DealBook: Dutch Government Takes Control of SNS Reaal

The Dutch government took control of one of the country’s biggest financial institutions, SNS Reaal, after the troubled company failed to find a private-sector buyer.

The Dutch finance minister, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, said the government would spend 3.7 billion euros, or $5 billion, in taxpayer money to clean up the bank, which has struggled for years with unprofitable real estate loans. The government will also require the country’s top three banks — ING, ABN Amro and Rabobank — to contribute 1 billion euros next year in a one-time payment, he said.

The moves comes as Europe continues to deal with a sluggish economic and debt problems. Last year, Spain took over Bankia, a mortgage lender also hurt by property deals.

Problems at SNS Reaal, which is based in Utrecht, had intensified in the last two weeks as depositors began losing faith, fearing talks with potential buyers would fail. The company had been reportedly negotiating possible investments with CVC Capital Partners and other funds in the hope of averting disaster.

Mr. Dijsselbloem, the finance minister, said in a statement that the takeover ‘‘was made necessary by the extreme situation’’ of the bank and the ‘‘serious and immediate threat posed by that situation to the stability of the financial system.’’

Shareholders and subordinated bondholders of SNS Reaal will be wiped out, effective immediately, Mr. Dijsselbloem said. The holders of senior debt will be repaid and depositors will not lose their money.

Three top executives of SNS Reaal said in a statement that they were stepping down, as ‘‘they do not want to and cannot take responsibility for the nationalization scenario.’’ The three — Ronald Latenstein, the bank’s chief executive, Rob Zwartendijk, the chairman, and Ference Lamp, the chief financial officer — said they had done ‘‘everything in their power’’ to avoid a bailout.

‘‘The persons in question do not advocate the chosen solution, but respect the choice of the Ministry of Finance,’’ according to a statement.

The announcement is the latest in a spate of recent bad news about European banks. On Thursday, Deutsche Bank posted a surprise fourth-quarter loss of 2.2 billion euros, and problems continue at Monti dei Paschi di Siena, which received a bailout from the Italian government last year.

The case of SNS Reaal also adds urgency to efforts to set up procedures to identify and wind down terminally ill banks in a way that does not burden taxpayers.

The move also signaled the transfer of another of the Netherlands’ biggest financial institutions into state hands. The Dutch business of ABN Amro was nationalized in October 2008 after the collapse of Lehman Brothers sent the world financial system into shock.

ABN Amro had been taken over and split up by Royal Bank of Scotland, Fortis and Santander in a 2007 deal that has since come to epitomize the worst excesses of the credit bubble. Both Royal Bank of Scotland and Fortis, once the biggest Belgian financial house, were laid low by the debt burdens they took on for the ABN Amro deal when the credit crisis struck.

The ABN Amro deal also marred SNS Reaal, which needed a bailout in 2008 after it acquired the broken-up lender’s property business. That bailout has not been fully repaid.

As part of the deal announced Friday, the state will forgive 800 million euros of the unpaid bailout loans, inject 2.2 billion euros into SNS and write off 700 million euros from the bank’s property portfolio. ING estimated that its share of the cost of bailing out SNS Reaal would come to 300 million to 350 million euros, but said the impact on its finances would be limited.

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This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 1, 2013

An earlier version of the article incorrectly spelled the name of the nationalized company. It is SNS Reaal, not SNS Reall.

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Hagel to stress opposition to a nuclear Iran in Senate testimony

WASHINGTON -- President Obama’s nominee for secretary of Defense, former Sen. Chuck Hagel, will stress at his confirmation hearing Thursday that he opposes letting Iran acquire nuclear weapons and will focus on developing military options to set back Tehran’s program, according to a U.S. official familiar with his planned testimony.

It will be Hagel’s first chance to explain his views publicly since his selection last month ignited fierce opposition from several former Republican colleagues and pro-Israel groups. They contend Hagel was not tough enough on Iran during his two terms as a GOP senator from Nebraska, and warn he might not push for a U.S. attack on Iran if one is needed.

“He’s going to be very clear that he fully supports the president’s policy of preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon,” said the U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because Hagel had not yet testified. “His job as secretary of Defense is to ensure that the military is prepared for any contingency, and he believes all options should be on the table, including military options.”

