Egypt’s Government Apologizes After a Beating Is Televised

Tara Todras-Whitehill for The New York Times

A funeral protest on Saturday in Cairo for Mohammed Hussein Korani, 23, who died Friday night in clashes with the police. More Photos »

CAIRO — Egypt’s interior minister offered a rare apology on Saturday after officers under his command were seen on television beating a naked man two blocks from the presidential palace. But under what his family said was police coercion, the victim, Hamada Saber, said in an interview later that the officers had been helping rather than attacking him.

The spectacle of the beating quickly revived fury at Egypt’s police force, whose record of brutality helped set off the revolt against Hosni Mubarak, the former president, and served as a reminder that nearly two years later, the new president, Mohamed Morsi, had taken few steps to reform the police.

Mr. Morsi’s office issued a statement saying it was “pained by the shocking footage.”

More than 50 people have been killed over the last 10 days in fighting in several Egyptian cities, in some of the worst violence since the fall of Mr. Mubarak in 2011. The beating of Mr. Saber has provoked a different kind of outrage, crystallizing for many the collapse of order and civility that has derailed Egypt’s transition from its authoritarian past.

In the shifting versions of the attack given on Saturday, it was hard to know exactly what happened.

In video images, a group of riot police officers are heard cursing at Mr. Saber on Friday night as they beat him on the ground and drag him across a street to an armored vehicle. A witness, Mai Sirry, said that when she saw Mr. Saber, his pants were around his knees. In its initial statement, the Interior Ministry said it regretted the beating and called it an “individual attack” that did not reflect police doctrine.

Later, though, in a television interview, Mr. Saber gave an account of the beating from his hospital bed in which he said the officers had come to help as he was running from a group of protesters who had stripped and robbed him. They had apparently thought he was an officer, he said, and left him alone after deciding he was “just an old man.”

“I was afraid,” he said, adding that as he ran away from the protesters, officers came to help. He ran from them too, but they pulled him back, he said, telling him he would die if he did not let them help him.

A woman who identified herself as Mr. Saber’s daughter Randa, speaking Saturday on another Egyptian channel, said her father was being prompted to lie during the interview and was “afraid to talk.”

“We were with him” when he was attacked on Friday, she said. “They took his clothes off and started kicking him, beating him,” she said, referring to the police. “They dragged him and put him in the car. All this happened. What he says are lies.”

Speaking to local news media on Saturday, the interior minister, Mohamed Ibrahim, said that after Mr. Saber was released from the hospital, he would invite him to the ministry’s offices to offer his apologies. He repeated Mr. Saber’s account, though he still acknowledged that the officers’ conduct was “excessive” and said he had ordered an investigation.

The latest violence deepened the sense of crisis in Egypt, and it undermined efforts by the country’s quarreling political forces to settle their differences. After the clashes, supporters and opponents of President Morsi blamed each other.

On Saturday, just days after leaders of a secular-leaning opposition coalition sat down at a rare meeting with representatives of Mr. Morsi’s Freedom and Justice Party, the opposition group released a statement saying it was “aligned” with those who want “to topple the regime of tyranny, and domination of the Muslim Brotherhood.”

In Tahrir Square early on Saturday morning, Mr. Morsi’s prime minister, Hesham Qandil, bore the brunt of the antigovernment anger. He was forced to cut short his visit to protest tents in the square after he was heckled, according to state media. His office said Mr. Qandil left to avoid creating a “pretext” for violence.

In a speech later in the day, the prime minister acknowledged the widespread perception that both the government and opposition were losing control. “Let us admit that the government, all the political forces, all the parties failed in containing the youth,” he said. “This is something that we all have to work on.”

At least one person was killed in the clashes on Friday, which broke up what had been a peaceful afternoon sit-in, when a small group of protesters, some wearing masks, tried to ram the gates of the presidential palace, according to video of the episode.

David D. Kirkpatrick contributed reporting.

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Americans Closest to Retirement Were Hardest Hit by Recession

David Maxwell for The New York Times

Susan Zimmerman, 62, has three part-time jobs.

Michael Stravato for The New York Times

Arynita Armstrong, 60, at her home in Willis, Tex. She last worked five years ago. “When you’re older, they just see gray hair and they write you off,” she says.

