NYT > Home Page: Israeli Airstrike in Syria Targets Arms Convoy, U.S. Says

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Israeli Airstrike in Syria Targets Arms Convoy, U.S. Says
Jan 31st 2013, 06:51

Jim Hollander/European Pressphoto Agency

In East Jerusalem, Israelis distributed gas masks on Wednesday as worries about security spread.

JERUSALEM — Israeli warplanes carried out a strike deep inside Syrian territory on Wednesday, American officials reported, saying they believed the target was a convoy carrying sophisticated antiaircraft weaponry on the outskirts of Damascus that was intended for the Hezbollah Shiite militia in Lebanon.

Photographs

Denying reports, Syria said Israeli jets had hit a defense research facility in Jimraya.

The American officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Israel had notified the United States about the attack, which the Syrian government condemned as an act of "arrogance and aggression." Israel's move demonstrated its determination to ensure that Hezbollah — its arch foe in the north — is unable to take advantage of the chaos in Syria to bolster its arsenal significantly.

The predawn strike was the first time in more than five years that Israel's air force had attacked a target in Syria. While there was no expectation that the beleaguered Assad government had an interest in retaliating, the strike raised concerns that the Syrian civil war had continued to spread beyond its border.

In a statement, the Syrian military denied that a convoy had been struck. It said the attack had hit a scientific research facility in the Damascus suburbs that was used to improve Syria's defenses, and called the attack "a flagrant breach of Syrian sovereignty and airspace."

Israeli officials would not confirm the airstrike, a common tactic here. But it came after days of intense security consultations with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu regarding the possible movement of chemical and other weapons around Syria, and warnings that Jerusalem would take action to thwart any possible transfers to Hezbollah.

Thousands of Israelis have crowded gas-mask distribution centers over the last two days. On Sunday, Israel deployed its Iron Dome missile defense system in the north, near Haifa, which was heavily bombed during the 2006 war with Lebanon.

Syria and Israel are technically in a state of war but have long maintained an uneasy peace along their decades-old armistice line. Israel has mostly watched warily and tried to stay out of Syria's raging civil war, fearful of provoking a wider confrontation with Iran and Hezbollah. In November, however, after several mortars fell on Israel's side of the border, its tanks struck a Syrian artillery unit.

Several analysts said that despite the increased tensions, they thought the likelihood of retaliation for the airstrike was relatively low.

"It is necessary and correct to prepare for deterioration — that scenario exists," Danny Yatom, a former chief of the Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency, told Ynet, a news Web site. "But in my assessment, there will not be a reaction, because neither Hezbollah nor the Syrians have an interest in retaliating."

Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad, "is deep in his own troubles," Mr. Yatom said, "and Hezbollah is making a great effort to assist him, in parallel with its efforts to obtain weapons, so they won't want to broaden the circle of fighting."

In the United States, the State Department and Defense Department would not comment on reports of the strike.

Russia, which has carried out a vigorous diplomatic battle to deter foreign military intervention in the Syrian conflict for more than a year, issued a statement of concern early on Thursday, describing the strikes as "an attack by Israel's air force on objects in Syria, near Damascus."

"If this information is confirmed, this is an unprovoked attack on the territory of a sovereign nation, which blatantly violates the U.N. charter and is unacceptable and unjustified whatever its motives," said a statement posted on the web site of the Russian Foreign Ministry.

Moscow said it would take immediate steps to clarify what had happened, and reiterated its longstanding insistence on a political solution and "the unacceptability of any kind of external intervention."

The episode illustrated how the escalating violence in Syria, which has already killed more than 60,000, is drawing in neighboring states and threatening to destabilize the region further.

Iran has firmly allied itself with Mr. Assad, sending personnel from its Islamic Revolutionary Guards Quds Force to Syria and ferrying military equipment to Syria through Iraqi airspace.

Hezbollah, which plays a decisive role in Lebanese politics and has supported Mr. Assad during the uprising by providing training and logistical support to his forces, has long relied on Syria as both a source of weapons and a conduit for weapons flowing from Iran. Some analysts think Hezbollah may be trying to stock up on weapons in case Mr. Assad falls and is replaced by a leadership that is hostile to the militia.

One American official said the trucks targeted on Wednesday were believed to have been carrying sophisticated SA-17 antiaircraft weapons. Hezbollah's possession of such weapons would be a serious worry for the Israeli government, said Matthew Levitt, a former intelligence official who is at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

"Israel is able to fly reconnaissance flights over Lebanon with impunity right now," Mr. Levitt said. "This could cut into its ability to conduct aerial intelligence. The passing along of weapons to Hezbollah by the regime is a real concern."

While some analysts said the Assad government might be providing the weapons to Hezbollah as a reward for its support, others were skeptical that Syria would relinquish such a sophisticated system.

Hezbollah has boasted that it has replenished and increased its weapons stocks since the 2006 war with Israel. During that war, Israeli bombardments destroyed some of its arms, and other missiles were used in a barrage that killed Israelis as far south as Haifa and that drove residents of northern Israel into shelters.

The Syrian statement, carried by state television, said an unidentified number of Israeli jets flying below radar had hit the research facility in the Jimraya district, killing two people and causing "huge material damage." It cast the attack as "another addition to the history of Israeli occupation, aggression and criminality against Arabs and Muslims."