Hagel’s willingness to back the use of force against Iran is likely to be the key area of questioning during what is expected to be a daylong hearing with the Senate Armed Services Committee.

After a shaky start, Hagel’s nomination has picked up increasing support from Democrats, and the first Republican, Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi, announced Monday that he would vote for Hagel.

White House officials say they expect more Republicans to back Hagel and predict that when the full Senate votes, he will win more than the 60 votes necessary to avoid the threat of a filibuster.

Some pro-Israel groups have greeted Hagel’s nomination with opposition or lukewarm support. Even Democrats who back Hagel are determined to press him for greater clarity on how long diplomatic pressure and sanctions on Iran should be given to work before a military strike becomes necessary.

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the committee, said “most Democrats are leaning very strongly” for Hagel, including himself. “That doesn’t mean I don’t have questions,” he added.

Many Republicans have not forgiven Hagel for publicly criticizing the George W. Bush administration for its handling of the war in Iraq, and they are likely to be considerably harsher in tone.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), speaking on the Senate floor Wednesday afternoon, said Hagel’s nomination had “already done damage to the United States’ credibility” in dealing with Iran.

“I realize that Sen. Hagel is now repudiating many of his past actions and statements,” he added. “But we’ve seen this before.”

Like Obama, Hagel has long called for a mix of negotiations and international economic sanctions to pressure Iran, insisting that military action should be considered only as a last resort. As he has sought support for his nomination, Hagel has emphasized that unilateral U.S. sanctions and even military action could be required.

“If Iran continues to flout its international obligations, it should continue to face severe and growing consequences,” Hagel said in response to written questions from the committee. ‘‘While there is time and space for diplomacy, backed by pressure, the window is closing. Iran needs to demonstrate it is prepared to negotiate seriously.’’

Ironically, the pressure on Hagel to come out strongly for a possible military strike against Iran comes as some Israeli officials, who have long pressed the Obama administration to consider a preemptive attack, say Iran appears to have backed away, at least for now, from what the West believes is a program to develop a nuclear bomb.

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the top Republican on the panel, said last week that he and Hagel were “too philosophically opposed on the issues" for Inhofe to support his nomination, citing Hagel’s support for defense budget cuts and for cutting nuclear stockpiles. Inhofe was one of three Republicans who voted Tuesday against confirming Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) as secretary of State.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Tuesday declined to rule out the possibility that Republicans would require a 60-vote threshold for confirming Hagel.

“Sen. Hagel hasn't had his hearing yet, and I think it's too early to predict the conditions under which his nomination will be considered,” McConnell said.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has said he would block Hagel’s nomination from coming to a vote unless the current Pentagon chief, Leon E. Panetta, agrees to testify about the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya. A White House official downplayed the possibility that Hagel’s nomination could be blocked, saying negotiations were underway to let Panetta testify.

david.cloud@latimes.com

michael.memoli@latimes.com

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Microsoft, Yahoo Among Open Source 'Rookies of the Year'

Each year, Black Duck unveils what it calls the Rookie Open Source Projects of the Year. The California company sells software for managing open source projects, and its annual list is a way of promoting both itself and the wider open source software community. But the list is also good reading.

This year, Microsoft made a surprise appearance, as did Yahoo, which fell down a bit in terms of developer relations last year, thanks to heavy layoffs and its widely panned patents policy.

Black Duck maintains extensive statistics on open source projects, running a site called Ohloh, which tracks the activity and popularity of just about every open source project the company can find. According to Black Duck, the Rookie of the Year projects were chosen based on a simple weighted scoring system that factored in “project activity, commits pace, project team attributes, and other factors.” Each project was introduced in 2012.

The winners are:

• Ansible –a radically simple configuration management, deployment, and ad-hoc task execution tool.


• Chaplin.js – an architecture for JavaScript applications using the Backbone.js library, it provides a lightweight and flexible structure that features well-proven design patterns and best practices.


• GPUImage –an iOS library that lets you apply GPU-accelerated filters and other effects to images, live camera video, and movies.


• Hammer.js –a JavaScript library for multi-touch gestures, Hammer.js enables gestures for the web on mobile devices.