In the current listless economy, every generation has a claim to having been most injured. But the Labor Department’s latest jobs snapshot and other recent data reports present a strong case for crowning baby boomers as the greatest victims of the recession and its grim aftermath.

These Americans in their 50s and early 60s — those near retirement age who do not yet have access to Medicare and Social Security — have lost the most earnings power of any age group, with their household incomes 10 percent below what they made when the recovery began three years ago, according to Sentier Research, a data analysis company.

Their retirement savings and home values fell sharply at the worst possible time: just before they needed to cash out. They are supporting both aged parents and unemployed young-adult children, earning them the inauspicious nickname “Generation Squeeze.”

New research suggests that they may die sooner, because their health, income security and mental well-being were battered by recession at a crucial time in their lives. A recent study by economists at Wellesley College found that people who lost their jobs in the few years before becoming eligible for Social Security lost up to three years from their life expectancy, largely because they no longer had access to affordable health care.

“If I break my wrist, I lose my house,” said Susan Zimmerman, 62, a freelance writer in Cleveland, of the distress that a medical emergency would wreak upon her finances and her quality of life. None of the three part-time jobs she has cobbled together pay benefits, and she says she is counting the days until she becomes eligible for Medicare.

In the meantime, Ms. Zimmerman has fashioned her own regimen of home remedies — including eating blue cheese instead of taking penicillin and consuming plenty of orange juice, red wine, coffee and whatever else the latest longevity studies recommend — to maintain her health, which she must do if she wants to continue paying the bills.

“I will probably be working until I’m 100,” she said.

As common as that sentiment is, the job market has been especially unkind to older workers.

Unemployment rates for Americans nearing retirement are far lower than those for young people, who are recently out of school, with fewer skills and a shorter work history. But once out of a job, older workers have a much harder time finding another one. Over the last year, the average duration of unemployment for older people was 53 weeks, compared with 19 weeks for teenagers, according to the Labor Department’s jobs report released on Friday.

The lengthy process is partly because older workers are more likely to have been laid off from industries that are downsizing, like manufacturing. Compared with the rest of the population, older people are also more likely to own their own homes and be less mobile than renters, who can move to new job markets.

Older workers are more likely to have a disability of some sort, perhaps limiting the range of jobs that offer realistic choices. They may also be less inclined, at least initially, to take jobs that pay far less than their old positions.

Displaced boomers also believe they are victims of age discrimination, because employers can easily find a young, energetic worker who will accept lower pay and who can potentially stick around for decades rather than a few years.

“When you’re older, they just see gray hair and they write you off,” said Arynita Armstrong, 60, of Willis, Tex. She has been looking for work for five years since losing her job at a mortgage company. “They’re afraid to hire you, because they think you’re a health risk. You know, you might make their premiums go up. They think it’ll cost more money to invest in training you than it’s worth it because you might retire in five years.

“Not that they say any of this to your face,” she added.

When older workers do find re-employment, the compensation is usually not up to the level of their previous jobs, according to data from the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University.

In a survey by the center of older workers who were laid off during the recession, just one in six had found another job, and half of that group had accepted pay cuts. Fourteen percent of the re-employed said the pay in their new job was less than half what they earned in their previous job.

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The New Old Age: Caregiving, Laced With Humor

“My grandmother, she’s not a normal person. She’s like a character when she speaks. Every day she’s playing like she’s an actress.”

These are words of love, and they come from Sacha Goldberger, a French photographer who has turned his grandmother, 93-year-old Frederika Goldberger, into a minor European celebrity.

In the photos, you can see the qualities grandson and grandmother have in common: a wicked sense of humor, an utter lack of pretension and a keen taste for theatricality and the absurd.

This isn’t an ordinary caregiving relationship, not by a long shot. But Sacha, 44 years old and unmarried, is deeply devoted to this spirited older relation who has played the role of Mamika (“my little grandmother,” translated from her native Hungarian) in two of his books and a photography exhibition currently under way in Paris.

As for Frederika, “I like everything that my grandson does,” she said in a recent Skype conversation from her apartment, which also serves as Sacha’s office. “I hate not to do anything. Here, with my grandson, I have the feeling I am doing something.”

Their unusual collaboration began after Frederika retired from her career as a textile consultant at age 80 and fell into a funk.

