Major Banks Aid in Payday Loans Banned by States

Major banks have quickly become behind-the-scenes allies of Internet-based payday lenders that offer short-term loans with interest rates sometimes exceeding 500 percent.

With 15 states banning payday loans, a growing number of the lenders have set up online operations in more hospitable states or far-flung locales like Belize, Malta and the West Indies to more easily evade statewide caps on interest rates.

While the banks, which include giants like JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo, do not make the loans, they are a critical link for the lenders, enabling the lenders to withdraw payments automatically from borrowers’ bank accounts, even in states where the loans are banned entirely. In some cases, the banks allow lenders to tap checking accounts even after the customers have begged them to stop the withdrawals.

“Without the assistance of the banks in processing and sending electronic funds, these lenders simply couldn’t operate,” said Josh Zinner, co-director of the Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project, which works with community groups in New York.

The banking industry says it is simply serving customers who have authorized the lenders to withdraw money from their accounts. “The industry is not in a position to monitor customer accounts to see where their payments are going,” said Virginia O’Neill, senior counsel with the American Bankers Association.

But state and federal officials are taking aim at the banks’ role at a time when authorities are increasing their efforts to clamp down on payday lending and its practice of providing quick money to borrowers who need cash.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau are examining banks’ roles in the online loans, according to several people with direct knowledge of the matter. Benjamin M. Lawsky, who heads New York State’s Department of Financial Services, is investigating how banks enable the online lenders to skirt New York law and make loans to residents of the state, where interest rates are capped at 25 percent.

For the banks, it can be a lucrative partnership. At first blush, processing automatic withdrawals hardly seems like a source of profit. But many customers are already on shaky financial footing. The withdrawals often set off a cascade of fees from problems like overdrafts. Roughly 27 percent of payday loan borrowers say that the loans caused them to overdraw their accounts, according to a report released this month by the Pew Charitable Trusts. That fee income is coveted, given that financial regulations limiting fees on debit and credit cards have cost banks billions of dollars.

Some state and federal authorities say the banks’ role in enabling the lenders has frustrated government efforts to shield people from predatory loans — an issue that gained urgency after reckless mortgage lending helped precipitate the 2008 financial crisis.

Lawmakers, led by Senator Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon, introduced a bill in July aimed at reining in the lenders, in part, by forcing them to abide by the laws of the state where the borrower lives, rather than where the lender is. The legislation, pending in Congress, would also allow borrowers to cancel automatic withdrawals more easily. “Technology has taken a lot of these scams online, and it’s time to crack down,” Mr. Merkley said in a statement when the bill was introduced.

While the loans are simple to obtain — some online lenders promise approval in minutes with no credit check — they are tough to get rid of. Customers who want to repay their loan in full typically must contact the online lender at least three days before the next withdrawal. Otherwise, the lender automatically renews the loans at least monthly and withdraws only the interest owed. Under federal law, customers are allowed to stop authorized withdrawals from their account. Still, some borrowers say their banks do not heed requests to stop the loans.

Ivy Brodsky, 37, thought she had figured out a way to stop six payday lenders from taking money from her account when she visited her Chase branch in Brighton Beach in Brooklyn in March to close it. But Chase kept the account open and between April and May, the six Internet lenders tried to withdraw money from Ms. Brodsky’s account 55 times, according to bank records reviewed by The New York Times. Chase charged her $1,523 in fees — a combination of 44 insufficient fund fees, extended overdraft fees and service fees.

For Subrina Baptiste, 33, an educational assistant in Brooklyn, the overdraft fees levied by Chase cannibalized her child support income. She said she applied for a $400 loan from Loanshoponline.com and a $700 loan from Advancemetoday.com in 2011. The loans, with annual interest rates of 730 percent and 584 percent respectively, skirt New York law.

Ms. Baptiste said she asked Chase to revoke the automatic withdrawals in October 2011, but was told that she had to ask the lenders instead. In one month, her bank records show, the lenders tried to take money from her account at least six times. Chase charged her $812 in fees and deducted over $600 from her child-support payments to cover them.

“I don’t understand why my own bank just wouldn’t listen to me,” Ms. Baptiste said, adding that Chase ultimately closed her account last January, three months after she asked.

A spokeswoman for Bank of America said the bank always honored requests to stop automatic withdrawals. Wells Fargo declined to comment. Kristin Lemkau, a spokeswoman for Chase, said: “We are working with the customers to resolve these cases.” Online lenders say they work to abide by state laws.

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The Lede: Reeva Steenkamp, Steve Biko and the Quest for Justice in South Africa

LONDON – The title of the presiding judge 35 years ago was the same, chief magistrate of Pretoria, and the venue for the hearing, a converted synagogue, was not far from the modern courthouse seen on television screens around the world in recent days as Oscar Pistorius, the gold medal-winning Paralympic athlete, fought for bail in the killing of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp.