• InaSAFE – produces realistic natural hazard impact scenarios for better planning, preparedness and response activities.


• Yahoo! Mojito – a JavaScript MVC framework for mobile and Web applications running on client and server.


• Sidekiq – provides simple, efficient message processing for Ruby.


• Syte –simple but powerful packaged personal site that has social integrations like Twitter, GitHub, Tumblr, WordPress, Stack Overflow and more.


• Twitter Bower – a package manager for the web that lets you easily install assets such as images, CSS, JS and manages dependencies for you.


• TypeScript – a language for application-scale JavaScript development, providing a typed superset of JavaScript that compiles to plain JavaScript.


• Honorable Mention: DCPUToolChain – an assembler, compiler, emulator and Integrated Development Environment for the DCPU-16 virtual CPU.

The list reflects the broader trends in modern programming, especially the growing need for mobile and cross-platform development.

Several of the projects deal with extending or enhancing JavaScript. JavaScript was originally as a simple scripting language for the Netscape browser. Now developers are building much larger applications that run both in the browser and on the server using JavaScript, and relying on it to build mobile applications.

For example, Yahoo Mojito is part of a growing family of JavaScript frameworks that help developers to build complex, desktop-like applications. AJAX-heavy web applications like Google Docs have changed user expectations for responsiveness and interactivity on the web. With drameworks like Mojito, Meteor, Derby and Flatiron, developers can create code that runs in both the browser and on the server using the Node.js platform.

Microsoft’s TypeScript was released last October and is a JavaScript-like language that is translated into JavaScript before being run. It adds a few additional features, such as static typing, that are helpful for developers trying to build larger applications. Its goals are similar to Google’s Dart programming language, but is much less of a departure from JavaScript.

Getting outside the tech community bubble, InaSAFE is a project backed by the Indonesian Disaster Management Agency, the Australia-Indonesia Facility for Disaster Reduction and the World Bank. It’s a plugin for the open source GIS application Quantum GIS designed to help prepare for the impacts of floods, earthquakes, or tsunami. It crunches data from several sources, including scientists and local governments to model flooding and other scenarios, allowing governments and NGOs to make evacuation plans and other preparations.

Not all of the winners had big organizations behind them. Syte was created by developer/designer/entrepreneur Rodrigo Neri to fill a gap he saw in site building applications. “I know a lot of people that should have a personal web site but they don’t,” he wrote on his own Syte-based blog. “Some of them are developers and some are designers, both that should be capable of putting one together but they don’t.”

There are already thousands of ways to build a website, open source or otherwise, yet Syte was successful by filling a gap that was still open. “I think what made Syte take off was the ability to integrate with most of your social networks which was a concept only a few were doing at the time,” Neri says. The platform allows users to use existing tools, such as Tumblr or WordPress.com to manage a blog, but brings everything together in a central location, much like the hosted service About.me.

Neri also has some thoughts on how other new open source projects can succeed. “I feel that building good documentation on how to utilize an open source project is the key for a project success,” he says. “You want to make sure that when people go download your project they can quickly recreate it for their needs.”

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Justin Timberlake launches music comeback with Grammy performance

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Justin Timberlake, making his pop music comeback with a new single and album, will perform at next month’s Grammy Awards for the first time in four years, Grammy organizers said on Wednesday.

Timberlake, 31, will take the stage at the music industry‘s biggest night in Los Angeles on February 10, ahead of the scheduled March release of his first album since 2006.

“The 20/20 Experience” marks Timberlake’s return to music after several years in which he has focused more on acting and business ventures, including a clothing line and a partnership in social networking site Myspace.

At the Grammy Awards ceremony and show, Timberlake will join performers and country music nominees Miranda Lambert and Dierks Bentley, singers Taylor Swift and Carrie Underwood, and bands Mumford & Sons and FUN.

Elton John will also duet with rising British singer Ed Sheeran, and the Grammy ceremony will be hosted by rapper LL Cool J. Other performers will be announced in the next 10 days.

(Reporting by Jill Serjeant; Editing by Will Dunham)

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Well: Waiting for Alzheimer's to Begin

My gray matter might be waning. Then again, it might not be. But I swear that I can feel memories — as I’m making them — slide off a neuron and into a tangle of plaque. I steel myself for those moments to come when I won’t remember what just went into my head.

