Wealth Matters: Protect Yourself from Investment Fraud This Madoff Day

Left to right: Louis Lanzano/Associated Press; Stephen Chernin/Getty Images; Richard Carson/Reuters

Three men accused of defrauding clients arriving at federal court. From left, Marc Dreier in Manhattan on May 11, 2009; Bernard Madoff in Manhattan on March 12, 2009; and R. Allen Stanford in Houston last Feb. 29.

THIS is the time of year when most people think of gifts and holiday gatherings. I couldn’t help thinking of frauds past.

Four years ago this week, Marc S. Dreier, a high-flying lawyer, was arrested and later charged with defrauding his clients of $700 million. A few days later, Bernard L. Madoff’s fraud was uncovered. Totaling an estimated $65 billion, Mr. Madoff’s fraud was in a class by itself. And then, a short time afterward, some of the brokers who had been selling fraudulent certificates of deposit for R. Allen Stanford began to turn on him; he was arrested in February 2009 and later convicted of a $7 billion fraud.

These schemes collapsed with the economy in 2008. But on their anniversaries, it may be a good time to ask whether you have done all you can to lower your risk of being caught up in a similar fraud. Call it Madoff Day (celebrated on Dec. 11, the day of his arrest).

Protecting yourself against fraud, or simply bad advice, is easier said than done. The most common advice is to make sure your money is held by an independent custodian or firm whose job is to keep your money safe. That wasn’t the case with either the Madoff or Stanford fraud. But that is only one small step.

So what else can investors do to protect themselves, not only from unscrupulous advisers but also from rushing into an investment that is clearly too good to be true?

Marc H. Simon, a lawyer who lost two years of bonuses, his job and months of unreimbursed expenses when Mr. Dreier’s law firm collapsed, said he has thought a lot about what he could have done differently.

Mr. Simon said that six or seven years before the fraud was uncovered, he knew of inconsistencies in the firm’s 401(k) plans. But the big red flag should have been that Mr. Dreier had sole control over every major decision at the law firm. Still, that had been Mr. Dreier’s pitch: work for him and don’t worry about the irksome details partners typically face.

“People like Drier and Madoff were highly intelligent individuals, they were very charismatic and they were giving people what they wanted,” Mr. Simon said. “It is harder to bring into question those who are providing you something you want.”

Randall A. Pulman, a lawyer in San Antonio who represents many victims of Mr. Stanford’s fraud, agreed that the will to believe was what ensnared people.

“For you and me, it’s too good to be true,” he said. “For the guy who has been working in the oil fields, how is he supposed to know?”

Of course, fraud and just plain bad advice are not limited to the poor or unsophisticated. Robert P. Rittereiser, the former chief financial officer of Merrill Lynch and former chief executive of E. F. Hutton, is working as the receiver for two funds suing J. Ezra Merkin, a former money manager who steered money to Mr. Madoff. Mr. Rittereiser did not think investors in Mr. Merkin’s funds knew that their money was simply being passed on to Mr. Madoff. But even if they did, they may not have seen anything to be concerned about.

“They were investing money and getting appropriate returns for the kind of fund it was,” Mr. Rittereiser said. “Most of them had a relationship of some kind and confidence with Merkin and the people he was dealing with.”

So how do you protect yourself? The first step would seem to be picking an honest adviser. The good news is that only about 7 percent of advisers have disciplinary records, said Nicholas W. Stuller, president and chief executive of AdviceIQ, a company that evaluates advisers. The bad news is that those violations appear only after someone has filed a complaint.

Mr. Stuller’s company, which has now approved some 2,400 advisers, rejects anyone with any type of infraction — from a securities fine to a misdemeanor for getting into a fight. He said this policy might keep some good advisers off the site, but his goal is to search the records of federal and state regulators to find advisers he knows are clean.

“There are advisers who have significant negative disciplinary history with one regulator but appear to be pristine with another regulator,” Mr. Stuller said. “There was a guy in Minnesota who was stealing insurance premiums. In his enforcement record, it says, ‘We’re going to alert Finra,’ but his Finra record is clean,” he said, referring to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. “That’s where the regulators don’t talk to each other.”

AdviceIQ’s main competitor, BrightScope, takes a different approach. It notes disciplinary actions taken against advisers but leaves it up to the consumer to go to regulators to determine what the violations were.

“We want the consumer to go to the source data, because there is a lot of liability in publishing that,” said Mike Alfred, co-founder and chief executive of BrightScope. “Many of these folks are good advisers, and they’ll take care of you. But what if they had one crazy client who put all his money in Internet stocks in 2000 and then sued?”

Read More..

