A. for failing to act on information about unsafe practices at the company as far back as March 2002.


By law, compounding pharmacies are regulated primarily by the states, but the pharmacies have grown over the years into major suppliers of some of the country’s biggest hospitals. The F.D.A. is asking Congress for stronger, clearer authority to police them, but Republicans have said the agency already has enough power.


Records show that the agency was sometimes slow in pursuing its own inspection findings. In one case involving the labeling and marketing of drugs, the agency issued a warning letter to New England Compounding 684 days after an inspection, a delay that the company’s chief pharmacist complained was so long that some of the letter’s assertions no longer applied to its operations.


The agency said in a statement Wednesday that it “was not the timeline we strive for,” but that much of the delay was because of “our limited, unclear and contested authority in this area.” Because of litigation, it said, there was “significant internal discussion about how to regulate compounders.”


The agency first inspected the company in April 2002 after reports that two patients had become dizzy and short of breath after being injected with a steroid made by the company.


 On the first day of the inspection, Barry Cadden, the chief pharmacist, was cooperative, but the next day, the agency inspectors wrote, Mr. Cadden “had a complete change in attitude & basically would not provide any additional information either by responding to questions or providing records,” adding that he challenged their legal authority to be at his pharmacy at all.


The F.D.A. was back at New England Compounding in October 2002 because of possible contamination of another of its products, methylprednisolone acetate, the same drug involved in the current meningitis outbreak.


 While the F.D.A. had the right to seize an adulterated steroid, officials at the time said that action alone would not resolve the company’s poor compounding practices. In a meeting with Massachusetts regulators, F.D.A. officials left authority in the hands of the state, which “would be in a better position to gain compliance or take regulatory action,” according to a memo by an F.D.A. official summarizing the meeting.


 David Elder, compliance branch director for the F.D.A.’s New England District, warned at the meeting that there was the “potential for serious public health consequences if N.E.C.C.’s compounding practices, in particular those relating to sterile products, are not improved.”


 The company fought back hard, repeatedly questioning the F.D.A.’s jurisdiction. In a September 2004 inspection over concerns that the company was dispensing trypan blue, a dye used for some eye surgeries that had not been approved by the F.D.A., Mr. Cadden told the agency inspector that he had none in stock.


But in the clean room, the inspector noticed a drawer labeled “Trypan Blue,” which contained 189 vials of the medicine.


A few days later, Mr. Cadden was defiant. He told the agency that he was continuing to dispense trypan blue and that there was nothing in the law saying a compounder could not dispense unapproved products.


 The conversation turned testy. “Don’t answer any more questions!” Mr. Cadden told another pharmacy executive, according to the F.D.A.’s report.


Mr. Cadden rejected many of the assertions in the warning letter that finally came in December 2006. The next correspondence from the agency did not come until almost two years later, in October 2008, saying that the agency still had “serious concerns” about the company’s practices, and that failing to correct them could result in seizure of products and an injunction against the company and its principals.


It is not known whether any corrective actions were taken. The agency did not conduct another inspection until the recent meningitis outbreak.


Denise Grady contributed reporting.



Read More..

Documents Show F.D.A.’s Failures in Meningitis Outbreak





Newly released documents add vivid detail to the emerging portrait of the Food and Drug Administration’s ineffective and halting efforts to regulate a Massachusetts company implicated in a national meningitis outbreak that has sickened nearly 500 people and killed 34.




In the documents, released on Tuesday in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, the agency would threaten to bring the full force of its authority down on the company, only to back away, citing lack of jurisdiction.


The company, the New England Compounding Center, at times cooperated with F.D.A. inspectors and promised to improve its procedures, and at other times challenged the agency’s legal authority to regulate it, refused to provide records and continued to ship a drug in defiance of the agency’s concerns.


Some of the documents were summarized last week by Congressional committees that held hearings on the meningitis outbreak. Republicans and Democrats criticized the F.D.A. for failing to act on information about unsafe practices at the company as far back as March 2002.


By law, compounding pharmacies are regulated primarily by the states, but the pharmacies have grown over the years into major suppliers of some of the country’s biggest hospitals. The F.D.A. is asking Congress for stronger, clearer authority to police them, but Republicans have said the agency already has enough power.


