Personal Health: Food Myths

Let’s start the new year on scientifically sound footing by addressing some nutritional falsehoods that circulate widely in cyberspace, locker rooms, supermarkets and health food stores. As a result, millions of people are squandering hard-earned dollars on questionable, even hazardous foods and supplements.

For starters, when did “chemical” become a dirty word? That’s a question raised by one of Canada’s brightest scientific minds: Joe Schwarcz, director of the Office for Science and Society at McGill University in Montreal. Dr. Schwarcz, who has received high honors from Canadian and American scientific societies, is the author of several best-selling books that attempt to set the record straight on a host of issues that commonly concern health-conscious people.

I’ve read two of his books, “Science, Sense and Nonsense” (published in 2009) and “The Right Chemistry” (2012), and recently attended a symposium on the science of food that Dr. Schwarcz organized at McGill.

What follows are tips from his books and the symposium that can help you make wiser choices about what does, and does not, pass your lips in 2013.

CURED MEATS Many health-conscious people avoid cured meats like hot dogs and bacon because the nitrites with which they are preserved can react with naturally occurring amines to form nitrosamines. Nitrosamines have produced mutations in cells cultured in the laboratory and cancer in animals treated with very high doses.

As an alternative, sandwich lovers often buy organic versions of processed meats or products without added nitrites. Without preservatives, these foods may not be protected from bacterial contamination. And despite their labels, they may contain nitrites. According to Dr. Schwarcz, organic processed meats labeled “uncured” may be preserved with highly concentrated, nitrate-rich celery juice treated with a bacterial culture that produces nitrites.

If you’re really concerned about your health, you’d be wise to steer clear of processed meats — organic, nitrite-free or otherwise. High saturated fat and salt content place them low on the nutritional totem pole.

MEAT GLUE Never heard of it? You may have eaten it, especially if you dine out often. At WD-50 in New York, the chef, Wylie Dufresne, makes his famous shrimp noodles with the enzyme transglutaminase, a k a meat glue. It binds protein molecules, gluing together small pieces of fish, meat or poultry.

The Japanese use meat glue to create artificial crab meat from pollock. Others use it to combine lamb and scallops, or to make sausages that hold together without casings.

Sound frightening? It shouldn’t. The enzyme is classified by the Food and Drug Administration as “generally recognized as safe,” and there is no reason to think otherwise. Our bodies produce it to help blood clot, Dr. Schwarcz points out. When consumed, it breaks down like any protein into its component amino acids in our digestive tracts.

There is, however, one possible indirect hazard: If glued-together animal protein is not thoroughly cooked, dangerous bacteria that originally contaminated the meat could remain viable within the fused product.

TRANS FATS The removal of heart-damaging trans fats from processed foods is a much-ballyhooed boon to health. But “not all trans fats are fiends,” Dr. Schwarcz notes. Certain ones can legally, and healthfully, be added to dairy products, meal-replacement bars, soy milk and fruit juice.

The word “trans” refers to the arrangement of hydrogen and carbon atoms in a fatty acid. The trans formation linked to heart disease is formed when vegetable oils are hardened to prolong shelf life in a manufacturing process called hydrogenation. Natural trans fats, like those in meat and dairy products, take a slightly different form, resulting in an entirely different effect on health.

The most widely consumed “good” trans fat is conjugated linoleic acid, which research has shown can help weight-conscious people lose fat and gain muscle. Various studies have suggested that C.L.A., now widely sold as a supplement, also can enhance immune function and reduce atherosclerosis, high blood pressure and inflammation.

ORGANIC OR NOT? Wherever I shop for food these days, I find an ever-widening array of food products labeled “organic” and “natural.” But are consumers getting the health benefits they pay a premium for?

Until the 20th century, Dr. Schwarcz wrote, all farming was “organic,” with manure and compost used as fertilizer and “natural” compounds of arsenic, mercury and lead used as pesticides.

Might manure used today on organic farms contain disease-causing micro-organisms? Might organic produce unprotected by insecticides harbor cancer-causing molds? It’s a possibility, Dr. Schwarcz said. But consumers aren’t looking beyond the organic sales pitch.