I’m not losing track of my car keys, which is pretty standard in aging minds. Nor have I ever forgotten to turn off the oven after use, common in menopausal women. I can always find my car in the parking lot, although lots of “normal” folk can’t.

Rather, I suddenly can’t remember the name of someone with whom I’ve worked for years. I cover by saying “sir” or “madam” like the Southerner I am, even though I live in Vermont and grown people here don’t use such terms. Better to think I’m quirky than losing my faculties. Sometimes I’ll send myself an e-mail to-do reminder and then, seconds later, find myself thrilled to see a new entry pop into my inbox. Oops, it’s from me. Worse yet, a massage therapist kicked me out of her practice for missing three appointments. I didn’t recall making any of them. There must another Nancy.

Am I losing track of me?

Equally worrisome are the memories increasingly coming to the fore. Magically, these random recollections manage to circumnavigate my imagined build-up of beta-amyloid en route to delivering vivid images of my father’s first steps down his path of forgetting. He was the same age I am now, which is 46.

“How old are you?” I recall him asking me back then. Some years later, he began calling me every Dec. 28 to say, “Happy birthday,” instead of on the correct date, Dec. 27. The 28th had been his grandmother’s birthday.

The chasms were small at first. Explainable. Dismissible. When he crossed the street without looking both ways, we chalked it up to his well-cultivated, absent-minded professor persona. But the chasms grew into sinkholes, and eventually quicksand. When we took him to get new pants one day, he kept trying on the same ones he wore to the store.

“I like these slacks,” he’d say, over and over again, as he repeatedly pulled his pair up and down.

My dad died of Alzheimer’s last April at age 73 — the same age at which his father succumbed to the same disease. My dad ended up choosing neurology as his profession after witnessing the very beginning of his own dad’s forgetting.

Decades later, grandfather’s atrophied brain found its way into a jar on my father’s office desk. Was it meant to be an ever-present reminder of Alzheimer’s effect? Or was it a crystal ball sent to warn of genetic fate? My father the doctor never said, nor did he ever mention, that it was his father’s gray matter floating in that pool of formaldehyde.

Using the jarred brain as a teaching tool, my dad showed my 8-year-old self the difference between frontal and temporal lobes. He also pointed out how brains with Alzheimer’s disease become smaller, and how wide grooves develop in the cerebral cortex. But only after his death — and my mother’s confession about whose brain occupied that jar — did I figure out that my father was quite literally demonstrating how this disease runs through our heads.

Has my forgetting begun?

I called my dad’s neurologist. To find out if I was in the earliest stages of Alzheimer’s, he would have to look for proteins in my blood or spinal fluid and employ expensive neuroimaging tests. If he found any indication of onset, the only option would be experimental trials.

But documented confirmation of a diseased brain would break my still hopeful heart. I’d walk around with the scarlet letter “A” etched on the inside of my forehead — obstructing how I view every situation instead of the intermittent clouding I currently experience.

“You’re still grieving your father,” the doctor said at the end of our call. “Sadness and depression affect the memory, too. Let’s wait and see.”

It certainly didn’t help matters that two people at my father’s funeral made some insensitive remarks.

“Nancy, you must be scared to death.”

“Is it hard knowing the same thing probably will happen to you?”

Maybe the real question is what to do when the forgetting begins. My dad started taking 70 supplements a day in hopes of saving his mind. He begged me to kill him if he wound up like his father. He retired from his practice and spent all day in a chair doing puzzles. He stopped making new memories in an all-out effort to preserve the ones he already had.

Maybe his approach wasn’t the answer.

Just before his death — his brain a fraction of its former self — my father managed to offer up a final lesson. I was visiting him in the memory-care center when he got a strange look on his face. I figured it was gas. But then his eyes lit up and a big grin overtook him, and he looked right at me and said, “Funny how things turn out.”

An unforgettable moment?

I can only hope.

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Nancy Stearns Bercaw is a writer in Vermont. Her book, “Brain in a Jar: A Daughter’s Journey Through Her Father’s Memory,” will be published in April 2013 by Broadstone.