Justices to Take Up Generic Drug Case

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court said on Friday that it would decide whether a pharmaceutical company should be allowed to pay a competitor millions of dollars to keep a generic copy of a best-selling drug off the market.

Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

Ralph Neas, head of the Generic Pharmaceutical Association, said the case would alter the marketing of new generics.

The case could settle a decade-long battle between federal regulators, who say the deals violate antitrust law, and the pharmaceutical industry, which contends that they are really just settlements of disputes over patents that protect the billions of dollars they pour into research and development.

Three separate federal circuit courts of appeal have ruled over the last decade that the deals were allowable. But in July a federal appeals court in Philadelphia — which covers the territory where many big drug makers are based — said the arrangements were anticompetitive.

Both sides in the case supported the petition for the Supreme Court to decide the case, each arguing that the conflicting appeals court decisions would inject uncertainty into their operations.

By keeping lower-priced generic drugs off the market, drug companies are able to charge higher prices than they otherwise could. Last year, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that a Senate bill to outlaw those payments would lower drug costs in the United States by $11 billion and would save the federal government $4.8 billion over 10 years.

Senator Charles E. Grassley, an Iowa Republican who co-sponsored the Senate bill, which never came to the floor for a vote, praised the decision.

The Federal Trade Commission first filed the suit in question in 2009. Jon Leibowitz, chairman of the F.T.C., said, “These pay-for-delay deals are win-win for the drug companies, but big losers for U.S. consumers and taxpayers.”

Generic drug makers say that the payments preserve a system that has saved American consumers hundreds of billions of dollars.

“This case could determine how an entire industry does business because it would dramatically affect the economics of each decision to introduce a new generic drug,” Ralph G. Neas, president of the Generic Pharmaceutical Association, said in a statement. “The current industry paradigm of challenging patents on branded drugs in order to bring new generics to market as soon as possible has produced $1.06 trillion in savings over the past 10 years.”

The case will review a decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, based in Atlanta, which in the spring ruled in favor of the drug makers, Watson Pharmaceuticals and Solvay Pharmaceuticals. Watson had applied for federal approval to sell a generic version of AndroGel, a testosterone replacement drug made by Solvay.

While courts have long held that paying a competitor to stay off the market creates unfair competition, the pharmaceuticals case is different because it involves patents, whose essential purpose is to prevent competition.

When a generic manufacturer seeks approval to market a copy of a brand-name drug, it also often files a lawsuit challenging a patent that the drug’s originator says prevents competition.

Last year, for the third time since 2003, the 11th Circuit upheld the agreements as long as the allegedly anticompetitive behavior that results — in this case, keeping the generic drug off the market — is the same thing that would take place if the brand-name company’s patent were upheld.

Two other federal circuit courts, the Second Circuit and the Federal Circuit, have ruled similarly. But in July, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals said that those arrangements were anticompetitive on their face and violated antitrust law.

The agreements are also affected by a peculiar condition in the law that legalized generic competition for prescription drugs. That law, known as the Hatch-Waxman Act, gives a 180-day period of exclusivity to the first generic drug maker to file for approval of a generic copy and to file a lawsuit challenging the brand-name drug’s patent.

Brand-name drug companies have taken advantage of that law, finding that they can settle the patent suit by getting the generic company to agree to stay out of the market for a period of time. Because that generic company also has exclusivity rights, no other generic companies can enter the market.

Michael A. Carrier, a professor at Rutgers School of Law-Camden, said that while there were provisions in the law under which a generic company could forfeit that exclusivity, “they really are toothless in practice.”

One wild card could still prevent the Supreme Court from definitively settling the question. In granting the petition to hear the case, the Supreme Court said that Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. recused himself, taking no part in the consideration or decision.

That opens the possibility that a 4-4 decision could result, upholding the lower court case that went against the F.T.C. and in favor of the drug makers. But it would leave the broader question for another day.

The case is Federal Trade Commission v. Watson Pharmaceuticals et al, No. 12-416.

Read More..

Justices to Take Up Generic Drug Case

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court said on Friday that it would decide whether a pharmaceutical company should be allowed to pay a competitor millions of dollars to keep a generic copy of a best-selling drug off the market.

Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

Ralph Neas, head of the Generic Pharmaceutical Association, said the case would alter the marketing of new generics.

The case could settle a decade-long battle between federal regulators, who say the deals violate antitrust law, and the pharmaceutical industry, which contends that they are really just settlements of disputes over patents that protect the billions of dollars they pour into research and development.

Three separate federal circuit courts of appeal have ruled over the last decade that the deals were allowable. But in July a federal appeals court in Philadelphia — which covers the territory where many big drug makers are based — said the arrangements were anticompetitive.

