Standoff After Militants Seize Americans and Other Hostages in Algeria

BAMAKO, Mali — The Algerian military launched an operation on Thursday against armed Islamist extremists holding dozens of hostages including Americans and other foreigners at a remote gas field on Thursday, and a top Algerian official said at least four hostages were freed. There were unconfirmed reports of multiple casualties.

Kjetil Alsvik/Statoil, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

An undated photo of the In Amenas gas field in Algeria, where Islamist militants took dozens of foreign hostages on Wednesday.

The military operation, confirmed by an Algerian official and the governments of Japan and Britain, which said they had been informed by Algerian authorities, came more than 24 hours after the armed extremists seized the hostages at the internationally managed gas field near the Libyan border in retaliation for the French military intervention in Mali last week.

“There was an assault, yes,” said the Algerian official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the operation. “There are burned-out vehicles. Four hostages have been saved.”

The official said reports that Algerian army helicopters had strafed the gas field and had killed 35 hostages and 15 kidnappers were “exaggerated.” He said that some kidnappers had been killed but he would not say whether any hostages had been killed.

“We are waiting for official confirmation,” he said.

News agencies in Algeria and neighboring Mauritania said the helicopters may have attacked when the kidnappers sought to move their hostages from one part of the installation to another.

British officials in London said Algerian authorities had informed them that an “operation” was under way at the remote location in the desert, but gave no further details. “It remains an ongoing situation,” one official said, speaking in return for anonymity under departmental rules. Japanese authorities were still trying to ascertain if any Japanese hostages had escaped, the top Japanese government spokesman, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, told a news conference.

The situation is “very confused,” President François Hollande of France said at a news conference in Paris and was “evolving hour by hour.” Mr. Hollande confirmed for the first time officially that French citizens were among the captives.

The kidnapping in Algeria was a retaliation for the continuing French military assault on Islamist extremists in Mali that has escalated into a much broader conflict spilling beyond Mali and North Africa to the United States and other countries with citizens held hostage. Reuters said the survivors of the Algerian assault included hostages from the United States, Belgium, Japan and Britain. The full extent of the casualties was not immediately clear.

Before reports of an assault began to emerge, many hostages — both Algerian and foreign — were reported to have escaped as the kidnappers sought and failed to persuade Algerian authorities to give them safe passage with their captives.

The Algerian news Web site TSA, quoted a local official, Sidi Knaoui, as saying 10 foreign hostages and 40 Algerians had escaped Thursday after the kidnappers had made several aborted attempts to flee with their captives. Mr. Knaoui said he had been scheduled to meet with the hostage takers in an attempt at negotiations. He could not be reached for confirmation.

The Irish government confirmed that an Irish national had escaped or been released. The man had contacted his family and was "understood to be safe and well and no longer a hostage," Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said in a statement.

Other Algerian news reports said that 30 Algerian hostages and 15 foreigners escaped, but there was no immediate independent confirmation of that account. The Associated Press, quoting an unidentified Algerian official, said 20 foreigners, including some Americans, had escaped.

Earlier, a French television station, France 24, quoted an unidentified hostage as saying the attackers “were heavily armed and forced several hostages to wear explosives belts. They threatened to blow up the gas field if Algerian forces attempted to enter the site,” the station reported.

Adam Nossiter reported from Bamako, and Alan Cowell and Scott Sayare from Paris. Reporting was contributed by Clifford Krauss from Houston, Rick Gladstone from New York, Elisabeth Bumiller from Rome, and Steven Erlanger from Paris.

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PlayStation 4 and Xbox 720 could cost just $350, expected to launch this fall

Sony (SNE) and Microsoft (MSFT) are both expected to announce their next-generation gaming consoles at the Electronics Entertainment Expo in June, or even a little before then. While we have seen rumored specs for both the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox 720, one thing that has escaped us is a possible price tag. In a research note to investors on Monday, Colin Sebastian of Baird Equity Research suggested that both consoles could retail for between $ 350 and $ 400 in the U.S., Games Industry International reported. The analyst revealed that during the Consumer Electronics Show last week he spent time “with a number of companies involved in video game development and distribution,” who informed him that the next-generation consoles will be “largely built from ‘off the shelf’ high-end PC components, along with hybrid physical/digital distribution models, enhanced voice controls and motion sensing, and broad multi-media capabilities.”

