Tehran Is Choked by Annual Buildup of Air Pollution

TEHRAN — Already battered by international threats against their nation’s nuclear program, sanctions and a broken economy, Iranians living here in the capital are now trying to cope with what has become an annual pollution peril: a yellowish haze that engulfs Tehran this time of year.

For nearly a week, officials here and in other large cities have been calling on residents to remain indoors or avoid downtown areas, saying that with air pollution at such high levels, venturing outside could be tantamount to “suicide,” state radio reported Saturday.

On Sunday, government offices, schools, universities and banks reopened after the government had ordered them to shut down for five days to help ease the chronic pollution. Tehran’s normally bustling streets were largely deserted.

Residents who dare to go outside cover their mouths and noses with scarves or surgical masks, but their eyes tear up and their throats sting from the mist of pollutants, which a report by the municipality of Tehran says is made up of a mixture of particles containing lead, sulfur dioxins and benzene.

“It feels as if even God has turned against us,” Azadeh, a 32-year-old artist, said on a recent day as she looked out a window in her apartment that often offers a clear view of Tehran, a sprawling city that is home to millions. But on this day, Azadeh, who did not want her full name used, saw only the blurred outlines of high-rise buildings and the Milad communications tower in the distance. The setting sun was reduced to a yellowish coin by the thick blanket of smog.

The haze of pollution occurs every year when cold air and windless days trap fumes belched out by millions of cars and hundreds of old factories between the peaks of the majestic Alborz mountain range, which embraces Tehran like a crescent moon.

Iran is prominently represented in the World Health Organization’s 2011 report on air quality and health, with three of its provincial towns among the organization’s list of the world’s 10 most-polluted cities. According to the report, Tehran has roughly four times as many polluting particles per cubic meter as Los Angeles. Many cities known for their poor air quality, like Mexico City, Shanghai and Bangkok, are cleaner than Tehran.

But since 2010, when American sanctions on Iranian imports of refined gasoline began to bite, the situation has grown worse, according to the report by the municipality of Tehran.

Faced with possible fuel shortages, Iran surprised outsiders by quickly making up for the loss of imports by producing its own brew of gasoline. While the emergency fuel kept vehicles running, local experts warned that it was creating much more pollution.

A recently released report by Tehran’s department of air quality control contained blank spaces where there should have been information about levels of benzene and lead — components of gasoline — in the capital’s air. But the report did state that while Tehran experienced more than 300 “healthy days” in 2009, in 2011 there were fewer than 150.

Iran’s Health Ministry has reported a rise in respiratory and heart diseases, as well as an increase in a variety of cancers that it says are related to pollution.

The state newspaper Resalat on Saturday called the pollution a continuing crisis, and it urged the authorities to act. “Why is it that when the winds pick up, this problem is again quickly forgotten?” an editorial asked. Another newspaper, Donya-e-Eqtesad, which is critical of the government, pressed for an improvement in gasoline standards.

The pollution caused by the use of the emergency fuel concoction has been a taboo subject here, as officials try to portray each measure to counter the economic sanctions as a success that should not to be criticized by the local news media.

On state television, several officials have denied that the yellow haze has anything to do with the locally produced gasoline.

In an interview on Saturday, Ali Mohammad Sha’eri, the deputy director of Iran’s Environmental Protection Organization, strongly denied that the pollution was linked to gasoline. However, he said that only 20 percent of the emergency fuel was up to modern standards. “Hopefully in three months that level will be 50 percent,” he said.

Meanwhile, the government has imposed strict traffic regulations in Tehran, Isfahan and other major population centers. An odd-even traffic-control plan based on the last digit of vehicle license plates keeps about half of the approximately three and a half million cars in Tehran off the streets on a daily basis.

Other plans to combat the pollution have been less realistic, analysts say. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has long advocated a plan to move civil servants from Tehran to reduce overpopulation in the capital. In 2010, the governor of Tehran Province ordered crop-dusters to dump water on the smog in an effort to dissipate it. There have also been plans for placing air purifiers in the city, but experts say they will not work in open spaces.

For those living in Tehran and unable to leave town for a vacation home on the Caspian Sea, waiting for the winds to pick up seems to be the only option.

“My head hurts, and I’m constantly dead tired,” said Niloufar Mohammadi, a university student. “I try not to go out, but I can smell the pollution in my room as I am trying to study.”

Azadeh, the artist, said the pollution forced her to stay indoors, adding to her sense of isolation. Step by step her world was being curtailed, she said. The Western sanctions imposed on Iran make her feel like a pariah, she explained. The government’s mismanagement of the economy and the resulting inflation have left her with little purchasing power, she said; she has stopped shopping for everything but essential items. And last week, security officers removed her illegal satellite dish from her roof.

“The pollution is the last straw for me,” she said. “We should wait helpless for winds to pick up and clean the air before we can safely leave our houses. It shows we have lost all power to control our lives.”