"The Syrian government points out to the international community that this Israeli arrogance and aggression is dangerous for Syrian sovereignty," the statement said, "and stresses that such criminal acts will not weaken Syria's role nor will discourage Syrians from continuing to support resistance movements and just Arab causes, particularly the Palestinian issue."

The Lebanese Army said in a statement on Wednesday that Israeli warplanes had carried out two sorties, circling over Lebanon for hours on Tuesday and before dawn on Wednesday, but made no mention of any attacks.

Israel has long maintained a policy of silence on pre-emptive military strikes. In October, officials refused to discuss an accusation by Sudan that Israeli airstrikes had destroyed a weapons factory in Khartoum, its capital. Israel also never admitted to the bombing of a Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007; Syria kept mum about that attack, too, and the ambiguity allowed the event to pass without Damascus feeling pressure to retaliate.

Amnon Sofrin, a retired brigadier general and former Israeli intelligence officer, told reporters here on Wednesday that Hezbollah, which is known to have been storing some of its more advanced weapons in Syria, was now eager to move everything it could to Lebanon. He said Israel was carefully watching for convoys transferring weapons systems from Syria to Lebanon.

Israel has made it clear that if the Syrian government loses control over its chemical weapons or transfers them to Hezbollah, Israel will feel compelled to act. Avi Dichter, the minister for the home front, told Israel Radio on Tuesday that options to prevent Syria from using or transferring the weapons included deterrence and "attempts to hit the stockpiles."

"Everything will have ramifications," Mr. Dichter said. "The stockpiles are not always in places where operative thinking is possible. It could be that hitting the stockpiles will also mean hitting people. Israel has no intention of hitting residents of Syria."

Isabel Kershner reported from Jerusalem, and Michael R. Gordon from Washington. Reporting was contributed by Anne Barnard, Hania Mourtada and Hwaida Saad from Beirut, Lebanon; Ellen Barry from Moscow; Eric Schmitt from Washington; and Rick Gladstone from New York.

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NYT > Home Page: The TV Watch: Tina Fey Signs Off ‘30 Rock,’ Broken Barriers Behind Her

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The TV Watch: Tina Fey Signs Off '30 Rock,' Broken Barriers Behind Her
Jan 31st 2013, 02:27

Tina Fey leaves prime time television pretty much the way she entered it seven years ago, as a sly observer who bites the network that feeds her so much material.

Ending its run on Thursday night, "30 Rock," the show Ms. Fey created, helped write and starred in, was a witty sendup of network television that cut uncannily close to the bone. It seemed at times almost like a transcript of production meetings at the NBC headquarters, at 30 Rockefeller Center. Ms. Fey made use and fun of everything that NBC holds sacred, including product placement, corporate synergy and some of its most venerable stars.

In a recent episode Ms. Fey's character, Liz Lemon, is thrilled to be included in a celebration of "80 under 80." Liz explains that the event honors "women in entertainment who aren't Betty White."

It's funny, but the remark is also Ms. Fey's way of deflecting attention from her own stature. For a new generation of female writer-performers who now have their own sitcoms, at least partly thanks to her, Ms. Fey is the new Betty White, a figure so accomplished, beloved and irreproachable that it's almost impossible not to joke about her.

On "The Mindy Project," on Fox, the doctor played by Mindy Kaling (like Ms. Fey, Ms. Kaling is the creator as well as the star of her show) riffles through an asthmatic male co-worker's shoulder bag for an inhaler. She finds among other things a copy of Ms. Fey's best-selling book, "Bossypants," and demands to know why he is reading it.

Gasping, he replies, "I wanted to see how Tina Fey could juggle it all."

The final episode of "30 Rock" is a one-hour special that sort of ties up loose ends but mostly gives its creator one last chance to don a disguise that was delightful and also the weakest part of the show.

Ms. Fey cast herself as a slovenly, aimless nerd who is a pushover at work and, for much of the series, single and hapless at home, the kind of person who was happy "eating night cheese and transitioning pajamas into day wear," as Liz Lemon says of herself. Ms. Fey is better at writing — and impersonating Sarah Palin — than she is at acting. She was never fully convincing in the role of a loser.

"30 Rock" was modeled on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" in many important ways, except for its heroine. Liz was not a goody-goody perfectionist like Mary Richards, or, by her own admission, Ms. Fey herself. Disciplined, ambitious type-A's can be comical, as Ms. Moore, and later Candice Bergen, the star of "Murphy Brown," proved. But Ms. Fey, who was the first female head writer of "Saturday Night Live," chose as her alter ego a dumpy sad sack who just happened to be the head writer of a late-night sketch comedy show.

She created deliciously absurd characters like the silkily self-possessed network executive Jack Donaghy, played brilliantly by Alec Baldwin, and the insane comedian Tracy Jordan, played by Tracy Morgan, by grafting familiar show-business phenotypes onto those actors' inner nuttiness. Ms. Fey borrows shamelessly from real life, except when it comes to her own success. It may be that she plays against type because she is uncomfortable with the deadly earnest role of trailblazer. But she is one.

There have been plenty of female comedy writers before she came along — Diane English ("Murphy Brown") and Linda Bloodworth-Thomason ("Designing Women"), to name but two, as well as notable performers who created their own characters and carried their own comedy shows like Lucille Ball, Carol Burnett, Tracey Ullman and Roseanne Barr. But before Ms. Fey there were almost no women on network television who created and wrote their own shows and starred in them. One of the more notable exceptions dates to the days of black-and-white: Gertrude Berg created, wrote and starred in a hit radio comedy about a Jewish matriarch in the Bronx that was turned into a CBS sitcom, "The Goldbergs," in 1949.

