The Lede Blog: Under Attack, Cairo Hotel Sends S O S via Twitter

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Video of unidentified men streaming into the lobby of Cairo’s Semiramis InterContinental hotel was shown live on Egypt’s ONTV early on Tuesday.

Last Updated, 2:56 p.m. As our colleagues Kareem Fahim, David Kirkpatrick and Mayy El Sheikh report, the mayhem on Cairo’s streets briefly spilled into the lobby of one of the city’s luxury hotels, the Semiramis InterContinental, during intense clashes between riot police and protesters along the Nile Corniche overnight.

Images of a mob streaming into the hotel, shown live on Egyptian television and then posted online, raised fears of further damage to the country’s already battered tourist industry. Coming at the same time as violence in cities on the Suez Canal, this week’s unrest threatened two of the main pillars of the Egyptian economy.

Judging by a series of urgent pleas for help posted on the hotel’s Twitter feed, the raid came just after 2:30 a.m. local time.

Within an hour of sounding the alarm on the social network, the staff reported on Twitter that the security forces had arrived.

Guards at the hotel told Bel Trew of the Egyptian news site Ahram Online that phone calls to the police and the army initially went unheeded as about 40 men armed with shotguns, knives and a semiautomatic weapon broke into the shuttered lobby and started looting.

An Ahram Online journalist who witnessed the attack, Karim Hafez, said that protesters had stopped fighting with the police to help secure the hotel: “When they realized these groups were trying to loot the hotel, protesters shot fire crackers at them as they attacked the building and tried to push them away from the area but these groups were armed with birdshot bullets.”

This reported cooperation of the protesters with the police officers they have been battling for days on the street outside the hotel prompted bloggers like the British-Egyptian journalist Sarah Carr to comment on the black comedy of the situation.

Another Egyptian blogger, Mohammed Maree, reported on his @mar3e Twitter feed that a police captain on the scene confirmed to him that the protesters who were fighting with the security forces when the raid took place were not responsible for the storming of the hotel.

Mr. Maree also reported that witnesses to the raid said it began after four people drove up in a car with no license plates and fired shots to scare protesters away, before storming the hotel. He later posted a photograph of some of the hotel’s guests leaving under the protection of protesters.

Nabila Samak, a spokeswoman for the hotel who posted the calls for help on Twitter, told The Times that the staff members had called Egyptian television stations for help earlier in the evening, well before the attack, after appeals to the security forces for protection went unanswered.

Ms. Samak told Ahram Online that the staff worked to secure the hotel’s guests but were not equipped to cope with the effective collapse of the police force, since, “no guards of hotels in Egypt are armed.” Later she thanked protesters for coming to the aid of the hotel’s staff and guests.

A Saudi women who identified herself as a guest at the hotel, Hilda Ismail, posted updates and photographs from a shelter the guests were taken to during the incident on her Arabic-language Twitter feed.

In one message, she wrote: “If there is no Egyptian security, and if Morsi is sleeping, where are this country’s men!! Come get these dogs, the Semiramis Hotel is being ransacked and we are there.”

Later, Ms. Ismail uploaded a brief video clip of a man attempting to reassure guests that they were safe after the arrival of special forces officers from the ministry of the interior led by a Captain Moataz.

In the clip, the man tells the guests that the police captain wants “to assure you that the hotel is secured and it is under the control of the ministry of the interior now. Within no time you will go back to your rooms and already are in safe hands.” The police, the man added, “will make sure that such thugs will not enter the hotel again. We are sorry.”

Ms. Ismail also posted an image of the ransacked lobby on Twitter.

Ms. Ismai’s claim to have been a guest at the hotel was supported by the fact that she had uploaded a brief video clip, apparently shot from a high floor of the hotel, showing the fighting on the Nile Corniche below.

The luxury hotel chain, which was created in 1946 by Pan American World Airways, did not immediately reply to a request for comment, but an executive in Cairo told Al-Masry Al-Youm, an Egyptian newspaper, that “more than 45 clients insisted on leaving despite the hotel’s offer to relocate them to higher floors, away from the clashes.”