Both sides in the case supported the petition for the Supreme Court to decide the case, each arguing that the conflicting appeals court decisions would inject uncertainty into their operations.

By keeping lower-priced generic drugs off the market, drug companies are able to charge higher prices than they otherwise could. Last year, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that a Senate bill to outlaw those payments would lower drug costs in the United States by $11 billion and would save the federal government $4.8 billion over 10 years.

Senator Charles E. Grassley, an Iowa Republican who co-sponsored the Senate bill, which never came to the floor for a vote, praised the decision.

The Federal Trade Commission first filed the suit in question in 2009. Jon Leibowitz, chairman of the F.T.C., said, “These pay-for-delay deals are win-win for the drug companies, but big losers for U.S. consumers and taxpayers.”

Generic drug makers say that the payments preserve a system that has saved American consumers hundreds of billions of dollars.

“This case could determine how an entire industry does business because it would dramatically affect the economics of each decision to introduce a new generic drug,” Ralph G. Neas, president of the Generic Pharmaceutical Association, said in a statement. “The current industry paradigm of challenging patents on branded drugs in order to bring new generics to market as soon as possible has produced $1.06 trillion in savings over the past 10 years.”

The case will review a decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, based in Atlanta, which in the spring ruled in favor of the drug makers, Watson Pharmaceuticals and Solvay Pharmaceuticals. Watson had applied for federal approval to sell a generic version of AndroGel, a testosterone replacement drug made by Solvay.

While courts have long held that paying a competitor to stay off the market creates unfair competition, the pharmaceuticals case is different because it involves patents, whose essential purpose is to prevent competition.

When a generic manufacturer seeks approval to market a copy of a brand-name drug, it also often files a lawsuit challenging a patent that the drug’s originator says prevents competition.

Last year, for the third time since 2003, the 11th Circuit upheld the agreements as long as the allegedly anticompetitive behavior that results — in this case, keeping the generic drug off the market — is the same thing that would take place if the brand-name company’s patent were upheld.

Two other federal circuit courts, the Second Circuit and the Federal Circuit, have ruled similarly. But in July, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals said that those arrangements were anticompetitive on their face and violated antitrust law.

The agreements are also affected by a peculiar condition in the law that legalized generic competition for prescription drugs. That law, known as the Hatch-Waxman Act, gives a 180-day period of exclusivity to the first generic drug maker to file for approval of a generic copy and to file a lawsuit challenging the brand-name drug’s patent.

Brand-name drug companies have taken advantage of that law, finding that they can settle the patent suit by getting the generic company to agree to stay out of the market for a period of time. Because that generic company also has exclusivity rights, no other generic companies can enter the market.

Michael A. Carrier, a professor at Rutgers School of Law-Camden, said that while there were provisions in the law under which a generic company could forfeit that exclusivity, “they really are toothless in practice.”

One wild card could still prevent the Supreme Court from definitively settling the question. In granting the petition to hear the case, the Supreme Court said that Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. recused himself, taking no part in the consideration or decision.

That opens the possibility that a 4-4 decision could result, upholding the lower court case that went against the F.T.C. and in favor of the drug makers. But it would leave the broader question for another day.

The case is Federal Trade Commission v. Watson Pharmaceuticals et al, No. 12-416.

Read More..

Thefts a Concern as Holiday Deliveries Increase

Librado Romero/The New York Times

A driver in Midtown Manhattan on Friday. U.P.S. expects to deliver more than 500 million packages this season, leaving some to fear a rise in thefts.

A pair of brown leather boots was snatched last week from a doorstep in the suburbs of Chicago. A computer disappeared from a front porch in Fort Worth last month, and an iPad case was stolen outside a Long Island home this week.

As the peak of the holiday gift-buying season approaches and more people are ordering online, here is the downside: Grinch-like bandits are swiping the deliveries from doorsteps when families are not home. Some thieves follow U.P.S. and FedEx trucks along their routes and nab the gifts, while others simply drive through residential neighborhoods looking for packages.

In River Forest, Ill., where the police arrested two young men last week, accusing them of stealing deliveries from homes, plainclothes police officers trail U.P.S. trucks to ferret out thieves who may be following them, Cmdr. Jim O’Shea said.

“This is common at this time of year,” Commander O’Shea said. “We’re trying to take a proactive approach to curtail this.”

So far this holiday season, Americans have spent $21.4 billion online, up 14 percent from last year, according to comScore, a research company. U.P.S. alone expects to deliver more than 500 million packages, and with many of them being left on doorsteps, there could be ample opportunity for thieves to strike.

