Europe: Germany: Funds for Global Health Fund Reinstated

Signaling that it was pleased with changes in the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, Germany announced Thursday that it would reinstate the annual pledge of 200 million euros (about $267 million) it had made since the fund’s early days. In 2011, Germany temporarily held back half its contribution and threatened to hold back future funds in protest against inefficiencies, thefts by some grantee countries and infighting among the fund’s top executives. Other contributions dried up, forcing the fund to cancel a planned round of grants. Since then, both the fund’s executive director and inspector general have departed, and it was run for one year by a Brazilian banker; he devised an overhaul of the grant-making process that is to take effect next month. In November, Dr. Mark Dybul, the Bush administration’s global AIDS czar, became the new executive director. The fund recently announced that it cut its operating expenses by 5 percent in 2012 while still making 26 percent more in grants than it did in 2011. Of the grants that had been audited, Dr. Dybul said, only 0.5 percent had been lost to fraud. The fund plans a new fund-raising round for later this year. The United States is the fund’s largest supporter, providing roughly a third of its budget.

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Europe: Germany: Funds for Global Health Fund Reinstated

Signaling that it was pleased with changes in the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, Germany announced Thursday that it would reinstate the annual pledge of 200 million euros (about $267 million) it had made since the fund’s early days. In 2011, Germany temporarily held back half its contribution and threatened to hold back future funds in protest against inefficiencies, thefts by some grantee countries and infighting among the fund’s top executives. Other contributions dried up, forcing the fund to cancel a planned round of grants. Since then, both the fund’s executive director and inspector general have departed, and it was run for one year by a Brazilian banker; he devised an overhaul of the grant-making process that is to take effect next month. In November, Dr. Mark Dybul, the Bush administration’s global AIDS czar, became the new executive director. The fund recently announced that it cut its operating expenses by 5 percent in 2012 while still making 26 percent more in grants than it did in 2011. Of the grants that had been audited, Dr. Dybul said, only 0.5 percent had been lost to fraud. The fund plans a new fund-raising round for later this year. The United States is the fund’s largest supporter, providing roughly a third of its budget.

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Gadgetwise Blog: Q&A: Upgrading to Microsoft Office 2013

If I buy Microsoft Office 2010 and Microsoft Office 2013 comes out right afterwards, can I return the older version of the program for the new one?

In general, most stores will only accept software returned for a refund if the box is still sealed and the program has not been installed. Microsoft has an explanation of its own returns and refunds policy on its site.

The new version, Microsoft Office 2013, is expected very soon — possibly by the end of the month. If you need the software and just cannot wait for the newest version to arrive, however, Microsoft has an offer than allows you upgrade to Office 2013 for free even if you buy Office 2010 now.

Microsoft Office 2010 (or Office 2011 for the Mac) software purchased between October 19, 2012, and April 30, 2013, is generally eligible for the upgrade. You can find full details on the Office 2013 offer here.

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Dolours Price, Defiant I.R.A. Bomber, Dies at 61

Dolours Price, an unrepentant former member of the Irish Republican Army who went to prison for a 1973 London bombing and who recently shook Northern Ireland’s fragile calm by claiming that her orders had come from Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein party leader and peace negotiator who denies having ever been in the I.R.A., died on Thursday at her home in a suburb of Dublin. She was 61.

The police in Dublin said the cause was not known. An autopsy was scheduled.

Ms. Price, the former wife of the Irish actor Stephen Rea, attracted more public attention than she might have expected in recent years. Since 2011, the police in Northern Ireland police have been fighting in the courts for access to audiotaped interviews that Ms. Price gave to an oral history project at Boston College in which she detailed her I.R.A. career. The United States Supreme Court has been asked to hear the case.