[More from BGR: HTC One SV review]

Sebastian believes that “a PC-based architecture (Intel chips in the case of Xbox) should have a number of advantages over custom-developed silicon.” In his opinion, there will be less of a “learning curve” for software developers compared to completely new technology, and the cost of production and retail price points should be lower than prior console launches.

[More from BGR: Dell’s bold plan to reinvent itself: A USB-sized PC that gives access to Windows, Mac OS, Chrome OS]

Microsoft launched the Xbox 360 in 2005 with a top end price of $ 399, while Sony released the PlayStation 3 a year later for $ 499 and $ 599 respectively.

“It will be easier to build online services around PC chip architecture, including flexible business models (free-to-play, subscriptions) and multi-media (over the top) content offerings,” the analyst added. “For Microsoft, this design will also allow for more integration with Windows 8 and Windows Mobile devices.”

Sebastian expects Sony to launch the PlayStation 4 in October and Microsoft to launch the Xbox 720 in November.

This article was originally published on BGR.com

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Manti Te'o girlfriend's death apparently a hoax

SOUTH BEND, Ind. (AP) — Not long before Notre Dame played Michigan State last fall, word spread that Fighting Irish linebacker Manti Te'o had lost his grandmother and girlfriend within hours of each other.

Te'o never missed a practice and made a season-high 12 tackles, two pass breakups and a fumble recovery in a 20-3 victory against the Spartans. His inspired play became a stirring story line for the Fighting Irish as they made a run to the national championship game behind their humble, charismatic star.

Te'o's grandmother did indeed die. His girlfriend, Lennay Kekua, never existed.

In a shocking announcement, Notre Dame said Te'o was duped into an online relationship with a woman whose "death" from leukemia was faked by perpetrators of an elaborate hoax. The goal of the scam wasn't clear, though Notre Dame said it used an investigative firm to dig into the details after Te'o disclosed them three weeks ago.

The hoax was disclosed hours after Deadspin.com posted a lengthy story, saying it could find no record that Kekua ever existed. The story suggests a friend of Te'o may have carried out the hoax and that the football player may have been in on it — a stunning claim against a widely admired All-American who led the most famed program in college football back to the championship game for the first time since 1988.

"This is incredibly embarrassing to talk about, but over an extended period of time, I developed an emotional relationship with a woman I met online," Te'o said Wednesday night in a statement. "We maintained what I thought to be an authentic relationship by communicating frequently online and on the phone, and I grew to care deeply about her. "

However, he stopped short of saying he had ever met her in person or correcting reports that said he had, though he did on numerous occasions talk about how special the relationship was to him.

"To realize that I was the victim of what was apparently someone's sick joke and constant lies was, and is, painful and humiliating," he said. "In retrospect, I obviously should have been much more cautious. If anything good comes of this, I hope it is that others will be far more guarded when they engage with people online than I was."

Word of the hoax spread quickly and raised questions about whether the school somehow played a role in pushing the tale.

Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick said at a news conference that Te'o told coaches on Dec. 26 that he had received a call from Kekua's phone number while at an awards ceremony during the first week of December.

"When he answered it, it was a person whose voice sounded like the same person he had talked to, who told him that she was, in fact, not dead. Manti was very unnerved by that, as you might imagine," Swarbrick said.

Swarbrick said the school hired investigators and their report indicated those behind the hoax were in contact with each other, discussing what they were doing.

The investigators "were able to discover online chatter among the perpetrators that was certainly the ultimate proof of this, the joy they were taking," Swarbrick said. "The casualness among themselves they were talking about what they accomplished."

Te'o asked the woman he thought was his girlfriend to converse via Skype, where he could see her online, but she always found an excuse not to, Swarbrick said.

"As part of the hoax, several meetings were set up where Lennay never showed, including some in Hawaii," said Swarbrick, who offered only vague details of the scheme to dupe his player, and others.

"We know, for example, that these perpetrators didn't limit themselves to Manti in the targets," he said. "There are a remarkable number of characters involved. We don't know how many people they represent. There are male and female characters, brothers, cousins, mother, and we don't know if it's two people playing multiple characters or multiple people. But, again, it goes to the sophistication of this, that there are all these sort of independent pieces that reinforce elements of the story all the way through."

As for Te'o being gullible, Swarbrick said the linebacker was the "perfect mark."