When "30 Rock" had its premiere in 2006 Ms. Fey was that rare thing, a female writer starring in her own prime-time network show. She has moved on to movies, starring with Paul Rudd in a new comedy, "Admission," to be released in the spring.

She doesn't leave television in a vacuum. Now of course Ms. Kaling has her Fox show; Lena Dunham has "Girls" on HBO; and Whitney Cummings, who created and stars in "Whitney" on NBC, also is a co-creator of the CBS comedy "2 Broke Girls." Amy Poehler, who like Ms. Fey is a "Saturday Night Live" alumna, is one of the writers as well as the lead of "Parks and Recreation" on NBC.

Ratings were never the real measure of the reach of "30 Rock." Those only peaked in 2008, immediately after Ms. Fey's dead-ringer impersonation of Ms. Palin on "Saturday Night Live" stoked audience interest. Critical praise and a deluge of Emmy Awards, so many that Ms. Fey has joked about it, are a better gauge of the show's influence. So are the celebrity cameos.

It doesn't take much to coax politicians and television anchors to make comic cameos anymore — Brian Williams is practically a regular on "30 Rock," and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. let Ms. Poehler swoon over him on a recent episode of "Parks and Recreation." But "30 Rock" had an even greater appeal, drawing famous people who are not particularly known for self-mockery, including Condoleezza Rice (in her cameo the former secretary of state is furious that her ex-boyfriend Jack broke up with her by text), Oprah Winfrey and the House Democratic leader, Nancy Pelosi. In the final episode Ms. Pelosi gives a mock-television interview denouncing Jack Donaghy as an "economic war criminal."

Ms. Fey is a pioneer who resists being taken too seriously. She prefers to be revered for her irreverence. But one sign of her influence is her ability to persuade powerful, sensible women to go on "30 Rock" and make fools of themselves.

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NYT > Home Page: Calls for Stricter Gun Laws Dominate Newtown Hearing

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Calls for Stricter Gun Laws Dominate Newtown Hearing
Jan 31st 2013, 03:37

Robert Stolarik for The New York Times

Scarlett Lewis, the mother of Jesse McCord Lewis, 6, a victim of the Sandy Hook school massacre Dec. 14, spoke Wednesday at Newtown High School before a Connecticut gun task force hearing.

NEWTOWN, Conn. — In riveting testimony repeatedly interrupted by standing ovations, parents, public officials, law enforcement officers and school employees issued a full-throated call on Wednesday night for strengthening the nation's gun laws in the wake of the massacre of 26 children and educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December.

For one night at least, in the same high school auditorium where President Obama comforted the victims of Sandy Hook and issued his call for action on guns, the legislative muddle of competing lobbies and gun agendas was washed away by the grief of Sandy Hook and demands for measures to make sure something like it never happens again.

David Wheeler, who lost his son, Benjamin, on Dec. 14, told a state legislative panel studying gun violence, mental health and school safety that his first-grade son died because an unstable suicidal individual "had access to a weapon that has no place in a home."

At the end of his three-minute remarks, he told a panel that Thomas Jefferson said government was instituted to protect our unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. He said that those words and their order were no accident.

"The liberty of any person to own a military-style assault weapon and a high-capacity magazine and keep them in their home is second to the right of my son to his life," he said. "His life, to the right to live of all of those children and those teachers, the rights of your children, of you, of all of us. Let's honor the founding documents and get our priorities straight."

Testimony included repeated calls for improved mental health services and reflections on the responsibilities of parents. But the main focus was on the weapons used at Sandy Hook and in other mass slayings in the United States.

Brad Greene, who spoke surrounded by supporters of an antigun march scheduled for Feb. 14 in Hartford, said he and others had received a chilling education in the nation's gun laws.

"We have come away appalled at what our laws allow," he said. "We are incredulous at the type of assault and semiautomatic weapons and magazine clips that are considered legal. What is the logic behind allowing anyone with a wad of cash to buy an arsenal without a background check? It's beyond our comprehension."

Unlike the committee's first hearing on Monday in Hartford, at which gun rights supporters from across the state turned out in force, proponents of gun control in green ribbons and stickers reading "We Demand Change Now" were by far the most conspicuous presence — both in testimony and in the audience, which filled the Newtown High School auditorium. And local officials and residents, still scarred by the tragedy, demanded it lead to change, no matter how hard the legislative obstacles.

Susie Ehrens, whose daughter, Emma, escaped from the school, appealed to the legislators to act as if it were their own children who did not come home alive that day.

"We are Americans," she said. "We stop being the world's greatest country when we allow our most vulnerable citizens to be slaughtered because we might offend people by taking away their guns. We stop being something to be proud of when we love our guns more than we love our children."

Jim Gaston, a member of the Newtown Board of Selectmen, said he was a gun owner, owned rifles and enjoyed shooting.

"As a gun owner and someone who enjoys the sport," he said, "I can assure you there is absolutely no reason that civilians need to have or should have access to high-powered assault weapons or mega-magazines."

After the families, officials and school personnel testified, other members of the public spoke against new gun rules as well as for them.