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DealBook: After Madoff, Financial Fraud Defies Policing

LOS ANGELES — To Philip Horn, the Braemar Country Club was not just a golf course, it was an extension of his office. Most weeks, Mr. Horn, a financial adviser at Wells Fargo, chatted up potential clients between holes at the upscale club set against the backdrop of the Santa Monica Mountains.

“I always thought, ‘This is a great guy and a straight shooter,’ ” said Barry Zelner, one of several country club members who invested with Mr. Horn.

Now, those same clients are wondering what went wrong.

After Wells Fargo alerted him to account discrepancies, Mr. Zelner, a corporate lawyer, said he stormed onto the club’s rolling greens in April, accusing the broker of theft. “Tell them what you did, Phil,” the lawyer bellowed among a crowd of members.

A few months later, Mr. Horn pleaded guilty to defrauding more than a dozen clients and Wells Fargo.

While Mr. Horn is a relatively minor player in the pantheon of financial fraud, his actions highlight the persistent problems with policing the industry, even after the wave of rules enacted since the collapse of Bernard L. Madoff’s giant Ponzi scheme in 2008.

And the challenge of oversight is not becoming any easier, with the ranks of financial advisers swelling. As new regulations crimp profits, big banks like Wells Fargo are ramping up their brokerage businesses in an effort to make up for lost revenue.

Amid the renewed focus, banks have spent millions of dollars to beef up their compliance systems and improve their oversight. Regulators, too, have bolstered their efforts, increasing enforcement and adopting new measures.

Every month, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, a Wall Street watchdog, penalizes more than 100 brokers for various actions, including unauthorized trading and fraudulent activities, as well as smaller violations.

“Theft, Ponzi schemes and other financial scams continue to happen at an alarming rate,” said Thomas Ajamie, a plaintiff’s lawyer who represents two of Mr. Horn’s clients.

For more than two years, Mr. Horn systematically executed and canceled trades in clients’ portfolios, pocketing the profits. To avoid detection, he limited his paper trail and made it appear that the trades originated in his own account, according to court documents.

“It’s simply unbelievable to me that this kind of fraud could happen for so long without Wells Fargo doing anything about it,” Mr. Zelner said. After meeting Mr. Horn on the golf course, Derek Brown invested more than $10 million with him in 2006, assured by the Wells Fargo name on his business card. “This wasn’t just Schlepper & Schlepper,” Mr. Brown, a retired pharmaceutical executive, said.

A Wells Fargo spokeswoman, Raschelle Burton, said the bank discovered the problems with Mr. Horn in October 2011 and immediately alerted law enforcement agencies. Wells Fargo also fired Mr. Horn. Mr. Horn is set to be sentenced on Monday. Prosecutors have recommended an 18-month sentence. A lawyer for Mr. Horn declined to comment.

Some of Mr. Horn’s clients are struggling to understand the extent of their losses. Mr. Brown and Mr. Zelner say that Wells Fargo has not let them review the trading records. Instead, they have had to rely on the bank’s analysis. “The firm believes it has provided appropriate information,” Ms. Burton said.

Prosecutors estimate the scheme’s damages at $732,000. But there are indications the losses could be higher. Last year, Wells Fargo, without explanation, transferred roughly $500,000 to an account that Mr. Brown has at Merrill Lynch. Mr. Brown said he planned to file a lawsuit seeking additional compensation.

While some clients still have concerns, Wells Fargo said the matter had been resolved and declined to provide further details. “In cases where his actions harmed the clients, the firm has either credited those accounts or reached another resolution with those clients,” Ms. Burton said.

On paper, Mr. Horn seemed like a model broker. After a short stint at Lehman Brothers in New York, he spent a decade at Citigroup in Los Angeles, moving to Wells Fargo in 2006. For much of his career, his regulatory record was clean, with few customer complaints.

At Wells Fargo, Mr. Horn, who worked in a team of brokers, seemed to land clients without an aggressive approach. He wooed clients slowly, often over many years. Between golf holes, he would casually mention winning trades, almost as an aside.

He nurtured friendships with clients. Norman Strang, an 80-year-old retired aerospace executive, said his wife regularly cooked dinner for Mr. Horn at the couple’s home in Pacific Palisades, Calif. “Here he was being this friendly guy, and yet he stole several thousands of dollars from our account.” Mr. Horn went to the weddings of both Mr. Brown’s children and planned to join him on a charitable trip to Israel and Morocco in the fall of 2011.

In 2011, Mr. Horn invited clients to his 50th birthday party inspired by the movie “Saturday Night Fever.” The tall and lanky Mr. Horn wore a white disco suit and handed out CDs with a cover that superimposed his head onto John Travolta’s body.

Given Mr. Horn’s gregarious nature, clients say they dismissed what should have been red flags. According to Mr. Zelner, Mr. Horn avoided meeting at his office, preferring the golf course. Between games, they would meet in the country club’s parking lot, where the broker would pull trading documents from his trunk.

