Ex-Ravens WR Evans still feels part of team

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. (AP) — While Lee Evans awaits another chance in the NFL, he'll be rooting for the Baltimore Ravens in Sunday's AFC championship rematch with New England.

The wide receiver who couldn't hold onto a pass in the end zone a year ago — which likely would have sent the Ravens into the Super Bowl — has no regrets. Except, maybe, that he's not part of the Ravens this time around.

Evans says in an email that he "wishes he made the touchdown catch, but is thankful for the overall journey. You play the game to win and celebrate the joy with your teammates."

With 27 seconds to go, Joe Flacco connected with Evans in the deep right corner of the end zone, but defensive back Sterling Moore knocked the ball to the ground.

Soon after, Billy Cundiff missed a 32-yard field goal that would have forced overtime.

Evans says he has not gotten depressed over the play — Moore did make a strong strip after Evans got two hands on the ball.

"Give him credit for the play he made," Evans said.

Unfortunately for Evans, he's remembered as much for that incompletion as he is for two 1,000-yard receiving seasons in seven years with the Bills, and 43 touchdown catches.

"My goal is to play in the NFL again," said Evans, who was cut in the preseason last summer by Jacksonville, a team not exactly overloaded with receivers. "And if I am afforded that opportunity, I will be fully prepared and absolutely capable of competing at the highest level."

Cundiff hooked up with Washington and then San Francisco this season, but was cut by the 49ers on Friday without kicking for them as they stuck with veteran David Akers, who had been struggling.

Evans said he will be in front of his TV on Sunday watching the title games. He likes what he's seen from Baltimore (12-6) and knows the Ravens' recent postseason history; they've won a playoff game in each of the last five seasons and will be in their third AFC championship match in those five years.

But he also knows how tough the Patriots (13-4) are at home, particularly in January.

"It is a chess match between a defense that goes hard after the quarterback and gets after you on every play," Evans said, "and an offense that seeks to exploit their match-ups while always trying to capitalize on a defense's mistakes."

Evans' only season with the Ravens was marred by injury and he made only four receptions. He did help mentor Torrey Smith, Baltimore's top draft pick in 2011 who came into the league with the same kind of speed and game-breaking ability that made Evans the 13th overall pick in the 2004 draft out of Wisconsin.

He's seen Smith develop into a dangerous weapon for Flacco, and veteran Anquan Boldin has been superb in the playoffs. Kick returner Jacoby Jones got free on the 70-yard TD pass in the final minute of regulation that tied Denver in last weekend's divisional-round win.

"I saw growth in him this year as both a man and a player," Evans said of Smith. "He is a great guy who gets the most out of his abilities. His play really highlighted the improvements he made toward being a more fluid route runner and a sure-handed pass catcher."

Evans is particularly impressed by Flacco, the only quarterback to win a playoff game in his first five pro seasons.

"Joe's record speaks for itself," Evans said. "He does not get the credit he deserves for how important he is to making the Ravens' offense go."

A part of Evans will share in the Ravens' excitement if they win Sunday "after fully understanding what it feels like to be on the losing side."

"Life brings you highs and lows," he said, "and you have to keep that in perspective."

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Online: http://pro32.ap.org/poll and http://twitter.com/AP_NFL

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Personal Health: That Loving Feeling Takes a Lot of Work

When people fall in love and decide to marry, the expectation is nearly always that love and marriage and the happiness they bring will last; as the vows say, till death do us part. Only the most cynical among us would think, walking down the aisle, that if things don’t work out, “We can always split.”

But the divorce rate in the United States is half the marriage rate, and that does not bode well for this cherished institution.

While some divorces are clearly justified by physical or emotional abuse, intolerable infidelity, addictive behavior or irreconcilable incompatibility, experts say many severed marriages seem to have just withered and died from a lack of effort to keep the embers of love alive.

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Jane Brody speaks about love and marriage.

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I say “embers” because the flame of love — the feelings that prompt people to forget all their troubles and fly down the street with wings on their feet — does not last very long, and cannot if lovers are ever to get anything done. The passion ignited by a new love inevitably cools and must mature into the caring, compassion and companionship that can sustain a long-lasting relationship.

Studies by Richard E. Lucas and colleagues at Michigan State University have shown that the happiness boost that occurs with marriage lasts only about two years, after which people revert to their former levels of happiness — or unhappiness.

Infatuation and passion have even shorter life spans, and must evolve into “companionate love, composed more of deep affection, connection and liking,” according to Sonja Lyubomirsky, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Riverside.

In her new book, “The Myths of Happiness,” Dr. Lyubomirsky describes a slew of research-tested actions and words that can do wonders to keep love alive.

She points out that the natural human tendency to become “habituated” to positive circumstances — to get so used to things that make us feel good that they no longer do — can be the death knell of marital happiness. Psychologists call it “hedonic adaptation”: things that thrill us tend to be short-lived.