The case that unfolded in the last weeks of 1977, like the one featuring Mr. Pistorius, centered on a death that captured global attention. Then, too, it was the role of the chief magistrate, a jurist of relatively minor standing in South Africa’s legal system, to weigh whether it was a case of murder or mishap. Then, too, there were constituencies, inside the courtroom and beyond, that clamored passionately for their version of the truth.

The similarities – and dissimilarities – will have pressed in on anyone who was present in the Pretoria courtroom those decades ago, when the proceeding involved was an inquest, and the death that of Steve Biko, a 30-year-old black activist who was a popular youth leader of the anti-apartheid movement. By the miserable manner of his dying, alone, naked, and comatose on the floor of a freezing prison cell, Mr. Biko became, in death still more than in life, a powerful force for an end to South Africa’s institutionalized system of racial repression.

A British television report from South Africa in 1977, eight days after Steve Biko, an anti-apartheid activist, was beaten to death in police custody.

The two cases, of course, will find widely different places on history’s ladder. Mr. Pistorius, awarded bail on Friday after a hearing that was sensational for what it revealed of his actions in shooting Ms. Steenkamp, and for the raw emotions the athlete displayed in the dock, became a global celebrity in recent years for his feats as the Blade Runner, a track star who overcame the disability of being born with no bones in his lower legs.

But for all that it has been a shock to the millions who have seen his running as a parable for triumph in adversity, Mr. Pistorius’s tragedy — and still more, Ms. Steenkamps’s — has been a personal one. Mr. Biko’s death was considered at the time, as it has been ever since, as a watershed in the history of apartheid, a grim milestone among many others along South Africa’s progress towards black majority rule, which many ranked as the most inspiriting event in the peacetime history of the 20th-century when it was finally achieved in 1994.

Still, for a reporter who covered the Biko inquest for the Times as the paper’s South Africa correspondent through the turbulent years of the 1970’s, there were strong resonances in the week’s televised proceedings in Pretoria. Among them was the sheer scale of the media coverage, and the display of how live-by-satellite broadcasting and the digitalization of the print press, with computers, cellphones and Twitter feeds, have globalized the news business.

Oscar Pistorius facing the media during his bail hearing this week in Pretoria.

For the Pistorius hearing, there was a frenzied, tented camp of television crews outside the court, a crush among reporters struggling to get into the hearing, and platoons of studio commentators eager to have their say.

The crush among reporters outside the bail hearing for Oscar Pistorius this week in Pretoria.

On each of the 13 days the Biko inquest was in session, I had no trouble finding myself a seat in the airy courtroom. I took my lunch quietly with members of the Biko family’s legal team, and loitered uneasily during adjournments in an outside passageway, eavesdropping on the policemen who were Mr. Biko’s captors in his final days as they fine-tuned the testimony they were to give in court.

In the Pistorius case, the police again emerged poorly, having, as it seemed, bungled aspects of the forensic investigation in ways that could complicate the prosecution’s case that Mr. Steenkamp’s death was a case of premeditated murder — and having assigned the case to an officer who turned out to be under investigation in a case of attempted murder himself. But nothing in that bungling could compare with the sheer wretchedness of the security police officers in the Biko case, who symbolized, in their brutal and callous treatment of a defenseless man, and in the jesting about it I heard in that courtroom passageway, just how far below human decency apartheid had descended.

There was, too, the extraordinary contrast in the deportment of the magistrates in their rulings in the two cases, and what that said about the different South Africas of then and now. Desmond Nair, presiding at the Pistorius hearing, took more than two hours to review the evidence in the killing of Ms. Steenkamp, swinging back and forth in a meandering — and often bewildering — fashion between the contending accounts of Ms. Steenkamp’s death offered by Mr. Pistorius’s legal counsel and those put forward by the police.

Marthinus J. Prins, the chief magistrate in the Biko inquest, took an abrupt three minutes to deliver his finding, a numbing, 120-word exculpation of the policemen and government doctors who ushered Mr. Biko to his death on the stone-flagged floor of the Pretoria Central Prison. “The court finds the available evidence does not prove the death was brought about by any act or omission involving any offense by any person,” Mr. Prins said, reading hurriedly from a prepared statement before leaving the courtroom and slipping away by a rear door.

In finding that nobody was to blame in the black leader’s death, the magistrate brushed aside testimony suggesting what the policemen and doctors involved acknowledged many years later to have been true, when they petitioned for amnesty under the Truth and Reconciliation Commission process that sought to heal the wounds of apartheid: that Mr. Biko had been beaten in police custody, suffering a severe brain injury that was left untreated until he died.

The utter lack of compassion, and of anything resembling justice, was expressed in the dull-eyed satisfaction of Mr. Prins when I caught up with him an hour or so after the verdict in his vast, dingy office a few blocks from the courtroom.