“Phil would present his investments as if he was giving you something that would protect you,” said Mr. Zelner, adding that “he was also just a guy you wanted to drink with.”

Many clients trusted him. Each month, they received thick booklets detailing trading activity, but few pored over the trades. “If I had time to do that, I wouldn’t need a broker,” Mr. Brown said.

Amid hundreds of legitimate transactions, a dubious trade was also hard to spot. In one instance, Mr. Horn bought 1,000 shares of an exchange-traded fund for $77.93 apiece on Feb. 15, 2011, according to Mr. Brown’s bank statements. A month later, Mr. Horn canceled the trade. By then, the price had surged to $86. But the transaction was buried within more than 50 double-sided pages. It appeared as a canceled trade, which by itself was not alarming.

Mr. Brown and his wife did not know anything was amiss until they received a startling call from an executive at Wells Fargo. While the couple were celebrating the Jewish holidays in Toronto in October 2011, the bank executive told them about the problems with their account. Mr. Brown added, “He said we had a ‘six-figure problem.’ ”

A version of this article appeared in print on 01/07/2013, on page A1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Madoff Aside, Financial Fraud Defies Policing.

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Ex-Officer Is First From C.I.A. to Face Prison for a Leak

Christaan Felber for The New York Times

John Kiriakou with his daughter Kate at home in Arlington, Va., last month. He has struggled with how to explain to his children that he will be going away.

WASHINGTON — Looking back, John C. Kiriakou admits he should have known better. But when the F.B.I. called him a year ago and invited him to stop by and “help us with a case,” he did not hesitate.

Timeline

Leak-Related Cases Prosecuted During the Obama Administration

Christaan Felber for The New York Times

Mr. Kiriakou is scheduled to be sentenced to 30 months in prison as part of a plea deal.

In his years as a C.I.A. operative, after all, Mr. Kiriakou had worked closely with F.B.I. agents overseas. Just months earlier, he had reported to the bureau a recruiting attempt by someone he believed to be an Asian spy.

“Anything for the F.B.I.,” Mr. Kiriakou replied.

Only an hour into what began as a relaxed chat with the two agents — the younger one who traded Pittsburgh Steelers talk with him and the senior investigator with the droopy eye — did he begin to realize just who was the target of their investigation.

Finally, the older agent leaned in close and said, by Mr. Kiriakou’s recollection, “In the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you that right now we’re executing a search warrant at your house and seizing your electronic devices.”

On Jan. 25, Mr. Kiriakou is scheduled to be sentenced to 30 months in prison as part of a plea deal in which he admitted violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act by e-mailing the name of a covert C.I.A. officer to a freelance reporter, who did not publish it. The law was passed in 1982, aimed at radical publications that deliberately sought to out undercover agents, exposing their secret work and endangering their lives.

In more than six decades of fraught interaction between the agency and the news media, John Kiriakou is the first current or former C.I.A. officer to be convicted of disclosing classified information to a reporter.

Mr. Kiriakou, 48, earned numerous commendations in nearly 15 years at the C.I.A., some of which were spent undercover overseas chasing Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. He led the team in 2002 that found Abu Zubaydah, a terrorist logistics specialist for Al Qaeda, and other militants whose capture in Pakistan was hailed as a notable victory after the Sept. 11 attacks.

He got mixed reviews at the agency, which he left in 2004 for a consulting job. Some praised his skills, first as an analyst and then as an overseas operative; others considered him a loose cannon.

Mr. Kiriakou first stumbled into the public limelight by speaking out about waterboarding on television in 2007, quickly becoming a source for national security journalists, including this reporter, who turned up in Mr. Kiriakou’s indictment last year as Journalist B. When he gave the covert officer’s name to the freelancer, he said, he was simply trying to help a writer find a potential source and had no intention or expectation that the name would ever become public. In fact, it did not surface publicly until long after Mr. Kiriakou was charged.

He is remorseful, up to a point. “I should never have provided the name,” he said on Friday in the latest of a series of interviews. “I regret doing it, and I never will do it again.”

At the same time, he argues, with the backing of some former agency colleagues, that the case — one of an unprecedented string of six prosecutions under President Obama for leaking information to the news media — was unfair and ill-advised as public policy.

His supporters are an unlikely collection of old friends, former spies, left-leaning critics of the government and conservative Christian opponents of torture. Oliver Stone sent a message of encouragement, as did several professors at Liberty University, where Mr. Kiriakou has taught. They view the case as an outrage against a man who risked his life to defend the country.

Whatever his loquaciousness with journalists, they say, he neither intended to damage national security nor did so. Some see a particular injustice in the impending imprisonment of Mr. Kiriakou, who in his first 2007 appearance on ABC News defended the agency’s resort to desperate measures but also said that he had come to believe that waterboarding was torture and should no longer be used in American interrogations.