So Dr. Lyubomirsky’s first suggestion is to adopt measures to avert, or at least slow down, the habituation that can lead to boredom and marital dissatisfaction. While her methods may seem obvious, many married couples forget to put them into practice.

Building Companionship

Steps to slow, prevent or counteract hedonic adaptation and rescue a so-so marriage should be taken long before the union is in trouble, Dr. Lyubomirsky urges. Her recommended strategies include making time to be together and talk, truly listening to each other, and expressing admiration and affection.

Dr. Lyubomirsky emphasizes “the importance of appreciation”: count your blessings and resist taking a spouse for granted. Routinely remind yourself and your partner of what you appreciate about the person and the marriage.

Also important is variety, which is innately stimulating and rewarding and “critical if we want to stave off adaptation,” the psychologist writes. Mix things up, be spontaneous, change how you do things with your partner to keep your relationship “fresh, meaningful and positive.”

Novelty is a powerful aphrodisiac that can also enhance the pleasures of marital sex. But Dr. Lyubomirsky admits that “science has uncovered precious little about how to sustain passionate love.” She likens its decline to growing up or growing old, “simply part of being human.”

Variety goes hand in hand with another tip: surprise. With time, partners tend to get to know each other all too well, and they can fall into routines that become stultifying. Shake it up. Try new activities, new places, new friends. Learn new skills together.

Although I’ve been a “water bug” my whole life, my husband could swim only as far as he could hold his breath. We were able to enjoy the water together when we both learned to kayak.

“A pat on the back, a squeeze of the hand, a hug, an arm around the shoulder — the science of touch suggests that it can save a so-so marriage,” Dr. Lyubomirsky writes. “Introducing more (nonsexual) touching and affection on a daily basis will go a long way in rekindling the warmth and tenderness.”

She suggests “increasing the amount of physical contact in your relationship by a set amount each week” within the comfort level of the spouses’ personalities, backgrounds and openness to nonsexual touch.

Positive Energy

A long-married friend recently told me that her husband said he missed being touched and hugged. And she wondered what the two of them would talk about when they became empty-nesters. Now is the time, dear friend, to work on a more mutually rewarding relationship if you want your marriage to last.

Support your partner’s values, goals and dreams, and greet his or her good news with interest and delight. My husband’s passion lay in writing for the musical theater. When his day job moved to a different city, I suggested that rather than looking for a new one, he pursue his dream. It never became monetarily rewarding, but his vocation fulfilled him and thrilled me. He left a legacy of marvelous lyrics for more than a dozen shows.

Even a marriage that has been marred by negative, angry or hurtful remarks can often be rescued by filling the home with words and actions that elicit positive emotions, psychology research has shown.

According to studies by Barbara L. Fredrickson, a social psychologist and professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a flourishing relationship needs three times as many positive emotions as negative ones. In her forthcoming book, “Love 2.0,” Dr. Fredrickson says that cultivating positive energy everyday “motivates us to reach out for a hug more often or share and inspiring or silly idea or image.”

Dr. Lyubomirsky reports that happily married couples average five positive verbal and emotional expressions toward one another for every negative expression, but “very unhappy couples display ratios of less than one to one.”

To help get your relationship on a happier track, the psychologist suggests keeping a diary of positive and negative events that occur between you and your partner, and striving to increase the ratio of positive to negative.

She suggests asking yourself each morning, “What can I do for five minutes today to make my partner’s life better?” The simplest acts, like sharing an amusing event, smiling, or being playful, can enhance marital happiness.

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This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 18, 2013

The Personal Health column on Tuesday, about making marriages last, misspelled the given name of a professor of psychology at the University of California, Riverside, who studies happiness. She is Sonja Lyubomirsky, not Sonya.

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Corner Office: Kon Leong of ZL Technologies, on Encouraging Creativity

This interview with Kon Leong, co-founder, president and chief executive of ZL Technologies, an e-mail and file archiving company, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant.

Q. Tell me about some important leadership lessons you’ve learned.

A. One of my early jobs was selling computer hardware. What I learned about selling was probably more valuable than my M.B.A. I had seen selling as a process just about logic. Then I realized that has nothing to do with it.

Q. What was the insight?

A. You have to present your story in their context, not yours. They don’t really care if you’re standing on top of a robot and quoting equations. If they’re in the deep part of the forest, you’ve got to talk the language of the deep forest. Salesmanship is more like a language unto itself. There is no right or wrong. It’s what you make of it, and what’s black can be gray, and what’s gray can be white. It depends on your framework. The challenge is to share the same framework so that you’re seeing the same page in the same way.

Q. How do you hire? If you were interviewing me for a job, what would you ask me?

A. I would want to know your goals for the job. Is it money? Learning? Fulfillment? What is it? I would try to figure out if our environment suits your goals. I would not try to sell you to get you to take the job. I also will ask, “How curious are you?”