“I was very depressed because I lived for working,” she told me in our Skype conversation.

Sacha had long dreamed of creating what he calls a “Woody Allen-like Web site with a French Jewish humor,” and he had an inspiration. What if he took one of the pillars of that type of humor, a French man’s relationship with his mother and grandmother, and asked Frederika to play along with some oddball ideas?

This Budapest-born baroness, whose family had owned the largest textile factory in Hungary before World War II, was a natural in front of the camera, assuming a straight-faced, imperturbable comic attitude whether donning a motorcycle helmet and goggles, polishing her fingernails with a gherkin, wearing giant flippers on the beach, lighting up a banana, or dressed up as a Christmas tree with a golden star on her head. (All these photos and more appear in “Mamika: My Mighty Little Grandmother,” published in the United States last year.)

“It was like a game for us, deciding what crazy thing we were going to do next, how we were going to keep people from being bored,” said Sacha, who traces his close relationship with his grandmother to age 14, when she taught him how to drive and often picked him up at school. “Making pictures was a very good excuse to spend time together.”

“He thought it was very funny to put a costume on me,” said Frederika. “And I liked it.”

People responded enthusiastically, and before long Sacha had cooked up what ended up becoming the most popular character role for Frederika: Super Mamika, outfitted in a body-hugging costume, tights, a motorcycle helmet and a flowing cape.

His grandmother was a super hero of sorts, because she had helped save 10 people from the Nazis during World War II, said Sacha. He also traced inspiration to Stan Lee, a Jewish artist who created the X-Men, The Hulk and the Fantastic Four for Marvel comics. “I wanted to ask what happens to these super heroes when they get old in these photographs with my grandmother.”

Lest this seem a bit trivial to readers of this blog, consider this passage from Sacha’s introduction to “Mamika: My Might Little Grandmother”:

In a society where youth is the supreme value; where wrinkles have to be camouflaged; where old people are hidden as soon as they become cumbersome, where, for lack of time or desire, it is easier to put our elders in hospices rather than take care of them, I wanted to show that happiness in aging was also possible.

In our Skype conversation, Sacha confessed to anxiety about losing his grandmother, and said: “I always was very worried about what would happen if my grandmother disappeared. Because she is exceptional.”

“I am not normal,” Frederika piped up at his side, her face deeply wrinkled, her short hair beautifully coiffed, seemingly very satisfied with herself.

“So, making these pictures to me is the best thing that could happen,” Sacha continued, “because now my grandma is immortal and it seems everyone knows her. I am giving to everybody in the world a bit of my grandma.”

This wonderful expression of caring and creativity has expanded my view of intergenerational relations in this new old age. What about you?

Read More..

The New Old Age: Caregiving, Laced With Humor

“My grandmother, she’s not a normal person. She’s like a character when she speaks. Every day she’s playing like she’s an actress.”

These are words of love, and they come from Sacha Goldberger, a French photographer who has turned his grandmother, 93-year-old Frederika Goldberger, into a minor European celebrity.

In the photos, you can see the qualities grandson and grandmother have in common: a wicked sense of humor, an utter lack of pretension and a keen taste for theatricality and the absurd.

This isn’t an ordinary caregiving relationship, not by a long shot. But Sacha, 44 years old and unmarried, is deeply devoted to this spirited older relation who has played the role of Mamika (“my little grandmother,” translated from her native Hungarian) in two of his books and a photography exhibition currently under way in Paris.

As for Frederika, “I like everything that my grandson does,” she said in a recent Skype conversation from her apartment, which also serves as Sacha’s office. “I hate not to do anything. Here, with my grandson, I have the feeling I am doing something.”

Their unusual collaboration began after Frederika retired from her career as a textile consultant at age 80 and fell into a funk.

“I was very depressed because I lived for working,” she told me in our Skype conversation.

Sacha had long dreamed of creating what he calls a “Woody Allen-like Web site with a French Jewish humor,” and he had an inspiration. What if he took one of the pillars of that type of humor, a French man’s relationship with his mother and grandmother, and asked Frederika to play along with some oddball ideas?