The police learned of the audiotapes from an interview Ms. Price gave to an Irish newspaper in 2010. She told the paper that her testimony for the college’s “Belfast Project” described kidnappings and executions that she said she helped carry out in 1972 on orders from Mr. Adams. She also asserted on the tapes, she said, that Mr. Adams had a role in conceiving the London car bombings and that he ordered her and nine other I.R.A. volunteers, including her sister Marian, to carry them out in 1973.

The explosions, at four landmark sites, including the Old Bailey Courthouse, injured 200 people and left one man dead from a heart attack. It was the I.R.A.’s first attack in London.

Mr. Adams, who has intermittently been a member of the power-sharing Northern Ireland Assembly since a peace agreement was forged in 1998, has repeatedly denied her accusations. On Thursday he said he had “no concerns, because they are not true.”

The Northern Ireland police have said that Mr. Adams is not a target in their seeking the audiotapes. The family of one suspected I.R.A. informer described by Ms. Price as having been executed has called for Mr. Adams’s arrest.

Mr. Adams expressed sorrow this week at the news of Ms. Price’s death.

"She endured great hardship during her time in prison in the 1970s,” he said.

Ms. Price spoke often of the personal toll of her terrorist activities: years of depression, alcohol and drug abuse, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Among the suspected informers she drove to their executions, she said, was a longtime family friend. In prison, she staged a 203-day hunger strike in which her jailers force-fed her every day through rubber tubing.

Suffering from tuberculosis and other ailments, Ms. Price was released from prison on humanitarian grounds in 1981 after serving seven years of a life sentence.

Ms. Price told interviewers that she might have spared herself and her victims had she known that the struggle would end with a peace that left Northern Ireland’s Catholic majority, in her view, where it had started: under British rule.

“When we starved together on hunger strike,” she wrote in a 2004 essay in Fortnight, an Irish journal, “it was not to ‘move the process forward,’ it was not for seats in a British government.” It was, she said, “to rid this land of any British interference.”

Ms. Price married Mr. Rea in 1983 and had two children with him. Mr. Rea, who portrayed an I.R.A. hit man in the 1992 film “The Crying Game,” spoke only obliquely about his wife’s past.

“You can’t be born in the north of Ireland and not be political,” he told the British newspaper The Evening Standard in 1992. “The situation there is a pollution of your thinking.”

Dolours Price was born in Belfast on June 21, 1951, into a family steeped in Irish republican politics. Her father, Albert, was an I.R.A. founding member. “My father never saw his firstborn child because she was born and died while he was interned,” she wrote.

An aunt, Bridie Price, lost both hands and her eyesight when a bomb she was assembling accidentally blew up. Her sister Marian, who was among the 10 I.R.A. members involved in the 1973 London bombings, was released from prison in the early ’80s but rearrested several years ago on charges of plotting an attack on the government.

Ms. Price was a recent college graduate and training to be a teacher when she enlisted in the I.R.A. in the early 197os. She was one of the first women assigned to carry out an armed attack and was selected for the London mission in part, she said in an interview, because she was a pretty young woman and had no arrest record.

Ms. Price’s marriage to Mr. Rea ended in divorce in 2003. She is survived by their children, Danny and Oscar; her sister Marian and another sister, Clare; and two brothers, Sean and Dino.

Ms. Price remained defiant to the end. She had no truck, she said, with those whose political views had changed over the years. “I am a republican, born and bred, as were my mother and father before me and theirs before them,” she wrote in a letter to an Irish newspaper last year. “I have no time for people who constantly change their position.”

“They are not republicans,” she wrote.

Douglas Dalby contributed reporting from Dublin.

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Johnson & Johnson Hid Flaw in Artificial Hip, Documents Show

Johnson & Johnson executives knew years before they recalled a troubled artificial hip in 2010 that it had a critical design flaw, but the company concealed that information from physicians and patients, according to internal company documents disclosed Friday during a trial over the device’s failure.

The medical device giant had received complaints from doctors about the device, the Articular Surface Replacement, or A.S.R., even as it started marketing a version of it in 2005 in the United States. The A.S.R.’s flaw caused it to shed large quantities of metallic debris after implant and the model failed an internal 2007 test in which engineers compared its performance to another company hip implant, the documents show.