Q. I imagine that most people simply say, “Very.”

A. But then I’d ask, “Outside the headlines, what were some of the most interesting things you’ve noted in the last couple of weeks, and tell me why, and what did you do about it?” That would reflect what you think is interesting, and that tells me a fair bit. If you can cite many disparate topics, that’s a step in the right direction. The point is, we’re trying to find the right fit. In a fast-changing environment, you need to learn more and more and more. There’s so much to learn, and you can’t be taught all the permutations and combinations of the answers, so you have to learn on your own. And to learn on your own, you need curiosity.

Q. What other questions?

A. I’ll ask: How willingly do you accept stuff, and how willing are you to question things? How creative are you in finding your own answers? For example, everyone knows in school that you cannot divide by zero. Why? I try to find if they’ve actually questioned things like that at any time. The point is, we’re usually handicapped by our own borders, and we will not think beyond them. I think there’s one rule of thumb in creativity: when you’re brainstorming, you have to suspend disbelief. That’s a key ingredient. There’s time enough to challenge it and poke holes, but not at the time of generation.

I’ll also change the subject to one where they have some expertise. So I’ll ask what their passions are, and then I’ll ask questions. If it’s ornithology, I’ll start talking about the evolution of birds and ask questions like, “How do you think reptiles got feathers?”

Q. What else do you look for when hiring?

A. Brains and drive. Those are the basics. Without them, it’s probably going to be a long shot. After we work through that, then it’s curiosity and attitude.

Q. How do you get at the question of attitude?

A. Are you willing to learn from your mistakes? Do you do that automatically? Are you willing to set the bar higher? Are you able to deal with failure? Can you bounce back from it?

Q. What’s your take on the standard interview question about strengths and weaknesses?

A. I never really ask about weaknesses, because it’s meaningless. I ask more about strengths, but I ask it from a different angle. I’m more interested in the answers from a more personal perspective as opposed to a professional environment. I’ll typically ask: How would you describe yourself in three words outside the work environment? And then: What do you consider your natural strength? What do you do that comes without any effort, that your peers struggle with and can’t even match? What is natural for you? Other skills emanate from that natural core. Someone once answered that question by saying, “People tend to just come and talk to me.” That really intrigued me.

Q. What’s your natural strength?

A. I can zoom in, zoom out.

Q. What’s it like to work for you day to day?

A. Certain aspects of my management style are extremely frustrating. There are many, many questions posed to me, many decisions asked of me. I try not to make them. I respond with more questions, because I want them to find the answer. It can be very frustrating to my employees, but I’m trying to get others to scale up and learn. They understand and accept my approach, but many still feel frustrated because they just want the answer.

Q. What is your advice for students who are graduating from college?

A. I tell all of them two things, and that goes for both undergrads and M.B.A.’s. First, experiment. If you’re 22 years old as an undergrad or if you’re 27 just out of your M.B.A., in both cases you’ve got a clean slate. You can go in any direction. So experiment. That can also mean taking a lower salary in order to experiment.

This is all in hindsight, of course, because I didn’t do it. I went to Wall Street after getting my M.B.A. If you experiment in different jobs and functions in those two or three years out of school, you will have a much better shot at finding your sweet spot. And the sweet spot is the intersection between what you’re really good at and what you love to do. If you can find that intersection, you are set. A lot of people would kill for that because, at 65, they’re retiring and never found it.

So don’t put so much emphasis on initial compensation. Don’t listen to all the harping from the family. Try to find your sweet spot and, once you find it, invest in that. You don’t want to get degrees just to do work you don’t really like. If you’re miserable, even if you make a lot of money, that’s still 40 years of your life.

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British Leader, David Cameron, Sees Wider Threat in Algeria Attack

Oli Scarff/Getty Images

Prime Minister David Cameron en route to Parliament to deliver a statement on the Algeria hostage crisis.

LONDON — With more than 60 hostages still missing and many feared dead, Prime Minister David Cameron told Parliament on Friday that the Qaeda-linked attack on a remote Algerian gas installation demonstrated the need for Britain and its western allies, including the United States, to direct more of their diplomatic, military and intelligence resources to the intensifying threat emanating from “the ungoverned space” of the North African desert, treating it with as much concern as the terrorist challenge in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Mr. Cameron offered little new information about the showdown at the In Amenas plant, 1,000 miles from Algiers in the oil-and-gas-rich emptiness of the Sahara, saying the information reaching London about what he described as a “continuing situation” remained sketchy. He added that Britain had learned overnight that its fears for British citizens caught up in the hostage-taking and the subsequent shootout now focused on “significantly” fewer than the 30 people feared on Thursday. As part of the effort to learn more, he said, a special plane had been assigned to carry Britain’s ambassador in Algiers and other British diplomats to the area of the gas plant on Friday.

But in an hourlong session in the House of Commons, Mr. Cameron pointed to the somber implications of underestimating recent events in Mali and Algeria as a regional problem for North Africa rather than an increasingly fertile arena for Islamic militants and their hostility to the West. He said he had discussed his concerns in a telephone conversation with President Obama on Thursday night.