The Better Business Bureau now recommends that customers be proactive, asking their shipping companies for tracking numbers and requiring signatures upon delivery. If they are not at home, customers should ask for their packages to be held at a lobby desk or at a local shipping center, advised Claire Rosenzweig, the president of the group’s New York chapter.

There are no national statistics on doorstep thefts, but reports of local episodes abound. In Burbank, Calif., with five reported incidents this year, compared with one last year, two teenagers were arrested last month after they were found trailing a U.P.S. truck. One young man was released, while the other person, Ararat Gevondyan, 19, was charged with receiving stolen property, with his bail set at $10,000.

“It’s a crime of opportunity,” Sgt. Darin Ryburn of the Burbank Police Department said. The burglars are “going through these packages for items that could be resold,” he said.

On Long Island, two young men were arrested this week, suspected of stealing headphones, an iPad case and two pairs of Skechers shoes from homes in the Bay Shore area.

A few of the thefts have been caught by home surveillance cameras set up to catch or deter vandals. A television station in Pasadena, Calif., showed a video of a woman taking a package from a doorstep. The homeowner said she never got the Paula Deen electric salt-and-pepper shaker her sister had sent her.

While it may seem extreme to install cameras to keep an eye on packages, this type of home surveillance has become more common in recent years, said Marc Horowitz, a spokesman for Brickhouse Security. The company’s sales for home security cameras have more than doubled in the past year, he said, as the cameras have become less expensive. A simple motion-activated porch camera costs about $100.

Some camera customers fear the culprit is closer to home, breaking that commandment of the cul-de-sac, Do Not Covet Thy Neighbor’s Flat-Screen TV.

Mr. Horowitz said he had heard reports from his sales representatives that some customers were buying cameras because they suspected neighbors of pilfering packages (or newspapers and plants).

U.P.S. started a program last year called U.P.S. My Choice, which allows a customer to receive an e-mail or text message before a package arrives and reroute it if no one is going to be home.

U.P.S. drivers are also trained to leave packages out of sight, said Natalie Godwin, a company spokeswoman. Ms. Godwin was with a driver in Atlanta on Tuesday when he decided not to leave a package on someone’s stoop because it was clearly an expensive computer monitor. He dropped it off nearby at the apartment complex’s office.

Drivers leave notes telling the tenants where to find packages, Ms. Godwin said. Often, she added, “They’ll use their own judgment.”

Read More..

In Shift of Jobs, Apple Will Make Some Macs in U.S.

Apple plans to join a small but growing number of companies that are bringing some manufacturing jobs back to the United States, drawn by the growing economic and political advantages of producing in their home market.

Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

Timothy Cook, Apple’s chief, said that the company was planning to build more Mac components domestically, with partners.

On Thursday, Apple’s chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, who built its efficient Asian manufacturing network, said the company would invest $100 million in producing some of its Mac computers in the United States, beyond the assembly work it already does in the United States. He provided little detail about how the money would be spent or what kinds of workers might benefit.

Apple, which long manufactured parts in the United States but stopped about a decade ago, has been under pressure to create more jobs here given its market power. It sold 237 million iPods, iPads, Macs and other devices in the year ended in September.

“I don’t think we have a responsibility to create a certain kind of job,” Mr. Cook told Bloomberg Businessweek. “But I think we do have a responsibility to create jobs.”

Some analysts are hopeful that the move by a big, innovative company like Apple could inspire a broader renaissance in American manufacturing, but a number of experts remain skeptical.

“I find it hard to see how the supply chains that drive manufacturing are going to move back here,” said Andre Sharon, a professor at Boston University and director of the Fraunhofer Center for Manufacturing Innovation. “So much of the know-how has been lost to Asia, and there’s no compelling reason for it to return. It’s great when a company says they want to create American jobs — but it only really helps the country if those are jobs that belong here, if it starts a chain reaction or is part of a bigger economic shift.”

Over the last few years, companies across various industries, including electronics, automotive and medical devices, have announced that they are “reshoring” jobs after decades of shipping them abroad. Lower energy costs in America, rising wages in developing countries like China and Brazil, quality control issues and the desire to keep the supply chain close to the gigantic American consumer base have all factored into these decisions.

“Companies were going abroad in pursuit of cost reduction, and it turns out there were a lot of unintended costs,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at Mesirow Financial. “America has been looking a lot more competitive lately.”

Even so, the impact on the American job market has been modest so far. Much of the work brought back has been high-value-added, automated production that requires few actual workers, which is part of the reason America’s higher wages are not scaring off companies.