"He was not a person who would have a second thought about offering his assistance and help in engaging fully," Swarbrick said.

For Te'o, "the pain was real," Swarbrick said. "The grief was real. The affection was real. That's the nature of this sad, cruel game."

Swarbrick said Notre Dame did not take the matter to the police, saying that the school left it up to Te'o and his family to do so. He added that Notre Dame did not plan to release the findings of its investigation.

"We had no idea of motive, and that was really significant to us. ... Was somebody trying to create an NCAA violation at the core of this? Was there somebody trying to impact the outcome of football games by manipulating the emotions of a key player? Was there an extortion request coming? When you match the lack of sort of detail we lacked until we got some help investigating it with the risk involved, it was clear to me until we knew more we had to just to continue to work to try to gather the facts," Swarbrick said.

The Deadspin report changed all that.

Friends and relatives of Ronaiah Tuiasosopo told Deadspin they believe he created Kekua. The website said Te'o and Tuiasosopo knew each other. Attempts by The Associated Press to reach Tuiasosopo by telephone were unsuccessful.

As for Kekua, Deadspin said she does not have a death certificate. Stanford, where she reportedly went to school, has no record of anybody by that name, the website said. Deadspin said a record search produced no obituary or funeral announcement. There is no record of her birth in the news.

There are a few Twitter and Instagram accounts registered to Lennay Kekua, but the website reported that photographs identified as Kekua online and in TV news reports are pictures from the social-media accounts of a 22-year-old California woman who is not named Lennay Kekua.

Te'o talked freely about their relationship after her supposed death and how much she meant to him.

In a story that appeared in The South Bend Tribune on Oct. 12, Manti's father, Brian, recounted an anecdote about how his son and Kekua met after Notre Dame had played at Stanford in 2009. Brian Te'o also told the newspaper that Kekua had visited Hawaii and met with his son. Brian Te'o told the AP in an interview in October that he and his wife had never met Manti's girlfriend but they had hoped to at the Wake Forest game in November. The father said he believed the relationship was just beginning to get serious when she died.

The Tribune released a statement saying: "At the Tribune, we are as stunned by these revelations as everyone else. Indeed, this season we reported the story of this fake girlfriend and her death as details were given to us by Te'o, members of his family and his coaches at Notre Dame."

The week before Notre Dame played Michigan State on Sept. 15, coach Brian Kelly told reporters when asked that Te'o's grandmother and a friend had died. He said Kekua had told Te'o not to miss a game if she died. The linebacker turned in one of his best performances of the season and his playing through heartache became a prominent theme during the Irish's undefeated regular season. He finished second in Heisman voting.

"It further pains me that the grief I felt and the sympathies expressed to me at the time of my grandmother's death in September were in any way deepened by what I believed to be another significant loss in my life," Te'o said in his statement.

"I am enormously grateful for the support of my family, friends and Notre Dame fans throughout this year. To think that I shared with them my happiness about my relationship and details that I thought to be true about her just makes me sick. I hope that people can understand how trying and confusing this whole experience has been."

Te'o and the Irish lost the title game to Alabama, 42-14 on Jan. 7. He has graduated and was set to begin preparing for the NFL combine and draft at the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla., this week.

"Fortunately, I have many wonderful things in my life," he said in his statement, "and I'm looking forward to putting this painful experience behind me as I focus on preparing for the NFL draft."

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The New Old Age Blog: Officials Say Checks Won't Be in the Mail

The jig is up.

Two years ago, the Treasury Department initiated its Go Direct campaign to persuade people still receiving paper checks for their Social Security, Veterans Affairs, S.S.I. and other federal benefits to switch to direct deposit.

“At that point, we were issuing approximately 11 million checks each month,” or about 15 percent of the total, Walt Henderson, director of the campaign, told me.

After putting notices in every monthly check envelope, circulating public service announcements and putting the word out through banks, senior centers, the Red Cross, AARP and other organizations, the Treasury Department has since shrunk that number to five million monthly checks.

That means 93 percent of those getting federal benefits are using direct deposit or, if they prefer or lack a bank account, a Direct Express debit card that gets refilled each month and can be used anywhere that accepts MasterCard.

“So people have been getting the word and making the switch,” Mr. Henderson said. Now, federal officials are pushing the last holdouts to convert to direct deposit by March 1.

