Jaguars hire Falcons' Caldwell as general manager

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) — The Jacksonville Jaguars have agreed to hire Atlanta director of player personnel David Caldwell as general manager, charging him with turning around one of the league's worst teams.

His first move will be deciding the fate of coach Mike Mularkey.

Owner Shad Khan tabbed Caldwell on Tuesday, a day after a third interview. FoxSports.com first reported the hire, saying the two sides are negotiating financial terms.

Caldwell is now expected to make a decision on Mularkey, who went 2-14 in his first season in Jacksonville and has lost 20 of his last 23 games as a head coach.

Khan gave Mularkey's assistants permission to search for other jobs last week, an indication that he doesn't expect to retain Mularkey or his staff.

Then again, Caldwell and Mularkey have a relationship stemming from their time in Atlanta.

Before becoming the Falcons' director of player personnel in 2012, Caldwell spent four seasons as Atlanta's director of college scouting — the same four years Mularkey served as offensive coordinator. Caldwell replaced Les Snead, who was hired as St. Louis' general manager last offseason.

"He's a great guy, a great family man, does a good job," Mularkey said of Caldwell last month. "He had some experience in Indy before he got to Atlanta, and I thought he did a good job up there. ... I thought that (he would become a GM) when I worked with him, that he was heading in that direction."

Caldwell was part of an Atlanta front office that drafted quarterback Matt Ryan, linebackers Curtis Lofton and Sean Witherspoon, offensive tackle Sam Baker, safety William Moore, receiver Julio Jones and running back Jacquizz Rodgers.

He doesn't inherit as much talent in Jacksonville, but the Jaguars have the No. 2 pick in April's draft and plenty of room under the salary cap to make moves. And coming off the worst season in franchise history, it won't take much to show improvement.

Khan fired general manager Gene Smith last week, parting ways with the guy who built a team that failed to make the playoffs the last four seasons.

Smith had been with the team since its inception in 1994, working his way up from regional scout to general manager. He had been GM since 2009, compiling a 22-42 record. Not one player he acquired made the Pro Bowl, though.

Smith changed the way Jacksonville approached personnel moves. He made character as important as ability, but it never paid off the way he envisioned.

Finding talent was the main issue.

Smith whiffed on offensive tackle Eben Britton (39th overall pick in 2009), defensive tackle Tyson Alualu (10th pick in 2010) and quarterback Blaine Gabbert (10th pick in 2011). Smith traded up to select Gabbert even though several teams with quarterback needs passed on the former Missouri starter.

Smith's most controversial act came in April, when he chose punter Bryan Anger in the third round (70th pick). Anger was terrific as a rookie, but adding him never seemed like the best call for a team that needed talent and depth at so many other positions.

Equally alarming for Khan had to be Smith's penchant for overpaying in free agency: Torry Holt, Aaron Kampman, Paul Posluszny, Clint Session, Dawan Landry, Laurent Robinson and Aaron Ross.

Smith did hit on some players, including left tackle Eugene Monroe (eighth pick in 2009), cornerback Derek Cox (73rd pick in 2009) and receivers Cecil Shorts (114th pick in 2011) and Justin Blackmon (fifth pick in 2012). But none of those starters has become a star. And Smith gave up a second-round pick to get Cox and a fourth-rounder to trade up and get Blackmon.

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Gaps Seen in Therapy for Suicidal Teenagers

Most adolescents who plan or attempt suicide have already gotten at least some mental health treatment, raising questions about the effectiveness of current approaches to helping troubled teenagers, according to the largest in-depth analysis to date of suicidal behaviors in American teenagers.

The study in the journal JAMA Psychiatry found that 55 percent of suicidal teenagers had received some therapy before they thought about suicide, planned it or tried to kill themselves, contradicting the widely held belief that suicide is due in part to a lack of access to treatment.

The findings, based on interviews with a nationwide sample of more than 6,000 teenagers and at least one parent of each, linked suicidal behavior to complex combinations of mood disorders like depression and behavior problems that include attention-deficit and eating disorders, as well as alcohol and drug abuse.

The study found that about one in eight teenagers had persistent suicidal thoughts at some point, and about a third of them had made a suicide attempt, usually within a year of having the idea.

Previous studies have had similar findings, based on smaller, regional samples. But the new study is the first to suggest, in a large nationwide sample, that access to treatment does not make a big difference.

The study suggests that effective treatment for severely suicidal teenagers must address not just mood disorders, but also behavior problems that can lead to impulsive acts, experts said. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1,386 people between the ages of 13 and 18 committed suicide in 2010, the latest year for which numbers are available.

“I think one of the take-aways here is that treatment for depression may be necessary but not sufficient to prevent kids from attempting suicide,” said Dr. David Brent, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh, who was not involved in the study. “We simply do not have empirically validated treatments for recurrent suicidal behavior.”

The report said nothing about whether the therapies given were state of the art, or carefully done, said Matt Nock, a professor of psychology at Harvard and the lead author; and it is possible that some of the treatments prevented suicide attempts. “But it’s telling us we’ve got a long way to go to do this right,” Dr. Nock said. His co-authors included Ronald C. Kessler of Harvard, and researchers from Boston University and Children’s Hospital Boston.