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DealBook: Deutsche Bank Posts Surprise $3 Billion Loss

FRANKFURT – Deutsche Bank, Germany’s largest lender, reported a surprise net loss of 2.2 billion euros ($3 billion) for the fourth quarter of 2012 on Thursday, hurt by the diminished value of some assets as well as costs related to numerous legal proceedings.

The results underline the task ahead for Jürgen Fitschen and Anshu Jain, the co- chief executives who took over the bank less than seven months ago and have declared their intention to deal more severely with the legacy of the financial crisis.

“This is the most comprehensive reconfiguration of Deutsche Bank in recent times,” Mr. Fitschen and Mr. Jain said in a statement. They warned that “deliberate but sometimes uncomfortable change” lay ahead, adding that “this journey will take years not months.”

Deutsche Bank avoided a government bailout during the financial crisis, but has faced numerous lawsuits and official investigations, including a tax-evasion inquiry that led to a raid on company headquarters last month by German police.

“Significant” charges related to legal proceedings contributed to the loss, Deutsche Bank said, without providing specifics.

Analysts consider the bank to be among the most highly leveraged in Europe, and bank management has promised to reduce the number of risky activities, a process that sometimes requires it to recognize the reduced value of assets and book losses.

Despite the loss, Deutsche Bank said fourth-quarter revenue rose 14 percent, to 7.9 billion euros, from the period a year earlier. The bank also said it had increased the amount of capital held as insurance against risk, and reduced the amount of money it needed to set aside to cover possible bad loans. The bank said it had reduced total employee pay to the lowest level in years.

The bank had warned in December that it would incur major charges in the quarter, without saying how much.

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South Korea successfully launches satellite into orbit

SEOUL -- In danger of falling behind in the space race on the Korean peninsula, the South Korean government announced Wednesday that it had successfully launched a rocket into space.

Pressure had been mounting ever since mid-December when communist arch-rival North Korea managed to launch a multi-stage rocket and put a satellite into orbit.

South Korea's Satellite Launch Vehicle-1, also known as Naro, blasted off at 4 p.m. local time from a space center in Jeolla province on the southwestern coast.

"Five hundred forty seconds after the launch, Naro successfully separated the satellite," South Korean Science and Technology Minister Lee Joo-ho said at a news briefing Wednesday. "After analyzing various data, we have confirmed that [the satellite] has been successfully put into orbit." 

Officials said the launch made South Korea the 13th country to get a satellite into orbit from its own territory. Iran on Monday announced that it had launched a monkey into space using its own technology.

The sky was clear and the weather had warmed up on Wednesday afternoon at the space center, where about 3,000 people gathered to observe the latest attempt to launch Naro. The crowd excitedly cheered and waved national flags during the countdown.

Two attempts to launch a space vehicle, in 2009 and 2010, ended in failures. The third attempt was to take place in October but was delayed due to a damaged rubber seal that caused a fuel leak. The next try came in November, but it was canceled 17 minutes before the rocket set to be launched due to a technical glitch.

The failures looked all the more embarrassing after the successful Dec. 12 launch of the Unha-3 rocket by North Korea, which has an economy less than one-twentieth the size of South Korea's. What North Koreans have dubbed a "peaceful satellite launch" was a part of the legacy of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, who died in December 2011.

The international community condemned North Korea as its rocket launch was suspected to be a cover for a test of ballistic missile technology.

Lee Sang-ryul, a South Korean scientist with the Korea Aerospace Research Institute, said the launches seven weeks apart were not comparable because the South Korean objective was purely scientific.

"The exterior of Unha-3 and Naro seems to be very much alike. It is about the same weight, the shapes are similar, and the fact that it puts a satellite in the orbit is the same. However, I believe North Korea's purpose is not to develop a satellite launch vehicle but a weapons development," South Korean television quoted Lee as saying Wednesday.

North Korea said earlier this month it would also conduct a nuclear test and that "the various satellites and long-range rockets that we will fire ... are targeted at the United States, the archenemy of the Korean people."

Independent scientists say the North Korean satellite was not a complete success because its transmitter failed during the launch, but that it achieved a reasonably accurate orbit.

"Most countries when they launch their first satellite don't get too close," Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics said in a recent interview.

He added that South Koreans shouldn't feel that North Korea has beaten them.