Although the hotel then announced that it would be closed for security reasons, the staff posted another urgent plea for help on Twitter late Tuesday.

Kareem Fahim contributed reporting from Cairo.

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Apple announces iPad with double storage capacity

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(Reuters) – Apple Inc said on Tuesday that it will sell a version of its iPad tablet computer with 128 gigabytes of storage, which is twice the capacity of its existing models.


Apple, which has sold more than 120 million iPads so far, said that the new iPad will go on sale February 5, in black or white, for a suggested retail price of $ 799 for the iPad with just Wi-Fi model, and $ 929 for the version that also has a cellular wireless connection.






(Reporting By Sinead Carew; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick)


Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Glance: 5 teasers to watch before the Super Bowl

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At least 15 advertisers are expected to launch teasers for their ads running during Super Bowl XLVII. The goal is to create interest for ads without spilling the beans on the Game Day spot. Here are 5 teaser ads to seek out online before the game on Sunday:


1. Mercedes-Benz: In a spot that has gotten 5.4 million views on Youtube.com, supermodel Kate Upton wears a low-cut tank top as she oversees football players washing her car.


On the Web: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPq7jVGPs3g


2. Volkswagen: Volkswagen's teaser spot shows people who have starred in videos online previously erupting in temper tantrums on a sunny hilltop to sing "Get Happy" with reggae singer Jimmy Cliff


On the Web: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfCm9P8naDQ


3. Gildan Activewear: First-time Super Bowl advertiser Gildan Activewear teases a spot that shows a man waking up dazed in a bedroom with furry handcuffs around his wrist.


On the Web: http://www.youtube.com/user/GildanTV?v=_KIKjcMTKPk


4. Kraft's Mio: "30 Rock" star Tracy Jordan appears to say a bleeped out profanity in a teaser to introduce Mio's sports drink drops, Mio Fit.


On the Web: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eenSfU7YYnY


5. Toyota: "Big Bang Theory" star Kaley Cuoco grants wishes to a peppy song in the teaser for Toyota's spot.


On the Web: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKnuMIIEtoo


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Well: Ask Well: Squats for Aging Knees

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You are already doing many things right, in terms of taking care of your aging knees. In particular, it sounds as if you are keeping your weight under control. Carrying extra pounds undoubtedly strains knees and contributes to pain and eventually arthritis.

You mention weight training, too, which is also valuable. Sturdy leg muscles, particularly those at the front and back of the thighs, stabilize the knee, says Joseph Hart, an assistant professor of kinesiology and certified athletic trainer at the University of Virginia, who often works with patients with knee pain.

An easy exercise to target those muscles is the squat. Although many of us have heard that squats harm knees, the exercise is actually “quite good for the knees, if you do the squats correctly,” Dr. Hart says. Simply stand with your legs shoulder-width apart and bend your legs until your thighs are almost, but not completely, parallel to the ground. Keep your upper body straight. Don’t bend forward, he says, since that movement can strain the knees. Try to complete 20 squats, using no weight at first. When that becomes easy, Dr. Hart suggests, hold a barbell with weights attached. Or simply clutch a full milk carton, which is my cheapskate’s squats routine.

Straight leg lifts are also useful for knee health. Sit on the floor with your back straight and one leg extended and the other bent toward your chest. In this position, lift the straight leg slightly off the ground and hold for 10 seconds. Repeat 10 to 20 times and then switch legs.

You can also find other exercises that target the knees in this video, “Increasing Knee Stability.”

Of course, before starting any exercise program, consult a physician, especially, Dr. Hart says, if your knees often ache, feel stiff or emit a strange, clicking noise, which could be symptoms of arthritis.

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DealBook: Jefferies C.E.O. Earned $19 Million in 2012

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3:48 p.m. | Updated

The head of the Jefferies Group was one of the better-paid chief executives on Wall Street in 2012, as the firm put a difficult period behind it.