The British leader said the growth of Islamic terrorist networks in the countries of the Sahel, the broad area of North Africa that runs more than 3,000 miles from Mauritania in the west to Sudan and Somalia in the east, should be a renewed focus of western counterterrorist concerns and resources. At one point, he cited the need for military assistance to the affected countries to be part of NATO military planning, though he again emphatically ruled out any British combat role in support of France’s campaign against militants in Mali.

Pointing to the leading role played in the Algerian attack by Mokhtar Belmohtar, a terrorist ringleader and smuggler with links to North Africa’s main Islamic terrorist group, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Mr. Cameron warned that the Algerian attack was symptomatic of a far broader threat.

“What we know is that the terrorist threat in the Sahel comes from Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, which aspires to establish Islamic law across the Sahel and northern Africa, and to attack Western interests in the region and frankly, wherever it can,” Mr. Cameron said. “Just as we have reduced the scale of the Al Qaeda threat in other parts of the world, including in Pakistan and Afghanistan, so it has grown in other parts of the world. We need to be equally concerned about that, and equally focused on it.”

To some British commentators, Mr. Cameron’s remarks sounded as though they may have been crafted as part of a British effort to prompt a deeper involvement in North African security matters by the United States. In last year’s Libyan conflict, the United States stepped back from the lead role it has traditionally taken in NATO military operations and left Britain, France and Italy to conduct the bulk of the bombing in support of the Libyan rebels’ successful campaign to topple Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.

Since then, high-ranking British officials have voiced concerns that the Obama administration was stepping back from European political and security issues and turning its attentions increasingly to the nations of the Pacific.

With the approach of Mr. Obama’s second inauguration on Sunday, The Spectator, a London-based weekly that is influential in Mr. Cameron’s Conservative Party, devoted its cover this week to an article headlined “The Pacific President,” and an illustration showing Mr. Obama in a brightly colored Hawaiian shirt and shorts surfing off a palm-lined beach. “As Barack Obama is sworn in again as president, his allies in the West will ask themselves the same nervous question they posed four years ago: how much does he care about us,” the accompanying article asked.

White House officials said on Thursday that Mr. Obama had used his telephone conversation with Mr. Cameron to underscore American concerns that Britain remain a robust force within the 27-nation European Union, a hot-button issue for Mr. Cameron. The prime minister had planned — then canceled, amid the Algerian crisis — a landmark speech in Amsterdam on Friday in which he was to have outlined his plan to negotiate a much sparer role for Britain in the European bloc.

In his remarks to lawmakers on Friday, Mr. Cameron offered what could have been construed as an oblique riposte to Mr. Obama, or at least to officials in the Obama administration who have urged that Europe take greater responsibility for confronting terrorist and other security threats in its own region.  He may also have been addressing domestic critics in Britain, or other NATO countries that have been less active than Britain in counterterrorism efforts aimed at confronting the spread of Islamic militant groups.

“There is a great need for not just Britain but other countries to give a priority to understanding better, and working better, with the countries in this region,” he said. “Those who believe that there is a terrorist, extremist Al Qaeda problem in parts of North Africa, but that it is a problem for those places and we can somehow back off and ignore it, are profoundly wrong. That is a problem for those places, and for us.”

Mr. Cameron noted that Britain had been “the first country in the world” to offer France military assistance in its campaign in Mali, deploying one of the largest military transport aircraft it has, an American-made C-17 Globemaster, to ferry French troops and military equipment to Bamako, the Malian capital. He said it was time for Britain and France to move beyond their spheres of influence in Africa dating back to the colonial era, “and recognize that is in our interest to boost the capacity of all African states” confronted by the terrorist threat.

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With an air kiss or empty hug, Te’oing is Twitter craze

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Manti Te’o, the Notre Dame linebacker entangled in a girlfriend hoax that gives a whole new meaning to the term “air kiss,” is inspiring a new fad racing through social media: Te’oing.

An avalanche of pictures of people hugging empty chairs or puckering up to an otherwise empty room were posted to Twitter with the hashtag #Te’oing days after the college football star’s story about his girlfriend’s cancer death was exposed as a fraud. Not only did she never have leukemia, she never existed.

Notre Dame officials said Te’o told them he had been duped into believing he had an online relationship with the fictitious woman.

“Te’oing – Mile High Club edition” read one tweet with a photo of a man hugging the air in an airplane bathroom, an apparent reference to the whispered practice of having sex in mid-flight.

Clint Eastwood was hailed in several tweets as a “Te’oing” pioneer for the actor’s interlude with an empty chair at the 2012 Republican Convention. Other tweets showed Ronald McDonald Te’oing on his cozy bench and President Barack Obama spending quality time Te’oing with a vacant seat.

“Just some afternoon bubbly with my baby” said one Te’oing tweet with a photo of a man clinking his champagne flute against another that appeared to be suspended in mid-air.