"It is difficult, but it is basically high-tech plumbing," McDowell said. "It is not as sophisticated as creating the industrial base to make a Samsung monitor."

South Korea's Naro program began in 2002 with the help of Russian technology. Before Wednesday's launch, the country had sent about 10 satellites into space, but they were all launched from foreign rockets overseas.

ALSO:

Egyptian general warns against continued unrest

Dozens of corpses found along river in Aleppo, Syria

Controversial Spanish doctor testifies in huge sports doping trial

-- Barbara Demick reported from Beijing.

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Even After Lackland Scandal, Military Still Isn't Fixing Its Sexual Abuse Epidemic

The Pentagon has talked a lot about putting a stop to sexual abuse and harassment in the military, including abuse carried out by general officers. Yet a new report from the investigative arm of Congress finds it’s mostly that — talk. It catalogs how the military still hasn’t fixed a host of systemic obstacles that contribute to sexual assault and make it less likely for survivors to get help.

According to a report released Wednesday by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), while the Pentagon has made some progress in recent years at trying to stop sexual abuse, treatment isn’t always available. Medical first-responders are undertrained and not always aware of services available for survivors. Perhaps worse, the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs — which oversees the military’s health resources — hasn’t “established guidance,” required by the Pentagon, “for the treatment of injuries stemming from sexual assault.”

Among those guidelines: standardizing procedures for collecting evidence; providing specialized medical care; and, perhaps most alarming, keeping the identities of survivors private. Instead, sexual assault survivors within the military have to navigate a hodge-podge of different standards between branches — even at individual bases. “These inconsistencies,” the report states, can “erode servicemembers’ confidence. As a consequence, sexual assault victims who want to keep their case confidential may be reluctant to seek medical care.”

All these systemic obstacles to ending sexual abuse persist despite endless pledges from Pentagon officials to finally do away with one of the military’s most glaring sources of injustice. “If we don’t take steps to deal with it — if we don’t exercise better leadership to confront it — it’ll get worse,” Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told NBC News in September. “In a May 2012 letter to military commanders signed by Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the chiefs stated: “As military professionals we must fully understand the destructive nature of these acts, lead our focused efforts to prevent them, and promote positive command climates and environments that reinforce mutual respect, trust and confidence.”

The Pentagon has had an overarching sexual-abuse policy since 2005 which “calls for sexual assault prevention … to be gender-responsive, culturally competent, and recovery-oriented; and for an immediate, trained sexual assault response capability to be available in deployed locations,” according to the report. But the Pentagon has fallen short of establishing and enforcing policies that are more specific, and trained first-responders may not always be available or trained properly to respond.

A huge problem is confidentiality — a reoccurring issue in sexual assault cases where victims may fear retaliation for reporting the crimes. First, sexual assault cases can be reported in the military using two ways: unrestricted reports and restricted reports. For an unrestricted report, a survivor reports an assault to superiors and military law enforcement, who — in theory — begin an investigation, and provide medical care and counseling. A restricted report, on the other hand, allows a survivor to confidentially inform superiors about the assault without sparking a criminal investigation. The survivor, according to military policy, should still receive medical care, but personally identifying information will be kept anonymous.

But that’s not always the case. At one unidentified military installation, the installation’s medical policies “did not … offer health care providers alternative procedures for documenting and reporting medical issues associated with restricted reports of sexual assault,” the GAO finds. And across different bases, medical personnel were being given conflicting instructions about how to report the assaults from different levels of command. These contradictory policies “created confusion for health care providers regarding the extent of their responsibility to maintain the confidentiality of victims who choose to make a restricted report of sexual assault.”

And there’s no single method for victims to access medical and mental health care across the military branches, according to the GAO. The Army requires each brigade “to deploy with a health care provider who is trained to conduct a forensic examination, whereas the Air Force deploys trained health care providers based on the medical needs at specific locations.” The Navy doesn’t require ships to have a sailor aboard who is trained to conduct forensic examinations, instead preferring a policy of transferring victims to ships that do — or onto shore. If a trained examiner is out of reach, the policy is for medical providers to “do their best … using the instructions provided with examination kits.”