Richard B. Handler, the chief executive of Jefferies, earned a total of $19 million for 2012, the firm said in a filing on Tuesday. That included a $5 million cash bonus and a $13 million long-term equity incentive award, on top of a $1 million base salary.

The board’s compensation committee was “unanimously impressed with our financial performance and Mr. Handler’s role in that performance,” Jefferies said in the filing. The board said that Mr. Handler was eligible for a bonus of $8.1 million but volunteered to take a smaller amount.

Jefferies reported a profit of $71.6 million in the fourth quarter, an increase of 48 percent from a year earlier. It was the final independent earnings report for the boutique investment bank, which is becoming part of the Leucadia National Corporation in a $3.6 billion deal. Mr. Handler is set to become Leucadia’s chief executive.

Jefferies said in the filing on Tuesday that Mr. Handler was also granted restricted stock worth $39 million to cover three future years: 2013, 2014 and 2015.

Mr. Handler’s pay package for 2012 was higher than that of Jamie Dimon, head of JPMorgan Chase. Mr. Dimon earned $11.5 million, compared with $23 million a year earlier.

Mr. Handler got a significant raise from 2011, when he earned $14 million. That year, he declined to accept a bonus after a period in which investors feared for the firm’s health.

But those fears, which emerged in the wake of MF Global‘s collapse, appear to have largely receded. The firm’s shares rose about 35 percent in 2012 and were virtually flat on Tuesday.

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The Lede Blog: Fire at a Nightclub in Southern Brazil

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Medics in Brazil rushed to care for the victims of a deadly fire at a nightclub on Sunday.

Last Updated, Monday, 3:36 p.m. An intense fire ripped through a nightclub crowded with university students in southern Brazil early on Sunday morning, leaving behind a scene of horror, with bodies piled in the club’s bathrooms and on the street. At least 233 people were killed, many of them students in the agronomy and veterinary medicine programs at a local university, police officials said. By Sunday evening, the authorities had released a preliminary list of the dead.

As Simon Romero reports, a flare from a band’s pyrotechnic show ignited the fire in the nightclub, called Kiss, in the southern city of Santa Maria. Rescue workers continued to haul bodies from the still-smoldering building on Sunday.

Extremely disturbing video uploaded to YouTube by witnesses showed scenes of chaos in a makeshift morgue and on the street outside, as medics scurried over the bodies of victims who appeared to be unconscious, checking for signs of life.

Victims of the fire are attended by medics — this video contains very disturbing images.

Officials and witnesses say that security guards at the club had locked some exits, sowing panic as people attempted to flee the flames and smoke.

“Only after a multitude pushed down the security guards did they see the crap they had done,” Murilo de Toledo Tiecher, 26, a medical student who survived the fire, said in comments posted on Facebook.

Shortly before the fire, a club D.J. posted a photo on Facebook from inside the crowded club apparently showing the pyrotechnic display on stage.

A short time later, another photo that was said to be taken outside the club and widely disseminated through social media showed smoke billowing from the front entrance.

The fire quickly engulfed the building.

Firefighters and volunteers who used T-shirts to protect themselves from the smoke struggled to pull people from the burning building.

Firefighters and volunteers tried to pull people from the burning building

Photos from the scene showed frantic friends and family members gathered outside the club and a hospital.

As Mr. Romero reports, witnesses said the fire started about 2 a.m. after the band, Gurizada Fandangueira, took the stage. At least one member of the five-person band, which is based in Santa Maria and advertised its use of pyrotechnics, was said to have been killed in the fire.

In a statement posted on its Facebook page, the nightclub said that its operations are on hold and that it would assist the authorities with an investigation. “We would still like to reiterate that our staff has the highest technical qualifications and was properly trained and prepared for any contingency,” it added.

Overcrowding and a disregard for fire safety codes have led to deadly blazes at nightclubs in the past, though Sunday’s tragedy in Brazil is among the worst.

In 2003 in Rhode Island, also fire set off by a pyrotechnic display at a club killed about 100 people. A fire that erupted under similar circumstances in Russia left almost as many dead in 2009.