“To me, it was just another death,” he said, pulling off his spectacles and rubbing his eyes. “It was just a job, like any other.”

Mr. Prins, who rose to his position through the apartheid bureaucracy, without legal training, appeared at that moment, as he had throughout the inquest, to be disturbingly sincere, yet utterly blinded. Faithful servant of the apartheid system, he had given it the clean bill of health it demanded, and freed the police to continue treating black political detainees as they chose. Among the country’s rulers, the verdict was embraced as a triumphal vindication, while those who chose to see matters more clearly understood it to be a tolling of history’s bell.

Listening to Mr. Nair delivering his ruling in the Pistorius case, there will have been many, in South Africa and abroad, who will have found his monologue on Friday confusing, circular in its argument, and numbingly repetitive. As an exercise in jurisprudence, it was something less than a stellar advertisement for a South African legal system that, at its best, is a match for any in the world, as it was back in 1977.

Sydney Kentridge, lead counsel for the Biko family at the inquest, moved seamlessly to England in the years that followed, and became, by widespread reckoning among his peers, Britain’s most distinguished barrister, still practicing in London now, well into his 80’s.

In the 2011 Steve Biko Lecture at the University of Cape Town, Sydney Kentridge spoke about the inquest into his death in 1977.

A host of other South African expatriates who fled apartheid have made outstanding careers as lawyers and judges in Britain, the United States, and elsewhere in the English-speaking world, but many others stayed at home, and continue to serve a court system that has fared rather better, in recent years, than many other institutions in the new South African state.

But even if Mr. Nair, in granting Mr. Pistorius bail, seemed no match in the elegance of his argument for South Africa’s finest legal minds, he nonetheless did South Africa proud. In the chaotic manner of his ruling, which sounded at times like a man grabbing for law books off a shelf, he was, indisputably, doing something that Mr. Prins, all those years before, had not even attempted: looking for ways to steer his course to justice. People will disagree whether Mr. Pistorius deserved the break he got in walking free from that courtroom, but nobody could reasonably contest that what we saw in his case was the working of a legal system that strives for justice, and not to rubber-stamp the imperatives of the state.

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Te'o doing tough balancing act at NFL combine

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Manti Te'o wants everyone to know he's over the embarrassment of an online hoax, and he's ready to focus on football.

The Heisman Trophy runner-up acknowledges he could have done things to avoid a public spectacle. But he says if he was still embarrassed by it, he wouldn't have taken questions Saturday at the NFL's annual scouting combine.

Instead, nearly two dozen television cameras and a room full of reporters were capturing every word out of Te'o's mouth as he again tried to explain how he was duped into believing a girlfriend that never existed died last fall.

It was the largest group of reporters Te'o has faced since the story broke last month

More than 300 players, including Te'o, are in Indy this weekend to work out for NFL scouts.

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Drone Pilots Found to Get Stress Disorders Much as Those in Combat Do

U.S. Air Force/Master Sgt. Steve Horton

Capt. Richard Koll, left, and Airman First Class Mike Eulo monitored a drone aircraft after launching it in Iraq.

The study affirms a growing body of research finding health hazards even for those piloting machines from bases far from actual combat zones.

“Though it might be thousands of miles from the battlefield, this work still involves tough stressors and has tough consequences for those crews,” said Peter W. Singer, a scholar at the Brookings Institution who has written extensively about drones. He was not involved in the new research.

That study, by the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center, which analyzes health trends among military personnel, did not try to explain the sources of mental health problems among drone pilots.

But Air Force officials and independent experts have suggested several potential causes, among them witnessing combat violence on live video feeds, working in isolation or under inflexible shift hours, juggling the simultaneous demands of home life with combat operations and dealing with intense stress because of crew shortages.

“Remotely piloted aircraft pilots may stare at the same piece of ground for days,” said Jean Lin Otto, an epidemiologist who was a co-author of the study. “They witness the carnage. Manned aircraft pilots don’t do that. They get out of there as soon as possible.”

Dr. Otto said she had begun the study expecting that drone pilots would actually have a higher rate of mental health problems because of the unique pressures of their job.

Since 2008, the number of pilots of remotely piloted aircraft — the Air Force’s preferred term for drones — has grown fourfold, to nearly 1,300. The Air Force is now training more pilots for its drones than for its fighter jets and bombers combined. And by 2015, it expects to have more drone pilots than bomber pilots, although fighter pilots will remain a larger group.

Those figures do not include drones operated by the C.I.A. in counterterrorism operations over Pakistan, Yemen and other countries.

The Pentagon has begun taking steps to keep pace with the rapid expansion of drone operations. It recently created a new medal to honor troops involved in both drone warfare and cyberwarfare. And the Air Force has expanded access to chaplains and therapists for drone operators, said Col. William M. Tart, who commanded remotely piloted aircraft crews at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada.