Although officials say the change is not optional, the jig isn’t entirely up. If you or your older relative does not respond to their pleading, “we’re not going to interrupt their payments,” Mr. Henderson said. But the department will start sending letters urging people to switch.

The major motive is financial: shifting the last paper checks to direct deposit or a debit card (only 2 percent of recipients go that route) will save $1 billion over the next decade, the department estimates.

But safety enters the picture, too. One reason some beneficiaries resist direct deposit, Mr. Henderson said, is that they fear their electronic deposits can be hacked or diverted. Having grown up in a predigital age, perhaps they feel safer with a check in their hands.

But they probably aren’t. In 2011, the Treasury Department received 440,000 reports of lost or stolen benefits checks. With direct deposit, “there’s no check lingering unattended in a mailbox,” Mr. Henderson noted.

The greater reason for sticking with paper is probably simple inertia. “It’s human nature to procrastinate,” he said.

But unless you or your relatives want a series of letters from the Treasury Department, it is probably time for the last fence-sitters to get with the program.

They don’t need to use a computer. People can switch to direct deposit, or get the debit card, at their banks or the local Social Security office. More simply, they can call a toll-free number, (800) 333-1795, and have agents walk them through the change. Or they can sign up online at www.GoDirect.org.

They will need:

1. Their Social Security number.
2. The 12-digit federal benefit number found on their checks.
3. The amount of the most recent check.
4. And, for direct deposit, a bank or credit union routing number, usually found on the front of a check. They can have direct deposit to a savings account, too.

A caution for New Old Age readers: If you think your relative has not switched because he or she is cognitively impaired and can no longer handle his finances, you can be designated a representative payee and receive monthly Social Security or S.S.I. payments on your relative’s behalf. This generally requires a visit to your local Social Security office, documentation in hand.

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Paula Span is the author of “When the Time Comes: Families With Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions.”

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DealBook: H.P. Said to Have Suitors for Two Units

Hewlett-Packard has received a number of inquiries from would-be buyers for its Autonomy and Electronic Data Systems units in recent weeks, though the technology company is not interested in selling at the moment, a person briefed on the matter said on Wednesday.

The calls from potential suitors and bankers picked up after H.P. filed its annual report with regulators on Dec. 28, said the person, who did not want to be identified because management deliberations were confidential.

In the securities filing, the company said, “We also continue to evaluate the potential disposition of assets and businesses that may no longer help us meet our objectives.”

That is standard legal boilerplate. But H.P. has been struggling with poor performance at both Autonomy and E.D.S., having significantly written down the value of those acquisitions.

The company has also claimed to have found accounting and disclosure issues at Autonomy, and has forwarded findings from an internal inquiry to securities regulators in the United States and the division’s home in Britain.

Shares of H.P. rose 4 percent on Wednesday after The Wall Street Journal reported news of the expressions of interest. Over the last 12 months, the shares have fallen 35 percent.

But H.P.’s management team, led by Meg Whitman, is not interested in selling what it considers to be core businesses. Instead, the company intends to focus on developing its enterprise operations, the person said.

The inquiries may also have been stoked by the sudden flurry of news coverage surrounding a potential leveraged buyout of Dell. That company still appears to be closing in on a potential deal to sell itself to a consortium that includes its founder, Michael S. Dell, and the investment firm Silver Lake, in the biggest leveraged buyout in more than five years.

Advisers to Dell and Silver Lake are still negotiating a number of elements in what is proving to be a complicated deal, though they have made advancements, according to a person briefed on the matter who did not want to be identified because the talks were private. A potential takeover may be priced around $14 a share, valuing the company at more than $24 billion.

Mr. Dell is expected to contribute his roughly 16 percent stake to a leveraged buyout. And Silver Lake has been in talks with potential partners, including sovereign wealth funds like Temasek of Singapore, about contributing additional capital, this person said.

Banks are also working on lining up the financing necessary for a deal, which could reach $15 billion. While an enormous amount of money, bankers are betting that debt investors will clamor for the financing package, hoping to reap yields that are higher than those for Treasury bonds.

Still, this person cautioned that the discussions could fall apart.

Confronting H.P. and Dell is the grinding pressure on both companies’ personal computer businesses, where profit margins have declined in the last few years as competition toughened.

The two tech companies are trying to decrease their dependence on making PCs.