Records show that the agency was sometimes slow in pursuing its own inspection findings. In one case involving the labeling and marketing of drugs, the agency issued a warning letter to New England Compounding 684 days after an inspection, a delay that the company’s chief pharmacist complained was so long that some of the letter’s assertions no longer applied to its operations.


The agency said in a statement Wednesday that it “was not the timeline we strive for,” but that much of the delay was because of “our limited, unclear and contested authority in this area.” Because of litigation, it said, there was “significant internal discussion about how to regulate compounders.”


The agency first inspected the company in April 2002 after reports that two patients had become dizzy and short of breath after being injected with a steroid made by the company.


 On the first day of the inspection, Barry Cadden, the chief pharmacist, was cooperative, but the next day, the agency inspectors wrote, Mr. Cadden “had a complete change in attitude & basically would not provide any additional information either by responding to questions or providing records,” adding that he challenged their legal authority to be at his pharmacy at all.


The F.D.A. was back at New England Compounding in October 2002 because of possible contamination of another of its products, methylprednisolone acetate, the same drug involved in the current meningitis outbreak.


 While the F.D.A. had the right to seize an adulterated steroid, officials at the time said that action alone would not resolve the company’s poor compounding practices. In a meeting with Massachusetts regulators, F.D.A. officials left authority in the hands of the state, which “would be in a better position to gain compliance or take regulatory action,” according to a memo by an F.D.A. official summarizing the meeting.


 David Elder, compliance branch director for the F.D.A.’s New England District, warned at the meeting that there was the “potential for serious public health consequences if N.E.C.C.’s compounding practices, in particular those relating to sterile products, are not improved.”


 The company fought back hard, repeatedly questioning the F.D.A.’s jurisdiction. In a September 2004 inspection over concerns that the company was dispensing trypan blue, a dye used for some eye surgeries that had not been approved by the F.D.A., Mr. Cadden told the agency inspector that he had none in stock.


But in the clean room, the inspector noticed a drawer labeled “Trypan Blue,” which contained 189 vials of the medicine.


A few days later, Mr. Cadden was defiant. He told the agency that he was continuing to dispense trypan blue and that there was nothing in the law saying a compounder could not dispense unapproved products.


 The conversation turned testy. “Don’t answer any more questions!” Mr. Cadden told another pharmacy executive, according to the F.D.A.’s report.


Mr. Cadden rejected many of the assertions in the warning letter that finally came in December 2006. The next correspondence from the agency did not come until almost two years later, in October 2008, saying that the agency still had “serious concerns” about the company’s practices, and that failing to correct them could result in seizure of products and an injunction against the company and its principals.


It is not known whether any corrective actions were taken. The agency did not conduct another inspection until the recent meningitis outbreak.


Denise Grady contributed reporting.



Read More..

Tool Kit: Online Shopping Tips for the Holidays





Some people may be looking forward to leaving Thanksgiving dinner before the pie is served to join the Black Friday rush, which will begin during dinnertime Thursday, earlier than ever, at stores like Sears, Walmart and Lord & Taylor.




But for those who prefer to stay for the pie course, avoid the lines and freezing temperatures and shop from the comfort of their homes, there are just as many deals to be found online this year, especially for smart shoppers.


Last year, online shoppers spent $816 million on Black Friday, an increase of 26 percent from the year before, and an additional $2.3 billion over Thanksgiving weekend and Cyber Monday, according to comScore. It expects online spending to rise this year.


Online, there is no commute, no parking and no crowds — and shopping can be done in bed or at the Thanksgiving dinner table. Still, you cannot try clothes on, you have to wait for your purchase to arrive and there is always the nagging feeling that a better price is just one more click away.


To find your way around those problems, here are some tips from online shopping pros, retailers and shopping bloggers.


BARGAINS START EARLY “Cyber Monday is passé,” said Fiona Dias, chief strategy officer for ShopRunner.com, a network of e-commerce sites. “With online sales beginning as early as the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving, consumers who hold out for the best deal may find that what they are looking for has already sold out.”


Amazon.com, for example, started its Black Friday deals on Monday, but they end Saturday. SHOP ON TUESDAYS One of the secrets of online shopping is that prices change by the second. To maximize your chances of getting the best price year-round, shop on Tuesday, a variety of e-commerce experts say. For whatever reason, Tuesday is when most e-commerce sites, including Shopbop, Etsy and RetailMeNot, post discounts and new items.


No matter the day, online retailers often start sales in the wee hours, so shop early.