Bruce Riedel, a retired veteran C.I.A. officer who led an Afghan war review for Mr. Obama and turned down an offer to be considered for C.I.A. director in 2009, said Mr. Kiriakou, who worked for him in the 1990s, was “an exceptionally good intelligence officer” who did not deserve to go to prison.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 5, 2013

A summary that appeared with an earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of the former C.I.A. operative. He is John C. Kiriakou, not Kiriako.

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Michael Cronan, Who Gave TiVo and Kindle Their Names, Dies at 61

Michael Cronan, a San Francisco-based graphic designer and marketing executive who placed his stamp on popular culture when he created the brand names TiVo and Kindle, died on Tuesday in Berkeley, Calif. He was 61.

The cause was colon cancer, said his wife, Karin Hibma, with whom he founded the marketing firm Cronan in the early 1980s.

Mr. Cronan, who studied art in college, had many corporations and cultural institutions as clients, but he was most remembered for the pair of brand names he came up with a decade apart.

In the spring of 1997, he was asked to forge a name and an identity for a new device, a digital video recorder developed by a company called Teleworld that offered more sophisticated television recording choices than the videocassette recorder.

“We reviewed probably 1,600-plus name alternatives, seriously considered over 800 names and presented over 100 strong candidates to the team,” Mr. Cronan told Matt Haughey for his blog PVR (the letters stand for personal video recorder) in 2005.

“We spent the early meetings trying to place a cultural context on the product,” he said. Among the possibilities were Bongo and Lasso, which never got far.

Believing that “we were naming the next TV,” Mr. Cronan recalled, “I thought it should be as close as possible to what people would find familiar, so it must contain T and V.”

“I started looking at letter combinations,” he added, “and pretty quickly settled on TiVo.” (The “Vo” portion, he said, had a connection to the Latin and Italian words for vocal sound and voice.) Then came the search for a mascot that Mr. Cronan hoped “would become as recognizable as the mouse ears are to Disney.” He created a TV-shaped smiley character with the name TiVo inscribed on its face, rabbit ears suggesting an early TV set and large, splayed feet. Teleworld changed its name to TiVo Inc.

When Amazon prepared to introduce its first electronic reader in 2007, it turned to Mr. Cronan, who envisioned imagery reflecting the reading experience as an embryonic but rising technology.

Ms. Hibma said in an interview on Friday that in pondering a brand name, Mr. Cronan “wanted to create something small, humble, with no braggadocio,” while choosing an image that “was about starting something, giving birth to something.” He found the name, she said, by likening use of the new e-reader to “starting a fire.”

Michael Patrick Cronan was born on June 9, 1951, in San Francisco. He studied painting at the California College of Arts and Crafts (now California College of the Arts), where he later taught, and received a degree in art from California State University, Sacramento. He was a founder and past president of the San Francisco branch of AIGA, the professional association for design.

Mr. Cronan and his wife expanded their focus in 1992 to create the Walking Man clothing collection, featuring loose-knit tops and pants. Mr. Cronan also designed a pair of 1999 postage stamps, one commemorating the 50th anniversary of NATO and the other promoting prostate cancer awareness, and painted portraits and watercolors.

In addition to his wife, Mr. Cronan is survived by his sons, Shawn HibmaCronan and Nick Cronan; a brother, Christopher; a sister, Patricia Cronan; and a granddaughter.

For all his devotion to marketing and branding, Mr. Cronan felt that sometimes the demands of commerce went too far, as in the often-changing corporate names attached to sports stadiums and concert halls.

“There was a time in American life where going to a sporting event or a concert was sort of magical, because a lot of these places had these fun names,” he told The Denver Post in 2010. “But these days, with the amount of people craving advertising exposure, the sponsors have found a way to sell everything. They’re selling our nostalgia, and it’s sad.”

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Despite New Health Law, Some See Sharp Rise in Premiums

Health insurance companies across the country are seeking and winning double-digit increases in premiums for some customers, even though one of the biggest objectives of the Obama administration’s health care law was to stem the rapid rise in insurance costs for consumers.

Bob Chamberlin/Los Angeles Times

Dave Jones, the California insurance commissioner, said some insurance companies could raise rates as much as they did before the law was enacted.

Particularly vulnerable to the high rates are small businesses and people who do not have employer-provided insurance and must buy it on their own.

In California, Aetna is proposing rate increases of as much as 22 percent, Anthem Blue Cross 26 percent and Blue Shield of California 20 percent for some of those policy holders, according to the insurers’ filings with the state for 2013. These rate requests are all the more striking after a 39 percent rise sought by Anthem Blue Cross in 2010 helped give impetus to the law, known as the Affordable Care Act, which was passed the same year and will not be fully in effect until 2014.

 In other states, like Florida and Ohio, insurers have been able to raise rates by at least 20 percent for some policy holders. The rate increases can amount to several hundred dollars a month.

The proposed increases compare with about 4 percent for families with employer-based policies.

Under the health care law, regulators are now required to review any request for a rate increase of 10 percent or more; the requests are posted on a federal Web site, healthcare.gov, along with regulators’ evaluations.