Still, executives of the company’s DePuy Orthaepedics unit kept selling the A.S.R. even as it was being abandoned by an increasing number of surgeons who were working as consultants to the company. DePuy executives discussed ways of fixing the defect but apparently never did so, the records suggest.

The documents were introduced Friday in Los Angeles Superior Court by plaintiffs’ lawyers during opening arguments in the first A.S.R.-related lawsuit to go to trial. The company faces more than 10,000 lawsuits in the United States in connection with the device. An estimated 93,000 patients worldwide received an A.S.R., about one-third of them in the United States.

For their part, DePuy executives insisted before the A.S.R.’s recall in mid-2010 that the implant was working well despite years of complaints from doctors that it was failing early. In late 2009, the company announced plans to phase out the model but said it was doing so because of slowing sales, not safety concerns.

In opening arguments, a lawyer for DePuy, Alexander Calfo, reiterated those positions, telling jurors that DePuy had acted ethically throughout the entire A.S.R. episode.

“The evidence will show that DePuy acted as an extremely responsible manufacturer,” Mr. Calfo said.

But a lawyer for Loren Kransky, the plaintiff in the case, painted a far different picture of DePuy’s behavior for jurors in his opening arguments.

The lawyer, Michael Kelly, also introduced a number of internal records which suggested that the concern of company executives for profits might have exceeded their worries about patients. For example, Mr. Kelly said, DePuy officials never told doctors that the A.S.R. had failed an internal performance test against another company hip.

“They did not report the data to American doctors,” said Mr. Kelly. “They changed the test and tested it against other things until they found one it could beat.”

The A.S.R. represents one of the biggest medical device failures in recent decades. According to DePuy’s internal estimates, it will fail within five years in about 40 percent of patients who got one. That figure is eight times the failure rate of most orthopedic implants.

The A.S.R. belonged to a once-popular class of hip implants introduced about a decade ago as a way of trying to address problems associated with hips made from traditional materials like metal and plastic. But surgeons have largely abandoned them because their components can grind together, releasing metallic debris that damages a patient’s tissue and bone.

The A.S.R. was sold in two versions, one used in an alternative hip replacement called resurfacing and one used in standard hip replacement. Only the version used in standard replacements was sold in the United States.

In 2003, DePuy began selling the resurfacing version of the A.S.R. outside the United States in an effort to catch up with a competing device known as the Birmingham hip. But by 2005, some doctors began telling DePuy that the A.S.R. was failing quickly after implant and company consultants soon stopped using it, records show.

The problem, internal DePuy records indicate, was the design of the cup component that fit into a patient’s hip socket. The cup, which was used in both the resurfacing and standard versions of the A.S.R., had an inside groove against which a surgeon pressed a tool in order to implant the component.

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The New Old Age Blog: Grief Over New Depression Diagnosis

When the American Psychiatric Association unveils a proposed new version of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the bible of psychiatric diagnoses, it expects controversy. Illnesses get added or deleted, acquire new definitions or lists of symptoms. Everyone from advocacy groups to insurance companies to litigators — all have an interest in what’s defined as mental illness — pays close attention. Invariably, complaints ensue.

“We asked for commentary,” said David Kupfer, the University of Pittsburgh psychiatrist who has spent six years as chairman of the task force that is updating the handbook. He sounded unruffled. “We asked for it and we got it. This was not going to be done in a dark room somewhere.”

But the D.S.M. 5, to be published in May, has generated an unusual amount of heat. Two changes, in particular, could have considerable impact on older people and their families.

First, the new volume revises some of the criteria for major depressive disorder. The D.S.M. IV (among other changes, the new manual swaps Roman numerals for Arabic ones) set out a list of symptoms that over a two-week period would trigger a diagnosis of major depression: either feelings of sadness or emptiness, or a loss of interest or pleasure in most daily activities, plus sleep disturbances, weight loss, fatigue, distraction or other problems, to the extent that they impair someone’s functioning.