And in Luoyang, China in 2000, 309 people were killed in a fire that broke out at a dance hall, forcing some to leap from high-rise windows.

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 28, 2013

An earlier version of this post included video of a fire that was not recorded in Brazil on Sunday, but had been mislabeled and uploaded to a fake BBC News channel on YouTube.

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Crucial, long-overdue BlackBerry makeover arrives

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TORONTO (AP) — The maker of the BlackBerry smartphone is promising a speedy browser, a superb typing experience and the ability to keep work and personal identities separate on the same phone, the fruit of a crucial, long-overdue makeover for the Canadian company.


Thorsten Heins, chief executive of Research In Motion Ltd., will reveal the first phone with the new BlackBerry 10 system in New York on Wednesday. Repeated delays have left the once-pioneering BlackBerry an afterthought in the shadow of Apple’s trend-setting iPhone and Google’s Android-driven devices.






Now, there’s some optimism. Previews of the software have gotten favorable reviews on blogs. Financial analysts are starting to see some slight room for a comeback. RIM‘s stock has nearly tripled to about $ 16.30 from a nine-year low in September, though it’s still nearly 90 percent below its 2008 peak of $ 147.


Most analysts consider a BlackBerry 10 success to be crucial for the company’s long-term viability.


“The old models are becoming obsolete quickly,” BGC Financial analyst Colin Gillis said. “There is still a big user base but it’s going to rotate off. The question is: Where do they rotate to?”


The BlackBerry, pioneered in 1999, has been the dominant smartphone for on-the-go business people. Corporate information-technology managers like the phones because they’re relatively secure and easy to manage.


The BlackBerry has also crossed over to consumers. President Barack Obama couldn’t bear to part with it when he took office. Oprah Winfrey declared it one of her “favorite things.” People got so addicted that the device was nicknamed “the CrackBerry.”


But when the iPhone came out in 2007, it showed that phones can do much more than email and phone calls. They can play games, music and movies. Android came along to offer even more choices. Though IT managers still love BlackBerrys, employees were bringing their own devices to the workplace — a trend Heins acknowledged RIM was slow to adapt to.


Suddenly, the BlackBerry looked ancient.


Even as BlackBerry sales continued to grow in many parts of the world, many BlackBerry users in North America switched to iPhones and Android devices. BlackBerry’s worldwide subscriber based peaked at 80 million in the quarter that ended Sept. 1, before dropping to 79 million in the most-recent quarter. In the U.S., according to research firm IDC, shipments of BlackBerry phones plummeted from 46 percent of the market in 2008 to 2 percent in 2012.


RIM promised a new system to catch up, using technology it got through its 2010 purchase of QNX Software Systems. RIM initially said BlackBerry 10 would come by early 2012, but then the company changed that to late 2012. A few months later, that date was pushed further, to early 2013, missing the lucrative holiday season. The holdup helped wipe out more than $ 70 billion in shareholder wealth and 5,000 jobs.


Although executives have been providing a glimpse at some of BlackBerry 10′s new features for months, Heins will finally showcase a complete system at Wednesday’s event. Devices will go on sale soon after that.


RIM redesigned the system to embrace the multimedia, apps and touch-screen experience prevalent today.


“Historically there have been areas that have not been our strongest points,” Rick Costanzo, RIM’s executive vice president of global sales, said in an interview. “Not only have we caught up, but we may even be better than some of the competition now.”


Costanzo said “no one else can touch” what RIM’s new system offers.


The new operating system promises better multitasking than either the iPhone or Android. Simply swipe a finger across the phone’s display screen to switch to another program.


All emails and notifications from such applications as Twitter and Facebook go to the BlackBerry Hub, a nerve center accessible with a finger swipe even if you have another application open. One can peek into it and open an email, or return to the previous application without opening the email.


“You are not going in and out of applications; you’re flowing through applications with one simple gesture of your finger,” Costanzo said. “You can leave applications running. You can effortlessly flow between them. So that’s completely unique to us.”