As for the time of year, women’s clothes, shoes and accessories are discounted most in January, February, August and September, according to Shop It To Me, an online shopping search site. For consumer electronics like laptops, shop in midsummer and late September, before and after the back-to-school rush, according to Decide.com, a price comparison site.


NEVER PAY FULL PRICE Online holiday shoppers should use 40 percent off as a benchmark for a good deal, said Marjorie Cader, a Shop It To Me spokeswoman, based on discount data the site has collected. Expect discounts that are about 5 percent better from online-only retailers than from those that also operate brick and mortar stores, she said.


Comparison shopping sites like TheFind or ShopStyle can locate the best prices; Google or coupon sites like RetailMeNot can also help find a discount.


Google, Amazon and even flash sale sites like Gilt.com do not always have the lowest prices. You might check small shopping blogs dedicated to your favorite brands, like Grechen’s Closet for contemporary women’s clothes or J. Crew Aficionada.


“Spend 20 minutes and ensure you are getting the best deal out there,” said John Faith, senior vice president of mobile at WhaleShark Media, which operates coupon sites, including RetailMeNot.


BE A HAGGLER This is the year haggling at the cash register could become acceptable, as offline retailers try to keep shoppers offline. If you find a better price online — by using an application like RedLaser or searching Amazon — ask whether the cashier will match it. Big retailers like Target have already said they will.


WAIT TILL THE LAST MINUTE Procrastinators might benefit during the holidays. Electronics sold online are least expensive in the week before Christmas, according to Decide, especially TVs, laptops and cameras.


And while Dec. 17 is the last day that most online retailers will offer free shipping in time for Christmas, Walmart, the luxury clothing seller Net-a-Porter and others will deliver the same day. In San Francisco and New York, eBay now offers same-day delivery from hundreds of stores, including Macy’s, Target and Toys “R” Us.


NEVER PAY FOR SHIPPING... Nine of ten retailers will offer free shipping on certain purchases this holiday season, and a third will offer free shipping on all purchases, according to the National Retail Federation.


Some, though, require that you enter a promotional code, so it’s wise to take a minute to look around the Web site or search a coupon site to find it.


Stores including Walmart, Toys “R” Us and Nordstrom allow you to shop online and pick up your order locally.


...OR FOR RETURNS Sites like Zappos.com and Piperlime send prepaid shipping labels, but beware.


“When it comes to returns, read the fine print,” said Brian Hoyt, a spokesman for WhaleShark Media. Some merchants include a prepaid return label but subtract the price from your refund, and others charge a restocking fee as high as 30 percent for consumer electronics.


Many companies, including Gap and J. Crew, also let you return an online purchase to a local store. And until Dec. 31, PayPal will cover the return shipping cost if the merchant does not, as long as you pay with PayPal and make the return within 30 days.


SEARCH WISELY Try searching synonyms, like “coat” instead of “jacket.” On sites like eBay, try leaving out words — if you are looking for an Yves Saint Laurent handbag on eBay, search for “Saint Laurent” or “Laurent bag.”


“If you search for ‘Yves Saint Laurent,’ you’ll be fighting over pieces with a bigger group of people,” said Sophia Amoruso, founder and chief executive of the e-commerce retailer Nasty Gal, who suggested purposefully misspelling brand names as well. “Think of what an uninformed person might list a really great designer piece as, and you can get an amazing gem for an incredible price.”


EBay Fashion also lets shoppers search by taking a cellphone picture of a fabric to find similar designs.


GET INSPIRED Search for “black sequin dress,” and you’ll get 128 results on Zappos.com, 2,618 on Amazon.com and a truly overwhelming 18 million on Google.


One solution: Trust online curators to suggest items. Etsy creates lists of recommended items. On Pinterest, you can peruse items culled by others. Other sites to search for inspiration: Polvyore, Fancy, Svpply, Lookbook.nu and We Heart It.


TRY IT ON, VIRTUALLY You can visit sites that show real people wearing the clothes you’re interested in buying, like Go Try It On, Fashism and Rent the Runway and sites that show video, including Asos, MyHabit and Joyus. Or, as long as a site offers free shipping and returns, order two sizes and return one.


SHOP INTERNATIONALLY “Don’t let international shopping scare you off,” said Caroline Nolan, the writer of Pregnant Fashionista, a maternity shopping blog.