Traditionally, depression has been underdiagnosed in older adults. When people’s health suffers and they lose friends and loved ones, the sentiment went, why wouldn’t they be depressed? A few decades back, Dr. Kupfer said, “what was striking to me was the lack of anyone getting a depression diagnosis, because that was ‘normal aging.’” We don’t find depression in old age normal any longer.

But critics of the D.S.M. 5 now argue that depression may become overdiagnosed, because this version removes the so-called “bereavement exclusion.” That was a paragraph that cautioned against diagnosing depression in someone for at least two months after loss of a loved one, unless that patient had severe symptoms like suicidal thoughts.

Without that exception, you could be diagnosed with this disorder if you are feeling empty, listless or distracted, a month after your parent or spouse dies.

“D.S.M. 5 is medicalizing the expected and probably necessary process of mourning that people go through,” said Allen Frances, a professor emeritus at Duke who chaired the D.S.M. IV task force and has denounced several of the changes in the new edition. “Most people get better with time and natural healing and resilience.”

If they are diagnosed with major depression before that can happen, he fears, they will be given antidepressants they may not need. “It gives the drug companies the right to peddle pills for grief,” he said.

An advisory committee to the Association for Death Education and Counseling also argued that bereaved people “will receive antidepressant medication because it is cheaper and ‘easier’ to medicate than to be involved therapeutically,” and noted that antidepressants, like all medications, have side effects.

“I can’t help but see this as a broad overreach by the APA,” Eric Widera, a geriatrician at the University of California, San Francisco, wrote on the GeriPal blog. “Grief is not a disorder and should be considered normal even if it is accompanied by some of the same symptoms seen in depression.”

But Dr. Kupfer said the panel worried that with the exclusion, too many cases of depression could be overlooked and go untreated. “If these things go on and get worse over time and begin to impair someone’s day to day function, we don’t want to use the excuse, ‘It’s bereavement — they’ll get over it,’” he said.

The new entry for major depressive disorder will include a note — the wording isn’t final — pointing out that while grief may be “understandable or appropriate” after a loss, professionals should also consider the possibility of a major depressive episode. Making that distinction, Dr. Kupfer said, will require “good solid clinical judgment.”

Initial field trials testing the reliability of D.S.M. 5 diagnoses, recently published in The American Journal of Psychiatry, don’t bolster confidence, however. An editorial remarked that “the end results are mixed, with both positive and disappointing findings.” Major depressive disorder, for instance, showed “questionable reliability.”

In an upcoming post, I’ll talk more about how patients might respond to the D.S.M. 5, and to a new diagnosis that might also affect a lot of older people — mild neurocognitive disorder.

Paula Span is the author of “When the Time Comes: Families With Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions.”

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This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 24, 2013

An earlier version of this post misspelled the surname of a professor emeritus at Duke who chaired the D.S.M. IV task force. He is Allen Frances, not Francis.

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The New Old Age Blog: Grief Over New Depression Diagnosis

When the American Psychiatric Association unveils a proposed new version of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the bible of psychiatric diagnoses, it expects controversy. Illnesses get added or deleted, acquire new definitions or lists of symptoms. Everyone from advocacy groups to insurance companies to litigators — all have an interest in what’s defined as mental illness — pays close attention. Invariably, complaints ensue.

“We asked for commentary,” said David Kupfer, the University of Pittsburgh psychiatrist who has spent six years as chairman of the task force that is updating the handbook. He sounded unruffled. “We asked for it and we got it. This was not going to be done in a dark room somewhere.”

But the D.S.M. 5, to be published in May, has generated an unusual amount of heat. Two changes, in particular, could have considerable impact on older people and their families.