That move had prompted H.P. to buy both E.D.S. and Autonomy, paying more than $20 billion for the pair.

A version of this article appeared in print on 01/17/2013, on page B4 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Two Units Of Hewlett Reportedly Draw Suitors.

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Berlusconi Stirs Up Elections in Italy

ROME — The dark, double-breasted suits have long been a mainstay, but now former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has taken to wearing the occasional fedora. It lends him a rakish, retro air as he embarks on what many Italians, foreign investors and no doubt Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany hoped would never happen: another election campaign.

In recent weeks, Mr. Berlusconi, a center-right candidate, has blitzed the airwaves with a theatrical blend of anti-establishment populism, this from someone who governed Italy for the better part of the last decade. His prime targets are Prime Minister Mario Monti, a well-behaved technocrat now vying to retain his post, and Ms. Merkel, cast as the taskmaster of the austerity that is suffocating southern Europe.

With every hour that he appears on television, the medium he knows best and that made him rich, Mr. Berlusconi rises in opinion polls. His People of Liberty party is now in second place, after the center-left Democratic Party and before Mr. Monti’s nascent and still incoherent centrist bloc. They are trailed by the grass-roots Five Star Movement of Beppe Grillo, a comedian, which has tapped into a groundswell of antipolitical sentiment.

Analysts widely agree that there is little chance Mr. Berlusconi will govern Italy again after elections scheduled for February. But they say he is likely to win enough seats in Parliament to achieve his goals: protecting his interests on issues like justice reform, digital television rights and wiretap laws — and weakening the center-left Democratic Party and Mr. Monti, whose popularity has dropped since the economist became a candidate.

“It’s a very confusing time,” said Giuliano Ferrara, the editor of the conservative daily Il Foglio and a sometime Berlusconi adviser. “People don’t want the insider,” he said of Mr. Berlusconi, “and they don’t want the outsider,” he added of Mr. Monti.

Mr. Berlusconi, a skilled campaigner, has cast himself as an outsider while making an “insider” of Mr. Monti, who was lionized when he first took office in November 2011 precisely because he was seen as apolitical.

Despite his many legal tangles and the dire performance of Italy’s economy under his leadership, Mr. Berlusconi maintains a residual popularity through charm, mastery of the media and a lack of strong competing parties.

Last week, Mr. Berlusconi appeared for two hours on a television program hosted by one of his old enemies. Questioned about the number of politicians with criminal records elected on his party’s slate over the years, Mr. Berlusconi said he had not sought them out. “You take 100 priests and you don’t find 100 saints,” he said.

“This country is ungovernable!” he said with glee at one point, only to be reminded that his governments had the largest majority in postwar Italian history. At another moment, Mr. Berlusconi stood up in outrage, threatened to leave but eventually calmed down, deftly taking out a white handkerchief to brush off his chair before sitting back down.

The show drew nine million viewers, a quarter of the Italian audience share.

“He’s an ex-prime minister who is doing showmen’s gags on television,” said Marco Damilano, a political correspondent for L’Espresso, a left-wing weekly magazine, whom Mr. Berlusconi cheerfully pretended to hit on the head with a poster on a television program on Tuesday.

Always a savvy populist, Mr. Berlusconi now rails against the fiscal consolidation policies advocated by Germany, sounding not unlike the leftist Syriza party in Greece, which leads in opinion polls there. He has also taken to quoting the New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, a critic of austerity.

His message has struck a nerve in Italy and has helped put Mr. Monti, the darling of Europe and the United States, who calmed financial speculation and put Italy back on the world stage, on the defensive on television, a medium that Mr. Berlusconi dominates the way Fred Astaire did the dance floor.

Appearing on Italy’s most widely watched interview program on Monday evening, Mr. Monti, who routinely treats his predecessor with understated irony, compared Mr. Berlusconi to “the Pied Piper” who entranced Italy but ultimately led it to its death.

Gaia Pianigiani contributed reporting.