Meanwhile, the military’s medical first responders are “still unsure of the health care services available to sexual assault victims at their respective locations.” According to the report, there’s no consistent instructions on where sexual assault survivors should go for examination, even though evidence in such cases is perishable. “Refresher training” for sexual assault cases, which the Pentagon requires military first responders to undergo every year, is also below standards, with thousands of personnel missing annual courses.

The report comes a week after the House Armed Services Committee brought in Gen. Mark Welsh III, the Air Force’s top general, for a grilling about the Lackland Air Force Base sexual abuse scandal. The sprawling base in San Antonio, Texas, where the Air Force sends all its recruits for basic training, has been the focus of an investigation into sexual abuse of at least 59 recruits and airmen by their instructors. Thirty-two instructors have been disciplined — including prison terms — for charges ranging from aggravated sexual assault to rape. There’s also the case of Army Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sinclair, accused of “forcibly sodomizing” a woman Army captain and threatening her military career “if she ended their sexual relationship,” as stated by military documents acquired by Danger Room in December. On Jan. 22, Sinclair deferred entering a plea at his court-martial.

There’s hope things could be different. On Thursday, Dempsey argued to reporters that sexual abuse in the military is partly owed to how the military treats women: as less than equal. “When you have one part of the population that’s designated as warriors, and another part of the population that’s designated as something else, I think that disparity begins to establish a psychology that, in some cases, led to that environment,” Dempsey said while announcing plans to integrate women in combat roles and units.

Dempsey never said that equality by itself would be a solution, for the simple reason that it’s true. For a start, it means recognizing that talk is talk. It’s quite another thing to step up and do something about it.

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Ke$ha bringing her “crazy beautiful life” to MTV series

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Singer Ke$ ha is coming to cable television with a new reality series that promises to document the “drama, madness and euphoria” of her professional and personal life, MTV said on Tuesday.

“Ke$ ha: My Crazy Beautiful Life,” will premiere on MTV in April, the network said.

“You might have heard my voice on the radio, seen me onstage or in a music video, but that’s only a part of the story,” the 25-year-old singer, known for hits including “Tik Tok” and “We R Who We R,” said in a statement.

“With this documentary series I’m revealing a more complete picture of what my life is really like. It’s not all glamorous but it’s all real,” she added.

MTV said the “no-limits” series would depict the music star “as she navigates the drama, madness and euphoria of her professional and personal life while recording a new album and traveling the globe.”

The show was shot over two years by the singer’s brother Lagan Sebert, working with minimal crew, providing what MTV said was an unfiltered, “real and raw” look at her life.

Lagan, a journalist, said that as he watched his sister’s ascent, “I soon realized that the most amazing story was happening in my own family and it became my mission document it … I set off on a two year long journey to tell my sister’s story.”

Ke$ ha has sold 3 million albums and 30 million singles worldwide and has won MTV Europe‘s best new act award. Her most recent album was 2012′s “Warrior.”

(Reporting by Chris Michaud; Editing by Jill Serjeant and Cynthia Osterman)

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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The New Old Age Blog: For Some Caregivers, the Trauma Lingers

Recently, I spoke at length to a physician who seems to have suffered a form of post-traumatic stress after her mother’s final illness.

There is little research on this topic, which suggests that it is overlooked or discounted. But several experts acknowledge that psychological trauma of this sort does exist.

Barry Jacobs, a clinical psychologist and author of “The Emotional Survival Guide for Caregivers” (The Guilford Press, 2006), often sees caregivers who struggle with intrusive thoughts and memories months and even years after a loved one has died.

“Many people find themselves unable to stop thinking about the suffering they witnessed, which is so powerfully seared into their brains that they cannot push it away,” Dr. Jacobs said.

Flashbacks are a symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder, along with feelings of numbness, anxiety, guilt, dread, depression, irritability, apathy, tension and more. Though one symptom or several do not prove that such a condition exists — that’s up to an expert to determine — these issues are a “very common problem for caregivers,” Dr. Jacobs said.

Dolores Gallagher-Thompson, a professor of psychiatry at the Stanford University School of Medicine who treats many caregivers, said there was little evidence that caregiving on its own caused post-traumatic stress. But if someone is vulnerable for another reason — perhaps a tragedy experienced earlier in life — this kind of response might be activated.