Margaret McConnell, a consultant in Alexandria, Va., said that her daughter Alice, who killed herself in 2006, at the age of 17, was getting treatment at the time. “I think there might have been some carelessness in the way the treatment was done,” Ms. McConnell said, “and I was trusting a 17-year-old to manage her own medication; we found out after we lost her that she wasn’t taking it regularly.”

In the study, researchers surveyed 6,483 adolescents from the ages of 13 to 18 and found that 9 percent of male teenagers and 15 percent of female teenagers experienced some stretch of having persistent suicidal thoughts. Among girls, 5 percent made suicide plans and 6 percent made at least one attempt (some were unplanned).

Among boys, 3 percent made plans and 2 percent carried out attempts – which tended to be more lethal than girls’ attempts.

(Suicidal thinking or behavior was virtually unheard-of before age 10.)

Over all, about one-third of teenagers with persistent suicidal thoughts went on to make an attempt to take their own lives.

Almost all of the suicidal adolescents in the study qualified for some psychiatric diagnosis, whether depression, phobias, or generalized anxiety disorder. Those with an added behavior problem – attention-deficit disorder, substance abuse, explosive anger – were more likely to act on thoughts of self-harm, the study found.

Doctors have tested a range of therapies to prevent or reduce recurrent suicidal behaviors, with mixed success. Medications can ease depression, but in some cases can increase suicidal thinking. Talk therapy can contain some behavior problems, but not all.

One approach, called dialectical behavior therapy, has proved effective in reducing hospitalizations and attempts in people with so-called borderline personality disorder, who are highly prone to self-harm, among others.

But suicidal teenagers who have a mixture of mood and behavior issues are difficult to reach. In one 2011 study, researchers at George Mason University reduced suicide attempts, hospitalizations, drinking and drug use among suicidal adolescent substance abusers. The study found that a combination of intensive treatments – talk therapy for mood problems, family-based therapy for behavior issues and patient-led reduction in drug use – was more effective that regular therapies.

“But that’s just one study, and it’s small,” Dr. Brent said. “We can treat components of the overall problem, but that’s about all.”

Ms. McConnell said that her daughter’s depression seemed mild and that there was no warning that she would take her life. “I think therapy does help a lot of people, if it’s handled right,” she said.

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Square Feet: Before Building Towers, a Manhattan Market Plans to Add Vendors

The owner of Chelsea Market, a popular food marketplace in West Chelsea, recently ignited a public furor when the city approved plans to add office towers to the squat structure. But before construction on the towers begins, the market now plans to expand by adding eight new spaces for vendors — all without changing the exterior of the neighborhood landmark.

A collection of industrial buildings that once housed the National Biscuit Company, or Nabisco, Chelsea Market will require no new space to house the new tenants, said Michael Phillips, a chief operating officer of Jamestown Properties, an acquisition and management firm based in Cologne, Germany, and Atlanta.

Instead, the space for the new stores was created when Amy’s Bread moved most of its baking operations off-site, leaving thousands of square feet open that, along with the conversion of a loading dock and an office, amounted to about 5,700 square feet of space, he said. Construction on the project has already begun and will not disrupt the approximately 35 current tenants of Chelsea Market.

In November, Jamestown received city approval to add two office towers to Chelsea Marketplace, one of them eight stories and the other seven stories, for a total of 300,000 square feet of space that could bring hundreds of new workers to the area, but construction on that project has not yet begun. The market fills the entire block between Ninth and 10th Avenues and West 15th and 16th Streets.

Leases are currently being negotiated for the eight new retail outlets, and though no leases have been signed yet, Mr. Phillips said he expected that the stores would be up and running by mid-February.

“We’re very focused on ethnic food and spices, and the whole beer growler, homemade beers and wine and spirits business, as well as local, New York-produced products,” he said.

Currently, the market carries everything from fine foods and baked goods to prime meats and fresh lobster, along with a smattering of books, flowers and kitchen and home décor goods.

Under the terms negotiated with the city for approval of the office towers, 75 percent of the vendors at Chelsea Market must remain food purveyors. All the tenants in space converted from Amy’s Bread will involve food products, Mr. Phillips said. A map of the project’s floor plan shows a possible bicycle shop and barbershop in the original loading dock and office space.

Amy’s Bread continues to have a presence at Chelsea Market in its reduced space, where it has a cafe, along with a small baking operation behind a glass panel so shoppers can watch baking demonstrations.

The area formerly occupied by Amy’s Bread is being built into small kiosks, much like an existing wing of the market where tenants like The Filling Station, Tuck Shop and Lucy’s Whey operate. In the new wing, however, the emphasis will be on cooking and food preparation. Two spaces will have food counters where people can sit and watch chefs cook while they dine.

“They’re really sort of fitted-out modern versions of a diner food counter with exhibition kitchens,” Mr. Phillips said.

Spaces will lease for about $200 to $400 a square foot, which is substantially more than typical rents in Chelsea, but the spaces are being delivered as almost completely turnkey, he said.

“They include power supply, water supply, hood systems for cooking, kitchen equipment where there’s cooking, so they’re basically plug-and-play spaces,” Mr. Phillips said. “The natural reaction would be, ‘Wow that’s a high rate,’ but when you look at what comes with it, it makes a lot of sense.”