David Barzetti said his 5-year-old son played with Jesse Lewis, one of the children who was killed. He said he understood the anguish over gun issues but did not believe more laws were needed.

"We are divided into two groups, one that thinks if we keep people from owning guns it can stop another 12/14 from happening," he said, referring to the date of the shooting. "The other group wants to protect ourselves from others like Adam Lanza."

He said gun control laws did not reduce crime and that gun owners should have choices of what weapons to own. "Obviously we don't need an assault rifle to kill a deer, but we also don't need to take away a 500-horsepower vehicle from an owner who wants to own a high-powered vehicle. That's their choice."

There were some vivid windows into the horror Dec. 14. Mary Ann Jacob, a school staff member, recalled the way it began as a routine Friday morning, how Victoria Soto, one of the teachers, grumbled that it was a bad day because she had spilled her coffee. Then came strange sounds that Ms. Jacob could not decipher until it became clear that hundreds of bullets were rocketing through the school.

"Make no mistake," she said. "If there was a police officer in our building that day, he would be dead. Adam Lanza did not knock on the door and ask for permission to come in. He shot his way through the door barely seconds after he got out of his car."

She added, "Nobody needs a gun that can kill 26 people and shoot hundreds of rounds of ammunition in three minutes."

Kristin Hussey contributed reporting.

A version of this article appeared in print on January 31, 2013, on page A17 of the New York edition with the headline: Gun Advocates Take Back Seat to Calls for Stricter Laws at Newtown Forum.

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NYT > Home Page: F.B.I. Raids Offices of Doctor Tied to Menendez

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F.B.I. Raids Offices of Doctor Tied to Menendez
Jan 31st 2013, 03:43

The Federal Bureau of Investigation on Tuesday raided the offices of a prominent South Florida eye surgeon who is a wealthy Democratic Party donor with close ties to Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey.

Federal agents taking files from the offices of Dr. Salomon Melgen, a Florida eye surgeon.

Agents remained all day Wednesday at Vitreo-Retinal Consultants Eye Center, the West Palm Beach offices of the doctor, Salomon Melgen. They also searched several other offices that the doctor has in the area, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation was continuing. Dr. Melgen, 58, owns over a dozen Florida-registered companies.

At the West Palm Beach office, agents from the F.B.I. were joined by the Office of the Inspector General of the federal Department of Health and Human Services, which investigates fraud in Medicare, Medicaid and other agency programs.

At midmorning, investigators carried in a crowbar, and a locksmith arrived shortly after noon. A few hours later, they hauled away more than 30 cardboard boxes and placed them into the back of an unmarked van and into a white vehicle.

Other than acknowledging that the F.B.I. was "conducting law enforcement activity" there, the agency declined to comment.

"The government has not informed Dr. Melgen what its concerns are," Lawrence Duffy, a lawyer for Dr. Melgen, said in a statement. "However, we are confident that Dr. Melgen has acted appropriately at all times."

Records show Dr. Melgen, who is best known for his association with Democratic politicians, including Senator Menendez, owes the Internal Revenue Service more than $10 million.

The raid came just four days after a conservative Web site alleged that the F.B.I. was looking into accusations that Mr. Menendez and Dr. Melgen frequented under-age prostitutes in the Dominican Republic.

The site included videos from alleged prostitutes and e-mail exchanges between an F.B.I. agent and a source in the Dominican Republic, who first referred the case to a nonprofit group in Washington.

In a statement, the senator called the allegations involving prostitutes "false" and "manufactured by a politically-motivated right-wing blog." The senator's office said Wednesday night that Mr. Menendez had reimbursed Dr. Melgen $58,500 for two flights that he had taken aboard his private jet in 2010.

The senator also called Dr. Melgen "a friend and political supporter."

Dr. Melgen told The New York Times last week, "I can assure you that all of the allegations are false."

Jacqui Goddard and William K. Rashbaum contributed reporting.

A version of this article appeared in print on January 31, 2013, on page A18 of the New York edition with the headline: Federal Agents Raid Offices of a Florida Donor Linked to Menendez.
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NYT > Home Page: The Lede Blog: Live Video of Newtown Residents Testifying Before State Task Force

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The Lede Blog: Live Video of Newtown Residents Testifying Before State Task Force
Jan 31st 2013, 02:09

WFSB 3 Connecticut

Hundreds of people, including families who lost children in the Dec. 14 mass shooting, packed Newtown High School in Connecticut on Wednesday night so they could tell members of a state legislative task force on gun violence and children's safety what changes in laws and policies they wanted to see.

Members of the General Assembly's 52-member bipartisan task force traveled to Newtown to hear from residents at the hearing. The task force, looking to make changes in areas ranging from gun control to mental health, held a similar hearing recently in Hartford.

Among those who spoke on Wednesday night was Scarlett Lewis, a 44-year-old single mother, whose 6-year-old son, Jesse Lewis, died in the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

"We need to somehow hold onto that feeling of oneness." Scarlet, mother of Jesse Lewis, child killed in Newtown. http://t.co/nQHBp4TC

— Newtown Patch (@NewtownPatch) 30 Jan 13

The task force hearing in Newtown was held on the same day that the Senate Judiciary Committee in Washington held its first hearing on gun violence in the aftermath of the Connecticut shooting, which left 20 pupils and 6 staff members of the elementary school dead.