American manufacturing has been growing in the last two years, but the sector still has two million fewer jobs than it had when the recession began in December 2007. Worldwide manufacturing appears to be growing much faster, even for many of the American-owned companies that are expanding at home. General Electric, for example, has hired American workers to build water heaters, refrigerators, dishwashers and high-efficiency topload washers, but continues to add more jobs overseas as well.

Apple has not announced plans to move the complex, faster-growing portions of its product lines. Macs now represent a relatively small part of Apple’s business, accounting for less than 20 percent of its nearly $36 billion in revenue in its most recent quarter. The company’s iPad and iPhone products, which amount to nearly 70 percent of its sales, will continue to be made in low-cost centers of manufacturing like China, mostly on contract with outside companies like Foxconn.

Mr. Cook’s statements suggested Apple was planning to build more of the Mac’s components domestically, but with partners. He told Bloomberg Businessweek that the plan “doesn’t mean that Apple will do it ourselves, but we’ll be working with people, and we’ll be investing our money.”

Whether Apple’s newly announced plan might help create other higher-paying jobs along the supply line depends on the nature of the manufacturing.

Other computer manufacturing has been trickling back to the United States after largely shifting overseas in the 1990s.

Charles Duhigg and Quentin Hardy contributed reporting.

Read More..

Euro Watch: Spending Data Points to Continuing Woes in Euro Zone

PARIS — European consumers continue to cut back on spending, official data showed Wednesday, indicating that the region’s financial crisis and ailing job market were weighing on hopes of an economic recovery.

Retail sales in the 17-nation euro zone fell 1.2 percent in October from September, and were down 3.6 percent from a year earlier, Eurostat, the statistical agency of the European Union, reported Wednesday.

For the entire 27-nation European Union, sales declined 1.1 percent from September and 2.4 percent from October 2011, Eurostat said.

The big dip in retail sales was partly a result of front-loading of purchases before value-added taxes rose in some countries, said James Nixon, an economist in London for Société Générale.

The fiscal crisis in the euro zone and the austerity measures employed to combat it have made companies reticent about hiring, helping to drive the euro zone into recession in the third quarter. That has created a vicious circle, in which falling consumer spending is expected to weigh further on the economy.

A reading Wednesday on euro zone activity from a private data and analysis firm also suggested the economy continued to contract. Markit Economics’ composite purchasing managers’ index for November came in at 46.5. That was a bump upward from the 40-month low of 45.7 in October, but the 10th straight month below 50, a level that suggests shrinking output.

On Friday, Eurostat reported that unemployment in the euro zone rose to a record 11.7 percent in October from 11.6 percent a month earlier, and that the jobless rate among those under 25 years of age was 23.9 percent.

The European Commission on Wednesday expressed grave concern about the problem of youth unemployment, noting that just the immediate cost to governments — in terms of lost revenue and social outlays — worked out to an estimated €150 billion, or $196 billion, a year, or 1.2 percent of E.U. gross domestic product.

It recommended a new program to address the problem, with measures including job guarantees for young people, labor market changes to reduce obstacles to hiring across European borders, and further efforts to provide high-quality training and apprenticeship programs.

The European commissioner for employment and social affairs, Laszlo Andor, said in a statement that the cost of failing to help put young people to work would be “catastrophic.”

The European Central Bank and its British counterpart, the Bank of England, will hold policy meetings Thursday, and though signs of weakness would appear to give the central banks scope for action, neither is believed to be planning any major changes to current monetary policy.

Economists expect the E.C.B. to leave its main refinancing rate at 0.75 percent, while the Bank of England is expected to stand pat at 0.5 percent.

Action by the central banks has helped to calm markets and relieve the pressure on the euro, but conditions remain unsettled. As an indication of the stresses that have sent investors scurrying for the perceived safety of major sovereign bonds, yields on France’s 10-year sovereign debt fell on Wednesday to around 2 percent, the lowest level on record.

The dismal retail sales data came as the European Stability Mechanism, the euro zone’s permanent new bailout fund, said it had issued about €39.5 billion in bonds to cover the recapitalization of Spain’s banking sector.

Euro zone leaders agreed in June to provide up to €100 billion to help Spanish banks, which have been battered in the aftermath of a property bubble collapse and economic dislocation caused by austerity measures. The funds were originally raised by the bloc’s temporary bailout fund, the European Financial Stability Facility, and the transaction Wednesday represented an effective transfer of that money from the old facility to the permanent one.

The fund said that €37 billion would be handed over some time in December to the Spanish government’s own banking rescue fund, the FROB, to cover the needs of BFA-Bankia, Catalunya Banc, NCG Banco and Banco de Valencia. The FROB will use the remaining €2.5 billion to capitalize Spain’s “bad bank,” a company called Sareb that is being used to sift through soured assets.