The review process not only reveals the sharp disparity in the rates themselves, it also demonstrates the striking difference between places like New York, one of the 37 states where legislatures have given regulators some authority to deny or roll back rates deemed excessive, and California, which is among the states that do not have that ability.

New York, for example, recently used its sweeping powers to hold rate increases for 2013 in the individual and small group markets to under 10 percent. California can review rate requests for technical errors but cannot deny rate increases.

The double-digit requests in some states are being made despite evidence that overall health care costs appear to have slowed in recent years, increasing in the single digits annually as many people put off treatment because of the weak economy. PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates that costs may increase just 7.5 percent next year, well below the rate increases being sought by some insurers. But the companies counter that medical costs for some policy holders are rising much faster than the average, suggesting they are in a sicker population. Federal regulators contend that premiums would be higher still without the law, which also sets limits on profits and administrative costs and provides for rebates if insurers exceed those limits.

Critics, like Dave Jones, the California insurance commissioner and one of two health plan regulators in that state, said that without a federal provision giving all regulators the ability to deny excessive rate increases, some insurance companies can raise rates as much as they did before the law was enacted.

“This is business as usual,” Mr. Jones said. “It’s a huge loophole in the Affordable Care Act,” he said.

While Mr. Jones has not yet weighed in on the insurers’ most recent requests, he is pushing for a state law that will give him that authority. Without legislative action, the state can only question the basis for the high rates, sometimes resulting in the insurer withdrawing or modifying the proposed rate increase.

The California insurers say they have no choice but to raise premiums if their underlying medical costs have increased. “We need these rates to even come reasonably close to covering the expenses of this population,” said Tom Epstein, a spokesman for Blue Shield of California. The insurer is requesting a range of increases, which average about 12 percent for 2013.

Although rates paid by employers are more closely tracked than rates for individuals and small businesses, policy experts say the law has probably kept at least some rates lower than they otherwise would have been.

“There’s no question that review of rates makes a difference, that it results in lower rates paid by consumers and small businesses,” said Larry Levitt, an executive at the Kaiser Family Foundation, which estimated in an October report that rate review was responsible for lowering premiums for one out of every five filings.

Federal officials say the law has resulted in significant savings. “The health care law includes new tools to hold insurers accountable for premium hikes and give rebates to consumers,” said Brian Cook, a spokesman for Medicare, which is helping to oversee the insurance reforms.

“Insurers have already paid $1.1 billion in rebates, and rate review programs have helped save consumers an additional $1 billion in lower premiums,” he said. If insurers collect premiums and do not spend at least 80 cents out of every dollar on care for their customers, the law requires them to refund the excess.

As a result of the review process, federal officials say, rates were reduced, on average, by nearly three percentage points, according to a report issued last September.

Read More..

Despite New Health Law, Some See Sharp Rise in Premiums

Health insurance companies across the country are seeking and winning double-digit increases in premiums for some customers, even though one of the biggest objectives of the Obama administration’s health care law was to stem the rapid rise in insurance costs for consumers.

Bob Chamberlin/Los Angeles Times

Dave Jones, the California insurance commissioner, said some insurance companies could raise rates as much as they did before the law was enacted.

Particularly vulnerable to the high rates are small businesses and people who do not have employer-provided insurance and must buy it on their own.

In California, Aetna is proposing rate increases of as much as 22 percent, Anthem Blue Cross 26 percent and Blue Shield of California 20 percent for some of those policy holders, according to the insurers’ filings with the state for 2013. These rate requests are all the more striking after a 39 percent rise sought by Anthem Blue Cross in 2010 helped give impetus to the law, known as the Affordable Care Act, which was passed the same year and will not be fully in effect until 2014.

 In other states, like Florida and Ohio, insurers have been able to raise rates by at least 20 percent for some policy holders. The rate increases can amount to several hundred dollars a month.

The proposed increases compare with about 4 percent for families with employer-based policies.

Under the health care law, regulators are now required to review any request for a rate increase of 10 percent or more; the requests are posted on a federal Web site, healthcare.gov, along with regulators’ evaluations.

The review process not only reveals the sharp disparity in the rates themselves, it also demonstrates the striking difference between places like New York, one of the 37 states where legislatures have given regulators some authority to deny or roll back rates deemed excessive, and California, which is among the states that do not have that ability.

New York, for example, recently used its sweeping powers to hold rate increases for 2013 in the individual and small group markets to under 10 percent. California can review rate requests for technical errors but cannot deny rate increases.

The double-digit requests in some states are being made despite evidence that overall health care costs appear to have slowed in recent years, increasing in the single digits annually as many people put off treatment because of the weak economy. PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates that costs may increase just 7.5 percent next year, well below the rate increases being sought by some insurers. But the companies counter that medical costs for some policy holders are rising much faster than the average, suggesting they are in a sicker population. Federal regulators contend that premiums would be higher still without the law, which also sets limits on profits and administrative costs and provides for rebates if insurers exceed those limits.