The Air Force has also conducted research into the health issues of drone crew members. In a 2011 survey of nearly 840 drone operators, it found that 46 percent of Reaper and Predator pilots, and 48 percent of Global Hawk sensor operators, reported “high operational stress.” Those crews cited long hours and frequent shift changes as major causes.

That study found the stress among drone operators to be much higher than that reported by Air Force members in logistics or support jobs. But it did not compare the stress levels of the drone operators with those of traditional pilots.

The new study looked at the electronic health records of 709 drone pilots and 5,256 manned aircraft pilots between October 2003 and December 2011. Those records included information about clinical diagnoses by medical professionals and not just self-reported symptoms.

After analyzing diagnosis and treatment records, the researchers initially found that the drone pilots had higher incidence rates for 12 conditions, including anxiety disorder, depressive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse and suicidal ideation.

But after the data were adjusted for age, number of deployments, time in service and history of previous mental health problems, the rates were similar, said Dr. Otto, who was scheduled to present her findings in Arizona on Saturday at a conference of the American College of Preventive Medicine.

The study also found that the incidence rates of mental heath problems among drone pilots spiked in 2009. Dr. Otto speculated that the increase might have been the result of intense pressure on pilots during the Iraq surge in the preceding years.

The study found that pilots of both manned and unmanned aircraft had lower rates of mental health problems than other Air Force personnel. But Dr. Otto conceded that her study might underestimate problems among both manned and unmanned aircraft pilots, who may feel pressure not to report mental health symptoms to doctors out of fears that they will be grounded.

She said she planned to conduct two follow-up studies: one that tries to compensate for possible underreporting of mental health problems by pilots and another that analyzes mental health issues among sensor operators, who control drone cameras while sitting next to the pilots.

“The increasing use of remotely piloted aircraft for war fighting as well as humanitarian relief should prompt increased surveillance,” she said.

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Fair Game: Dell Shareholders Look Hard at Takeover Effort

IS Michael Dell trying to take over the computer company he founded on the cheap?

That’s what more and more Dell shareholders appear to believe about the $13.65 per-share price proposed on Feb. 5 by Mr. Dell and Silver Lake Partners, a technology investment firm. Initial objectors to the buyout have been joined by additional shareholders concerned about getting a fair shake.

The issue of fairness is a hazard of management-led buyouts, of course. Are insiders, who have an enormous information advantage owing to their deep knowledge of a company’s operations, trying to get control of an enterprise when its shares are perhaps temporarily depressed? Over the last year, Dell’s stock has lost 19 percent of its value.

Some investors wonder if Mr. Dell, who owns 14 percent of the shares outstanding, might have a hot new product on the drawing board that has the potential to make the company a highflier again.

Neither management nor Mr. Dell is saying much of anything about the company’s prospects. Last Tuesday, when Dell announced mixed earnings for the year, the company declined to make any projections for coming quarters on the conference call with investors and analysts. Its chief financial officer cited the pending deal as the reason no outlook was given.

As is the case with all insider deals, there’s great potential for outside shareholders to be treated unfairly. Making the deal even more problematic, Dell’s shareholders have little data upon which to assess its price. Dell’s regulatory filings say that the $13.65 per-share price is the result of extensive “bids and arms-length negotiations” between Silver Lake and the special committee of Dell’s board beginning in late October 2012.

Still, there’s no mention of how the $13.65 per-share offer stacks up against the company’s long-term enterprise value, an assessment of future earnings potential that is a typical measure in a takeover. Instead, the offer by Mr. Dell and Silver Lake seems based on the company’s recent stock price. Their $24.4 billion deal represents a 37 percent premium to the stock’s average price over the previous three months, they say.

Meanwhile, Southeastern Asset Management, one of Dell’s largest outside shareholders, estimates that the company is worth $23.72 a share, almost 75 percent more than the buyers are offering. Southeastern has come to that conclusion using publicly available information, however, because that’s all it has access to.

Naturally, both of these parties have a vested interest in getting their price in the deal. Mr. Dell and his group want to pay as little as possible, while long-suffering outside owners hope for more.

Trying to remedy this unsatisfying situation, an uninvolved investor organization has made an excellent suggestion: an independent, peer-reviewed analysis of Dell’s enterprise value should be done on behalf of its outside shareholders. Based on the same information Dell’s management has, such an assessment would assure investors that they are being bought out at a fair value.

This idea comes from the Shareholder Forum, a nonpartisan, independent creator of programs devised to provide the kind of information investors need to make astute decisions. The Forum, overseen by Gary Lutin, a former investment banker at Lutin & Company, suggests hiring a qualified expert to analyze the company’s operations. This would be similar to the so-called fairness opinions provided to shareholders in takeovers by outsiders. The analysis would be subject to confidentiality when necessary and would be reviewed by recognized analysts, academics and other investment professionals.