The action Wednesday “is an important event as the E.S.M. has now started to actively fulfill its role as the permanent rescue mechanism for the euro zone,” Klaus Regling, the head of the European Stability Mechanism, said in a statement.

Mr. Nixon, of Société Générale, predicted that the euro zone economy would shrink in the fourth quarter at an annualized 1.2 percent rate, but said he expected some of the northern European economies, including Germany, to start pulling away from the laggards in 2013.

“We may have reached a bottom,” Mr. Nixon said, citing an easing of tension in the market for sovereign debt and smoother financing conditions. “At least things aren’t getting worse any faster.”

Read More..

Recipes for Health: Winter Squash and Walnut Spread — Recipes for Health

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

2 pounds pumpkin or winter squash, such as kabocha or butternut, seeds and membranes scraped away, cut into large pieces (if using butternut, cut in half crosswise, just above the bulbous bottom part, then cut these halves into lengthwise quarters and scrape away the seeds and membranes)

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1/2 medium onion, finely chopped

2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh mint

1/8 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

1/4 cup (1 1/4 ounces/35 g) lightly toasted walnuts, finely chopped

1 ounce Parmesan, grated (about 1/3 cup)

Salt and freshly ground pepper

1. Heat the oven to 425 degrees. Line a baking sheet with foil and oil the foil. Place the squash on the baking sheet and rub or toss with 1 tablespoon of the olive oil. Place in the oven and bake until tender, 40 to 60 minutes depending on the type of squash and the size of the pieces. Every 15 minutes use tongs to turn the pieces over so different surfaces become browned on the foil. Remove from the oven and allow to cool, then peel and place in the bowl of a food processor fitted with the steel blade. Pulse several times, scrape down the sides of the bowl, then purée until smooth.

2. Heat another tablespoon of the olive oil over medium heat in a large, heavy skillet and add the onion. Add a generous pinch of salt, turn the heat to medium low and cook, stirring often, until very tender, sweet and lightly caramelized, about 20 minutes. Remove from the heat and add to the squash. Add the mint, nutmeg, walnuts, Parmesan, and 1 tablespoon olive oil and pulse together. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve on croutons.

Yield: 2 cups

Advance preparation: This will keep for three to four days in the refrigerator and freezes well. It benefits from being made a day ahead.

Variation: Omit the Parmesan for a vegan version. If desired, blend in 1 to 2 teaspoons of light miso.

Nutritional information per tablespoon: 35 calories; 2 grams fat; 0 grams saturated fat; 1 gram polyunsaturated fat; 1 gram monounsaturated fat; 1 milligram cholesterol; 4 grams carbohydrates; 1 gram dietary fiber; 15 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste); 1 gram protein

Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health.”

Read More..

Recipes for Health: Winter Squash and Walnut Spread — Recipes for Health

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

2 pounds pumpkin or winter squash, such as kabocha or butternut, seeds and membranes scraped away, cut into large pieces (if using butternut, cut in half crosswise, just above the bulbous bottom part, then cut these halves into lengthwise quarters and scrape away the seeds and membranes)

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1/2 medium onion, finely chopped

2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh mint

1/8 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

1/4 cup (1 1/4 ounces/35 g) lightly toasted walnuts, finely chopped

1 ounce Parmesan, grated (about 1/3 cup)

Salt and freshly ground pepper

1. Heat the oven to 425 degrees. Line a baking sheet with foil and oil the foil. Place the squash on the baking sheet and rub or toss with 1 tablespoon of the olive oil. Place in the oven and bake until tender, 40 to 60 minutes depending on the type of squash and the size of the pieces. Every 15 minutes use tongs to turn the pieces over so different surfaces become browned on the foil. Remove from the oven and allow to cool, then peel and place in the bowl of a food processor fitted with the steel blade. Pulse several times, scrape down the sides of the bowl, then purée until smooth.

2. Heat another tablespoon of the olive oil over medium heat in a large, heavy skillet and add the onion. Add a generous pinch of salt, turn the heat to medium low and cook, stirring often, until very tender, sweet and lightly caramelized, about 20 minutes. Remove from the heat and add to the squash. Add the mint, nutmeg, walnuts, Parmesan, and 1 tablespoon olive oil and pulse together. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve on croutons.

Yield: 2 cups

Advance preparation: This will keep for three to four days in the refrigerator and freezes well. It benefits from being made a day ahead.

Variation: Omit the Parmesan for a vegan version. If desired, blend in 1 to 2 teaspoons of light miso.