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Leaked BlackBerry 10 sales manual reveals new images and details

The buzz continues to mount leading up to the January 30th unveiling of Research In Motions’s (RIMM) next-generation BlackBerry 10 platform, but we’re not sure how much is left to learn. Many BlackBerry 10 features have already been announced, we’ve seen RIM’s first two next-generation handsets — the BlackBerry Z10 and the BlackBerry X10 — a number times, and now Rogers’ internal sales manual for BlackBerry 10 devices has leaked thanks to CrackBerry. The manual is packed full of images and it also confirms some specs reported a few months ago, and the full document is embedded at the source link below. RIM’s next-generation operating system and handsets will be unveiled during a press conference on January 30th, and BGR will be on hand reporting live.

[More from BGR: Dell’s bold plan to reinvent itself: A USB-sized PC that gives access to Windows, Mac OS, Chrome OS]

This article was originally published on BGR.com

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Lance Armstrong may not be done confessing

Lance Armstrong may not be done confessing.

His interview with Oprah Winfrey hasn't aired yet, but already some people want to hear more — under oath — before Armstrong is allowed to compete in elite triathlons, a sport he returned to after retiring from cycling in 2011. In addition to stripping him of all seven of his Tour de France titles last year, anti-doping officials banned Armstrong for life from sanctioned events.

"He's got to follow a certain course," David Howman, director general of World Anti-Doping Agency, told the AP. "That is not talking to a talk show host."

Armstrong already has had conversations with U.S. Anti-Doping Agency officials, touching off speculation that the team leader who demanded loyalty from others soon may face some very tough choices himself: whether to cooperate and name those who aided, knew about or helped cover up a sophisticated doping ring that Armstrong ran on his tour-winning U.S. Postal Service squads. Former teammate Frankie Andreu, one of several riders Armstrong cast aside on his ride to the top of the sport, said no one could provide a better blueprint for cleaning up the sport.

"Lance knows everything that happened," Andreu told The Associated Press. "He's the one who knows who did what because he was the ringleader. It's up to him how much he wants to expose."

World Anti-Doping Agency officials said nothing short of "a full confession under oath" would even cause them to reconsider the ban. Although Armstrong admitted to Winfrey on Monday that he used performance-enhancing drugs, Howman said that is "hardly the same as giving evidence to a relevant authority." The International Cycling Union also urged Armstrong to tell his story to an independent commission it has set up to examine claims that the sport's governing body hid suspicious samples, accepted financial donations, and helped Armstrong avoid detection in doping tests.

Winfrey wouldn't detail what Armstrong said during their interview at a downtown Austin hotel. In an appearance on "CBS This Morning," she said she was "mesmerized and riveted by some of his answers." What had been planned as a 90-minute broadcast will be shown as a two-part special, Thursday and Friday, on Winfrey's OWN network.

The lifetime ban was imposed after a 1,000-page report by USADA last year outlined a complex, long-running doping program led by Armstrong. The cyclist also lost nearly all of his endorsements and was forced to cut ties with the Livestrong cancer charity he founded in 1997. The damage to Armstrong's reputation was just as severe.

The report portrayed him as well-versed in the use of a wide range of performance-enhancers, including steroids and blood boosters such as EPO, and willing to exploit them to dominate. Nearly a dozen teammates provided testimony about that drug regimen, among them Andreu and his wife, Betsy.

"A lot of it was news and shocking to me," Andreu said. "I am sure it's shocking to the world. There's been signs leading up to this moment for a long time. For my wife and I, we've been attacked and ripped apart by Lance and all of his people, and all his supporters repeatedly for a long time. I just wish they wouldn't have been so blind and opened up their eyes earlier to all the signs that indicated there was deception there, so that we wouldn't have had to suffer as much.

"And it's not only us," he added, "he's ruined a lot of people's lives."

Armstrong was believed to have left for Hawaii. The street outside his Spanish-style villa on Austin's west side was quiet the day after international TV crews gathered there hoping to catch a glimpse of him. Meanwhile, members of his legal team mapped out a strategy on how to handle at least two pending lawsuits against Armstrong, and possibly a third.

Former teammate Floyd Landis, who was stripped of the 2006 Tour de France title for doping, alleges in one of the lawsuits that Armstrong defrauded the U.S. government by repeatedly denying he used performance-enhancing drugs. The False Claims Act lawsuit could require Armstrong to return substantial sponsorship fees and pay a hefty fine. The AP reported earlier Tuesday that Justice Department officials were likely to join the whistleblower lawsuit before a Thursday deadline.

___

Jim Litke reported from Chicago, Jim Vertuno from Austin, Texas. Stephen Wilson in London and John L. Mone in Dearborn, Mich., also contributed to this report.