During the hearing in Washington, which the Lede covered earlier, former Representative Gabrielle Giffords called on lawmakers to be "bold and courageous" in creating solutions to reduce gun violence.

In Connecticut, the hearing also drew teachers with views on what steps should and should not be taken to quell violence.

Tom Swets, taught shooter Adam Lanza at NHS. He will quit tomorrow if teachers are told to carry guns. http://t.co/g73ULZeP

— Newtown Patch (@NewtownPatch) 31 Jan 13

Earlier this week, The Newtown Bee, the town's newspaper, reported that the first permanent memorial to the lives lost at Sandy Hook Elementary School had been dedicated.

First Permanent Memorial To Sandy Hook School Victims Is Dedicated http://t.co/yoGWPCK9 http://t.co/kGRSNUJH

— The Newtown Bee (@TheNewtownBee) 30 Jan 13

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NYT > Home Page: Chinese Hackers Infiltrate New York Times Computers

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Chinese Hackers Infiltrate New York Times Computers
Jan 31st 2013, 02:19

SAN FRANCISCO — For the last four months, Chinese hackers have persistently attacked The New York Times, infiltrating its computer systems and getting passwords for its reporters and other employees.

The New York Times published an article in October about the wealth of the family of China's prime minister, Wen Jiabao, in both English and Chinese

After surreptitiously tracking the intruders to study their movements and help erect better defenses to block them, The Times and computer security experts have expelled the attackers and kept them from breaking back in.

The timing of the attacks coincided with the reporting for a Times investigation, published online on Oct. 25, that found that the relatives of Wen Jiabao, China's prime minister, had accumulated a fortune worth several billion dollars through business dealings.

Security experts hired by The Times to detect and block the computer attacks gathered digital evidence that Chinese hackers, using methods that some consultants have associated with the Chinese military in the past, breached The Times's network. They broke into the e-mail accounts of its Shanghai bureau chief, David Barboza, who wrote the reports on Mr. Wen's relatives, and Jim Yardley, The Times's South Asia bureau chief in India, who previously worked as bureau chief in Beijing.

"Computer security experts found no evidence that sensitive e-mails or files from the reporting of our articles about the Wen family were accessed, downloaded or copied," said Jill Abramson, executive editor of The Times.

The hackers tried to cloak the source of the attacks on The Times by first penetrating computers at United States universities and routing the attacks through them, said computer security experts at Mandiant, the company hired by The Times. This matches the subterfuge used in many other attacks that Mandiant has tracked to China.

The attackers first installed malware — malicious software — that enabled them to gain entry to any computer on The Times's network. The malware was identified by computer security experts as a specific strain associated with computer attacks originating in China. More evidence of the source, experts said, is that the attacks started from the same university computers used by the Chinese military to attack United States military contractors in the past.

Security experts found evidence that the hackers stole the corporate passwords for every Times employee and used those to gain access to the personal computers of 53 employees, most of them outside The Times's newsroom. Experts found no evidence that the intruders used the passwords to seek information that was not related to the reporting on the Wen family.

No customer data was stolen from The Times, security experts said.

Asked about evidence that indicated the hacking originated in China, and possibly with the military, China's Ministry of National Defense said, "Chinese laws prohibit any action including hacking that damages Internet security." It added that "to accuse the Chinese military of launching cyberattacks without solid proof is unprofessional and baseless."

The attacks appear to be part of a broader computer espionage campaign against American news media companies that have reported on Chinese leaders and corporations.

Last year, Bloomberg News was targeted by Chinese hackers, and some employees' computers were infected, according to a person with knowledge of the company's internal investigation, after Bloomberg published an article on June 29 about the wealth accumulated by relatives of Xi Jinping, China's vice president at the time. Mr. Xi became general secretary of the Communist Party in November and is expected to become president in March. Ty Trippet, a spokesman for Bloomberg, confirmed that hackers had made attempts but said that "no computer systems or computers were compromised."

Signs of a Campaign

The mounting number of attacks that have been traced back to China suggest that hackers there are behind a far-reaching spying campaign aimed at an expanding set of targets including corporations, government agencies, activist groups and media organizations inside the United States. The intelligence-gathering campaign, foreign policy experts and computer security researchers say, is as much about trying to control China's public image, domestically and abroad, as it is about stealing trade secrets.

Security experts said that beginning in 2008, Chinese hackers began targeting Western journalists as part of an effort to identify and intimidate their sources and contacts, and to anticipate stories that might damage the reputations of Chinese leaders.

In a December intelligence report for clients, Mandiant said that over the course of several investigations it found evidence that Chinese hackers had stolen e-mails, contacts and files from more than 30 journalists and executives at Western news organizations, and had maintained a "short list" of journalists whose accounts they repeatedly attack.

While computer security experts say China is most active and persistent, it is not alone in using computer attacks for a variety of national purposes, including corporate espionage. The United States, Israel, Russia and Iran, among others, are suspected of developing and deploying cyberweapons.

The United States and Israel have never publicly acknowledged it, but evidence indicates they released a sophisticated computer virus in 2012 that attacked and caused damage at Iran's main nuclear enrichment plant. Iran is believed to have responded with computer attacks on targets in the United States, including American banks and foreign oil companies.

Russia is suspected of having used computer attacks during its war with Georgia in 2008.

The following account of the attack on The Times — which is based on interviews with Times executives, reporters and security experts — provides a glimpse into one such spy campaign.