Nutritional information per tablespoon: 35 calories; 2 grams fat; 0 grams saturated fat; 1 gram polyunsaturated fat; 1 gram monounsaturated fat; 1 milligram cholesterol; 4 grams carbohydrates; 1 gram dietary fiber; 15 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste); 1 gram protein

Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health.”

Read More..

Tool Kit: Apps and Accessories Help Make the iPad a Scaled-Down Darkroom

Over the years, I’ve been in and out of relationships with dozens of film cameras, Pentax, Canon, Nikon, Minolta and others, as a result of my passion for photography.

In the late 1990s, after college, I snapped so many photos that I ended up building a 5-by-6-foot darkroom in the corner of my living room in Brooklyn. There, standing amid long, dark strips of film under the glow of a dim red light, I spent countless hours mixing pungent chemicals and developing and printing photographs.

I have since retired most of my film cameras. Now, my camera bag is all digital, and my darkroom is 7 inches wide and 9.5 inches long: an Apple iPad.

The chemicals I once used have been replaced by a tiny, white USB connector that allows me to transfer my photos from any digital camera into the iPad in a matter of seconds.

What inspired me to jump from film to digital was immediacy — or impatience, depending on how you look at it. In the old days, I’d have to finish a roll of film, get home, develop it, wait, then wait some more. With digital, you snap a picture and there it is, like magic, on the back of your digital camera. With the iPad as a darkroom, it’s also editable immediately.

Editing your photos on an iPad instead of a conventional laptop also means you can carry one device fewer on your travels. Although most applications on the iPad will shrink the size and therefore the quality of your images when you import them, there are apps that can deal with full-size images. You can even connect wirelessly to printers intended to work with the iPad.

For older iPads with a 30-pin connection, Apple sells the $29 Apple iPad Camera Connection Kit. It comes with two connectors that plug directly into the iPad’s base. One has a USB cable slot, which works with almost any camera, and the other has a slot for SD memory cards.

There are also many less expensive third-party connectors, including a 2-in-1 Camera Connection Kit ($10) available from Amazon.

The cables for newer iPads, with the lighting connector, are overpriced, with each connector costing $30.

To transfer the photos from your camera, you plug a connector into the base of your iPad, connect your camera with a USB cord, then turn the camera on. The iPad will detect that the device is connected and allow you to select which images you would like to import. It’s quicker than a Polaroid.

The immediacy of digital has pushed photographers to want to edit their photos and then share them right away. A number of applications allow you to do this, some free and some costing as much as $20.

SnapSeed ($5) is an app made specifically for multitouch photo-editing. Sliding your finger up and down on the screen will allow you to alter the image, changing the contrast, brightness or saturation. A feature called Selective Adjust allows you to drag little adjustable pointers all over a picture to tweak the lighting in specific areas.

Apple’s own iPhoto application ($5) for the iPad also has some advanced features. You can apply filters, turning a color photo into a sepia or “vintage” image. If you’re in a rush, “auto-enhance” will try to improve the image for you. There are also brushes that pop out from the bottom of the screen, making your iPad feel like a painter’s palette. These can be used to remove red-eye and soften or sharpen an image.

Adobe, the big maker of graphics and photoediting software, offers two photo-specific iPad applications. Photoshop Express, which is free, has some limited editing features, like adjusting tint, saturation and exposure, but it’s really for novices. Advanced users will want to try Photoshop Touch ($10). This application offers similar controls to Adobe software on a standard computer — layers, curves, the ability to add text, and other advanced features. But be warned: the app is somewhat confusing to navigate, and you will have to take some time with its tutorial before jumping in.

For photographers who want to take iPad editing to another level, there are more advanced — and expensive — options.

Jeff Carlson, author of the book “The iPad for Photographers,” sometimes bypasses the iPad camera connection kit in favor of an EyeFi SD card and an app called ShutterSnitch ($16). EyeFi cards, which range from $40 to $100 depending on speed and memory size, can connect directly with your iPad wirelessly. Mr. Carlson said that although EyeFi offers a free app, ShutterSnitch is much faster and has a more advanced interface.

Mr. Carlson said he sometimes captures RAW images with his digital cameras. These are uncompressed and large files, often used by professional photographers because they preserve more of the image quality than standard JPEG files. To handle these files he sometimes uses the apps piRAWnha or Photoraw, both $10. But his favored application is Photosmith ($20) an advanced tool that can wirelessly transfer pictures to your desktop computer for printing or editing later.

The only question remaining is which iPad to use. The newer iPads with retina displays are the best choice for editing, as the screen is phenomenally crisp. But they are also expensive. Of course the iPad Mini is lighter, and a fraction of the price, so it might be a better option for vacation snaps. But if you’re someone who really wants to get into your digital photos, you might be disappointed with the Mini’s screen resolution and prefer the big version.