The spaces are being set up to incubate start-up and smaller, less established businesses, Mr. Phillips said, companies that otherwise might find it hard to get a foothold in a neighborhood where retail rents have grown rapidly in recent years.

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Official to Leave Panel Overseeing Delayed Berlin Airport

BERLIN — The seemingly endless series of delays and debacles entangling the new Berlin airport claimed its first political victim on Monday, after the project’s planned opening was pushed back yet again.

The mayor of Berlin, Klaus Wowereit, who helped build the city’s reputation as an affordable, bohemian metropolis, told reporters that he would quit as head of the board overseeing construction of the airport. He said he would stay on as mayor, despite calls for his ouster.

Mr. Wowereit’s decision came just hours after an official communication leaked to the news media revealed that the latest projected opening date for the airport, in October, would not be met. The revelation, which came in a letter by the project’s chief operating officer, unleashed an uproar among politicians in Berlin and in Brandenburg, the largely rural state that surrounds the capital. The city and state governments are the main stakeholders in the project, and the federal government is also a partner.

The new airport, the Berlin-Brandenburg Willy Brandt Airport, was originally scheduled to open in 2011, then June 2012. The deadline was then pushed back to March, and then to October. It is to replace two older airports — Tegel in the west and Schönefeld in the east — which were strained beyond capacity as the reunified city established itself as a tourist destination. Last year about 25 million visitors passed through Berlin. The new airport is supposed to be able handle up to 27 million passengers a year.

The delays in the project — the latest caused by a faulty fire safety system — have dented Germany’s shiny image as an efficient industrial powerhouse driven by superior technical know-how and have become the butt of jokes among Berlin residents.

A postcard that has become popular in tourist shops features a portrait of the former East German leader Walter Ulbricht with the quote “Nobody has the intention of opening an airport” — a spoof on his infamous 1961 statement denying construction of the Berlin Wall.

“I’m going to be guarded about picking a date now,” Mr. Wowereit said Monday. “That it would be difficult to meet the target we had for this year was already known up and down the country.”

No new proposed opening date has yet been set.

A planned meeting of the project’s board was moved forward and will be held next week, the airport said in a statement. Mr. Wowereit said he would formally resign from the board at that time.

Most likely he will be replaced by Matthias Platzeck, governor of Brandenburg, where the airport is.

The latest delay followed a check completed last week that again found problems with the airport’s automated fire safety system.

Horst Amann, chief operating officer for the airport, said in a statement that “the planned Oct. 27, 2013, opening date is not going to be met.”

The latest delay is expected to drive the project’s costs beyond the 4 billion euros, or $5.2 billion, that had been expected. When the airport was first planned 20 years ago, the budget was the equivalent of 2.4 billion euros.

Last month the European Commission allowed the German government to contribute an additional 1.2 billion euros, $1.6 billion, which otherwise would have had to have been raised from private investors.

The opposition Greens in Berlin said they would seek to have Mr. Wowereit, a Social Democrat, unseated as mayor through a vote of confidence.

Some Green politicians maintained that Mr. Wowereit already knew about the delay when he delivered his New Year’s speech on Dec. 28. At the time, he said the construction project had been troubled, but he vowed to “focus all of our power on keeping the opening date in October 2013.”

“Wowereit has withheld information about new problems at the airport, and he’s a liability,” said Ramona Pop, a leader with the Greens in the city-state assembly.

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Year-end Wii U sales steady, says Nintendo chief

KYOTO (Reuters) – Nintendo Co Ltd‘s year-end sales of its Wii U games console were steady, though not as strong as when its Wii predecessor was first launched, the Japanese game maker’s top executive told Reuters on Monday.

The company, which grew from making playing cards in the late 19th century into the blockbuster Super Mario video game series, is pinning its hopes on the Wii U after posting a first operating loss last year, as gamers ditch console games to play on smartphones and tablets.

“At the end of the Christmas season, it wasn’t as though stores in the U.S. had no Wii U left in stock, as it was when Wii was first sold in that popular boom. But sales are not bad, and I feel it’s selling steadily,” Nintendo President Satoru Iwata said in an interview.

Iwata gave no details on sales or forecasts, but said Nintendo needed to focus on developing attractive software for its 3DS handheld device to draw new users, and increase Wii U sales as it battles competition from popular mobile devices. The Wii U carries video content from Netflix Inc and Hulu, and has a dedicated social gaming network called Miiverse, which allows users to interact and share games tips.

Nintendo said in October it aimed to sell 5.5 million Wii U devices by end-March. Wii U, the successor to the blockbuster Wii machine, went on sale in the United States on November 18. The company later said it sold more than 400,000 of the video game consoles in the first week.

Nintendo sold 638,339 Wii U consoles in Japan between December 8 and 30, according to data from game magazine publisher Enterbrain. The company has sold nearly 100 million of the original Wii units since its launch in 2006.

Rival Microsoft Corp sold more than 750,000 of its Xbox 360 console during the Black Friday week in November – one of the busiest U.S. consumer shopping periods of the year, beating sales of both Sony Corp’s

DOUBLE CHALLENGE

Iwata acknowledged the challenge of producing two Wii U models at the same time, as most customers wanted the premium package, which sold out quickly in many places, while there was a glut of the slightly cheaper Wii U model on store shelves.