Many international e-commerce sites, like Asos, ship free to the United States. And because the seasons are different, winter clothes in Australia, for instance, go on sale just as Americans are starting to shop for winter, she said. FarFetch has items from small boutiques worldwide and 1stDibs is good at finding rare items like an antique from Paris. On eBay, you might have luck finding items made by a European designer by switching to eBay’s site for a particular country.


MAKE SITES WORK FOR YOU On Shop It To Me, you can enter your favorite designers and sizes and the site will send you personalized e-mails with promotions and sales. Many sites allow shoppers to place a symbol like a heart on best-liked items or save them to a wish list. On a site like Pinterest, shoppers can build a list.


“You always think you’ll remember where you saw something or what brand it was, but really you never do,” said Noria Morales, style director at SugarInc, a network of fashion and lifestyle blogs.


Even better, sites like Shopbop and Polyvore send alerts when items you have saved go on sale or are running low. EBay sends alerts when new items are listed for a search you have saved.


BE DILIGENT No one has time to read 50 e-mails a day from retailers. But for your favorite e-commerce sites, it is worth signing up for e-mails, as well as tracking them on Facebook and Twitter, where they often post exclusive deals. Many online shoppers have more luck hunting for items than trusting services to send alerts, said Grechen Reiter, owner of Grechen Media, a network of shopping blogs.


“It is the thrill of the hunt that gets us going, after all,” she said.


Read More..

Toll Rises as U.S. Pushes for Israel-Hamas Truce





JERUSALEM — Efforts to agree on a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas intensified Tuesday, but the struggle to achieve even a brief pause in the fighting emphasized the obstacles to finding any lasting solution.




On the deadliest day of fighting in the week-old conflict, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived hurriedly in Jerusalem and met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to push for a truce. She was due in Cairo on Wednesday to consult with Egyptian officials in contact with Hamas, placing her and the Obama administration at the center of a fraught process with multiple parties, interests and demands.


Officials on all sides had raised expectations that a cease-fire would begin around midnight, followed by negotiations for a longer-term agreement. But by the end of Tuesday, officials with Hamas, the militant Islamist group that governs Gaza, said any announcement would not come at least until Wednesday.


The Israelis, who have amassed tens of thousands of troops on the Gaza border and have threatened to invade for a second time in four years to end the rocket fire from Gaza, never publicly backed the idea of a short break in fighting. They said they were open to a diplomatic accord but were looking for something more enduring.


“If there is a possibility of achieving a long-term solution to this problem through diplomatic means, we prefer that,” Mr. Netanyahu said before meeting with Mrs. Clinton at his office. “But if not, I’m sure you understand that Israel will have to take whatever actions necessary to defend its people.”


Mrs. Clinton spoke of the need for “a durable outcome that promotes regional stability and advances the security and legitimate aspirations of Israelis and Palestinians alike.” It was unclear whether she was starting a complex task of shuttle diplomacy or whether she expected to achieve a pause in the hostilities and then head home.


The diplomatic moves came as the antagonists on both sides stepped up their attacks. Israeli aerial and naval forces assaulted several Gaza targets in multiple strikes, including a suspected rocket-launching site near Al Shifa Hospital. More than 30 people were killed on Tuesday, bringing the total number of fatalities in Gaza to more than 130 — roughly half of them civilians, the Gaza Health Ministry said.


A delegation visiting from the Arab League canceled a news conference at the hospital because of the Israeli aerial assaults as wailing ambulances brought victims in, some of them decapitated.


The Israeli assaults carried into early Wednesday, with multiple blasts punctuating the otherwise darkened Gaza skies.


Militants in Gaza fired a barrage of at least 200 rockets into Israel, killing an Israeli soldier — the first military casualty on the Israeli side since the hostilities broke out. The Israeli military said the soldier, identified as Yosef Fartuk, 18, had died from a rocket strike that hit an area near Gaza. Israeli officials said a civilian military contractor working near the Gaza border had also been killed, bringing the number of fatalities in Israel from the week of rocket mayhem to five.


Other Palestinian rockets hit the southern Israeli cities of Beersheba and Ashdod, and longer-range rockets were fired at Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Neither main city was struck, and no casualties were reported. One Gaza rocket hit a building in Rishon LeZion, just south of Tel Aviv, wounding one person and wrecking the top three floors.