Although digital cameras have changed the way most photographers shoot, I haven’t retired all of my film equipment just yet. There is one area of photography that most app makers and digital camera companies seem to have neglected: black and white.

All of the apps mentioned in this article can strip the color out of an image like a scene from the movie “Pleasantville,” but none have succeeded in recreating the authentic look of black and white photos. In most instances, shooting black and white on digital cameras can feel like making a pizza in a microwave: sure, it looks like a pizza, but it’s just not right.

So every once in a while I will still shoot a roll of 3200-speed black-and-white film on one of my old cameras. Then off I go to a darkroom to get it developed. Nowadays, while I sit waiting amid those pungent and familiar smells, I have my digital darkroom with me, and I edit photos on my iPad while the chemicals work their magic.

Read More..

Blood Is Shed as Egyptian President’s Backers and Rivals Battle in Cairo

Asmaa Waguih/Reuters

Supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood walked past tanks outside the Egyptian presidential palace in Cairo on Thursday. More Photos »

CAIRO — Angry mobs of Islamists battled secular protesters with fists, rocks and firebombs in the streets around the presidential palace for hours overnight in the first major outbreak of violence between political factions here since the revolt against then-President Hosni Mubarak began nearly two years ago.

By early Thursday, at least four people had died and more than 350 injured, according to the Health Ministry. Each side claimed that one of its own had been killed, spurring the fighting. News reports also said armored vehicles were being deployed to protect the presidential palace.

Three senior advisers to Mr. Mubarak’s successor, Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s first freely elected president, resigned during the clashes, blaming him for the bloodshed, and his prime minister implored both sides to pull back in order to make room for “dialogue.”

The scale of the clashes, in an affluent neighborhood just outside Mr. Morsi’s office in the presidential palace, raised the first doubts about Mr. Morsi’s attempt to hold a referendum on Dec. 15 to approve a draft constitution approved by his Islamist allies over the objections of his secular opposition and the Coptic Christian Church.

Periodic gunshots could be heard at the front lines of the fight, and secular protesters displayed birdshot wounds and pellets. But it could not be determined whether the riot police or Islamists or the opposition had fired the guns.

Many in both camps brandished makeshift clubs, and on the secular side a few carried knives. Thousands joined the battle on each side. The riot police initially tried to fight off or break up the crowds with tear gas, but by about 9:30 p.m. Wednesday, the security forces had all but withdrawn. They continued to try to separate the two sides across one boulevard but stayed out of the battle that raged on all around.

In a city square on the Islamist side of the battle lines, a loudspeaker on the top of a moving car blared out exhortations that the fight was about more than politics or Mr. Morsi.

“This is not a fight for an individual, this is not a fight for President Morsi,” the speaker declared. “We are fighting for God’s law, against the secularists and liberals.”

Protesters reportedly set fire to Muslim Brotherhood political offices in the cities of Suez and Ismailia.

Even after two years of periodic battles between protesters and police, Egyptians said they were shocked and alarmed by the spectacle of fellow citizens drawing blood over matters of ideology or political power.

“It is Egyptian fighting Egyptian,” said Mohamed Abu Shukka, 23, who was blocked from entering his apartment building and shaking his head.

Distrust and animosity between Islamists and their secular opponents have mired the outcome of Egypt’s promised transition to democracy in debates about the legitimacy of the new government and its new leaders’ commitment to the rule of law.

The clashes followed two weeks of sporadic violence around the country since Mr. Morsi, a former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood movement, seized temporary powers beyond the review of any court, removing the last check on his authority until ratification of the new constitution.

Mr. Morsi has said he needed the expanded powers to block a conspiracy by corrupt businessmen, Mubarak-appointed judges and opposition leaders to thwart Egypt’s transition to a constitutional democracy. Some opponents, Mr. Morsi’s advisers say, would sacrifice democracy to stop the Islamists from winning elections.

Mr. Morsi’s secular critics have accused Mr. Morsi and the Islamists of seeking to establish a new dictatorship, in part by ramming through a rushed constitution that they charge could ultimately give new power over society to Muslim scholars and Islamists groups. And each side’s actions have confirmed the other’s fears.

As Wednesday’s clashes began, Vice President Mahmoud Mekke offered a compromise that seemed to go nowhere. Mr. Mekke proposed that both sides agree in advance on a package of amendments to the text of the draft constitution to build more support for it before the Dec. 15 vote.

Mai Ayyad contributed reporting.

Read More..