The snarky social media frenzy recalled another similar trend called the “Tebowing,” named for New York Jets quarterback Tim Tebow, who frequently kneeled for on-field prayers and inspired copy-cat poses by people whose pictures flooded social media last year.

In its own riff on emptiness and romance, a Kentucky minor league baseball team, the Florence Freedom, has announced it will give away Manti Te’o Girlfriend Bobblehead dolls – actually empty boxes – to the first 1,000 fans at the May 23 game.

One section of the Florence, Kentucky, stadium has been reserved “for fans to sit with their imaginary friends, girlfriends/boyfriends or spouses” who may be caught on the “pretend kiss cam” and are invited to compete in an air guitar contest or an imaginary food fight.

(Writing by Barbara Goldberg; Editing by Paul Thomasch and Vicki Allen)

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Anti-doping officials say Armstrong must say more

For anti-doping officials, Lance Armstrong's admission of cheating was only a start. Now they want him to give details — lots of them — to clean up his sport.

Armstrong's much-awaited confession to Oprah Winfrey made for riveting television, but if the disgraced cyclist wants to take things further, it will involve several long days in meetings with anti-doping officials who have very specific questions: Who ran the doping programs, how were they run and who looked the other way.

"He didn't name names," World Anti-Doping Agency President John Fahey told The Associated Press in Australia. "He didn't say who supplied him, what officials were involved."

In the 90-minute interview Thursday night with Winfrey — the first of two parts broadcast on her OWN network — Armstrong said he started doping in the mid-1990s, using the blood booster EPO, testosterone, cortisone and human growth hormone, as well as engaging in outlawed blood doping and transfusions. The doping regimen, he said, helped him in all seven of his Tour de France wins.

His openness about his own transgressions, however, did not extend to allegations about other people. "I don't want to accuse anybody," he said.

But he might have to name names if he wants to gain anything from his confession, at least from anti-doping authorities.

Armstrong has been stripped of all his Tour de France titles and banned for life. A reduction of the ban, perhaps to eight years, could allow him to compete in triathlons in 2020, when he's 49.

Almost to a person, those in cycling and anti-doping circles believe it will take nothing short of Armstrong turning over everything he knows to stand any chance of cutting a deal to reduce his ban.

"We're left wanting more. We have to know more about the system," Tour de France race director Christian Prudhomme told the AP. "He couldn't have done it alone. We have to know who in his entourage helped him to do this."

U.S. Anti-Doping Agency chief Travis Tygart, who will have the biggest say about whether Armstrong can return to competition, also called his confession a small step in the right direction.

"But if he is sincere in his desire to correct his past mistakes, he will testify under oath about the full extent of his doping activities," he said.

Pierre Bordry, the head of the French Anti-Doping Agency from 2005-10, said there was nothing to guarantee that Armstrong isn't still lying and protecting others.

"He's going in the right direction, but with really small steps," Bordry said. "He needs to bring his testimony about the environment and the people who helped him. He should do it before an independent commission or before USADA and that would no doubt help the future of cycling."

It's doubtful Armstrong could get the same kind of leniency today as he might have had he chosen to cooperate with USADA during its investigation. But in an attempt to rid cycling of the doping taint it has carried for decades, USADA, WADA and the sport's governing body aren't satisfied with simply stopping at its biggest star. They still seek information about doctors, team managers and high-ranking executives.

Tyler Hamilton, whose testimony helped lead to Armstrong's downfall, says if Armstrong is willing to provide information to clean up the sport, a reduction in the sanctions would be appropriate, even if it might be hard to stomach after watching USADA's years of relentless pursuit of the seven-time Tour de France winner.

"The public should accept that," Hamilton said. "I'm all for getting people to come clean and tell the truth. I'm all for doctors, general managers and everyone else coming forward and telling the truth. I'm all for anyone who crossed the line coming forward and telling the truth. No. 1, they'll feel better personally. The truth will set you free."

The International Cycling Union (UCI) has been accused of protecting Armstrong and covering up positive tests, something Armstrong denied to Winfrey.

"I am pleased that after years of accusations being made against me, the conspiracy theories have been shown to be nothing more than that," said Hein Verbruggen, the president of the UCI from 1991-2005. "I have no doubt that the peddlers of such accusations and conspiracies will be disappointed by this outcome."

But Verbruggen was among the few who felt some closure after the first part of Armstrong's interview with Winfrey. The second was set for Friday night.

Most of the comments either urged him to disclose more, or felt it was too little, too late.

"There's always a portion of lies in what he says, in my opinion," retired cyclist and longtime Armstrong critic Christophe Bassons said. "He stayed the way I thought he would: cold, hard. He didn't let any sentiment show, even when he spoke of regrets. Well, that's Lance Armstrong. He's not totally honest even in his so-called confession. I think he admits some of it to avoid saying the rest."

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AP Sports Writers Jerome Pugmire in Paris, Dennis Passa, John Pye and Neil Frankland in Melbourne; Stephen Wilson in London; Steve McMorran in Wellington, New Zealand; Nesha Starcevic in Frankfurt, Germany; and Andrew Dampf in Cortina, Italy, contributed to this report.