On Feb. 14, Mr. Lutin sent a letter to Mr. Dell and Alex Mandl, chairman of the special committee of Dell’s board charged with ensuring the deal’s fairness to all shareholders. In the letter, Mr. Lutin asked that the company support the independent analysis and provide assistance in its preparation.

Mr. Lutin said he had assumed that the board committee and Mr. Dell would want to support this project. “Shareholders have a very well-established right to any information relevant to their investment decisions under Delaware law,” Mr. Lutin said last week. “They also have the right to expect management to be responsible for addressing those interests.”

But last week, Mr. Lutin said that lawyers representing Mr. Mandl and his committee told him they would not be supporting the independent analysis.

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Palestinians Threaten to Boycott Sponsors of Jerusalem Marathon

JERUSALEM — A lawyer representing Palestinian government agencies sent letters this week to an American sneaker company and an international hotel chain threatening a boycott and legal action if they did not withdraw their sponsorship of the Jerusalem marathon, which the Palestinians say violates international law.

The letters to New Balance, a footwear company based in Boston, and the InterContinental Hotel Group, which includes the Crowne Plaza hotel in Jerusalem, say that the marathon, scheduled for March 1, is a “serious breach” of international law because it runs through East Jerusalem, territory that Israel captured during the 1967 war and later annexed. The Palestinians, and much of the world, consider East Jerusalem occupied territory, but the Israelis see it as part of their capital city.

“As the marathon neither caters to the needs of Palestinian civilians nor serves any genuine military purpose, the marathon constitutes an illegal activity in occupied East Jerusalem under international humanitarian law,” read the letters, sent on behalf of the Palestinian Olympic Committee, Athletics Federation, and Higher Council of Youth and Sport. Citing United Nations resolutions, the Fourth Geneva Convention, and an International Court of Justice ruling, the letters warn: “If your company does not immediately withdraw sponsorship of this illegal activity, my clients will be forced to pursue this matter legally.”

The letters do not specifically mention the United Nations General Assembly vote on Nov. 29 that upgraded Palestine to a nonmember observer state, but a senior Palestinian official said the companies could be targets if Palestinians leaders decide to use the new status to pursue claims in international courts. Another possibility is action by the Arab League, whose 22 member states have called for a boycott of Adidas last year over its sponsorship of the Jerusalem marathon.

The mayor of Jerusalem, Nir Barkat, has described the marathon, in its third year, as an effort to make his bitterly divided and contested city “normal.” But normalcy is a challenge in a city that both Israelis and Palestinians see as their capital, a place that Jews, Muslims and Christians worldwide all revere as holy, a sprawling 48 square miles where 500,000 Israelis and 300,000 Palestinians live mostly in separate neighborhoods. Virtually none of those Palestinians vote in municipal elections, for fear of “normalization,” and many Palestinians in recent years have refused to attend meetings or hold official events in parts of Jerusalem for the same reason.

This week, Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, made headlines during a visit here for an offhand reference to Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, which Washington generally avoids. American consular officials joke that part of their job is to make sure the mail is addressed simply to “Jerusalem,” not “Jerusalem, Israel.”

Asked about the letters to New Balance and Crowne Plaza, a spokesman for Mr. Barkat said on Friday that the Palestinians were “trying to drag the marathon into a political cause.”

“This is not politics, this is sport, this is culture,” said the spokesman, Barak Cohen. “This is a major international event in a major international city,” he added, noting that 2,000 of the more than 18,000 registered runners were from 52 countries. “Arab residents and Jewish residents are welcome to participate and celebrate together,” he added.

A spokeswoman for New Balance, whose logo is at the top of the marathon’s Web site next to the slogan, “Let’s Make Excellent Happen,” did not respond to inquiries on Friday.

A spokeswoman for the InterContinental Hotel Group said the company was unaware of the marathon sponsorship, which she said was by the Jerusalem Crowne Plaza, a franchisee. She said the hotel’s manager could not be reached for comment because of the Jewish Sabbath.

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Oscar Pistorius gets bail as murder trial looms

PRETORIA, South Africa (AP) — Oscar Pistorius walked out of a South African court Friday a free man — for now — after a magistrate agreed to release him on bail ahead of his premeditated murder trial over the shooting death of his girlfriend.

But even as he was driven away from court and chased by videographers and photographers, questions continued to hound the Paralympian about what actually happened when he opened fire on Valentine's Day inside his home and killed Reeva Steenkamp.