First, the new volume revises some of the criteria for major depressive disorder. The D.S.M. IV (among other changes, the new manual swaps Roman numerals for Arabic ones) set out a list of symptoms that over a two-week period would trigger a diagnosis of major depression: either feelings of sadness or emptiness, or a loss of interest or pleasure in most daily activities, plus sleep disturbances, weight loss, fatigue, distraction or other problems, to the extent that they impair someone’s functioning.

Traditionally, depression has been underdiagnosed in older adults. When people’s health suffers and they lose friends and loved ones, the sentiment went, why wouldn’t they be depressed? A few decades back, Dr. Kupfer said, “what was striking to me was the lack of anyone getting a depression diagnosis, because that was ‘normal aging.’” We don’t find depression in old age normal any longer.

But critics of the D.S.M. 5 now argue that depression may become overdiagnosed, because this version removes the so-called “bereavement exclusion.” That was a paragraph that cautioned against diagnosing depression in someone for at least two months after loss of a loved one, unless that patient had severe symptoms like suicidal thoughts.

Without that exception, you could be diagnosed with this disorder if you are feeling empty, listless or distracted, a month after your parent or spouse dies.

“D.S.M. 5 is medicalizing the expected and probably necessary process of mourning that people go through,” said Allen Frances, a professor emeritus at Duke who chaired the D.S.M. IV task force and has denounced several of the changes in the new edition. “Most people get better with time and natural healing and resilience.”

If they are diagnosed with major depression before that can happen, he fears, they will be given antidepressants they may not need. “It gives the drug companies the right to peddle pills for grief,” he said.

An advisory committee to the Association for Death Education and Counseling also argued that bereaved people “will receive antidepressant medication because it is cheaper and ‘easier’ to medicate than to be involved therapeutically,” and noted that antidepressants, like all medications, have side effects.

“I can’t help but see this as a broad overreach by the APA,” Eric Widera, a geriatrician at the University of California, San Francisco, wrote on the GeriPal blog. “Grief is not a disorder and should be considered normal even if it is accompanied by some of the same symptoms seen in depression.”

But Dr. Kupfer said the panel worried that with the exclusion, too many cases of depression could be overlooked and go untreated. “If these things go on and get worse over time and begin to impair someone’s day to day function, we don’t want to use the excuse, ‘It’s bereavement — they’ll get over it,’” he said.

The new entry for major depressive disorder will include a note — the wording isn’t final — pointing out that while grief may be “understandable or appropriate” after a loss, professionals should also consider the possibility of a major depressive episode. Making that distinction, Dr. Kupfer said, will require “good solid clinical judgment.”

Initial field trials testing the reliability of D.S.M. 5 diagnoses, recently published in The American Journal of Psychiatry, don’t bolster confidence, however. An editorial remarked that “the end results are mixed, with both positive and disappointing findings.” Major depressive disorder, for instance, showed “questionable reliability.”

In an upcoming post, I’ll talk more about how patients might respond to the D.S.M. 5, and to a new diagnosis that might also affect a lot of older people — mild neurocognitive disorder.

Paula Span is the author of “When the Time Comes: Families With Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions.”

---

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 24, 2013

An earlier version of this post misspelled the surname of a professor emeritus at Duke who chaired the D.S.M. IV task force. He is Allen Frances, not Francis.

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AT&T Fourth-Quarter Earnings Hurt by Pensions and Storm

Over the holiday season, AT&T sold a record number of smartphones. But its quarterly earnings took a hit from pension costs and Hurricane Sandy.

Despite the setbacks, AT&T’s business had a strong fourth quarter. It sold more smartphones than its main competitor, Verizon Wireless. It also added many new contract subscribers and increased the revenue that it gets from mobile data, the fees that people pay to use the Internet on its network.

“We had an excellent 2012,” said Randall Stephenson, AT&T’s chief executive, in a statement. “Looking ahead,” he added, “our key growth platforms — mobile data, U-verse and strategic business services — all have good momentum with a lot of headroom.”