After The Times learned of warnings from Chinese government officials that its investigation of the wealth of Mr. Wen's relatives would "have consequences," executives on Oct. 24 asked AT&T, which monitors The Times's computer network, to watch for unusual activity.

On Oct. 25, the day the article was published online, AT&T informed The Times that it had noticed behavior that was consistent with other attacks believed to have been perpetrated by the Chinese military.

The Times notified and voluntarily briefed the Federal Bureau of Investigation on the attacks and then — not initially recognizing the extent of the infiltration of its computers — worked with AT&T to track the attackers even as it tried to eliminate them from its systems.

But on Nov. 7, when it became clear that attackers were still inside its systems despite efforts to expel them, The Times hired Mandiant, which specializes in responding to security breaches. Since learning of the attacks, The Times — first with AT&T and then with Mandiant — has monitored attackers as they have moved around its systems.

Hacker teams regularly began work, for the most part, at 8 a.m. Beijing time. Usually they continued for a standard work day, but sometimes the hacking persisted until midnight. Occasionally, the attacks stopped for two-week periods, Mandiant said, though the reason was not clear.

Investigators still do not know how hackers initially broke into The Times's systems. They suspect the hackers used a so-called spear-phishing attack, in which they send e-mails to employees that contain malicious links or attachments. All it takes is one click on the e-mail by an employee for hackers to install "remote access tools" — or RATs. Those tools can siphon off oceans of data — passwords, keystrokes, screen images, documents and, in some cases, recordings from computers' microphones and Web cameras — and send the information back to the attackers' Web servers.

Michael Higgins, chief security officer at The Times, said: "Attackers no longer go after our firewall. They go after individuals. They send a malicious piece of code to your e-mail account and you're opening it and letting them in."

Lying in Wait

Once hackers get in, it can be hard to get them out. In the case of a 2011 breach at the United States Chamber of Commerce, for instance, the trade group worked closely with the F.B.I. to seal its systems, according to chamber employees. But months later, the chamber discovered that Internet-connected devices — a thermostat in one of its corporate apartments and a printer in its offices — were still communicating with computers in China.

In part to prevent that from happening, The Times allowed hackers to spin a digital web for four months to identify every digital back door the hackers used. It then replaced every compromised computer and set up new defenses in hopes of keeping hackers out.

"Attackers target companies for a reason — even if you kick them out, they will try to get back in," said Nick Bennett, the security consultant who has managed Mandiant's investigation. "We wanted to make sure we had full grasp of the extent of their access so that the next time they try to come in, we can respond quickly."

Based on a forensic analysis going back months, it appears the hackers broke into The Times computers on Sept. 13, when the reporting for the Wen articles was nearing completion. They set up at least three back doors into users' machines that they used as a digital base camp. From there they snooped around The Times's systems for at least two weeks before they identified the domain controller that contains user names and hashed, or scrambled, passwords for every Times employee.

While hashes make hackers' break-ins more difficult, hashed passwords can easily be cracked using so-called rainbow tables — readily available databases of hash values for nearly every alphanumeric character combination, up to a certain length. Some hacker Web sites publish as many as 50 billion hash values.

Investigators found evidence that the attackers cracked the passwords and used them to gain access to a number of computers. They created custom software that allowed them to search for and grab Mr. Barboza's and Mr. Yardley's e-mails and documents from a Times e-mail server.

Over the course of three months, attackers installed 45 pieces of custom malware. The Times — which uses antivirus products made by Symantec — found only one instance in which Symantec identified an attacker's software as malicious and quarantined it, according to Mandiant.

A Symantec spokesman said that, as a matter of policy, the company does not comment on its customers.

The attackers were particularly active in the period after the Oct. 25 publication of The Times article about Mr. Wen's relatives, especially on the evening of the Nov. 6 presidential election. That raised concerns among Times senior editors who had been informed of the attacks that the hackers might try to shut down the newspaper's electronic or print publishing system. But the attackers' movements suggested that the primary target remained Mr. Barboza's e-mail correspondence.

"They could have wreaked havoc on our systems," said Marc Frons, the Times's chief information officer. "But that was not what they were after."

What they appeared to be looking for were the names of people who might have provided information to Mr. Barboza.

Mr. Barboza's research on the stories, as reported previously in The Times, was based on public records, including thousands of corporate documents through China's State Administration for Industry and Commerce. Those documents — which are available to lawyers and consulting firms for a nominal fee — were used to trace the business interests of relatives of Mr. Wen.

A Tricky Search

Tracking the source of an attack to one group or country can be difficult because hackers usually try to cloak their identities and whereabouts.

To run their Times spying campaign, the attackers used a number of compromised computer systems registered to universities in North Carolina, Arizona, Wisconsin and New Mexico, as well as smaller companies and Internet service providers across the United States, according to Mandiant's investigators.

The hackers also continually switched from one I.P. address to another; an I.P. address, for Internet protocol, is a unique number identifying each Internet-connected device from the billions around the globe, so that messages and other information sent by one device are correctly routed to the ones meant to get them.

Using university computers as proxies and switching I.P. addresses were simply efforts to hide the source of the attacks, which investigators say is China. The pattern that Mandiant's experts detected closely matched the pattern of earlier attacks traced to China. After Google was attacked in 2010 and the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists were opened, for example, investigators were able to trace the source to two educational institutions in China, including one with ties to the Chinese military.