Critics, like Dave Jones, the California insurance commissioner and one of two health plan regulators in that state, said that without a federal provision giving all regulators the ability to deny excessive rate increases, some insurance companies can raise rates as much as they did before the law was enacted.

“This is business as usual,” Mr. Jones said. “It’s a huge loophole in the Affordable Care Act,” he said.

While Mr. Jones has not yet weighed in on the insurers’ most recent requests, he is pushing for a state law that will give him that authority. Without legislative action, the state can only question the basis for the high rates, sometimes resulting in the insurer withdrawing or modifying the proposed rate increase.

The California insurers say they have no choice but to raise premiums if their underlying medical costs have increased. “We need these rates to even come reasonably close to covering the expenses of this population,” said Tom Epstein, a spokesman for Blue Shield of California. The insurer is requesting a range of increases, which average about 12 percent for 2013.

Although rates paid by employers are more closely tracked than rates for individuals and small businesses, policy experts say the law has probably kept at least some rates lower than they otherwise would have been.

“There’s no question that review of rates makes a difference, that it results in lower rates paid by consumers and small businesses,” said Larry Levitt, an executive at the Kaiser Family Foundation, which estimated in an October report that rate review was responsible for lowering premiums for one out of every five filings.

Federal officials say the law has resulted in significant savings. “The health care law includes new tools to hold insurers accountable for premium hikes and give rebates to consumers,” said Brian Cook, a spokesman for Medicare, which is helping to oversee the insurance reforms.

“Insurers have already paid $1.1 billion in rebates, and rate review programs have helped save consumers an additional $1 billion in lower premiums,” he said. If insurers collect premiums and do not spend at least 80 cents out of every dollar on care for their customers, the law requires them to refund the excess.

As a result of the review process, federal officials say, rates were reduced, on average, by nearly three percentage points, according to a report issued last September.

Read More..

Despite New Health Law, Some See Sharp Rise in Premiums

Health insurance companies across the country are seeking and winning double-digit increases in premiums for some customers, even though one of the biggest objectives of the Obama administration’s health care law was to stem the rapid rise in insurance costs for consumers.

Bob Chamberlin/Los Angeles Times

Dave Jones, the California insurance commissioner, said some insurance companies could raise rates as much as they did before the law was enacted.

Particularly vulnerable to the high rates are small businesses and people who do not have employer-provided insurance and must buy it on their own.

In California, Aetna is proposing rate increases of as much as 22 percent, Anthem Blue Cross 26 percent and Blue Shield of California 20 percent for some of those policy holders, according to the insurers’ filings with the state for 2013. These rate requests are all the more striking after a 39 percent rise sought by Anthem Blue Cross in 2010 helped give impetus to the law, known as the Affordable Care Act, which was passed the same year and will not be fully in effect until 2014.

 In other states, like Florida and Ohio, insurers have been able to raise rates by at least 20 percent for some policy holders. The rate increases can amount to several hundred dollars a month.

The proposed increases compare with about 4 percent for families with employer-based policies.

Under the health care law, regulators are now required to review any request for a rate increase of 10 percent or more; the requests are posted on a federal Web site, healthcare.gov, along with regulators’ evaluations.

The review process not only reveals the sharp disparity in the rates themselves, it also demonstrates the striking difference between places like New York, one of the 37 states where legislatures have given regulators some authority to deny or roll back rates deemed excessive, and California, which is among the states that do not have that ability.

New York, for example, recently used its sweeping powers to hold rate increases for 2013 in the individual and small group markets to under 10 percent. California can review rate requests for technical errors but cannot deny rate increases.

The double-digit requests in some states are being made despite evidence that overall health care costs appear to have slowed in recent years, increasing in the single digits annually as many people put off treatment because of the weak economy. PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates that costs may increase just 7.5 percent next year, well below the rate increases being sought by some insurers. But the companies counter that medical costs for some policy holders are rising much faster than the average, suggesting they are in a sicker population. Federal regulators contend that premiums would be higher still without the law, which also sets limits on profits and administrative costs and provides for rebates if insurers exceed those limits.

Critics, like Dave Jones, the California insurance commissioner and one of two health plan regulators in that state, said that without a federal provision giving all regulators the ability to deny excessive rate increases, some insurance companies can raise rates as much as they did before the law was enacted.

“This is business as usual,” Mr. Jones said. “It’s a huge loophole in the Affordable Care Act,” he said.

While Mr. Jones has not yet weighed in on the insurers’ most recent requests, he is pushing for a state law that will give him that authority. Without legislative action, the state can only question the basis for the high rates, sometimes resulting in the insurer withdrawing or modifying the proposed rate increase.

The California insurers say they have no choice but to raise premiums if their underlying medical costs have increased. “We need these rates to even come reasonably close to covering the expenses of this population,” said Tom Epstein, a spokesman for Blue Shield of California. The insurer is requesting a range of increases, which average about 12 percent for 2013.