This Budapest-born baroness, whose family had owned the largest textile factory in Hungary before World War II, was a natural in front of the camera, assuming a straight-faced, imperturbable comic attitude whether donning a motorcycle helmet and goggles, polishing her fingernails with a gherkin, wearing giant flippers on the beach, lighting up a banana, or dressed up as a Christmas tree with a golden star on her head. (All these photos and more appear in “Mamika: My Mighty Little Grandmother,” published in the United States last year.)

“It was like a game for us, deciding what crazy thing we were going to do next, how we were going to keep people from being bored,” said Sacha, who traces his close relationship with his grandmother to age 14, when she taught him how to drive and often picked him up at school. “Making pictures was a very good excuse to spend time together.”

“He thought it was very funny to put a costume on me,” said Frederika. “And I liked it.”

People responded enthusiastically, and before long Sacha had cooked up what ended up becoming the most popular character role for Frederika: Super Mamika, outfitted in a body-hugging costume, tights, a motorcycle helmet and a flowing cape.

His grandmother was a super hero of sorts, because she had helped save 10 people from the Nazis during World War II, said Sacha. He also traced inspiration to Stan Lee, a Jewish artist who created the X-Men, The Hulk and the Fantastic Four for Marvel comics. “I wanted to ask what happens to these super heroes when they get old in these photographs with my grandmother.”

Lest this seem a bit trivial to readers of this blog, consider this passage from Sacha’s introduction to “Mamika: My Might Little Grandmother”:

In a society where youth is the supreme value; where wrinkles have to be camouflaged; where old people are hidden as soon as they become cumbersome, where, for lack of time or desire, it is easier to put our elders in hospices rather than take care of them, I wanted to show that happiness in aging was also possible.

In our Skype conversation, Sacha confessed to anxiety about losing his grandmother, and said: “I always was very worried about what would happen if my grandmother disappeared. Because she is exceptional.”

“I am not normal,” Frederika piped up at his side, her face deeply wrinkled, her short hair beautifully coiffed, seemingly very satisfied with herself.

“So, making these pictures to me is the best thing that could happen,” Sacha continued, “because now my grandma is immortal and it seems everyone knows her. I am giving to everybody in the world a bit of my grandma.”

This wonderful expression of caring and creativity has expanded my view of intergenerational relations in this new old age. What about you?

Read More..

Google Submits Proposal in Bid to Resolve E.U. Antitrust Case

BRUSSELS — European officials said on Friday that Google had submitted proposals aimed at ending a three-year antitrust case focused on its search service, but the offer did not prevent rivals from seeking to prolong its legal entanglements.

Neither the company nor European officials were willing on Friday to describe the settlement proposals. But Google has been expected to offer revisions to the way it conducts its search business in Europe to address regulators’ concerns that its activities were unfair to other Web publishers and its online competitors.

The two parties are still negotiating the terms of the proposed settlement, and a final agreement is expected in the coming week, according to a person briefed on the negotiations who spoke on condition of anonymity while the agreement was still under discussion.

Google’s competitors did not take a wait-and-see attitude. After filing a new complaint against Google on Thursday, Icomp, an industry group backed by Microsoft, urged European regulators on Friday to approach the company’s proposal with caution.

“To be seen as a success, any settlement must include specific measures to restore competition and allow other parties to compete effectively on a level playing field,” David Wood, legal counsel for Icomp, said in a statement.

Michael Weber, chief executive of an online mapping service called Hot-map.com and a member of Icomp who is based in Germany, said he hoped Google’s offer would be “enough to restore competition,” but “if not, we will take into account all legal options we have and we won’t hesitate to use them.”

Icomp’s new antitrust complaint contended that Google was using exclusive agreements to discourage advertisers and publishers from using competing advertising platforms and search services like Bing and Yahoo.

If critics of Google in Europe remain dissatisfied, they can sue the European Commission, the European Union’s executive arm, at the General Court of the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg and accuse it of failing to push hard enough for an effective solution. Final judgments in such cases can take years.

Google reached one settlement on Friday. In France, it agreed to pay 60 million euros, or $82 million, into a fund to help French media develop their presence on the Internet. Publishers in France had been pushing for Google to pay them licensing fees for the headlines and summaries of articles in its search engines.

The commission has taken a tougher line with Google than has the United States Federal Trade Commission. The F.T.C. decided in January that Google had not broken antitrust laws after a 19-month inquiry into how the company operated its search engine.