Senior Egyptian officials in Cairo said Israel and Hamas were “very close” to a cease-fire agreement. “We have not received final approval, but I hope to receive it any moment,” said Essam el-Haddad, President Mohamed Morsi’s top foreign affairs adviser.


Foreign diplomats who were briefed on the outlines of a tentative agreement said it had been structured in stages — first, an announcement of a cease-fire, followed by its implementation for 48 hours. That would allow time for Mrs. Clinton to involve herself in the process here and create a window for negotiators to agree on conditions for a longer-term cessation of hostilities.


But it seemed that each side had steep demands of a longer-term deal that the other side would reject.


Khaled Meshal, the Hamas leader, said in Cairo that Israel needed to end its blockade of Gaza. Israel says the blockade keeps arms from entering the coastal strip.


Ethan Bronner reported from Jerusalem, and David D. Kirkpatrick from Cairo. Reporting was contributed by Jodi Rudoren and Fares Akram from Gaza; Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem; Peter Baker from Phnom Penh, Cambodia; David E. Sanger and Mark Landler from Washington; and Rick Gladstone from New York.



This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 20, 2012

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misspelled the family name of the Israeli soldier who was killed in a Palestinian rocket attack on Tuesday. He is Yosef Fartuk, not Yosef Faruk. An earlier version also referred imprecisely to the cause of deaths near Al Shifa Hospital. A series of attacks, not a single attack, killed more than a dozen people there.



Read More..

I.H.T. Special Report: Technology & Innovation: Guarding a 'Fundamental Right' of Privacy in Europe







PARIS — Is it impolitic to ask the French privacy regulator a personal question about her Internet habits? Perhaps, but Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin, head of the country’s data protection agency, is perfectly forthcoming in her answer.




“Facebook? I follow it but, to be perfectly honest, I don’t use it,” she said. As for Google, “Of course I use it, but I am prudent about what I do. I don’t give away any family secrets.”


Both Facebook and Google, along with a range of other Internet companies, have faced the scrutiny of Ms. Falque-Pierrotin and her colleagues at the Commission nationale de l'informatique et des libertés, also known as the CNIL.


The agency has taken the lead role among the 27 European authorities on data protection in an investigation of a new privacy policy that Google introduced this year to streamline the previously separate practices for data use in dozens of Google services. Last month, CNIL ordered the company to make changes to the policy or face disciplinary action.


European privacy officials worry that the mining and blending of data across different Google services, like the search engine and the YouTube video site, could result in privacy violations.


In an interview last week at the CNIL headquarters in Paris, Ms. Falque- Pierrotin said she wanted Google to report back with proposed solutions by February, nearly a year after the new policy was introduced. If the proposals are insufficient, she said, “we will move on to a sanctions phase.”


“This is not about taking the scalp of a big company,” she said. “It’s about pushing them to come into conformity. If a company that is at the heart of the digital economy cannot come up with a satisfactory solution, that is very serious.”


Google has said it has been reviewing a letter from Ms. Falque-Pierrotin to its chief executive, Larry Page. The company has consistently maintained that the new policy respects E.U. law.


CNIL has the power to fine companies as much as €300,000, or about $382,000, for violations.


Companies like Google are eager to use the personal data gleaned from the Internet in new ways to sell online advertising and to provide other services tailored to individual users.


But Ms. Falque-Pierrotin said her tough approach was justified by the importance that the French, and Europeans more generally, attach to privacy.


“In Europe, we consider privacy a fundamental right,” she said. “That doesn’t mean it is exclusive of other rights, but economic rights are not superior to privacy.”


In the United States, she said, despite signs of a new concern about privacy in the digital age, “personal data are seen as raw material for business.”


The inquiry illustrates a new level of cooperation among the various data protection agencies in Europe, which have sometimes struggled to respond in a consistent way to the challenges of regulating global Internet companies like Google and Facebook.


Viviane Reding, vice president of the European Commission, has proposed the creation of a central authority to oversee data protection at the E.U. level. Big Internet companies have generally welcomed this approach, saying they find it difficult to deal with a welter of local regulations.


Ms. Falque-Pierrotin said, however, that this approach would be “too centralized,” adding that she preferred to maintain the current decentralized system of regulation, but with greater cooperation among national agencies.


“We have to have a system where a citizen can go to their local data protection authority,” she said. “Otherwise it is too remote.”