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Phys Ed: Exercise Can Boost Flu Shot's Potency

Phys Ed

Gretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness.

As this year’s influenza season continues to take its toll, those procrastinators now hurrying to get a flu shot might wish to know that exercise may amplify the flu vaccine’s effect. And for maximal potency, the exercise should be undertaken at the right time and involve the right dosage of sweat, according to several recent reports.

Flu shots are one of the best ways to lessen the risk of catching the disease. But they are not foolproof. By most estimates, the yearly flu vaccine blocks infection 50 to 70 percent of the time, meaning that some of those being inoculated gain little protection. The more antibodies someone develops, the better their protection against the flu, generally speaking. But for some reason, some people’s immune systems produce fewer antibodies to the influenza virus than others’ do.

Being physically fit has been found in many studies to improve immunity in general and vaccine response in particular. In one notable 2009 experiment, sedentary, elderly adults, a group whose immune systems typically respond weakly to the flu vaccine, began programs of either brisk walking or a balance and stretching routine. After 10 months, the walkers had significantly improved their aerobic fitness and, after receiving flu shots, displayed higher average influenza antibody counts 20 weeks after a flu vaccine than the group who had stretched.

But that experiment involved almost a year of dedicated exercise training, a prospect that is daunting to some people and, in practical terms, not helpful for those who have entered this flu season unfit.

So scientists have begun to wonder whether a single, well-calibrated bout of exercise might similarly strengthen the vaccine’s potency.

To find out, researchers at Iowa State University in Ames recently had young, healthy volunteers, most of them college students, head out for a moderately paced 90-minute jog or bike ride 15 minutes after receiving their flu shot. Other volunteers sat quietly for 90 minutes after their shot. Then the researchers checked for blood levels of influenza antibodies a month later.

Those volunteers who had exercised after being inoculated, it turned out, exhibited “nearly double the antibody response” of the sedentary group, said Marian Kohut, a professor of kinesiology at Iowa State who oversaw the study, which is being prepared for publication. They also had higher blood levels of certain immune system cells that help the body fight off infection.

To test how much exercise really is required, Dr. Kohut and Justus Hallam, a graduate student in her lab, subsequently repeated the study with lab mice. Some of the mice exercised for 90 minutes on a running wheel, while others ran for either half as much time (45 minutes) or twice as much (3 hours) after receiving a flu shot.

Four weeks later, those animals that, like the students, had exercised moderately for 90 minutes displayed the most robust antibody response. The animals that had run for three hours had fewer antibodies; presumably, exercising for too long can dampen the immune response. Interestingly, those that had run for 45 minutes also had a less robust response. “The 90-minute time point appears to be optimal,” Dr. Kohut says.

Unless, that is, you work out before you are inoculated, another set of studies intimates, and use a dumbbell. In those studies, undertaken at the University of Birmingham in England, healthy, adult volunteers lifted weights for 20 minutes several hours before they were scheduled to receive a flu shot, focusing on the arm that would be injected. Specifically, they completed multiple sets of biceps curls and side arm raises, employing a weight that was 85 percent of the maximum they could lift once. Another group did not exercise before their shot.

After four weeks, the researchers checked for influenza antibodies. They found that those who had exercised before the shot generally displayed higher antibody levels, although the effect was muted among the men, who, as a group, had responded to that year’s flu vaccine more robustly than the women had.

Over all, “we think that exercise can help vaccine response by activating parts of the immune system,” said Kate Edwards, now a lecturer at the University of Sydney, and co-author of the weight-training study.

With the biceps curls, she continued, the exercises probably induced inflammation in the arm muscles, which may have primed the immune response there.

As for 90 minutes of jogging or cycling after the shot, it probably sped blood circulation and pumped the vaccine away from the injection site and to other parts of the body, Dr. Kohut said. The exercise probably also goosed the body’s overall immune system, she said, which, in turn, helped exaggerate the vaccine’s effect.

But, she cautions, data about exercise and flu vaccines is incomplete. It is not clear, for instance, whether there is any advantage to exercising before the shot instead of afterward, or vice versa; or whether doing both might provoke the greatest response – or, alternatively, be too much and weaken response.