“It was the first time Nintendo released two models of the game console at the same time … and I believe there was a challenge with balancing this. Specifically, inventory levels for the premium, deluxe package was unbalanced as many people wanted that version and couldn’t find it,” he said.

Iwata noted a weaker yen would have little impact on Nintendo’s profits this fiscal year, but would positively impact its foreign denominated assets.

Nintendo’s Osaka-listed shares earlier ended down nearly 2.1 percent on Monday at 8,980 yen, and have fallen 15 percent since the Wii U was launched.

(Editing by Ian Geoghegan)

Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Love 'em or hate 'em, all eyes on Tide and Irish

MIAMI (AP) — Love 'em or hate 'em, it's hard to turn away from Notre Dame and Alabama.

They are storied programs that stir plenty of passions, college football's North and South versions of the New York Yankees.

Well, now they're facing each other for the biggest prize of all.

A national championship.

"Having those two traditions come together in a game like this certainly creates a lot of national interest," said Alabama coach Nick Saban, "which is probably really good for college football."

Indeed, this was shaping up as one of the most anticipated games in years, a throwback to the era when coaching giants named Bear and Ara ruled the sidelines, when it was a big deal for teams from different parts of the country to meet in a bowl, when everyone took sides based on where they happened to live.

"I'm pretty aware of our history. I've become more aware of theirs over the past few months," said Barrett Jones, the Crimson Tide's All-American center. "I know that they are a very storied program. We both are. I think that's part of what makes this matchup fun."

ESPN executives were hopeful of getting the highest ratings of the BCS era. Tickets were certainly at a premium, with a seat in one of the executive suites going for a staggering $60,000 on StubHub the day before the game, and even a less-than-prime spot in the corner of the upper deck requiring a payout of more than $900.

"This is, to me, the ultimate matchup in college football," said Brent Musberger, the lead announcer for ESPN.

For Alabama (12-1), this is a chance to be remembered as a full-fledged dynasty. The Tide will be trying to claim its third national championship in four years and become the first school to win back-to-back BCS titles, a remarkable achievement given the ever-increasing parity of the college game and having to replace five players from last year's title team who were picked in the first two rounds of the NFL draft.

"To be honest, I think this team has kind of exceeded expectations," Saban said Sunday. "If you look at all the players we lost last year, the leadership that we lost ... I'm really proud of what this team was able to accomplish."

That said, it's not a huge surprise to find Alabama playing for another title. That's not the case when it comes to Notre Dame.

Despite their impressive legacy, the Fighting Irish (12-0) weren't even ranked at the start of the season. But overtime wins against Stanford and Pittsburgh, combined with three other victories by a touchdown or less, gave Notre Dame a shot at its first national title since 1988.

After so many lost years, the golden dome has reclaimed its luster in coach Brian Kelly's third season.

This is the beginning, he said.

"Playing in this game is an incredible springboard into the next season," Kelly said. "They've already been here. You come back the next year, it's unacceptable for a standard to be any less than being back here again."

Both Notre Dame and Alabama have won eight Associated Press national titles, more than any other school. They are the bluest of the blue bloods, the programs that have long set the bar for everyone else even while enduring some droughts along the way.

Kelly molded Notre Dame using largely the same formula that has worked so well for Saban in Tuscaloosa: a bruising running game and a stout defense, led by Heisman Trophy finalist Manti Te'o.

"It's a little bit old fashioned in the sense that this is about the big fellows up front," Kelly said. "It's not about the crazy receiving numbers or passing yards or rushing yards. This is about the big fellas, and this game will unquestionably be decided up front."

While points figure to be at a premium given the quality of both defenses, Alabama appears to have a clear edge on offense. The Tide has the nation's highest-rated passer (AJ McCarron), two 1,000-yard rushers (Eddie Lacy and T.J. Yeldon), a dynamic freshman receiver (Amari Cooper), and three linemen who made the AP All-America team (first-teamers Jones and Chance Warmack, plus second-teamer D.J. Fluker).

"That's football at its finest," said Te'o, who heads a defense that has given up just two rushing touchdowns. "It's going to be a great challenge, and a challenge that we look forward to."

The Crimson Tide had gone 15 years without a national title when Saban arrived in 2007, the school's fifth coach in less than a decade (including one, Mike Price, who didn't even made it to his first game in Tuscaloosa). Finally, Alabama got it right.

In 2008, Saban landed one of the greatest recruiting classes in school history, a group that has already produced eight NFL draft picks and likely will send at least three more players to the pros. The following year, he guided Alabama to a perfect season, beating Texas in the title game at Pasadena.

Last season, the Tide fortuitously got a shot at another BCS crown despite losing to LSU during the regular season and failing to even win its division in the Southeastern Conference. In a rematch against the Tigers, Alabama romped to a 21-0 victory at the Superdome.

The all-SEC matchup gave the league an unprecedented six straight national champions, hastening the end of the BCS. It will last one more season before giving way to a four-team playoff in 2014, an arrangement that was undoubtedly pushed along by one conference hoarding all the titles under the current system.

"Let's be honest, people are probably getting tired of us," Jones said. "We don't really mind. We enjoy being the top dog and enjoy kind of having that target on our back, and we love our conference. Obviously, we'd rather not be a part of any other conference."