Ms. Falque-Pierrotin has also been meeting with her counterparts at the Federal Trade Commission in Washington, which is responsible for data protection in the United States.


Even though the American approach to privacy has traditionally been more accommodating, she said that she had been encouraged by recent enforcement action by the F.T.C. against Google and Facebook.


“We are starting to learn, starting to get to know each other,” Ms. Falque-Pierrotin said. Just do not turn to Facebook for her biography.


Read More..

Recipes for Health: Pear Cranberry Galette — Recipes for Health


Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times







I used Bartlett pears for this juicy galette, but pretty much any variety will work, as long as they’re not overly ripe.




1 dessert galette pastry (1/2 recipe)


2/3 cup dried cranberries


2 pounds pears, ripe but not too soft, peeled, cored and sliced (about 8 to 12 wedges per pear, depending on the size; if the pears are very large, cut the slices into 2 pieces at the middle)


1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice


2 tablespoons mild honey, like clover


1/2 teaspoon cinnamon


1 teaspoon vanilla


1/4 cup (25 grams) almond powder


1 egg beaten with 1 teaspoon milk, for egg wash


1 tablespoon raw brown sugar


1. Remove the pastry from the freezer and place it on a baking sheet lined with parchment. Leave to thaw while you prepare the fruit, but don’t keep it out of the freezer for too long. It’s easiest to handle if it’s cold and will thaw quickly. You just want it soft enough so that you can manipulate it.


2. Soak the cranberries for 5 minutes in hot water. Drain and dry on paper towels. Toss the sliced pears with the lemon juice in a large bowl, then add the dried cranberries, honey, cinnamon and vanilla and gently toss together.


3. Sprinkle the almond powder over the pastry, leaving a 2- to 3-inch border all around. Place the fruit on top. Fold the edges of the dough in over the fruit, pleating the edges as you work your way around the fruit to form a free-form tart that is roughly 9 inches in diameter. Place in the freezer on the baking sheet for 45 minutes to an hour. This helps the galette maintain its shape.


4. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Remove the galette from the freezer. Brush the exposed edge of the pastry with the egg wash. Sprinkle the sugar over the fruit and the crust. Place in the oven and bake 50 to 60 minutes, until the fruit is bubbly and the juice is running out and caramelizing on the parchment. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for at least 15 minutes. Serve hot, warm or at room temperature.


Yield: 1 9-inch galette, serving 8


Advance preparation: You can assemble this through Step 3 and freeze it for up to a month. Once it is frozen, double-wrap it in plastic. You can also freeze the galette after baking. Thaw and warm in a 350-degree oven for 10 to 15 minutes to recrisp the crust.


Nutritional information per serving: 246 calories; 6 grams fat; 2 grams saturated fat; 1 gram polyunsaturated fat; 2 grams monounsaturated fat; 43 milligrams cholesterol; 46 grams carbohydrates; 5 grams dietary fiber; 90 milligrams sodium; 5 grams protein


Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health.”


Read More..

Recipes for Health: Pear Cranberry Galette — Recipes for Health


Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times







I used Bartlett pears for this juicy galette, but pretty much any variety will work, as long as they’re not overly ripe.




1 dessert galette pastry (1/2 recipe)


2/3 cup dried cranberries


2 pounds pears, ripe but not too soft, peeled, cored and sliced (about 8 to 12 wedges per pear, depending on the size; if the pears are very large, cut the slices into 2 pieces at the middle)


1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice


2 tablespoons mild honey, like clover


1/2 teaspoon cinnamon


1 teaspoon vanilla


1/4 cup (25 grams) almond powder


1 egg beaten with 1 teaspoon milk, for egg wash


1 tablespoon raw brown sugar


1. Remove the pastry from the freezer and place it on a baking sheet lined with parchment. Leave to thaw while you prepare the fruit, but don’t keep it out of the freezer for too long. It’s easiest to handle if it’s cold and will thaw quickly. You just want it soft enough so that you can manipulate it.


2. Soak the cranberries for 5 minutes in hot water. Drain and dry on paper towels. Toss the sliced pears with the lemon juice in a large bowl, then add the dried cranberries, honey, cinnamon and vanilla and gently toss together.


3. Sprinkle the almond powder over the pastry, leaving a 2- to 3-inch border all around. Place the fruit on top. Fold the edges of the dough in over the fruit, pleating the edges as you work your way around the fruit to form a free-form tart that is roughly 9 inches in diameter. Place in the freezer on the baking sheet for 45 minutes to an hour. This helps the galette maintain its shape.


4. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Remove the galette from the freezer. Brush the exposed edge of the pastry with the egg wash. Sprinkle the sugar over the fruit and the crust. Place in the oven and bake 50 to 60 minutes, until the fruit is bubbly and the juice is running out and caramelizing on the parchment. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for at least 15 minutes. Serve hot, warm or at room temperature.


Yield: 1 9-inch galette, serving 8


Advance preparation: You can assemble this through Step 3 and freeze it for up to a month. Once it is frozen, double-wrap it in plastic. You can also freeze the galette after baking. Thaw and warm in a 350-degree oven for 10 to 15 minutes to recrisp the crust.


Nutritional information per serving: 246 calories; 6 grams fat; 2 grams saturated fat; 1 gram polyunsaturated fat; 2 grams monounsaturated fat; 43 milligrams cholesterol; 46 grams carbohydrates; 5 grams dietary fiber; 90 milligrams sodium; 5 grams protein


Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health.”


Read More..

Hamas Strengthens as Palestinian Authority Weakens





RAMALLAH, West Bank — In the daily demonstrations here of solidarity with Gaza, a mix of sympathy and anguish, there is something else: growing identification with the Islamist fighters of Hamas and derision for the Palestinian Authority, which Washington considers the only viable partner for peace with Israel.




“Strike a blow on Tel Aviv!” proclaimed the lyrics of a new hit song blasting from shops and speakers at Monday’s demonstration, in a reference to Hamas rockets that made it nearly to Israel’s economic and cultural capital. “Don’t let the Zionists sleep! We don’t want a truce or a solution! Oh, Palestinians, you can be proud!”


Pop songs everywhere are filled with bravado and aggression. But this one reflects a widespread sentiment that does not augur well for President Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestinian Authority, which is rapidly losing credibility, even relevance. The Gaza truce talks in Cairo, involving Egypt, Turkey and Qatar, offer a telling tableau. The Palestinian leader seen there is not Mr. Abbas, but Khaled Meshal, the leader of the militant group Hamas, who seeks to speak for all Palestinians as his ideological brothers in the Muslim Brotherhood rise to power around the region.


Israel is also threatening Mr. Abbas, even hinting that it may give up on him, as he prepares to go to the United Nations General Assembly on Nov. 29 to try to upgrade the Palestinian status to that of a nonmember state. The Israelis consider this step an act of aggression, and even some Palestinians say it is somewhat beside the point at this stage.


“His people are being killed in Gaza, and he is sitting on his comfortable chair in Ramallah,” lamented Firas Katash, 20, a student who took part in the Ramallah demonstration.


For the United States, as for other countries hoping to promote a two-state solution to this century-old conflict, a more radicalized West Bank with a discredited Palestinian Authority would mean greater insecurity for Israel and increased opportunity for anti-Western forces to take root in a region where Islamism is on the rise.


Since Hamas, which won parliamentary elections in 2006, threw the Fatah-controlled authority out of Gaza a year later, Mr. Abbas has not set foot there. Yet he will be asking the world to recognize the two increasingly distinct entities as a unified state.


Manar Wadi, who works in an office in Ramallah, put the issue this way: “What is happening in Gaza makes the Palestinian Authority left behind and isolated. Now we see the other face of Hamas, and its popularity is rising. It makes us feel that the Palestinian Authority doesn’t offer a path to the future.”


In Cairo on Monday, Mr. Meshal seemed defiant and confident in his new role, daring the Israelis to invade Gaza as a sixth day of Israeli aerial assaults brought the death toll there to more than 100 people, many of them militants of Hamas and its affiliates. Rockets launched from Gaza hit southern Israel, causing some damage and panic, but no casualties, leaving the death toll there at three.


“Whoever started the war must end it,” Mr. Meshal said at a news conference. “If Israel wants a cease-fire brokered through Egypt, then that is possible. Escalation is also possible.”


Officials in the authority have been holding leadership meetings, staying in close touch with the talks in Cairo and issuing statements of solidarity. They have also sent a small medical delegation to Gaza and argue that there is a new opportunity to forge unity between the two feuding movements. But they are acutely aware of their problem.


“The most dangerous thing is the fact that what we could not do in negotiations, Hamas did with one rocket,” one official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “The people had such excitement seeing the occupiers run in panic. It’s a very dangerous message.”