So for now, she says, the best course of action is to get a flu shot, since any degree of protection is better than none, and, if you can, also schedule a visit to the gym that same day. If nothing else, spending 90 minutes on a stationary bike will make any small twinges in your arm from the shot itself seem pretty insignificant.

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DealBook: Goldman Sachs Earnings Soar

9:46 a.m. | Updated

Goldman Sachs on Wednesday reported a fourth-quarter profit of $2.89 billion, or $5.60 a share, a significant jump from the period a year earlier.

The per-share figure is after the company paid preferred dividends, and comes in well ahead of analysts’ expectations of $3.78 a share, according to Thomson Reuters.

Analysts had been anticipating a fairly decent quarter for Goldman, and its results were buoyed by strong trading and investment banking results and lower compensation costs. In the fourth quarter of 2011, the bank earned $1.01 billion, or $1.84 a share.

The bank’s most recent results reflect a continued focus on cutting expenses as well as a number of investing gains, including $485 million from debt and security loans, the company said.

“While economic conditions remained challenging for much of last year, the strengths of our business model and client franchise, coupled with our focus on disciplined management, delivered solid performance for our shareholders,” Goldman’s chairman and chief executive, Lloyd C. Blankfein, said in a news release.

The results had an immediate effect on the firm’s stock, sending it up 2.7 percent in early morning trading.

Over all, the firm produced $9.24 billion in revenue in the quarter ended Dec. 31, up 53 percent from the same quarter in 2011. That also beat analysts’ estimates of quarterly revenue of $7.91 billion.

Goldman also revealed how much it had set aside for compensation, paying out $12.9 billion in 2012, an average of $399,506 to each of its 32,400 employees. This represented 37.9 percent of Goldman’s revenue for the year.

Over the last year, Goldman has reduced its payroll by 900 people. In 2011, the bank set aside $12.22 billion, or 42.4 percent, of its 2011 net revenue to pay compensation and benefits for its employees.

Goldman partners, a small group of top managers at the firm, will learn their 2012 compensation packages on Wednesday. The vast majority of employees, however, will be told what their bonuses will be on Thursday in what is known at Goldman as compensation communication day. These bonuses are on top of annual salaries, which can range from roughly $100,000 to $2 million for executives like Mr. Blankfein.

Bonuses on Wall Street — both the size of them and how they are paid — always draw scrutiny. Goldman Sachs decided this week not to delay the payment of bonuses to its staff members in Britain, a move that would have helped investment bankers and other highly paid employees benefit from a lower income tax rate.

Goldman Sachs was already drawing attention in the United States after it distributed $65 million in stock to 10 senior executives in December instead of January, when the firm typically makes such awards. That move helped the executives avoid the higher tax rates that will now be imposed on income of $450,000 or more.

The firm’s annual return on equity was 10.7 percent, up from 2011, when it was 5.8 percent. While this is far below its performance in boom years like 2006, when its return on equity was 41.5 percent, it is an achievement that it has broken above 10 percent.

Banks continue to fight difficult economic conditions at home and abroad, and Goldman’s results are still well below what it was producing before the financial crisis. Those outsize profits, however, were fueled by borrowing on credit and selling mortgage-linked products, and they have dwindled. New regulations aimed at reining in risk-taking have also reduced the profitability of certain businesses.

Revenue from investment banking came in at $1.41 billion, up 64 percent from the year-ago period.

Net revenue in Goldman’s powerful division that trades bonds, currencies and commodities was $2.04 billion, up 50 percent from levels in the quarter a year earlier. The firm said those results reflected an increase in mortgage revenues, which were “significantly higher” when compared with 2011.

The firm’s investing and lending division also had a stronger-than-expected quarter, posting revenue of $1.97 billion, up 126 percent from year-ago levels. The firm said this unit benefited from an increase in equity prices in Asia and Europe and a number of one-time gains. For instance, it logged a gain of $334 million from its investment in the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, a strategic investment the firm made in 2006. It also had gains from the debt securities and loans it holds.

Goldman is one of a number of banks releasing earnings this week. JPMorgan Chase also Wednesday weighed in with its results, reporting a strong profit of $5.7 billion for the fourth quarter, up 53 percent from the previous year.

These positive results put pressure on Morgan Stanley to post good results when it releases its fourth quarter numbers on Friday. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters are expecting Morgan Stanley to report earnings of 27 cents a share, up from a loss of 14 cents in the year-ago period.

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