Security experts say that by routing attacks through servers in other countries and outsourcing attacks to skilled hackers, the Chinese military maintains plausible deniability.

"If you look at each attack in isolation, you can't say, 'This is the Chinese military,' " said Richard Bejtlich, Mandiant's chief security officer.

But when the techniques and patterns of the hackers are similar, it is a sign that the hackers are the same or affiliated.

"When you see the same group steal data on Chinese dissidents and Tibetan activists, then attack an aerospace company, it starts to push you in the right direction," he said.

Mandiant has been tracking about 20 groups that are spying on organizations inside the United States and around the globe. Its investigators said that based on the evidence — the malware used, the command and control centers compromised and the hackers' techniques — The Times was attacked by a group of Chinese hackers that Mandiant refers to internally as "A.P.T. Number 12."

A.P.T. stands for Advanced Persistent Threat, a term that computer security experts and government officials use to describe a targeted attack and that many say has become synonymous with attacks done by China. AT&T and the F.B.I. have been tracking the same group, which they have also traced to China, but they use their own internal designations.

Mandiant said the group had been "very active" and had broken into hundreds of other Western organizations, including several American military contractors.

To get rid of the hackers, The Times blocked the compromised outside computers, removed every back door into its network, changed every employee password and wrapped additional security around its systems.

For now, that appears to have worked, but investigators and Times executives say they anticipate more efforts by hackers.

"This is not the end of the story," said Mr. Bejtlich of Mandiant. "Once they take a liking to a victim, they tend to come back. It's not like a digital crime case where the intruders steal stuff and then they're gone. This requires an internal vigilance model."

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NYT > Home Page: Officials Back Deep Cuts in Atlantic Cod Harvest to Save Industry

NYT > Home Page
HomePage
Officials Back Deep Cuts in Atlantic Cod Harvest to Save Industry
Jan 31st 2013, 02:16

Katherine Taylor for The New York Times

The Lady Jane, a fishing boat, in Gloucester, Mass. The New England Fishery Management Council voted to impose reductions of 77 percent in the Gulf of Maine cod catch.

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. — Fishery management officials meeting here on Wednesday voted to impose drastic new cuts to the commercial harvest of cod along the Atlantic coast, arguing that the only way to save the centuries-old cod fishing industry was to sharply limit it.

Andrew McConiskey, 27, guiding cod off the Lady Jane.

In the 1600s, the lowly cod was so abundant in the cold North Atlantic waters that, along with boatbuilding and timbering, it provided the foundation of the New England economy. In the 1700s, a "sacred cod" was bestowed on the State House in Massachusetts, where it hangs to this day as a symbol of the importance of cod fishing to the region.

But over recent decades, the once bountiful cod has been so depleted that government officials now say that it stands on the verge of extinction.

At a grim daylong session here, a deeply divided New England Fishery Management Council voted to recommend reductions of 77 percent from last year's catch for each of the next three years for cod in the Gulf of Maine.

It also recommended cuts of 61 percent from last year for one year only to the cod catch on Georges Bank, a vast area off Cape Cod, which was named for the fish. The council's recommendations are subject to approval by the federal government, which is expected to put them in place by May 1.

"We are headed, slowly, seeming inexorably, to oblivion," said John Bullard, the regional administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and a member of the council, as he explained his support for the catch limits. "I do not deny the costs that are going to be paid by fishermen, families, communities. They are real. They will hurt."

The problem, he said, is not government inflexibility, as fishermen have suggested, but the lack of fish. "It's midnight and getting darker when it comes to how many cod there are," he said. "There isn't enough cod for people to make a decent living."

But opponents said the limits would not help save the industry.

"Right now what we've got is a plan that guarantees the fishermen's extinction and does nothing to ameliorate it," David Goethel, a New Hampshire-based fisherman and biologist, said as he cast his vote against the plan.

Fishermen were furious with the result.

"I'm leaving here in a coffin," said Carlos Rafael, who owns a commercial fishing business in New Bedford, Mass. "With all these cuts, I won't be able to keep half of my fleet working. I'll have to cut down from 20 groundfish boats to maybe 5or 6."

Before the vote, fishermen had crowded into the meeting room, many pleading that the limits not be set so low.

"We have done everything that has been asked of us," said Paul Vitale, who fishes commercially in Gloucester, Mass. "I don't want to go anywhere else for work, as demented as that sounds."

The plan reduces the catch of cod in the Gulf of Maine down to 1,550 metric tons a year for the next three years; the limit was 8,000 metric tons a decade ago. The catch in Georges Bank would drop to 2,002 metric tons, down from 12,000 from a decade ago.

 "They're huge, there's no other way to describe it," said Tom Nies, a fishery analyst for the council.

At its last peak in 2001, Mr. Nies said, the industry made about $100 million. It made about $80 million last year. The new limits could cut the size of the industry for this year to about $55 million, for a loss of $25 million.

 But fishermen said the true impact of the cuts would go much deeper.

 "It's 80 percent of a really small number to begin with," Mr. Goethe said. He said the actual loss to the industry would be more like $60 million. "When you get down to cuts that small, there's simply no place to go," he said.

Frank Mirarchi, a fisherman from Scituate, Mass., who primarily pursues groundfish, said that the proposed limits would deprive him of his living and that the cuts would ripple up and down the coast.