The schools have played only six times, and not since 1987, but the first of their meetings is still remembered as one of the landmark games in college football history. Bear Bryant had one of his best teams at the 1973 Sugar Bowl, but Ara Parseghian and the Fighting Irish claimed the national title by knocking off top-ranked Alabama 24-23.

If you're a longtime Notre Dame fan, you still remember Parseghian's gutty call to throw the ball out of the end zone for a game-clinching first down. If you were rooting for the Tide, you haven't forgotten a missed extra point that turned out to be the losing margin.

Of course, these Alabama players aren't concerned about what happened nearly four decades ago.

For the most part, all they know is winning.

"You want to be remembered for something," defensive lineman Damion Square said. "You live life to be remembered and do great things so that you can leave a legacy here when you're gone."

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Follow Paul Newberry on Twitter at www.twitter.com/pnewberry1963

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Reliving the Nightmare of Plague, 10 Years Later

Jakob Schiller for The New York Times

SURVIVORS Lucinda Marker and John Tull at home a decade after having the plague.

It was November 2002, little more than a year after planes had been flown into the World Trade Center and anthrax mailings had killed five Americans. New York City was still on edge, in a state of high alert for suspected terrorists.

Suddenly all eyes were on a middle-aged married couple from Santa Fe, N.M., on a brief vacation to New York, who had the remarkably ill luck to come down with the city’s first case of bubonic plague in more than a century. Television news trucks surrounded Beth Israel Medical Center North, where they had dragged themselves after being stricken in their hotel room with rampaging fevers, headaches, extreme exhaustion and mysterious balloonlike swellings.

It took just over a day for public health officials to dispel fears about bioterrorism; there had been no unusual rise in the number of very high fevers that could have suggested an attack.

It turned out that the couple, Lucinda Marker and John Tull, had been bitten by fleas infected with Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes plague. Their home state, New Mexico, accounts for more than half of the average seven cases of plague in the country every year. (In 2012, just one case was reported in the state.)

“It was an absolute fluke,” Ms. Marker, now 57, said during a recent visit to New York. “Just rotten luck.”

Like most people who contract the disease and are quickly treated with antibiotics, she recovered in a few days. But 10 years later, her husband is still badly scarred.

In the days after they were bitten, Mr. Tull, a burly, athletic lawyer — a former prosecutor who volunteered with search-and-rescue teams — developed septicemic plague, as the infection spread throughout his body.

His temperature rose to 104.4, his blood pressure plummeted to 78/50. His kidneys were failing, and so much clotted blood collected in his hands and feet that they turned black.

Mr. Tull was put into a medically induced coma. When he was brought out of it, nearly three months later, he found out that both his legs had been amputated below the knee to drain the deadly infection. The surgery that saved his life radically changed it, but did not dampen his resilient spirit.

Even before he was released from the hospital to begin a long rehabilitation, he vowed he would once again be hiking on the rustic trails above his home.

Today Mr. Tull, 63, drives his own car, sometimes takes over the controls of a private plane, and goes on an annual trout-fishing trip to Colorado with friends. But he has not been able to hike that trail.

“That is one of the things I miss most,” Mr. Tull, now retired and receiving a disability pension, said in a telephone interview from his home. “Every single hour of every single day, the plague affects our lives, but about the only time I really get angry these days is when, because of my physical condition, there is something I want to do but can’t.”

He has appeared in several television documentaries, speaking to medical researchers around the world and dealing with a posse of journalists as his very private ordeal has been played out in public.

“Basically Lucinda and I surrendered our privacy to the press and the people who make documentaries,” Mr. Tull said. “But you know what? That didn’t bother us a bit. Lucinda had been an actress and I had been a trial lawyer. We were used to it.”

Ms. Marker, who has started to write about their ordeal, says that after 10 years she is coming to terms with it emotionally and psychologically. Yet many aspects of their case still puzzle medical experts.

In particular, no one knows why she was so easily cured while he nearly died.

Bubonic plague is transmitted by fleas that feed off pack rats, ground squirrels and prairie dogs in the mountains of New Mexico and several other states. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the disease probably came to the United States around 1900, in Asian rats that escaped from ships in the port of San Francisco.

Initially, plague was restricted to cities. The worst outbreak came in 1907, after the San Francisco earthquake. Vermin control programs prevented further outbreaks, but fleas hitched onto other animals in the wild.

Dr. Paul Ettestad, public health veterinarian for the New Mexico Department of Health, said prairie dogs became an “amplification host,” carrying the disease to their burrows and spreading it throughout their territory. Today, the easternmost limit of the plague roughly corresponds to the 100th meridian, which passes through central Texas. Known as the plague line, is it also the extent of the prairie dog population.

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DealBook: Dartmouth Controversy Reflects Quandary for Endowments

By the numbers, the endowment at Dartmouth had a banner year. The $3.49 billion fund returned 5.8 percent for the 12 months that ended in June — the best in the Ivy League.

But the performance has been clouded by controversy. Last year, an anonymous letter signed by “the friends of Eleazar Wheelock,” referring to the university’s founder, asked New Hampshire state officials to investigate the endowment over potential conflicts of interest raised by trustee-related investments.