That said, multitasking will be limited and won’t allow for extensive use of apps side by side, as is typically permitted on traditional computers. If you’re watching a video, it will still run while you check for email. But it will pause if you decide to open an email and resume when you are done.


The BlackBerry’s touch-screen keyboard promises to learn a user’s writing style and suggest words and phrases to complete, going beyond typo corrections offered by rivals. See the one you want, and flick it up to the message area. Costanzo said that “BlackBerry offers the best keyboard, period.”


Gus Papageorgiou, a Scotiabank financial analyst who has tried it out, agreed with that assessment and said the keyboard even learns and adjusts to your thumb placements.


The first BlackBerry 10 phone will have only a touch screen. RIM has said it will release a version with a physical keyboard soon after that. That’s an area RIM has excelled at, and it’s one reason many BlackBerry users have remained loyal despite temptations to switch.


Another distinguishing feature will be the BlackBerry Balance, which allows two personas on the same device. Businesses can keep their data secure without forcing employees to get a second device for personal use. For instance, IT managers can prevent personal apps from running inside corporate firewalls, but those managers won’t have access to personal data on the device.


With Balance, “you can just switch from work to personal mode,” Papageorgiou said. “I think that is something that will attract a lot of people.”


RIM is also claiming that the BlackBerry 10′s browser will be speedy, even faster than browsers for laptop and desktop computers. According to Papageorgiou, early, independent tests between the BlackBerry 10 and the iPhone support that claim.


Regardless of BlackBerry 10′s advances, though, the new system will face a key shortcoming: It won’t have as many apps written by outside companies and individuals as the iPhone and Android. RIM has said it plans to launch BlackBerry 10 with more than 70,000 apps, including those developed for RIM’s PlayBook tablet, first released in 2011. Even so, that’s just a tenth of what the iPhone and Android offer. Papageorgiou said the initial group will include the most popular ones such as Twitter and Facebook. But RIM will have to persuade others to make a BlackBerry version, when they are already struggling to keep up with both the iPhone and Android.


Like many analysts, Papageorgiou recently upgraded RIM’s stock, but cautions that longtime BlackBerry users will have to get used to a whole new operating system.


He said RIM can be successful if about a third of current subscribers upgrade and if the company can get 4 million new users overseas, especially in countries where the BlackBerry has remained popular. IDC said smartphone shipments grew 44 percent in 2012. If those trends continue, it will be possible for the BlackBerry to grow even if iPhone and Android users don’t switch.


“This doesn’t have to be the best smartphone on the planet to be a success for RIM,” he said. “I think the big question though is, if it fails, is it just too late? Are the other two ecosystems just so advanced that no one can catch up? That’s a big risk.”


Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Who are these guys at QB in Super Bowl?

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NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Tom Brady is not playing in the Super Bowl. Neither is Ben Roethlisberger or either of the Mannings.


This Super Bowl has a pair of fresh faces in Colin Kaepernick and Joe Flacco, one of whom will leave New Orleans as the latest and greatest at football's glamour position.


For each, this is new territory.


Flacco, the only quarterback to win a playoff game in each of his first five NFL seasons, will lead the AFC champion Baltimore Ravens into Sunday's matchup with second-year QB Kaepernick and the NFC winners, the San Francisco 49ers. Not exactly a superstar matchup — yet.


It's the first time in a decade that neither Brady, Roethlisberger, Eli Manning or Peyton Manning has gotten to the Super Bowl.


___


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


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Well: Keeping Blood Pressure in Check

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Since the start of the 21st century, Americans have made great progress in controlling high blood pressure, though it remains a leading cause of heart attacks, strokes, congestive heart failure and kidney disease.

Now 48 percent of the more than 76 million adults with hypertension have it under control, up from 29 percent in 2000.

But that means more than half, including many receiving treatment, have blood pressure that remains too high to be healthy. (A normal blood pressure is lower than 120 over 80.) With a plethora of drugs available to normalize blood pressure, why are so many people still at increased risk of disease, disability and premature death? Hypertension experts offer a few common, and correctable, reasons:

Jane Brody speaks about hypertension.