On Thursday, AT&T reported a loss in the fourth quarter of $3.9 billion, or 68 cents a share, up from a loss of $6.7 billion, or $1.12 a share, from the same quarter a year earlier.

The company said revenue was essentially flat at $32.6 billion.

Its adjusted per-share earnings were 44 cents a share, excluding pension costs, the impact of Hurricane Sandy and the sale of its advertising units. Wall Street analysts had expected 45 cents a share on earnings of $32.2 billion, according to Thomson Reuters.

The company, based in Dallas, said that it sold 10.2 million smartphones over the quarter, the most ever sold by any American carrier. A majority of those smartphones were iPhones: AT&T sold 8.6 million iPhones, in contrast to Verizon Wireless’s 6.2 million iPhones.

AT&T did not, however, beat Verizon in an important metric for carriers: the number of new contract subscribers, who are the most valuable type of customer. AT&T gained 780,000 new contract subscribers over the quarter, compared with Verizon’s 2.1 million. In the wireless industry, subscription growth is crucial as carriers joust for the few remaining people who do not already own cellphones.

The iPhone, the most popular smartphone in the world, has been an important weapon for carriers to get new subscribers. Although AT&T still leads as the nation’s top seller of iPhones, Verizon has been increasing its iPhone sales every quarter, and it is getting close to catching up, said Chetan Sharma, an independent mobile analyst.

“There’s always been this attachment in consumers’ minds that AT&T is the brand for iPhone,” Mr. Sharma said. “I think that’s starting to even out in the marketplace.”

Similar to Verizon, AT&T last summer started offering shared data plans, which allow customers to share a single pool of data across multiple devices, including smartphones, tablets and computers. It said on the earnings call that it already had 6.6 million subscribers on these plans, about a quarter of whom are opting for plans with at least 10 gigabytes. Thanks in part to these new shared data plans, revenue from mobile data grew 14.7 percent over the quarter, to $6.8 billion, up from $5.9 billion last year.

AT&T’s success with shared data plans is good news for the company, because they help to pry customers off flat-rate, unlimited data plans so that they eventually pay more for data, said Jan Dawson, an analyst with Ovum, a research firm. Indeed, AT&T said more than 15 percent of shared data plan customers were switching from unlimited data plans.

AT&T also saw a rise in customers for U-verse, its digital phone, television and high-speed Internet service for households. It added 609,000 U-verse customers over the quarter, bringing the total number of subscribers to about 7.7 million.

The carrier has big plans this year to attract more customers. It is in the process of a major wireless network expansion. It said late last year that it would invest an extra $14 billion to expand its wireless and broadband services through 2015. It expects that its fourth-generation network technology, called LTE, will cover 300 million people by the end of next year.

Beyond making upgrades to its wireless network, AT&T has plans to offer new services that might create new revenue streams. In March, it will begin selling its new wireless home security system, Digital Life, which will allow people to use tablets or phones to monitor their homes from afar. If a burglar trips a motion sensor in the house, for example, a user can receive a text message, then call the police. Ralph de la Vega, chief executive of AT&T Mobility, has said that he believes home security will be a big opportunity to increase revenue, because only 20 percent of American homes have security systems, leaving millions of homeowners as potential buyers.

AT&T’s Mr. Stephenson said he was excited about the “vibrant options” for phones set to arrive in the coming year, including devices with Research in Motion’s new BlackBerry 10 system.

“I’m very optimistic about BlackBerry 10,” Mr. Stephenson said. “I hope that it’s as good as it appears to be.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 24, 2013

An earlier version of this article published online misstated the expectation of Wall Street analysts for AT&T’s quarterly per-share earnings. It was 45 cents, not 48 cents.

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David C. Headley Gets 35 Years for Mumbai Attack

CHICAGO — David C. Headley, an American who confessed to helping plan the deadly 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, was sentenced here on Thursday to 35 years in prison, the maximum sought by federal prosecutors.