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Flu Season ‘Worse Than Average,’ Officials Say

This year’s flu season is shaping up to be “worse than average and particularly bad for the elderly,” Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the nation’s top federal disease-control official, said Friday.

But the season appears to have peaked, added Dr. Frieden, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with new cases declining over most of the nation except for the far West.

Spot shortages of flu vaccine and flu-fighting medicine are occurring, but that reflects uneven distribution, not a supply crisis, federal officials said. They urged people seeking flu shots to consult flu.gov and doctors to check preventinfluenza.org for suppliers.

Vaccine-makers will ultimately be able to deliver 145 million doses, 10 million more than projected earlier, the officials said. The Food and Drug Administration has allowed the maker of Tamiflu to release 2 million doses it had in storage.

The older Tamiflu is perfectly good, said Dr. Margaret A. Hamburg, the commissioner of the F.D.A., who joined Dr. Frieden on a telephone news conference. “It’s not outdated, it just has older labeling,” she said. “Repackaging it would take weeks,” she added, so her agency told the company not to bother.

Weekly recorded deaths from flu and pneumonia are still rising, and are well above the “epidemic” curve for the first time. But how severe a season ultimately proves depends on how long high weekly death rates persists. Flu deaths often aren’t recorded until March or April, well after new infections taper off.

Dr. Frieden said the season appeared to resemble the “moderately severe” season of 2003-2004, which also had an early start and was dominated by an H3N2 strain. In such seasons, 90 percent of all deaths occur among those over 65. Flu hospitalization rates are “quite high” now, Dr. Frieden said, and most of those hospitalized are elderly.

Last year’s flu season was unusually mild. At the end of the season last year, 34 children had died.

So far this year, the C.D.C.'s count of pediatric flu deaths, which includes premature infants and teenagers up to age 17 — has risen to 29, although this is acknowledged to be an undercount as it is only of lab-confirmed influenza cases reported to the agency.

Henry L. Niman, a flu-watcher who follows state death registries and news reports, counts about 40 pediatric deaths so far and predicted that the total would ultimately be close to the 153 of the 2003-04 season, but much less than in the 2009-2010 “swine flu” pandemic, when 282 children died. That flu was a strain never seen before and many more children caught it. The elderly had surprising resistance to getting it, presumably because similar flus that circulated 40 or more years ago had given them some immunity. But among those elderly who did catch it, the death rates were high.

Dr. Frieden suggested that the elderly avoid contact with sick children. “Having a grandparent baby-sit a sick child may not be a good idea,” he said.

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Your Money: Finding Investment Advice for More Modest Retirement Accounts

If you’re perfectly capable of running your own retirement savings, selecting the right mix of low-cost investments, rebalancing at the right time and not buying and selling out of fear or greed, then good for you.

But the majority of people — maybe the vast majority — are not like that. They may be smart enough to do the right thing, in theory, but they forget or slip up or are taken in by well-meaning friends bearing stock tips or annuity-peddling scoundrels who make nice to them over free steak dinners.

For people with more than $500,000 or so to invest, finding first-class help is hard but not impossible. If you have more than $1 million, you’ll have your choice of many of the best financial advisers in town. But until recently, it was tough for people with a few hundred thousand dollars or less to find reasonably priced assistance, especially if they were insistent on putting money in the kind of low-cost investments that would not pay a commission or other fee to the person helping them.

On Friday, the latest entrant in an increasingly crowded field of services trying to serve this customer is introducing its offering, which is called Rebalance IRA. As the name suggests, it exists only to help you with your Individual Retirement Account, perhaps one that you’ll fill with money that’s been sitting around in several 401(k) or similar accounts at previous employers.

Rebalance IRA representatives will talk with you about your goals, invest your money in a low-cost collection of index fundlike exchange-traded funds that don’t try to make big bets on individual stocks, and rebalance the investments when necessary. In exchange, you agree to hand over one half of 1 percent of your assets each year, with a minimum annual fee of $500.

The company’s single-minded focus on retirement savings is somewhat narrow, but it makes sense given how much money is at stake and how badly many people mess things up when they do it on their own.

There is more money in I.R.A.’s than in any other type of retirement vehicle, according to estimates from the Investment Company Institute. I.R.A. balances totaled $5.3 trillion at the end of the third quarter of 2012. That’s more than the $5 trillion in 401(k), 403(b) and other similar plans; the $4.8 trillion in government retirement plans; and the $2.6 trillion in traditional pensions.

According to the Department of Labor, the professionals who run pension plans earned an 8.3 percent annual return from 1991 to 2010. People fending for themselves in 401(k) and similar plans earned 7.2 percent. Nationwide I.R.A. performance figures are more scarce, though one 2006 study by the Center for Retirement Research put the figure for 1998 to 2003 at 3.8 percent annually, roughly 2 to 3 percentage points worse than pension fund managers and 401(k) investors did during that same period.