Chief Magistrate Desmond Nair, who agreed to bail with harsh restrictions for the athlete, expressed his own doubts about Pistorius' story. Those questions, highlighted at a four-day bail hearing that at times foreshadowed his coming trial, come from Pistorius' account that he felt threatened and mistook Steenkamp for an intruder when he fired the four shots at her in his bathroom.

"Why would (Pistorius) venture further into danger?" Nair asked.

Pistorius' supporters shouted "Yes!" when Nair made his decision after a nearly two hour explanation of his ruling to a packed courtroom in Pretoria, South Africa's capital. Yet when prosecutors and the defense said they agreed to bail terms, Nair more than doubled those conditions for the 26-year-old runner to be free ahead of trial.

Nair set the bail at 1 million rand ($113,000), with $11,300 in cash up front and proof that the rest is available. The magistrate said Pistorius must hand over his passports and also turn in any other guns that he owns. Pistorius also cannot leave the district of Pretoria without the permission of his probation officer, Nair said, nor can he take drugs or drink alcohol.

Pistorius' family members hugged each other after the decision was read, with tears in their eyes.

"We are relieved at the fact that Oscar got bail today but at the same time we are in mourning for the death of Reeva with her family," said Pistorius' uncle, Arnold Pistorius. "As a family, we know Oscar's version of what happened on that tragic night and we know that that is the truth and that will prevail in the coming court case."

Sharon Steenkamp, Reeva's cousin, had said earlier that the family wouldn't be watching the bail decision and hadn't been following the hearing in Pretoria.

"It doesn't make any difference to the fact that we are without Reeva," she told The Associated Press.

Nair set Pistorius' next court appearance for June 4. The Olympian left the courthouse in a silver Land Rover, sitting in the rear, just more than an hour after the magistrate imposed the bail conditions. The vehicle, tailed by motorcycles carrying television cameramen aboard, later pulled into the home of Pistorius' uncle.

Pistorius left behind more than a dozen international and local television crews at the red-brick courthouse. It's a sign of the growing global fascination with a case involving an inspirational athlete and his beautiful, law-school graduate girlfriend, who was a model and reality TV show contestant.

During Friday's long session in Pretoria Magistrate's Court, Pistorius alternately wept and appeared solemn and more composed, especially toward the end as Nair criticized police procedures in the case and as a judgment in Pistorius' favor appeared imminent. He showed no reaction as he was granted bail.

Before the hearing, Pistorius' longtime coach Ampie Louw said he hoped to put his runner back into his morning and afternoon training routine if he got bail.

"The sooner he can start working the better," said Louw, who was the person who convinced the double-amputee to take up track as a teenager a decade ago. But he acknowledged Pistorius could be "heartbroken" and unwilling to immediately pull on his carbon-fiber running blades, the reason behind his "Blade Runner" nickname.

There is one place, however, where Nair ordered that Pistorius cannot go: His upscale home in a gated community in the eastern suburbs of Pretoria, where he killed Steenkamp in the predawn hours of Feb. 14.

Pistorius said in a sworn statement to the court that he shot his girlfriend accidentally, believing she was an intruder in his house. He described "a sense of terror rushing over" him and feeling vulnerable because he stood only on his stumps before opening fire.

Prosecutors, however, say he intended to kill Steenkamp, saying the shooting followed a loud argument between the two. Yet despite poking holes in Pistorius' statement — they questioned why he didn't notice his girlfriend missing despite walking past the bed and brought up incidents that they said highlighted his temper — their case unraveled through testimony by the police's lead investigator in the case, Detective Warrant Officer Hilton Botha.

Botha, who faces seven charges of attempted murder in an unrelated incident, was removed from the case Thursday. His replacement, the nation's top detective Vinesh Moonoo, stopped briefly by the hearing Friday. Prosecution spokesman Medupe Simasiku said later Friday: "We're still confident in our case."

While Nair leveled harsh criticism at Botha for "errors" and "blunders," he said one man does not represent an investigation and that the state could not be expected to put all "the pieces of the puzzle" together in such a short time. The magistrate questioned whether Pistorius would be a flight risk and be prepared to go "ducking and diving" around the world when he stood to lose a fortune in cash, cars, property and other assets.

Pistorius faced the sternest bail requirements in South Africa because of the seriousness of the charge. His defense lawyers had to prove that he would not flee the country, would not interfere with witnesses or the case and his release would not cause public unrest. They also had to show "exceptional" circumstances for his release as well, something Nair said could be found in the "weak" case offered by prosecutors.

Yet the magistrate still anticipated the shape of the state's case at trial. Nair said he had serious questions about Pistorius' account: Why didn't he try to locate his girlfriend on fearing an intruder was in the house? Why didn't he try to determine who was in the bathroom? And why would he venture into perceived "danger" — the bathroom area — when he could have taken other steps to ensure his safety?

Touching those unanswered questions, Nair said: "There are improbabilities which need to be explored."