¶ About 20 percent of affected adults don’t know they have high blood pressure, perhaps because they never or rarely see a doctor who checks their pressure.

¶ Of the 80 percent who are aware of their condition, some don’t appreciate how serious it can be and fail to get treated, even when their doctors say they should.

¶ Some who have been treated develop bothersome side effects, causing them to abandon therapy or to use it haphazardly.

¶ Many others do little to change lifestyle factors, like obesity, lack of exercise and a high-salt diet, that can make hypertension harder to control.

Dr. Samuel J. Mann, a hypertension specialist and professor of clinical medicine at Weill-Cornell Medical College, adds another factor that may be the most important. Of the 71 percent of people with hypertension who are currently being treated, too many are taking the wrong drugs or the wrong dosages of the right ones.

Dr. Mann, author of “Hypertension and You: Old Drugs, New Drugs, and the Right Drugs for Your High Blood Pressure,” says that doctors should take into account the underlying causes of each patient’s blood pressure problem and the side effects that may prompt patients to abandon therapy. He has found that when treatment is tailored to the individual, nearly all cases of high blood pressure can be brought and kept under control with available drugs.

Plus, he said in an interview, it can be done with minimal, if any, side effects and at a reasonable cost.

“For most people, no new drugs need to be developed,” Dr. Mann said. “What we need, in terms of medication, is already out there. We just need to use it better.”

But many doctors who are generalists do not understand the “intricacies and nuances” of the dozens of available medications to determine which is appropriate to a certain patient.

“Prescribing the same medication to patient after patient just does not cut it,” Dr. Mann wrote in his book.

The trick to prescribing the best treatment for each patient is to first determine which of three mechanisms, or combination of mechanisms, is responsible for a patient’s hypertension, he said.

¶ Salt-sensitive hypertension, more common in older people and African-Americans, responds well to diuretics and calcium channel blockers.

¶ Hypertension driven by the kidney hormone renin responds best to ACE inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers, as well as direct renin inhibitors and beta-blockers.

¶ Neurogenic hypertension is a product of the sympathetic nervous system and is best treated with beta-blockers, alpha-blockers and drugs like clonidine.

According to Dr. Mann, neurogenic hypertension results from repressed emotions. He has found that many patients with it suffered trauma early in life or abuse. They seem calm and content on the surface but continually suppress their distress, he said.

One of Dr. Mann’s patients had had high blood pressure since her late 20s that remained well-controlled by the three drugs her family doctor prescribed. Then in her 40s, periodic checks showed it was often too high. When taking more of the prescribed medication did not result in lasting control, she sought Dr. Mann’s help.

After a thorough work-up, he said she had a textbook case of neurogenic hypertension, was taking too much medication and needed different drugs. Her condition soon became far better managed, with side effects she could easily tolerate, and she no longer feared she would die young of a heart attack or stroke.

But most patients should not have to consult a specialist. They can be well-treated by an internist or family physician who approaches the condition systematically, Dr. Mann said. Patients should be started on low doses of one or more drugs, including a diuretic; the dosage or number of drugs can be slowly increased as needed to achieve a normal pressure.

Specialists, he said, are most useful for treating the 10 percent to 15 percent of patients with so-called resistant hypertension that remains uncontrolled despite treatment with three drugs, including a diuretic, and for those whose treatment is effective but causing distressing side effects.

Hypertension sometimes fails to respond to routine care, he noted, because it results from an underlying medical problem that needs to be addressed.

“Some patients are on a lot of blood pressure drugs — four or five — who probably don’t need so many, and if they do, the question is why,” Dr. Mann said.

How to Measure Your Blood Pressure

Mistaken readings, which can occur in doctors’ offices as well as at home, can result in misdiagnosis of hypertension and improper treatment. Dr. Samuel J. Mann, of Weill Cornell Medical College, suggests these guidelines to reduce the risk of errors:

¶ Use an automatic monitor rather than a manual one, and check the accuracy of your home monitor at the doctor’s office.

¶ Use a monitor with an arm cuff, not a wrist or finger cuff, and use a large cuff if you have a large arm.