These numbers are a bit squishy, given that pensions often make bets in markets that 401(k) investors can’t access and the high fees that many 401(k) participants pay that pension managers don’t. Still, there are about a thousand reasons plenty of do-it-yourselfers (who, after all, did not volunteer to manage their retirement money) would be likely to get worse returns than, say, pension managers.

To start with, large numbers of people make extreme bets. At Vanguard, 10 percent of retirement plan participants invested only in stocks in 2011, while 8 percent had no stocks at all. At least this is better than 2004, when 35 percent of its customers were that far out of balance. Then, there are the emotional challenges. To stick with the mix of investments you’ve selected, you need to sell things that have done well and buy investments that have lagged recently. That’s hard to do.

Then there’s the grab bag of other feelings. The bad experience with a broker you may have had in the past. The spouse who may scold you for doing the wrong thing. The fear that may have caused you to bail out in early 2009 or the greed that has you pouring money into stocks today, now that they’re looking up again. This can be intensely hazardous to your long-term financial health.

All of this should be self-evident, but because we’re playing on the field of emotions, it isn’t. Still, it wasn’t immediately obvious to Mitch Tuchman, the man behind Rebalance IRA, who started a service for do-it-yourself index investors called MarketRiders in 2008.

A former software entrepreneur, Mr. Tuchman had a midlife conversion to passive investing and not trying to beat the market, and he wanted to help others invest in the same way. “We thought we could build such great software that we could turn everyone into a do-it-yourselfer,” he said. “And people said they didn’t have time or they didn’t care to do it themselves.”

MarketRiders charges subscribers $150 a year for instructions on how to adjust their portfolios and when, and it will continue to exist. But Mr. Tuchman, who had also started managing millions of dollars on the side for friends and family who simply could not be bothered to do it themselves, eventually realized that his sideline was where the real mass-market opportunity lay.

So why would you let this guy handle your money? It’s a perfectly reasonable question, and plenty of start-ups in the money management space don’t do a particularly good job of answering it.

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IHT Rendezvous: Jihadist Kingpin Suspected in Hostage Seizure

LONDON — Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the one-eyed smuggler-jihadist said to be behind the seizure of foreign hostages at a gas plant in Algeria, has been a notorious kingpin of the Sahara for more than a decade.

As a successful kidnapper, cigarette smuggler — he is nicknamed “Mr. Marlboro” — and go-between for Al Qaeda, Mr. Belmokhtar has been a wanted man in his native Algeria after returning from training with jihadists in Afghanistan in 1993.

He returned at the height of a bloody decade-long civil war between the Algerian government and Islamist insurgents, acting as a channel between Al Qaeda leaders and local jihadist groups.

Raising money through kidnappings and smuggling, he has been a main supplier of weapons and equipment to insurgent groups and “has become increasingly integrated into the fabric of the Sahara and Sahel,” according to a 2009 Jamestown Foundation study that was based in part on Mr. Belmokhtar’s own account.

His activities led to him being included in a United Nations blacklist of wanted Qaeda associates.

Security agencies in Algeria and beyond might know who “Mr. Marlboro” is. But what is his motive in the operation to seize Western hostages?

In the past, he has staged kidnappings for money, negotiating the freedom of his captives in exchange for millions of dollars in ransom.

This time, the group he leads has linked the operation to events in Mali, where the French military has intervened to prevent an advance by Islamist forces that control the north of the country.

Mr. Belmokhtar, 40, is thought to be based in Mali in the rebel-held town of Gao, which has been attacked by French warplanes. Some believe he is masterminding the hostage operation from there.

The hostage-takers have demanded an end to the intervention and a reversal of Algeria’s decision to allow the French military to fly over its territory on the way to Mali.

Mr. Belmokhtar might also be seeking to reassert his role as a central player in the factionalized Islamist politics of the region after a recent move by the local Qaeda affiliate to push him aside.

He was removed from a military leadership role in Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in October, according to French broadcaster RFI, after falling out with the movement’s leaders.

He then announced the creation of his own brigade as part of a rapprochement with Mujao, a jihadist group that has broken with Al Qaeda.

He is also thought to be close to leaders of Mali’s Tuareg tribesmen, possibly through one of his many marriages. The Tuareg’s seizure of northern Mali last year was rapidly taken over by jihadists.

It is as yet unclear whether the Algerian hostage-taking was a rapid response to the French intervention in Mali or whether it was preplanned for other motives.

Mr. Belmokhtar, condemned in his absence to life imprisonment by Algerian courts, was already scheduled to be tried in absentia by the Algiers criminal tribunal next Monday on charges that include supplying weapons for attacks on Algerian soil.

Planned targets were said to include pipelines and oil company installations in southern Mali.

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Amazon holiday results to show sales tax impact

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Acting as a tax collector may have hurt Amazon.com, Inc’s holiday sales analysts and industry executives said, but they expect to know more when the internet retailer reports its fourth-quarter results on January 29.