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AP Sports Writer Gerald Imray contributed to this report from Johannesburg.

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Jon Gambrell can be reached at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP .

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Question Mark: Acne Common in Baby Boomers Too

Pimples are no surprise on babies and teenagers, but boomers?

You no longer have to gaze over a school lunchroom, hoping to find a seat at a socially acceptable table. You don’t rush to get home at night before your junior license driving restrictions kick in. And you men no longer have to worry that your voice will skip an octave without warning.

But if adolescence is over, what is that horrid protuberance staring at you in the mirror from the middle of your forehead? Some speak of papules, pustules and nodules, but we will use the technical term: zit. That thing on your forehead now is the same thing that was there back in high school, or at least a close relative. Same as it ever was (cue “Once in a Lifetime”).

We get more than the occasional complaint here from baby boomers who want to know about this aging body part or that. So you would think people would be happy with any emblem of youth — even if it is sore and angry-looking and threatening to erupt at any second. But oddly, there are those who are not happy to see pimples again, and some have asked for an explanation.

Acne occurs when the follicles that connect the pores of the skin to oil glands become clogged with a mixture of hair, oils and skin cells, and bacteria in the plug causes swelling, experts say. A pimple grows as the plug breaks down.

According to the American Academy of Dermatology, a growing number of women in their 30s, 40s, 50s and even beyond are seeking treatment for acne. Middle-age men are also susceptible to breakouts, but less so, experts say.

In some cases, people suffer from acne that began in their teenage years and never really went away. Others had problems when they were younger and then enjoyed decades of mostly clear skin. Still others never had much of the way of pimples until they were older.

Whichever the case, the explanation for adult acne is likely to be the same as it is for acne found in teenagers and, for that matter, newborns: hormonal changes. “We know that all acne is hormonally driven and hormonally sensitive,” said Dr. Bethanee J. Schlosser, an assistant professor of dermatology at Northwestern.

Among baby boomers, the approach of menopause may result in a drop in estrogen, a hormone that can help keep pimples from forming, and increased levels of androgens, the male hormone. Women who stop taking birth control pills may also see a drop in their estrogen levels.

Debate remains over what role diet plays in acne. Some experts say that foods once thought to cause pimples, like chocolate, are probably not a problem. Still, while sugar itself is no longer believed to contribute to acne, some doctors think that foods with a high glycemic index – meaning they quickly elevate glucose in the body — might. White bread and sweetened cereals are examples. And for all ages, stress has also been found to play a role.

One message to acne sufferers has not changed over the years. Your mother was right: don’t pop it! It can cause scarring.

Questions about aging? E-mail boomerwhy@nytimes.com

Booming: Living Through the Middle Ages offers news and commentary about baby boomers, anchored by Michael Winerip. You can follow Booming via RSS here or visit nytimes.com/booming. You can reach us by e-mail at booming@nytimes.com.

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Pentagon Suspends F-35 Flights Due to Engine Blade Crack

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon on Friday suspended the flights of all 51 F-35 fighter planes after a routine inspection revealed a crack on a turbine blade in the jet engine of an F-35 test aircraft in California.

It was the second grounding of the warplane in two months and marked another setback for the $396 billion F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, the Pentagon's biggest weapons program. The program has already been restructured three times in recent years and may face further cutbacks if Congress does not avert major budget reductions due to take effect on March 1.

The F-35 program office said it was too early to know if this was a fleet-wide issue, but it was suspending all flights until an investigation was completed. A total of 51 F-35 jets were affected, including 17 that are being used for testing and 34 in use for training in Florida and Arizona.

It said it was working closely with Pratt & Whitney, the United Technologies Corp unit that builds the engine, and Lockheed Martin Corp, the prime contractor for the radar-evading warplane, to ensure the integrity of the engine and return the F-35 fleet to flight as soon as possible.

The Pentagon's F-35 program office began notifying the chiefs of the U.S. Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps late on Thursday about the engine issue and decision to ground the planes, said Kyra Hawn, a spokeswoman for the program office.

She said that a routine inspection at Edwards Air Force Base in California on February 19 revealed a crack on a low pressure turbine blade that is part of the F-35's F135 engine. The blade was on an F-35 A-model, or Air Force variant, which takes off and lands from conventional runways.

Pratt spokesman Matthew said the inspection showed "an indication of a crack" on the third stage low pressure turbine airfoil. He said the company was working closely with the Pentagon, Lockheed and the military services to get the planes flying again.

Engineering teams are removing the turbine blade from the plane and plan to ship it to Pratt's engine facility in Middletown, Connecticut, for more thorough evaluation and root cause analysis, according to the Pentagon and Pratt.

Hawn said an initial analysis was expected next week.

The grounding comes on the heels of a nearly month-long grounding of the Marine Corps variant of the new warplane after a manufacturing defect caused a fuel line to detach just before a training flight in Florida.