Although rates paid by employers are more closely tracked than rates for individuals and small businesses, policy experts say the law has probably kept at least some rates lower than they otherwise would have been.

“There’s no question that review of rates makes a difference, that it results in lower rates paid by consumers and small businesses,” said Larry Levitt, an executive at the Kaiser Family Foundation, which estimated in an October report that rate review was responsible for lowering premiums for one out of every five filings.

Federal officials say the law has resulted in significant savings. “The health care law includes new tools to hold insurers accountable for premium hikes and give rebates to consumers,” said Brian Cook, a spokesman for Medicare, which is helping to oversee the insurance reforms.

“Insurers have already paid $1.1 billion in rebates, and rate review programs have helped save consumers an additional $1 billion in lower premiums,” he said. If insurers collect premiums and do not spend at least 80 cents out of every dollar on care for their customers, the law requires them to refund the excess.

As a result of the review process, federal officials say, rates were reduced, on average, by nearly three percentage points, according to a report issued last September.

Read More..

Plane Carrying Vittorio Missoni Lost Near Venezuela

MILAN — Venezuelan emergency services mounted a sea-and-air rescue mission on Saturday after a plane carrying the fashion executive Vittorio Missoni went missing off the coast of Venezuela.

The plane carrying Mr. Missoni, 58; his wife, Maurizia Castiglioni; another couple and two Venezuelan crew members disappeared after taking off from the resort of Los Roques, an archipelago off the coast of Venezuela, Italian media said.

“It disappeared yesterday. They have been looking for it with helicopters and ships, but have not found anything yet. They are still searching for it this morning,” the Italian consul in Venezuela, Giovanni Davoli, said.

Mr. Missoni is the oldest son of the founders of the fashion house famous for its exuberantly colored knits, featuring bold stripes and zigzags. He is co-owner with two siblings, Luca and Angela, who handle the technical and design sides of the firm.

“The Missoni family has been informed by the Venezuelan Consulate that Vittorio Missoni and his wife are missing, but we don’t know any more,” a Missoni spokeswoman, Maddalena Aspes, said.

Other members of the Missoni family are traveling back to Italy from a holiday in France, Ms. Aspes said.

Mr. Missoni and his siblings took over managing the company from their parents Ottavio and Rosita in 1996, aiming to relaunch the brand to a larger, younger market as rivals Gucci and Burberry have done. Under Vittorio’s tenure, Missoni has opened hotels in Scotland and Kuwait and started the Missoni Home collection.

By 2011, the brand’s appeal was wide enough for American mass-market retailer Target to ask it to design a collection.

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Europe Likely to Be Harder on Google Over Search

PARIS — By some accounts, the United States let Google off the hook when it found that the technology giant had not abused its dominance in the Internet search market.

Yves Logghe/Associated Press

Joaquín Almunia has vowed to restore competition to the Internet search business in Europe.

Few expect the European antitrust watchdog to be as lenient.

The Federal Trade Commission ruled on Thursday that Google had not broken antitrust laws, after a 19-month inquiry into how it operated its search engine. But the European Commission, which is pursuing claims that the company rigs results to favor its own businesses, operates under a different standard.

The agreement with the American authorities, analysts and competition lawyers say, is unlikely to alter the demands of European regulators, led by the competition commissioner, Joaquín Almunia.

“We have taken note of the F.T.C. decision, but we don’t see that it has any direct implications for our investigation, for our discussions with Google, which are ongoing,” said Michael Jennings, a spokesman for the European Commission in Brussels.

Faced with nearly $4 billion in possible penalties and restrictions on its business in Europe, Google submitted proposals in July to remedy the concerns of the European Commission, which covered four areas. In its deal with the F.T.C., Google made concessions in two of those areas but was not required to do so in the rest.

A Google spokesman, Al Verney, declined to comment on the content of the company’s proposals to Mr. Almunia but said the company would “continue to work cooperatively with the European Commission.”

The Google case underscores a basic difference between the approaches to monopoly power in Europe and the United States. American antitrust regulators tend to focus on whether a company’s dominance harms consumers; the European system seeks to keep competitors in the market. Mr. Almunia has vowed to restore competition to the Internet search business in Europe.

“History shows that competition law is applied to monopoly power more stringently in the E.U. than in the U.S.,” said Jacques Lafitte, head of the competition practice at Avisa Partners, a consultancy in Brussels, who brought one of the original complaints against Google. “Whether the E.U. is right or not is a different question.”

Mr. Lafitte has some expertise in the matter. He is the former head of corporate affairs at Microsoft Europe and watched as that company did battle with regulators over its dominant computer operating system. Microsoft won a lenient settlement with the Justice Department in October 2001, he said, only to be slapped with nearly 1.6 billion euros, or $2.1 billion, in fines and penalties from the European Union from 2004 to 2008.