Although the state attorney general’s office decided that an investigation was not warranted, the situation highlights a thorny problem for college endowments.

Trustees’ connections can prove profitable for the universities, offering access to top-performing hedge funds and private equity firms that may not be open to other investors. But they can also create the appearance that the colleges may have nonfinancial motives for picking investments. And if the investments do not perform well, it can be stickier to fire the money manager.

“It’s probably better not to” engage in such transactions, said John S. Griswold, executive director of the Commonfund Institute, the research arm of a money manager that caters to educational endowments in Wilton, Conn. “It avoids the perception of conflict of interest and self dealing.”

Universities like Dartmouth rely on endowments to help pay for financial aid, academics and operations. As part of their core fund-raising, colleges hunt for big donations from their most successful alumni, a group that is often heavily populated by financiers and professional investors. The trustees at Dartmouth, a board that oversees the university, include James G. Coulter, a founding partner of the private equity firm TPG Capital and Stephen F. Mandel Jr., the head of the hedge fund Lone Pine Capital.

Dartmouth has frequently tapped that pool to fill its endowment portfolio. In July, the university said that 13.5 percent of the assets were in funds led by trustees or members of the college’s investment committee. Those included investments managed by Lone Pine, whose chief, Mr. Mandel, has been a Dartmouth trustee since 2007; by Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe, a private equity firm whose co-founder, Russell L. Carson, was a Dartmouth trustee until 2009; and Apollo Global Management, the private equity firm run by Leon D. Black, a Dartmouth trustee until 2011.

Dartmouth is not an outlier in the practice. A 2011 study by the National Association of College and University Business Officers and the Commonfund Institute found that 56 percent of the 823 endowments surveyed allowed board members to do business with their university, as long as the relationship is disclosed.

But Dartmouth, which has six funds with trustee ties, appears to be among the more aggressive. Among the Ivy League universities, Brown and Cornell have disclosed five trustee-related investments. Princeton, Yale, Columbia and Pennsylvania have reported just one. Harvard has not reported any trustee investments, but its reports do not include investments managed by firms of board members of Harvard Management, which runs the university’s endowment.

“Dartmouth is proud that some of the world’s leading money managers are Dartmouth alumni,” said the college’s general counsel, Robert B. Donin, adding that the picks were “based on a manager’s strategy, expertise and performance history,” rather than ties to the university.

Over all, the strategy has been sound. The Dartmouth-related managers produced average annual returns of 11.1 percent over the 10 years that ended in mid-2011. By comparison, the endowment as a whole is up 7 percent on average in the same period.

Even so, the practice has prompted concern within the ranks of the Dartmouth trustees. Roughly five years ago, the group debated such transactions, according to Charles E. Haldeman Jr., a Dartmouth trustee from 2004 to 2012 and the former chief executive of Freddie Mac. “We understood there was a potential negative perception,” Mr. Haldeman said. But the trustees concluded that the potential for “a higher return on the endowment” justified the risk of a “perception issue.”

In the depths of the financial crisis, the issue came up again. Like many colleges, Dartmouth saw its endowment suffer during the market downturn, forcing the fund to sell assets and cut staff to bolster its cash cushion.

At the time, one trustee raised concerns that the endowment was overly invested in illiquid high-fee products, which could not be easily sold. By then, Dartmouth’s exposure to alternative investments like hedge funds, private equity funds and venture capital had swelled to 48.5 percent of assets, well above its target of 35 percent.

The cash squeeze also prompted questions from the trustee, Todd J. Zywicki, a law professor at George Mason University, about the amount of alternative assets that were devoted to firms led by Dartmouth trustees.

Initially, Mr. Zywicki said in an interview, he got the impression that such investments were a “special opportunity.” But by the time of the downturn, he said that it had become routine. “Every year they would bring more of these things,” he said.

After Mr. Zywicki was voted off the board in 2009, the endowment issue was swept up into a larger, decade-long battle between alumni factions over whether Dartmouth should try to compete globally by expanding its top graduate schools, or focus on its traditional undergraduate core.

But the concerns did not go away. In February 2012, a group sent an anonymous letter to the office of the New Hampshire attorney general. “Who really runs Dartmouth College and for whose benefit?” the letter asked. “For years, Dartmouth has been run by and has paid sky-high fees to a group of investment manager trustees, all Dartmouth graduates, who have then recycled some portion of the fees” back to the college “as generous ‘donations,’ ” often getting a building named for them in the process.

The letter cited donations by some of the same trustees. For example, Mr. Black contributed $48 million for a Black Family Visual Arts Center, and a building to house Dartmouth’s history department was named for Mr. Carson in 2002. An Apollo spokesman declined to comment. Neither Mr. Carson nor another Welsh, Carson official returned calls.

The anonymous letter noted that Pamela J. Joyner, a Dartmouth trustee from 2001 to 2010, had served as a placement agent for Apollo, receiving commissions for investments in its funds. Ms. Joyner, whose San Francisco firm Avid Partners is an alternative investment marketing consultant, declined to comment, referring questions to a Dartmouth spokesman. The college spokesman, Justin Anderson, confirmed her placement work for Apollo, and said she had also “explored” such work for the money management firm Welsh, Carson, but did not benefit from any Dartmouth investments.