Joaquín Almunia, the European competition commissioner and the top European antitrust official, has been formally investigating Google since November 2010. He has insisted that Google make changes to the most sensitive area of its business, online search.

If Mr. Almunia ultimately accepts Google’s offer, the company will avoid further investigation. Additional inquiry could lead to a fine of as much as 10 percent of Google’s annual global sales, which came to about $50 billion last year. Google would also avoid a guilty finding, which could restrict its activities in Europe.

“We continue to work cooperatively with the commission,” Al Verney, a spokesman for Google in Brussels, said on Friday.

Antoine Colombani, a spokesman for Mr. Almunia, said at a news conference on Friday that Google had sent a detailed proposal that the commission was analyzing before taking further steps.

There is no formal timeline in European antitrust cases, so negotiations could continue.

“I can’t anticipate the timing or the substance of the analysis,” Mr. Colombani said.

Mr. Almunia could still take a far more confrontational stance with Google by sending the company a statement of objections, the European equivalent of formal antitrust charges. But that is something Mr. Almunia has been eager to avoid because he favors nonlitigious solutions to antitrust problems, particularly in the fast-moving technology field, to prevent cases from dragging on for years.

The next stage for Mr. Almunia is to assess Google’s offer and decide whether it addresses his concerns sufficiently. Then he will invite another, formal submission from the company, which would be sent to the complainants for review.

Claire Cain Miller contributed reporting from San Francisco.

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Cambodia Bids Farewell to King Sihanouk

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — The sound of artillery shells thundered across this city on Friday as part of the final, elaborate salute to the late King Sihanouk, whose reign spanned the euphoria of independence from France in 1953 and the terror of the Khmer Rouge in the late 1970s.

The flourishes included military bands, attendants in traditional dress banging large gongs and rows of officials wearing white shirts and black armbands. Some 15,000 civil servants took part.

Tens of thousands of onlookers knelt on the roadside with their hands clasped as a funeral procession looped through the city, pausing for an incantation from monks and ending at the site next to the royal palace where the king’s body will be cremated Monday.

Several people fainted in the tropical heat, including the powerful deputy prime minister, Sok An, who was carried away by aides.

The former king died in October at age 89, having ceded what had become a ceremonial throne to his son, Norodom Sihamoni, in 2004. The current king watched the procession from the gate of the royal palace with his mother, Norodom Monineath.

Hun Sen, the authoritarian prime minister who has been in power for nearly three decades and now dominates Cambodian politics, played a relatively low-key role, sitting with other officials in a float shaped like a mythical bird.

But analysts said that the spectacle was his way of drawing on the popular legacy of the late king as the father of the modern nation who led the campaign for independence from France.

“The policy of the government is to promote his memory,” said Pung Chhiv Kek, president of the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights. “Hun Sen wants to be seen as the protector of the monarchy.”

The monarchy, especially among older Cambodians, is a defining institution, Ms. Pung said.

“Some Cambodians in the countryside like to say, ‘You cannot have a country without a king,’ ” she said.

There was little reference to the darker side of the late king’s leadership: lending his prestige to the Khmer Rouge and helping them come to power. The group’s rule left 1.7 million people dead.

Government announcers eulogized him as a leader who built national character along with factories, schools, roads and hospitals.

“He is the father of integrity and the father of national unity,” said one announcer, whose comments were carried on loudspeakers around the city and on national television, which broadcast the procession.

“He is the best king ever,” the announcer said.

The government has declared a week of mourning. Civil servants were given two days off and businesses along the procession route were ordered to close.

“All entertainment centers and broadcasters must refrain from displaying excessive happiness,” a government statement said.

Mourners praised the king for many virtues, including generosity.

Keo Sina, 56, who owns a cake shop on the outskirts of Phnom Penh and walked with nine other members of her family to see the procession, said she remembered the king delivering aid to her village when she was a child.

“Today is the last day that we can see the king,” Ms. Keo said. “He sacrificed his life to the country. I hope his soul rests in peace.”

Cannons, lined in formation along the banks of the Mekong River and loaded with shells provided by Vietnam, fired as the chariot carrying the king’s gilded coffin rolled past at a mournful pace.

“It reminded me of the battlefield,” said Mey Thorn, a bicycle rickshaw driver here in Phnom Penh watching the procession. “Things are better now, getting better and better.”