Balancing what was described in court as a “very heinous crime” and “very significant cooperation,” the ruling came after lawyers for the government and the defense urged Judge Harry D. Leinenweber of Federal District Court to downgrade Mr. Headley’s punishment from life in prison. They said he had cooperated with the authorities and provided useful information about Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistan-based militant group with which he had worked.

“No matter how good our intelligence is, no matter how technologically advanced our investigative techniques are, we need witnesses,” Gary S. Shapiro, the acting United States attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, said after the decision. “And the only way you get witnesses in this world is by threatening to prosecute them and then offering them some real incentive to provide you with that information.”

According to court documents, Mr. Headley, 52, attended Lashkar-e-Taiba training camps in Pakistan between 2002 and 2005. He later admitted to scouting targets in Mumbai for the group before the raids in November 2008, in which 163 people and 9 gunmen died. Six of the victims were American.

After his arrest at a Chicago airport a year later, Mr. Headley pleaded guilty to 12 conspiracy charges over his involvement in the Mumbai attack and a proposed terrorist plot against a Danish newspaper that published cartoon caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. Prosecutors said that Mr. Headley immediately began sharing information that led to criminal charges against at least seven other people. He also testified against his co-defendant, the Chicago businessman Tahawwur Rana, who last week was sentenced to 14 years in prison.

In exchange for his cooperation, which is expected to continue while he is in prison, prosecutors also agreed not to seek the death penalty or extradite Mr. Headley to Pakistan, India or Denmark.

But on Thursday, some expressed concern that Mr. Headley was getting more leniency than he deserved.

Standing before the court, Linda Ragsdale, who was injured in the Mumbai attack, fought back tears as she described the gunfire she witnessed at a hotel that was raided in the militant attack.

“I know the sound of life leaving a 13-year-old child,” she said.

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DealBook: S.E.C. Pick Is Ex-Prosecutor, in Signal to Wall Street

3:30 p.m. | Updated

President Obama announced Thursday his nomination of Mary Jo White, a former federal prosecutor turned white-collar defense lawyer, to be the next chairwoman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

In a short ceremony at the White House, Mr. Obama also said he was renominating Richard Cordray as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a post Mr. Cordray has held under a temporary recess appointment without Senate approval for the past year. The president portrayed both selections as a way of preventing a financial crash like the one he inherited four years ago.

“It’s not enough to change the law,” Mr. Obama said. “We also need cops on the beat to enforce the law.”

Mr. Obama noted that Ms. White was a childhood fan of “The Hardy Boys,” just as he was. He added that as the United States attorney in New York in the 1990s she “built a career the Hardy Boys could only dream of.”

He noted that she prosecuted money launderers, mobsters and terrorists. “I’d say that’s a pretty good run,” he said. “You don’t want to mess with Mary Jo. As one former S.E.C. chairman said, Mary Jo does not intimidate easily.”

Mr. Obama likewise pressed the Senate to finally confirm Mr. Cordray to the leadership of the consumer agency created by the Wall Street regulation law passed in 2010. The president installed Mr. Cordray as director last January without Senate approval using his recess appointment power, but his term will expire at the end of the year unless he wins approval from the upper chamber of Congress.

“Financial institutions have plenty of lobbyists looking out for their interests,” Mr. Obama said. “The American people need Richard to keep standing up for them. And there’s absolutely no excuse for the Senate to wait any longer to confirm him.”

Ms. White and Mr. Cordray spoke only briefly. Ms. White said if confirmed she would work “to protect investors and to ensure the strength, efficiency and the transparency of our capital markets.” Mr. Cordray said that during his short tenure he has “been focused on making consumer finance markets work better for the American people” and approached it “with open minds, open ears and great determination.”

Regulatory chiefs are often market experts or academics. But Ms. White spent nearly a decade as the United States attorney in New York, the first woman named to this post. Among her prominent cases, she oversaw the prosecution of the mafia boss John Gotti as well as the people responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. She is now working the other side, defending Wall Street firms and executives as a partner at Debevoise & Plimpton.