Media files:
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NYT > Home Page: Patty Andrews, Singer With the Andrews Sisters, Dies at 94

NYT > Home Page
HomePage
Patty Andrews, Singer With the Andrews Sisters, Dies at 94
Jan 31st 2013, 01:28

Associated Press

The Andrews Sisters, with Patty at center, in a 1947 publicity still.

Patty Andrews, the last of the Andrews Sisters, the jaunty vocal trio whose immensely popular music became part of the patriotic fabric of World War II America, died on Wednesday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 94.

Patty Andrews, center, with her sisters Maxene, left and LaVerne, in the 1940s. The Andrews Sisters, with Patty singing soprano, sold tens of millions of records in the 1930s and '40s.

Laverne, left, Maxene, center, and Patty, right, sang for soldiers disembarking in New York City in 1945.

Lynda Wells, a niece, confirmed the death.

With their jazzy renditions of songs like "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy (of Company B)," "Rum and Coca-Cola" and "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree (With Anyone Else but Me)," Patty, Maxene and LaVerne Andrews sold war bonds, boosted morale on the home front, performed with Bing Crosby and with the Glenn Miller Orchestra, made movies and entertained thousands of American troops overseas, for whom the women represented the loves and the land the troops had left behind.

Patty, the youngest, was a soprano and sang lead; Maxene handled the high harmony; and LaVerne, the oldest, took the low notes. They began singing together as children; by the time they were teenagers they made up an accomplished vocal group. Modeling their act on the commercially successful Boswell Sisters, they joined a traveling revue and sang at country fairs and in vaudeville shows. Their big break came in 1937 when they were signed by Decca Records, but their first recording went nowhere.

Their second effort featured the popular standard "Nice Work If You Can Get It," but it was the flip side that turned out to be pure gold. The song was a Yiddish show tune, "Bei Mir Bist Du Schön (Means That You're Grand)," with new English lyrics by Sammy Cahn, and the Andrews Sisters' version, recorded in 1937, became the top-selling record in the country.

Other hits followed, and in 1940 they were signed by Universal Pictures. They appeared in more than a dozen films during the next seven years — sometimes just singing, sometimes also acting. They made their film debut in "Argentine Nights," a 1940 comedy that starred the Ritz Brothers, and the next year appeared in three films with Bud Abbott and Lou Costello: "Buck Privates," "In the Navy" and "Hold That Ghost." Their film credits also include "Swingtime Johnny" (1943), "Hollywood Canteen" (1944) and the Bob Hope-Bing Crosby comedy "Road to Rio" (1947).

After selling more than 75 million records, the Andrews Sisters broke up in 1953 when Patty decided to go solo. By 1956 they were together again, but musical tastes were changing and they found it hard to adapt. When LaVerne Andrews died of cancer in 1967, no suitable replacement could be found, and Patty and Maxene soon went their separate ways. Patty continued to perform solo, and Maxene joined the staff of a private college in South Lake Tahoe, Calif.

Patricia Marie Andrews was born on Feb. 16, 1918, in Minneapolis. Her father, Peter, was a Greek immigrant who changed his name from Andreos to Andrews when he came to America. Her mother, Olga, was Norwegian.

Like her older sisters, Patty learned to love music as a child (she also became a good tap dancer), and she did not have to be persuaded when Maxene suggested that the sisters form a trio in 1932. She was 14 when they began to perform in public.

As their fame and fortune grew, the sisters came to realize that the public saw them as an entity, not as individuals. In a 1974 interview with The New York Times, Patty explained what that was like: "When our fans used to see one of us, they'd always ask, 'Where are your sisters?' Every time we got an award, it was just one award for the three of us." This could be irritating, she said with a touch of exasperation: "We're not glued together."

The Andrews Sisters re-entered the limelight in the early 1970s when Bette Midler released her own recording of "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy," modeled closely on theirs. It reached the Top 10, and its success led to several new compilations of the Andrews Sisters' own hits.

The previous year, Patty Andrews had appeared in a West Coast musical called "Victory Canteen," set during World War II. When the show was rewritten for Broadway and renamed "Over Here!," the producers decided that the Andrews Sisters were the only logical choice for the leads. They hired Patty and lured Maxene back into show business as well. The show opened in March 1974 and was the sisters' belated Broadway debut. It was also the last time they sang together.

The sisters got into a bitter money dispute with the producers and with each other, leading to the show's closing in January 1975 and the cancellation of plans for a national tour. After that, the sisters pursued solo careers into the 1990s. They never reconciled and were still estranged when Maxene Andrews died in 1995.

Patty Andrews's first marriage, to the movie producer Marty Melcher, lasted two years and ended in divorce in 1949. (Mr. Melcher later married Doris Day.) In 1951 she married Wally Weschler, who had been the sisters' pianist and conductor and who later became her manager. They had no children. Mr. Weschler died in 2010. Ms. Andrews is survived by her foster daughter, Pam DuBois.

A final salute to the Andrews Sisters came in 1991 in the form of "Company B," a ballet by the choreographer Paul Taylor subtitled "Songs Sung by the Andrews Sisters." The work, which featured nine of the trio's most popular songs, including "Rum and Coca-Cola" and, of course, "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy," underscored the enduring appeal of the three sisters from Minneapolis.

Dennis Hevesi contributed reporting.

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