This is a time of relative stability for Cambodia and of rising prosperity in Phnom Penh and a few other urban centers. The procession in Phnom Penh on Friday passed near the signposts of urban affluence, including a towering skyscraper under construction.

But the economic growth has been uneven, leaving the countryside, where the majority of the population lives, dirt poor.

Vietnam, another war-torn nation, has surged ahead of Cambodia over the past decade in gross domestic product per capita, a measure of average wealth, according to World Bank figures.

Only one quarter of the Cambodian population has access to electricity, compared with nearly full coverage in Vietnam and Thailand.

About one-third of the Cambodian population does not have running water at home.

“The wealth that we get from economic growth does not benefit people over all — just a handful of people,” said Son Chhay, a senior member of the Cambodia National Rescue Party, the main opposition party in Parliament, which was formed by the merger of two parties last year.

“We have just rich and poor. We don’t have a middle class.”

Poypiti Amatatham contributed reporting.

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DealBook: Amid Bank's Legal Problems, Barclays Chief Gives Up Bonus

6:44 p.m. | Updated

Antony P. Jenkins, the new chief executive of Barclays, said on Friday that he would forgo his bonus as the British bank struggled to rebuild its reputation after recent missteps.

British regulators are investigating new accusations that Barclays failed to properly disclose to shareholders a loan to a group of Qatari investors that gave the British bank a cash infusion during the financial crisis, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter.

Last year, the bank disclosed that British and American authorities were investigating the legality of the payments related to the $7.1 billion cash injection to Qatar Holding, the sovereign wealth fund.

Mr. Jenkins is dealing with a series of legal headaches.

In June, Barclays agreed to pay a $450 million settlement with United States and British regulators over rate manipulation. The scandal forced a number of the bank’s top executives to resign, including the chief executive at the time, Robert E. Diamond Jr.

The British firm has also set aside $3.2 billion to cover legal costs related to the inappropriate selling of insurance to consumers. British authorities recently told the bank that it must review the sale of certain interest rate hedging products after 90 percent of a sample of the complex instruments were found to have been sold improperly. Analysts say the investigation may lead to millions of dollars of new legal costs.

With the controversy surrounding the bank, Mr. Jenkins said he did not want to be considered for a bonus that could have totaled up to $4.3 million, adding that many of the problems engulfing the bank were of its own making. The Barclays chief’s annual salary is $1.7 million.

“I think it only right that I bear an appropriate degree of accountability for those matters,” Mr. Jenkins said in a statement. “It would be wrong for me to receive a bonus for 2012.”

A spokesman for Barclays declined to comment about the investigation into potential wrongdoing connected to the loan to Qatari investors.

By giving up his bonus, Mr. Jenkins contrasts with his predecessor. Mr. Diamond was in line for a $4.3 million bonus for 2011 despite criticism about the bank’s performance. Faced with mounting opposition, Mr. Diamond and Chris Lucas, the bank’s finance director, eventually agreed to forgo half of the deferred stock payout if the British bank failed to reach a number of its financial targets.

Barclays, which will disclose details of a major overhaul of its operations when it reports earnings on Feb. 12, is expected to cut up to 2,000 jobs in its investment bank in an effort to reduce its exposure to risky trading activity, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter.

Mr. Jenkins, who previously ran Barclays’ consumer banking business, told employees in January that they should leave the bank if they were not willing to help rebuild the firm’s reputation.

“My message to those people is simple,” Mr. Jenkins wrote in an internal note obtained by The New York Times. “Barclays is not the place for you. The rules have changed.”

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This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 1, 2013

An earlier version of this article indicated that the Barclays chief executive told employees earlier this month that they should leave the bank if they were not willing to help rebuild the firm’s reputation. He told them in January.

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Well: Waiting for Alzheimer's to Begin

My gray matter might be waning. Then again, it might not be. But I swear that I can feel memories — as I’m making them — slide off a neuron and into a tangle of plaque. I steel myself for those moments to come when I won’t remember what just went into my head.

I’m not losing track of my car keys, which is pretty standard in aging minds. Nor have I ever forgotten to turn off the oven after use, common in menopausal women. I can always find my car in the parking lot, although lots of “normal” folk can’t.