As the attorney general of Ohio, Mr. Cordray made a name for himself suing Wall Street companies in the wake of the financial crisis. He undertook a series of prominent lawsuits against big names in the finance world, including Bank of America and the American International Group.

The White House expects Ms. White, 65, and Mr. Cordray, 53, to draw on their prosecutorial backgrounds while carrying out a broad regulatory agenda under the Dodd-Frank Act. Congress enacted the law, which mandates a regulatory overhaul, in response to the 2008 financial crisis.

Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said Ms. White has “an incredibly impressive resume” and that her appointment along with the renomination of Mr. Cordray sends an important signal.

“The president believes that appointment and the renomination he’s making today demonstrate the commitment he has to carrying out Wall Street reform, making sure we have the rules of the road that are necessary and that are being enforced in a way” to avoid a crisis like that of 2008, Mr. Carney said.

Another White House official added that Ms. White and Mr. Cordray will “serve in top enforcement roles” in part so that “Wall Street is held accountable and middle-class Americans never again are harmed by the abuses of a few.”

Ms. White will succeed Elisse B. Walter, a longtime S.E.C. official, who took over as chairwoman after Mary L. Schapiro stepped down as the agency’s leader in December. Mr. Cordray joined the consumer bureau in 2011 as its enforcement director.

The nominations could face a mixed reception in Congress. Republicans had previously vowed to block any candidate for the consumer bureau, leading to the recess appointment. It is unclear whether the White House and Mr. Cordray will face another standoff the second time around.

Mr. Carney argued that there were no substantive objections to Mr. Cordray’s confirmation, only political ones. “He is absolutely the right person for the job,” Mr. Carney said.

Ms. White is expected to receive broader support on Capitol Hill. Senator Charles E. Schumer, a New York Democrat, declared that Ms. White was a “tough-as-nails prosecutor” who “will not shy away from enforcing the laws to ensure that markets operate fairly.”

But she could face questions about her command of arcane financial minutiae. She was a director of the Nasdaq stock market, but has otherwise built her career on the law-and-order side of the securities industry.

People close to the S.E.C. note, however, that her husband, John W. White, is a veteran of the agency. From 2006 through 2008, he was head of the S.E.C.’s division of corporation finance, which oversees public companies’ disclosures and reporting.

Some Democrats also might question her path through the revolving door, in and out of government. While seen as a strong enforcer as a United States attorney, she went on in private practice to defend some of Wall Street’s biggest names, including Kenneth D. Lewis, a former head of Bank of America. She also represented JPMorgan Chase and the board of Morgan Stanley. Last year, the N.F.L. hired her to investigate allegations that the New Orleans Saints carried out a bounty system for hurting opponents.

Consumer advocates generally praised her appointment on Thursday. “Mary Jo White was a tough, smart, no-nonsense, broadly experienced and highly accomplished prosecutor,” said Dennis Kelleher, head of Better Markets, the nonprofit advocacy group. “She knew who the bad guys were, went after them and put them in prison when they broke the law.”

The appointment comes after the departure of Ms. Schapiro, who announced she would step down from the S.E.C. in late 2012. In a four-year tenure, she overhauled the agency after it was blamed for missing the warning signs of the crisis.

Since her exit, Washington and Wall Street have been abuzz with speculation about the next S.E.C. chief. President Obama quickly named Ms. Walter, then a Democratic commissioner at the agency, but her appointment was seen as a short-term solution. It is unclear if she will shift back to the commissioner role if Ms. White is confirmed.

In the wake of Ms. Schapiro’s exit, several other contenders surfaced, including Sallie L. Krawcheck, a longtime Wall Street executive. Richard G. Ketchum, chairman and chief executive of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Wall Street’s internal policing organization, was also briefly mentioned as a long-shot contender.

Kitty Bennett contributed reporting.

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