The letter, made public in May, prompted a review by the state attorney general’s office. In October, officials concluded that an investigation wasn’t warranted. The review, in part, found that Dartmouth had complied with state rules. Regulations require that such transactions be approved by a two-thirds vote of the board, without any participation by the trustee involved with the investment.

Since the issue arose, Dartmouth has bolstered its controls over such investments. In addition to the previous requirements, the audit committee now votes on such investments to ensure they don’t pose “an unreasonable risk of appearance of conflict of interest.”

“We could have had a blanket prohibition, and if we did, we would never be second-guessed,” said Mr. Haldeman, the former Dartmouth trustee. “But returns on our endowment would have been substantially lower,” he added, “and the institution would not be as strong as it is today.”

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Pakistani Soldier Killed in Shooting in Kashmir

Mukesh Gupta/Reuters

Kashmir remains a point of confrontation between India and Pakistan.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistani and Indian troops exchanged gunfire across the disputed Kashmir border early Sunday, leaving one Pakistani soldier dead in a relatively rare fatal confrontation between the two neighbors.

As usual, the rival armies, which have been engaged in a face-off in Kashmir for decades, disagreed about who started the shooting or what happened next.

Pakistan said Indian troops crossed the disputed boundary, known as the Line of Control, into Pakistani-controlled territory, where they attacked a remote outpost and wounded two soldiers, one of whom later died.

“Our army troops effectively responded and repulsed the attack successfully,” said a Pakistani military spokesman, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “Indian Army troops left behind a gun and a dagger.”

But the Indian military said that its troops had not crossed into Pakistani territory and that it was only responding to an unprovoked Pakistani shelling across the Line of Control that destroyed a civilian house.

“None of our troops crossed the Line of Control,” Col. Jagadish Dahiya, an Indian Army spokesman, told Reuters. “We have no casualties or injuries.”

The clash was an unusual breach of an almost decade-long cease-fire that has largely held between the two rivals, whose leaders have concentrated on building economic and diplomatic ties.

In the last major shooting, in September 2011, Pakistan claimed to have lost three soldiers while India said one of its officers was killed. There have been other, smaller, clashes in recent months.

But in the last year, encouraging signs have emerged that relations are thawing.

The two countries have eased travel restrictions for Kashmiris living on both sides of the de facto border, and introduced encouraging economic initiatives intended to foster bilateral trade.

It was unclear whether Sunday’s clash would affect any of that. The Pakistani cricket team is visiting India, and on Sunday, a match was played between the two sides in New Delhi, the Indian capital.

Still, military and ideological hard-liners in both countries consider the bitter conflict over Kashmir, which erupted just after independence in 1947, as the core issue that needs to be resolved. Pakistan and India, both of which claim the mountainous territory in its entirety, have fought two wars over the region.

Pakistan said that Sunday’s clash occurred at a remote border post in the Bagh district, more than 50 miles east of the capital, Islamabad.

One encouraging sign is that the recent warming of relations could not have taken place without approval from Pakistan’s generals, who at any rate are increasingly absorbed by the fight against Islamist militants along their western border with Afghanistan.

That fight has been complicated by tense relations with the United States. On Sunday the Central Intelligence Agency continued to press its drone strike campaign in Waziristan, with three missile attacks against suspected militant bases that killed at least 12 people, according to Pakistani intelligence officials.

In one strike, in South Waziristan, a remotely piloted American aircraft fired 10 missiles into a suspected Pakistani Taliban training camp, one intelligence official said, speaking by phone on the condition of anonymity.

A senior Taliban militant, speaking by phone from Waziristan on the condition of anonymity, confirmed the strike. Three senior Taliban commanders were believed to have died, he said, including one who had masterminded a jailbreak in nearby Bannu last year that allowed 390 inmates to escape.

Another commander who is believed to have died, Wali Muhammad, who is also known as Tuffani Mehsud, was considered to be the leader of the Pakistani Taliban’s suicide bomber squad.

“It is a major blow to our organization,” the Taliban militant said.

Salman Masood and Ihsanullah Tipu Mehsud contributed reporting.

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Handset makers scurry to join Year of the Phablet

SINGAPORE/HONG KONG (Reuters) – Call it phablet, phonelet, tweener or super smartphone, but the clunky mobile phone – closer in size to a tablet than the smartphone of a couple of years back – is here to stay.

A surprise hit of 2012, it is drawing in more users, more handset makers and is shaping the way we consume content.

“We expect 2013 to be the year of the phablet,” said Neil Mawston, UK-based executive director of Strategy Analytics‘ global wireless practice.

While Samsung Electronics Co Ltd has blazed a trail with its once-mocked Galaxy Note devices, now other manufacturers are scurrying to catch up.

At this week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Chinese telecommunications giants ZTE Corp and Huawei Technologies Co Ltd will launch their own.

ZTE, which collaborated with Italy’s designer Stefano Giovannoni for the Nubia phablet, is scheduled to launch its 5-inch Grand S, while Huawei brings out the Ascend Mate, sporting a whopping 6.1-inch screen, making it only slightly smaller than Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet.

“Users have realized that a nearly 5-inch screen smartphone isn’t such a cumbersome device,” said Joshua Flood, senior analyst at ABI Research in Britain.