Mr. Abbas, whose popularity has been on the decline as the Palestinian Authority faces economic difficulty and growing Israeli settlements, also ran into trouble not long before the Gaza fighting began when he seemed to give up on the Palestinian demand of a right of return to what is now Israel.


Many Palestinians believe that Israel launched its latest operation in Gaza to block the Palestinian Authority’s United Nations plans by embarrassing it. Israeli officials say that is ridiculous: the operation’s purpose is to stop the growing number of rockets being fired at their communities, and Israelis interrupted their deliberations over the United Nations bid to wage the military campaign.


But Israel says anything that does not involve direct negotiations is a waste of time. The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly threatened to take severe retaliatory steps against the Palestinian Authority, including cutting off badly needed tax receipts to Palestinian coffers, should Mr. Abbas go ahead at the United Nations.


In a speech here on Sunday night at a Palestinian leadership meeting, Mr. Abbas repeated his determination to go to New York and ask for a change in status to that of nonmember state. He has chosen the symbolically significant date of Nov. 29, when the General Assembly voted in 1947 to divide this land into two states, one Jewish and the other Palestinian Arab.


The United States has asked Mr. Abbas not to do so, but instead to resume direct negotiations with Israel, which have essentially been frozen since 2008.


Read More..

Fiber Optic Breakthrough to Improve Internet Security Cheaply


Scientists at Toshiba and Cambridge University have perfected a technique that offers a less expensive way to ensure the security of the high-speed fiber optic cables that are the backbone of the modern Internet.


The research, which will be published Tuesday in the science journal Physical Review X, describes a technique for making infinitesimally short time measurements needed to capture pulses of quantum light hidden in streams of billions of photons transmitted each second in data networks. Scientists used an advanced photodetector to extract weak photons from the torrents of light pulses carried by fiber optic cables, making it possible to safely distribute secret keys necessary to scramble data over distances up to 56 miles.


Such data scrambling systems will most likely be used first for government communications systems for national security. But they will also be valuable for protecting financial data and ultimately all information transmitted over the Internet.


The approach is based on quantum physics, which offers the ability to exchange information in a way that the act of eavesdropping on the communication would be immediately apparent. The achievement requires the ability to reliably measure a remarkably small window of time to capture a pulse of light, in this case lasting just 50 picoseconds — the time it takes light to travel 15 millimeters.


The secure exchange of encryption keys used to scramble and unscramble data is one of the most vexing aspects of modern cryptography.


Public key cryptography uses a key that is publicly distributed and a related secret key that is held privately, allowing two people who have never met physically to securely exchange information. But such systems have a number of vulnerabilities, including potentially to computers powerful enough to decode data protected by mathematical formulas.


If it is possible to reliably exchange secret keys, it is possible to use an encryption system known as a one-time pad, one of the most secure forms. Several commercially available quantum key distribution systems exist, but they rely on the necessity of transmitting the quantum key separately from communication data, frequently in a separate optical fiber, according to Andrew J. Shields, one of the authors of the paper and the assistant managing director for Toshiba Research Europe. This adds cost and complexity to the cryptography systems used to protect the high-speed information that flows over fiber optic networks.


Weaving quantum information into conventional networking data will lower the cost and simplify the task of coding and decoding the data, making quantum key distribution systems more attractive for commercial data networks, the authors said.


Modern optical data networking systems increase capacity by transmitting multiple data streams simultaneously in different colors of light. The Toshiba-Cambridge system sends the quantum information over the same fiber, but isolates it in its own frequency.


“We can pick out the quantum photons from the scattered light using their expected arrival time at the detector,” Dr. Shields said. “The quantum signals hit the detector at precisely known times — every one nanosecond, while the arrival time of the scattered light is random.”


Despite their ability to carry prodigious amounts of data, fiber-optic cables are also highly insecure. An eavesdropper needs only to bend a cable and expose the fiber, Dr. Shields said. It is then possible to capture light that leaks from the cable and convert it into digital ones and zeros.


“The laws of quantum physics tell us that if someone tries to measure those single photons, that measurement disturbs their state and it causes errors in the information carried by the single photon,” he said. “By measuring the error rate in the secret key, we can determine whether there has been any eavesdropping in the fiber and in that way directly test the secrecy of each key.”


Read More..