“When something happens that the individual perceives and reacts to as a tremendous stressor, that can intensify and bring back to the forefront of consciousness memories that were traumatic,” Dr. Gallagher-Thompson said. “It’s more an exacerbation of an already existing vulnerability.”

Dr. Judy Stone, the physician who was willing to share her mother’s end-of-life experience and her powerful reaction to it, fits that definition in spades.

Both of Dr. Stone’s Hungarian parents were Holocaust survivors: her mother, Magdus, called Maggie by family and friends, had been sent to Auschwitz; her father, Miki, to Dachau. The two married before World War II, after Maggie left her small village, moved to the city and became a corset maker in Miki’s shop.

Death cast a long shadow over the family. During the war, Maggie’s first baby died of exposure while she was confined for a time to the Debrecen ghetto. After the war, the family moved to the United States, where they worked to recover a sense of normalcy and Miki worked as a maker of orthopedic appliances. Then he died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 50.

“None of us recovered from that,” said Dr. Stone, who traces her interest in medicine and her lifelong interest in fighting for social justice to her parents and trips she made with her father to visit his clients.

Decades passed, as Dr. Stone operated an infectious disease practice in Cumberland, Md., and raised her own family.

In her old age, Maggie, who her daughter describes as “tough, stubborn, strong,” developed macular degeneration, bad arthritis and emphysema — a result of a smoking habit she started just after the war and never gave up. Still, she lived alone, accepting no help until she reached the age of 92.

Then, in late 2007, respiratory failure set in, causing the old woman to be admitted to the hospital, then rehabilitation, then assisted living, then another hospital. Maggie had made her preferences absolutely clear to her daughter, who had medical power of attorney: doctors were to pursue every intervention needed to keep her alive.

Yet one doctor sent her from a rehabilitation center to the hospital during respiratory crisis with instructions that she was not to be resuscitated — despite her express wishes. Fortunately, the hospital called Dr. Stone and the order was reversed.

“You have to be ever vigilant,” Dr. Stone said when asked what advice she would give to families. “You can’t assume that anything, be it a D.N.R. or allergies or medication orders, have been communicated correctly.”

Other mistakes were made in various settings: There were times that Dr. Stone’s mother had not received necessary oxygen, was without an inhaler she needed for respiratory distress, was denied water or ice chips to moisten her mouth, or received an antibiotic that can cause hallucinations in older people, despite Dr. Stone’s request that this not happen. “People didn’t listen,” she said. “The lack of communication was horrible.”

It was a daily fight to protect her mother and make sure she got what she needed, and “frankly, if I hadn’t been a doctor, I think I would have been thrown out of there,” she said.

In the end, when it became clear that death was inevitable, Maggie finally agreed to be taken off a respirator. But rather than immediately arrange for palliative measures, doctors arranged for a brief trial to see if she could breathe on her own.

“They didn’t give her enough morphine to suppress her agony,” Dr. Stone recalled.

Five years have passed since her mother died, and “I still have nightmares about her being tortured,” the doctor said. “I’ve never been able to overcome the feeling that I failed her — I let her down. It wasn’t her dying that is so upsetting, it was how she died and the unnecessary suffering at the end.”

Dr. Stone had specialized in treating infectious diseases and often saw patients who were critically ill in intensive care. But after her mother died, “I just could not do it,” she said. “I couldn’t see people die. I couldn’t step foot in the I.C.U. for a long, long time.”

Today, she works part time seeing patients with infectious diseases on an as-needed basis in various places — a job she calls “rent a doc” — and blogs for Scientific American about medical ethics. “I tilt at windmills,” she said, describing her current occupations.

Most important to her is trying to change problems in the health system that failed her mother and failed her as well. But Dr. Stone has a sense of despair about that: it is too big an issue, too hard to tackle.

I’m grateful to her for sharing her story so that other caregivers who may have experienced overwhelming emotional reactions that feel like post-traumatic stress realize they are not alone.

It is important to note that both Dr. Jacobs and Dr. Gallagher-Thompson report successfully treating caregivers beset by overwhelming stress. It is hard work and it takes time, but they say recovery is possible. I’ll give a sense of treatment options they and others recommend in another post.

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