Driving the phablet’s shift to the mainstream is a confluence of trends. Users prefer larger screens because they are consuming more visual content on mobile devices than before, and using them less for voice calls – the phablet’s weak spot.

And as WiFi-only tablets become more popular, so has interest among commuters in devices that combine the best of both, while on the move.

According to the latest Ericsson Mobility Report, the monthly data traffic for every smartphone will rise fourfold between now and 2018 to 1,900 megabytes.

The upshot is a market for phablets that will quadruple in value to $ 135 billion in three years, according to Barclays. Shipments of gadgets that are 5 inches or bigger in screen size will surge by nearly nine-fold to 228 million during the same period, though estimates vary because no one can agree on where smartphones stop and phablets start.

But that’s the point, some say.

“I think phone size was a preconceived notion based on voice usage,” said John Berns, a Singapore-based executive who works in the information technology industry. He recently upgraded his Note for the newer Note 2 and bought another for his girlfriend for Christmas. “Smaller was better until phones got smart, became visual.”

Samsung has been both the engine and beneficiary. While other players shipped devices with larger screens earlier – Dell Inc launched its Streak in 2010 – it was only when the Korean behemoth launched the Galaxy Note in late 2011, with its 5.3-inch screen, that users took an interest.

“The Streak was launched at a time when 3-inch smartphones were standard and the leap to a 5-inch Streak was a jump too far for consumers,” says Strategy Analytics’ Mawston.

“The Galaxy Note was launched when 4-inch smartphones had become commonplace, and the leap to 5-inch was no longer such a chasm.”

THE BIGGER, THE BETTER

Since then Samsung has bet big on bigger: its updated Note has a 5.5-inch screen and its flagship Galaxy S3 – the best-selling smartphone in the third quarter of 2012 – has a screen that puts it in the phablet category for some analysts.

Samsung accounted for around three quarters of all phablets shipped last year, according to Barclays’ Taipei-based analyst Dale Gai.

Samsung’s marketing heft has paved the way for others. LG Electronics Inc accounted for 14 percent of shipments in the third quarter of last year, according to Strategy Analytics.

HTC Corp’s 5-inch Butterfly – called the Droid DNA in the United States – has been selling well in places where Samsung is less dominant, according to Taipei-based Yuanta Securities analyst Dennis Chan. The first batch sold out soon after its December launch in Taiwan.

“I don’t think we can say that Samsung invented phablets,” said Lv Qianhao, head of handset strategy at ZTE. “But it did do a lot to promote this product category, which helped create tremendous demand.”

Phablets are also proving popular in emerging markets.

A poll of nearly 5,000 readers of Yahoo’s Indonesian website chose Samsung’s Galaxy Note 2 as their favorite mobile phone of 2012, ahead of the iPhone 5.

Kristian Tjahjono, a technology journalist who posted the poll, said phablets were a natural fit for Indonesians who liked tablets but also liked making phone calls.

But while those in such markets who can afford them are going for the high-end devices, the door is opening for cheaper models. Tjahjono pointed to Lenovo’s 5-inch S880, which has a lower resolution screen and sells for about $ 250, which is around a third of the price of Galaxy Note 2.

SWEET SPOT

Falling component prices will add to demand. The total cost of an upper-end phablet, its bill of materials, will likely fall to 2,000 yuan ($ 323) this year, says Gai from Barclays, and will halve within two years.

“One thousand yuan is a very sweet spot for China,” he said.

India is also a fan.

Vivek Deshpande, who manages global strategy for Shenzhen-based mobile phone maker Zopo, says that while the Indian and Chinese markets are different, they both share a common appetite for aspirational devices: phones big enough for their owners to show off. This is changing the direction of lower end players.

“Zopo’s primary focus is now on phablets,” said Deshpande.

Even Samsung is pushing its own creation downmarket: In Las Vegas it will unveil the Galaxy Grand, a 5-inch device that lacks some of the resolution and muscle of its bigger brethren but will be aimed at markets like India. There is a version offering a dual SIM slot, a popular feature for those wanting to arbitrage cheaper call and data plans.

As phablets slide into the mainstream, handset makers are trying to find ways of differentiating.

As well as hiring Italian designer Giovannoni better known for his minimalist, sleek bathrooms, ZTE also came up with an onscreen keypad that inclines to one side of the screen, depending on whether the user is left- or right-handed.

Samsung, however, not only has first mover advantage, it can also build on its expertise in display.

Barclay’s Gai says Samsung is expected to introduce a thinner, unbreakable AMOLED screen which will leave room for bigger batteries.

“That will put Samsung in good stead to still dominate the market,” he said. Despite pressure in China, Gai estimates Samsung’s share of smartphones with 5-inch or larger screens to fall only from 73 percent in 2012 to 58 percent in 2016, which is still the lion’s share.

By then consumers will see the phablet for what it is, says Horace Dediu, a Finnish analyst who runs a technology blog asymco.com. Its rise is part of a wider march of computing power into wherever we reside – the living room, the train, bed or work.

“It makes sense that we’re moving towards a time where we are served not by a computer or a netbook or a phone, but rather that we have these screens scattered around and available for us to play with,” he said. “In a way the phablet is not a bulky phone but a very delicate computer.”

(Editing by Emily Kaiser)

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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