Rather, I suddenly can’t remember the name of someone with whom I’ve worked for years. I cover by saying “sir” or “madam” like the Southerner I am, even though I live in Vermont and grown people here don’t use such terms. Better to think I’m quirky than losing my faculties. Sometimes I’ll send myself an e-mail to-do reminder and then, seconds later, find myself thrilled to see a new entry pop into my inbox. Oops, it’s from me. Worse yet, a massage therapist kicked me out of her practice for missing three appointments. I didn’t recall making any of them. There must another Nancy.

Am I losing track of me?

Equally worrisome are the memories increasingly coming to the fore. Magically, these random recollections manage to circumnavigate my imagined build-up of beta-amyloid en route to delivering vivid images of my father’s first steps down his path of forgetting. He was the same age I am now, which is 46.

“How old are you?” I recall him asking me back then. Some years later, he began calling me every Dec. 28 to say, “Happy birthday,” instead of on the correct date, Dec. 27. The 28th had been his grandmother’s birthday.

The chasms were small at first. Explainable. Dismissible. When he crossed the street without looking both ways, we chalked it up to his well-cultivated, absent-minded professor persona. But the chasms grew into sinkholes, and eventually quicksand. When we took him to get new pants one day, he kept trying on the same ones he wore to the store.

“I like these slacks,” he’d say, over and over again, as he repeatedly pulled his pair up and down.

My dad died of Alzheimer’s last April at age 73 — the same age at which his father succumbed to the same disease. My dad ended up choosing neurology as his profession after witnessing the very beginning of his own dad’s forgetting.

Decades later, grandfather’s atrophied brain found its way into a jar on my father’s office desk. Was it meant to be an ever-present reminder of Alzheimer’s effect? Or was it a crystal ball sent to warn of genetic fate? My father the doctor never said, nor did he ever mention, that it was his father’s gray matter floating in that pool of formaldehyde.

Using the jarred brain as a teaching tool, my dad showed my 8-year-old self the difference between frontal and temporal lobes. He also pointed out how brains with Alzheimer’s disease become smaller, and how wide grooves develop in the cerebral cortex. But only after his death — and my mother’s confession about whose brain occupied that jar — did I figure out that my father was quite literally demonstrating how this disease runs through our heads.

Has my forgetting begun?

I called my dad’s neurologist. To find out if I was in the earliest stages of Alzheimer’s, he would have to look for proteins in my blood or spinal fluid and employ expensive neuroimaging tests. If he found any indication of onset, the only option would be experimental trials.

But documented confirmation of a diseased brain would break my still hopeful heart. I’d walk around with the scarlet letter “A” etched on the inside of my forehead — obstructing how I view every situation instead of the intermittent clouding I currently experience.

“You’re still grieving your father,” the doctor said at the end of our call. “Sadness and depression affect the memory, too. Let’s wait and see.”

It certainly didn’t help matters that two people at my father’s funeral made some insensitive remarks.

“Nancy, you must be scared to death.”

“Is it hard knowing the same thing probably will happen to you?”

Maybe the real question is what to do when the forgetting begins. My dad started taking 70 supplements a day in hopes of saving his mind. He begged me to kill him if he wound up like his father. He retired from his practice and spent all day in a chair doing puzzles. He stopped making new memories in an all-out effort to preserve the ones he already had.

Maybe his approach wasn’t the answer.

Just before his death — his brain a fraction of its former self — my father managed to offer up a final lesson. I was visiting him in the memory-care center when he got a strange look on his face. I figured it was gas. But then his eyes lit up and a big grin overtook him, and he looked right at me and said, “Funny how things turn out.”

An unforgettable moment?

I can only hope.

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Nancy Stearns Bercaw is a writer in Vermont. Her book, “Brain in a Jar: A Daughter’s Journey Through Her Father’s Memory,” will be published in April 2013 by Broadstone.

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Well: Waiting for Alzheimer's to Begin

My gray matter might be waning. Then again, it might not be. But I swear that I can feel memories — as I’m making them — slide off a neuron and into a tangle of plaque. I steel myself for those moments to come when I won’t remember what just went into my head.

I’m not losing track of my car keys, which is pretty standard in aging minds. Nor have I ever forgotten to turn off the oven after use, common in menopausal women. I can always find my car in the parking lot, although lots of “normal” folk can’t.