¶ Sit quietly for a few minutes, without talking, after putting on the cuff and before checking your pressure.

¶ Check your pressure in one arm only, and take three readings (not more) one or two minutes apart.

¶ Measure your blood pressure no more than twice a week unless you have severe hypertension or are changing medications.

¶ Check your pressure at random, ordinary times of the day, not just when you think it is high.

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An Italian Bank Caught in the Vortex of Election Politics

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MILAN — The chief executive of a regional Italian bank embroiled in a scandal with political and even Europe-wide implications said Monday that recent revelations of past mismanagement and questionable deals would not impede efforts to turn around the beleaguered institution.


“This is still a solid bank,” Fabrizio Viola, chief executive of Monte dei Paschi di Siena, said Monday at a news conference in Milan.


In the past week revelations of transactions that may have disguised the extent of the bank’s losses during the global financial crisis have become political fodder ahead of Italy’s national elections next month.


And the disclosures have raised questions about the degree of scrutiny given Monte dei Paschi di Siena by Mario Draghi, who was still head of Italy’s central bank when the problems developed. Mr. Draghi, of course, is now president of the European Central Bank.


At issue is whether Monte dei Paschi di Siena, or M.P.S. as it is known, hid losses it incurred after acquiring the Italian bank Antonveneta in 2008, for €9 billion — a price that even at the time was widely derided as far too high. Now under scrutiny are two complex transactions M.P.S. conducted with Deutsche Bank and Nomura that critics say enabled M.P.S. to mask some of its losses.


Mr. Viola, part of the new management that came to the bank last year, said Monday that an investigation now under way would produce findings by mid-February, ahead of national elections scheduled for Feb. 24 and 25.


With M.P.S. based in Siena, in a part of northern Italy that is a stronghold of the leftist Democratic Party, the conservative former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, who is trying to be a spoiler in next month’s elections, has been trying to lay blame for the scandal at the Democratic Party’s doorstep. Meanwhile, the current prime minister, Mario Monti, has had to defend his government’s decision to bail out the banks with loans granted last year.


More broadly, though, the problems at M.P.S. provide an extreme example of an old-line banking pattern that analysts say is still disturbingly commonplace in Europe. As with most Italian banks, M.P.S.’s primary shareholder is a local foundation, which receives dividends that are to be used to pay for social projects as well as cultural and charitable enterprises. That gives M.P.S. an extensive veil of political relationships that can be hard for any national overseer to peer through.


The same combination of local political influence and lax control has also afflicted many banks in Germany and Spain, with taxpayers left suffering the consequences. Indeed, grave lapses by national regulators are among the main reasons European leaders have decided to put the European Central Bank in charge of bank regulation.


But now there is a possible snag in the plan: Mr. Draghi, who is expected to lead that overhaul, was at least nominally the overseer of M.P.S. while it was digging itself into a deep hole.


Many analysts, though, question whether Mr. Draghi — or any Italian regulators — would have had enough information to recognize the bank’s problems, since there appears to have been a deliberate attempt to conceal losses. And in any case, the Bank of Italy may not have had legal power to prevent M.P.S. from making bad decisions.


But at the very least Mr. Draghi’s proximity to the scandal is untimely as the E.C.B. and euro zone leaders finally seemed to be rebuilding credibility in the common currency. The decision to create a centralized banking supervisor at the E.C.B. is a big part of the effort to restore confidence in the euro zone.


“Italy is a country where even national regulators can have a trouble getting a grip on what is happening at the local level,” said Nicolas Véron, a senior fellow at Bruegel, a research organization in Brussels. Mr. Véron stressed that there was no evidence Mr. Draghi deserved any blame for the Monti dei Paschi scandal.


But Mr. Véron said, “It clearly does create perception problems, because there’s a question mark about the appropriateness of the Bank of Italy’s response at the time.”


“At this point it’s only a question mark,” Mr. Véron said. “We don’t have any facts.”


A spokesman for the E.C.B. declined to comment Monday.


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