Best Buy Co., an archrival of Amazon in consumer electronics, saw holiday online sales increase in three states where Amazon started collecting sales tax ahead of the period.

“There was a little softness in states where Amazon is now collecting sales tax,” said R.J. Hottovy, an equity analyst at Morningstar. “That isn’t surprising to me. It levels the playing field for brick-and-mortar retailers.”

Critics of Amazon argued it had an unfair advantage because most retailers have had to collect state sales tax on online sales for years because they have stores and other physical operations in these locations.

But many states, hungry for extra tax revenue in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, introduced new laws requiring that Internet-only retailers also collect sales tax. Brick-and-mortar retailers hope the requirement will reduce Amazon’s price advantage and help them recoup lost sales.

CHANNELADVISOR DATA

Amazon, the world’s biggest Internet retailer, began collecting sales tax of 7.25 percent to 9.75 percent in California on Sept 15, about two weeks before the start of the fourth-quarter. Third-party sellers on Amazon.com saw a drop in sales during the quarter, compared to other states, according to an analysis by e-commerce firm ChannelAdvisor.

It also started collecting sales tax in Pennsylvania in September and in Texas in July.

Amazon’s fourth-quarter results should provide clues on whether consumers changed their shopping habits when faced with higher taxes on their purchases from the company’s website.

ChannelAdvisor, which helps merchants sell more online, analyzed its clients’ sales on Amazon.com in California, and compared them to other states before and after the sales tax kicked in.

Before Amazon began collecting the tax in California, ChannelAdvisor client sales were 5 percent to 10 percent above other states. The week before the September 15 start of the tax, sales spiked as high as 70 percent compared to other states.

“The surge before the tax went into effect was much larger than I thought it would be,” said Scot Wingo, chief executive of ChannelAdvisor. “Californians definitely bought a lot in the three or four days before the tax went into effect.”

After Amazon began collecting tax, its California sales leveled with other states. Then, in early November, they slipped as much as 10 percent below other states, ChannelAdvisor data showed.

During one of the busiest holiday periods, in late November and early December, sales dipped further in California vs other states. Toward the end of the holiday period, client sales in California recovered, the data showed.

“There was a sales impact of about 10 percent at the worst point of the dip,” Wingo said. EBay, another Amazon rival, is an investor in ChannelAdvisor. Wingo also owned Amazon shares, but sold them in the fourth quarter for personal tax-related reasons.

Amazon’s tax collection in California had the most impact on fourth-quarter sales of more expensive items priced at $ 200 to $ 250, Wingo said.

PRICES, PROFIT

Amazon probably lowered prices by 8 percent to 9 percent on items most affected by this, although it is tricky to separate such reductions from the usual holiday season promotions that were also happening, Wingo said.

The extra price competition may dent Amazon’s profitability in the fourth quarter, Morningstar’s Hottovy said.

Amazon is expected to make 52 cents a share in the fourth quarter, on revenue of $ 22.3 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. In late October, the company forecast operating results ranging from a profit of $ 310 million to a loss of $ 490 million.

Hottovy expects $ 22.4 billion in revenue and an operating loss of $ 210 million, or a $ 135 million loss after excluding stock-based compensation and other operating expenses.

BEST BUY

In California, Texas and Pennsylvania, Best Buy said it saw a 4 percent to 6 percent increase in online sales during the holiday versus the rest of its chain.

The retailer also saw an increase of 6 percent to 9 percent in online orders that are picked up in its stores in those three states compared with the rest of its chain.

Overall, Best Buy reported better-than-expected holiday sales last week, sending its shares up more than 10 percent.

“This makes Amazon equal to everyone else. They no longer have that sales tax advantage,” said Anne Zybowski, vice president of retail insights at Kantar Retail. “If this had happened to Amazon when they were just a bookseller years ago, they may not be as big as they are now.

Despite the tax changes, Amazon’s consumer electronics prices were still at least 5 percent below Best Buy’s during the holiday season, Zybowski said. But Best Buy may have benefited from even a small change in this area.

“Particularly in consumer electronics, any narrowing of Amazon’s price advantage at the margin is important because Best Buy brings service and other shopper benefits to the category,” she said.

Best Buy will take away people’s old TVs when they buy a new one and the company’s Geek Squad service will install devices in shoppers’ homes, services Amazon does not provide, she noted.

An Amazon spokesman declined to comment when asked if the company saw an impact on fourth-quarter sales from the collection of sales taxes in the three states.

In the past, Amazon executives have said there was little or no impact from such changes in other regions.

Several analysts have argued that shoppers use Amazon for its vast product selection and convenient, fast shipping and returns, and not just its low prices.

“While not great for Amazon, it’s just one of many consumer benefits its service offers,” said Ken Sena, an analyst at Evercore Partners. “And while there may be early effects from this change, I still see usage trends remaining in Amazon’s favor.”

(Editing by Leslie Gevirtz)

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