Rather, I suddenly can’t remember the name of someone with whom I’ve worked for years. I cover by saying “sir” or “madam” like the Southerner I am, even though I live in Vermont and grown people here don’t use such terms. Better to think I’m quirky than losing my faculties. Sometimes I’ll send myself an e-mail to-do reminder and then, seconds later, find myself thrilled to see a new entry pop into my inbox. Oops, it’s from me. Worse yet, a massage therapist kicked me out of her practice for missing three appointments. I didn’t recall making any of them. There must another Nancy.

Am I losing track of me?

Equally worrisome are the memories increasingly coming to the fore. Magically, these random recollections manage to circumnavigate my imagined build-up of beta-amyloid en route to delivering vivid images of my father’s first steps down his path of forgetting. He was the same age I am now, which is 46.

“How old are you?” I recall him asking me back then. Some years later, he began calling me every Dec. 28 to say, “Happy birthday,” instead of on the correct date, Dec. 27. The 28th had been his grandmother’s birthday.

The chasms were small at first. Explainable. Dismissible. When he crossed the street without looking both ways, we chalked it up to his well-cultivated, absent-minded professor persona. But the chasms grew into sinkholes, and eventually quicksand. When we took him to get new pants one day, he kept trying on the same ones he wore to the store.

“I like these slacks,” he’d say, over and over again, as he repeatedly pulled his pair up and down.

My dad died of Alzheimer’s last April at age 73 — the same age at which his father succumbed to the same disease. My dad ended up choosing neurology as his profession after witnessing the very beginning of his own dad’s forgetting.

Decades later, grandfather’s atrophied brain found its way into a jar on my father’s office desk. Was it meant to be an ever-present reminder of Alzheimer’s effect? Or was it a crystal ball sent to warn of genetic fate? My father the doctor never said, nor did he ever mention, that it was his father’s gray matter floating in that pool of formaldehyde.

Using the jarred brain as a teaching tool, my dad showed my 8-year-old self the difference between frontal and temporal lobes. He also pointed out how brains with Alzheimer’s disease become smaller, and how wide grooves develop in the cerebral cortex. But only after his death — and my mother’s confession about whose brain occupied that jar — did I figure out that my father was quite literally demonstrating how this disease runs through our heads.

Has my forgetting begun?

I called my dad’s neurologist. To find out if I was in the earliest stages of Alzheimer’s, he would have to look for proteins in my blood or spinal fluid and employ expensive neuroimaging tests. If he found any indication of onset, the only option would be experimental trials.

But documented confirmation of a diseased brain would break my still hopeful heart. I’d walk around with the scarlet letter “A” etched on the inside of my forehead — obstructing how I view every situation instead of the intermittent clouding I currently experience.

“You’re still grieving your father,” the doctor said at the end of our call. “Sadness and depression affect the memory, too. Let’s wait and see.”

It certainly didn’t help matters that two people at my father’s funeral made some insensitive remarks.

“Nancy, you must be scared to death.”

“Is it hard knowing the same thing probably will happen to you?”

Maybe the real question is what to do when the forgetting begins. My dad started taking 70 supplements a day in hopes of saving his mind. He begged me to kill him if he wound up like his father. He retired from his practice and spent all day in a chair doing puzzles. He stopped making new memories in an all-out effort to preserve the ones he already had.

Maybe his approach wasn’t the answer.

Just before his death — his brain a fraction of its former self — my father managed to offer up a final lesson. I was visiting him in the memory-care center when he got a strange look on his face. I figured it was gas. But then his eyes lit up and a big grin overtook him, and he looked right at me and said, “Funny how things turn out.”

An unforgettable moment?

I can only hope.

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Nancy Stearns Bercaw is a writer in Vermont. Her book, “Brain in a Jar: A Daughter’s Journey Through Her Father’s Memory,” will be published in April 2013 by Broadstone.

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Chinese Hackers Infiltrate New York Times Computers

A Cyberattack From China:
TimesCast: Chinese hackers infiltrated The New York Times’s computer systems, getting passwords for its reporters and others.

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.

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.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 31, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the timing of a cyberattack that caused damage at Iran’s main nuclear enrichment plant. Evidence suggests that the United States and Israel released a computer worm around 2008, not 2012.

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