Google learned from Microsoft’s mistakes. It worked with authorities in both the United States and Europe to reach a deal rather than fight a desperate legal action. That approach appears to have paid off: last month, after a meeting with Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s executive chairman, Mr. Almunia said that the sides had “substantially reduced our differences.”

In its deal with the F.T.C., Google agreed to make concessions in two areas that concerned European regulators. In one, it will allow rivals to opt out of allowing Google to “scrape,” or copy, text from their sites. Google will probably offer the same concession to European authorities.

But in a second area of European concern — whether Google deliberately favors its own content in search results — the F.T.C. did not require changes.

Mr. Almunia has also demanded that Google put fewer restrictions on advertising distribution deals, an area his American counterparts did not explore.

The company will make a detailed set of proposed remedies in January. The European Commission will then allow the complainants to review them in a period of what is known as “market testing.” Antitrust lawyers say a final denouement could arrive by spring, depending on how hostile Google’s rivals are to the proposed remedies.

FairSearch, an alliance of Google rivals, accused the F.T.C. of rushing its decision. It said in a statement that closing the F.T.C. investigation “with only voluntary commitments from Google is disappointing and premature.”

The outcome in Europe may also be affected by Google’s dominance there. Google’s share of the United States search market was 67 percent in November, according to comScore, a digital analytics company, while its share in Europe was 83 percent that month.

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Scare Amplifies Fears That Clinton’s Work Has Taken Heavy Toll

Pool photo by Brendan Smialowski

Hillary Rodham Clinton with Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi in Cairo in July.

WASHINGTON — When Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton fractured her right elbow after slipping in a State Department garage in June 2009, she returned to work in just a few days. Her arm in a sling, she juggled speeches and a trip to India and Thailand with physical therapy, rebuilding a joint held together with wire and pins.

It was vivid evidence of Mrs. Clinton’s indomitable stamina and work ethic — as a first lady, senator, presidential candidate and, for the past four years, the most widely traveled secretary of state in American history.

But after a fall at home in December that caused a concussion, and a subsequent diagnosis of a blood clot in her head, it has taken much longer for Mrs. Clinton to bounce back. She was released from a hospital in New York on Wednesday, accompanied by her daughter, Chelsea, and her husband, former President Bill Clinton. On Thursday, she told colleagues that she hoped to be in the office next week.

Her health scare, though, has reinforced the concerns of friends and colleagues that the years of punishing work and travel have taken a heavy toll. Even among her peers at the highest levels of government, Mrs. Clinton, 65, is renowned for her grueling schedule. Over the past four years, she was on the road for 401 days and spent the equivalent of 87 full days on a plane, according to the State Department’s Web site.

In one 48-hour marathon in 2009 that her aides still talk about, she traveled from talks with Palestinian leaders in Abu Dhabi to a midnight meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, then boarded a plane for Morocco, staying up all night to work on other issues, before going straight to a meeting of Arab leaders the next morning.

“So many people who know her have urged me to tell her not to work so hard,” said Melanne S. Verveer, who was Mrs. Clinton’s chief of staff when she was first lady and is now the State Department’s ambassador at large for women’s issues. “Well, that’s not easy to do when you’re Hillary Clinton. She doesn’t spare herself.”

It is not just a matter of duty, Ms. Verveer and others said. Mrs. Clinton genuinely relishes the work, pursuing a brand of personal diplomacy that, she argues, requires her to travel to more places than her predecessors.

While there is no medical evidence that Mrs. Clinton’s clot was caused by her herculean work habits, her cascade of recent health problems, beginning with a stomach virus, has prompted those who know her best to say that she desperately needs a long rest. Her first order of business after leaving the State Department in the coming weeks, they say, should be to take care of herself.

Some even wonder whether this setback will — or should — temper the feverish speculation that she will make another run for the White House in 2016.

“I am amazed at the number of women who come up to me and tell me she must run for president,” said Ellen Chesler, a New York author and a friend of Mrs. Clinton’s. “But perhaps this episode will alter things a bit.”

Given Mrs. Clinton’s enduring status as a role model, Ms. Chesler said women would be watching which path she decides to take, as they plan their own transitions out of the working world.

“Do remember that women of our generation are really the first to have worked through the life cycle in large numbers,” she added. “Many seem to be approaching retirement with dread.”

For now, aides say, Mrs. Clinton’s focus is on wrapping up her work at the State Department. She would like to take part in a town hall-style meeting, thank her staff and sit for some interviews. But first she has to get clearance from her doctors, who are watching her to make sure that the blood thinners they have prescribed for her clot are working.

Speaking to a meeting of a foreign policy advisory board from her home in Chappaqua, N.Y., on Thursday, Mrs. Clinton said she was crossing her fingers and encouraging her doctors to let her return next week. “I’m trying to be a compliant patient,” she said, according to a person who was in the room. “But that does require a certain level of patience, which I’ve had to cultivate over the last three and a half weeks.”

While convalescing, Mrs. Clinton has spoken with President Obama and has held a 30-minute call with Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, whom Mr. Obama nominated as her successor.

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