The Marine Corps variant of the F-35, which takes off from shorter runways and lands like a helicopter, was grounded for nearly a month after a fuel line detached just before a training flight at Eglin Air Force Base in January.

That issue was later found to be caused by a manufacturing defect. The Pentagon and the U.S. Navy lifted flight restrictions on the B-model of the plane on February 13.

(Reporting By Andrea Shalal-Esa; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick and Leslie Adler)

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The Lede: Assad Denies Starting War in New Interview

Last Updated, Thursday, 3:48 p.m. The Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, denied in an interview broadcast last week on German television that he was responsible for starting the bloody conflict tearing his country apart.

The interview, featured in a new documentary on the conflict in Syria by the filmmaker Hubert Seipel, was conducted in English but later overdubbed in German for broadcast on the network ARD. Mr. Seipel, whose previous film, “I, Putin,” was also a portrait of a strongman, provided The Lede with clips from the documentary in which Mr. Assad’s remarks can be heard in the original English.

The filmmaker said recently that he wanted to speak directly to Mr. Assad because “misinformation and psychological warfare make up a large part of the Syrian civil war.” He explained in an e-mail to The Lede that he was frustrated by watching Syria’s war unfold in YouTube clips selectively edited by the two sides. So, he said, “my intention was just to let Assad speak about his point of view, so that our viewers can make their own judgment in what kind of a separate world he lives.”

Below is a transcript of Mr. Assad’s remarks (in occasionally idiosyncratic English).

On Chemical Weapons: “Have you heard that any country used chemical weapon to fight terrorism? I haven’t heard about it. This is W.M.D weapon of mass destruction. How can I use it to fight groups, small groups of terrorists spreading everywhere, especially in the cities? You fight them in the suburbs. You just mentioned that you hear the shelling in the suburbs, you don’t hear it in the desert, or in far area from the cities. So this is not realistic and not logical. I think they use it as pretext maybe to have more pressure or to have an aggression against Syria.”

On Foreign Fighters: “You cannot talk about good situation while you have assassination and killings of innocent people by terrorists coming from abroad, and some of them are Syrian, to be frank and clear about the situation. But the most important thing is about do they have incubator in the society or not. This where it could be very bad or worse or where you don’t have no hope.”

‘We Didn’t Launch the War’: “We didn’t launch the war and we didn’t choose which kind of war because we didn’t choose it anyway. You have terrorists coming with very sophisticated armaments, nearly all kinds of armaments that they can carry with them and started killing people, destroying infrastructure, destroying public places, everything. How do you defend them? You defend them according to the aggressions that you have, according to the tactics that they use. So they use heavy weaponries. You have to retaliate in the same way.“

On Reforms: “Well the criteria that you used to talk about the speed of reform, nobody has criteria. When you drive your car you know that this is the law here, 100 kilometer, let’s say, per hour. Well about the reform, does anyone has criteria or certain meter? So it’s subjective.”

On Turkey’s Missile Defense: “This is part of the missile shield that they started a year ago in Turkey, but the Turkish didn’t want to say that this is a part of it because many Turks refuse that Turkey is part of this program. The second aspect of it that Erdogan has been trying hard to rally the Turks and to muster support to his policy against Syria, something that he failed. So he distributed the Patriot on our border just to give the impression that Turkey is in danger because Syria may think of attacking Turkey, which is not realistic.”

On Peace Talks: “We started right away discussing the conflict in Syria and I concentrated mainly on the violence. If you want to succeed (I mean I was talking to Kofi Annan at the time.) If you want to succeed, you have to focus on the violence part of your initiative. If you don’t stop the violence, if you don’t stop the terrorists coming to Syria through different countries, mainly Turkey and Qatar, if you don’t stop the money coming inside Syria in order to stoke the fire – the whole initiative will fail. So that was the core of our discussion in the first meeting.”

On His Future: “If it’s about me as president, the decision should be by the Syrian people. If the Syrian people doesn’t want you as president what would you do here? How can you succeed? It should be through national dialogue, and whatever this national dialogue decide, we are going to adopt as a government, of course including me.”

On the Houla Massacre: “The people who were killed in the massacres are state supporters loyal to the government, so how could a militia, loyal to the government, killing people, loyal to the government? This is contradiction, unrealistic. Actually militia of the terrorists coming to that city or to that village and committed the massacre, and they took the photos and put it on YouTube and on the TVs and they said this is the government, which was not realistic. Actually it was committed by the gangs, by the terrorists.”

The full film, with German narration, also includes interviews in English with Kofi Annan, the former United Nations envoy, and Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister. After the documentary was broadcast, the Russian foreign ministry posted video and a transcript of Mr. Lavrov’s complete conversation with Mr. Seipel online.

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