Also questionable is whether organic foods, which are certainly kinder to the environment, are more nutritious. Though some may contain slightly higher levels of essential micronutrients, like vitamin C, the difference between them and conventionally grown crops may depend more on where they are produced than how.

A further concern: Organic producers disavow genetic modification, which can be used to improve a crop’s nutritional content, enhance resistance to pests and diminish its need for water. A genetically modified tomato developed at the University of Exeter, for example, contains nearly 80 times the antioxidants of conventional tomatoes. Healthier, yes — but it can’t be called organic.

FARMED SALMON Most of the salmon consumed nowadays is farmed. Even if we all could afford the wild variety, there’s simply not enough of it to satisfy the current demand for this heart-healthy fish.

There may be legitimate concerns about possible pollutants in farmed salmon, but one concern that is a nonissue involves that “salmon” color, produced by adding astaxanthin to fish feed. This commercially made pigment is an antioxidant found naturally in algae, and it is carried up the food chain to give wild salmon its color, too.

NUTS Growing up, I was often warned to avoid nuts because they’re “fattening.” Now I know better. Research has shown that people who regularly eat nuts and nut butters in normal amounts weigh less, on average, than nut avoiders.

The fat in nuts is unsaturated and heart-healthy. Nuts are also good sources of protein, antioxidants, vitamins, minerals and fiber, and can help keep between-meal hunger at bay. The same is true of avocados — just don’t go overboard.

Read More..

Personal Health: Food Myths

Let’s start the new year on scientifically sound footing by addressing some nutritional falsehoods that circulate widely in cyberspace, locker rooms, supermarkets and health food stores. As a result, millions of people are squandering hard-earned dollars on questionable, even hazardous foods and supplements.

For starters, when did “chemical” become a dirty word? That’s a question raised by one of Canada’s brightest scientific minds: Joe Schwarcz, director of the Office for Science and Society at McGill University in Montreal. Dr. Schwarcz, who has received high honors from Canadian and American scientific societies, is the author of several best-selling books that attempt to set the record straight on a host of issues that commonly concern health-conscious people.

I’ve read two of his books, “Science, Sense and Nonsense” (published in 2009) and “The Right Chemistry” (2012), and recently attended a symposium on the science of food that Dr. Schwarcz organized at McGill.

What follows are tips from his books and the symposium that can help you make wiser choices about what does, and does not, pass your lips in 2013.

CURED MEATS Many health-conscious people avoid cured meats like hot dogs and bacon because the nitrites with which they are preserved can react with naturally occurring amines to form nitrosamines. Nitrosamines have produced mutations in cells cultured in the laboratory and cancer in animals treated with very high doses.

As an alternative, sandwich lovers often buy organic versions of processed meats or products without added nitrites. Without preservatives, these foods may not be protected from bacterial contamination. And despite their labels, they may contain nitrites. According to Dr. Schwarcz, organic processed meats labeled “uncured” may be preserved with highly concentrated, nitrate-rich celery juice treated with a bacterial culture that produces nitrites.

If you’re really concerned about your health, you’d be wise to steer clear of processed meats — organic, nitrite-free or otherwise. High saturated fat and salt content place them low on the nutritional totem pole.

MEAT GLUE Never heard of it? You may have eaten it, especially if you dine out often. At WD-50 in New York, the chef, Wylie Dufresne, makes his famous shrimp noodles with the enzyme transglutaminase, a k a meat glue. It binds protein molecules, gluing together small pieces of fish, meat or poultry.

The Japanese use meat glue to create artificial crab meat from pollock. Others use it to combine lamb and scallops, or to make sausages that hold together without casings.

Sound frightening? It shouldn’t. The enzyme is classified by the Food and Drug Administration as “generally recognized as safe,” and there is no reason to think otherwise. Our bodies produce it to help blood clot, Dr. Schwarcz points out. When consumed, it breaks down like any protein into its component amino acids in our digestive tracts.

There is, however, one possible indirect hazard: If glued-together animal protein is not thoroughly cooked, dangerous bacteria that originally contaminated the meat could remain viable within the fused product.

TRANS FATS The removal of heart-damaging trans fats from processed foods is a much-ballyhooed boon to health. But “not all trans fats are fiends,” Dr. Schwarcz notes. Certain ones can legally, and healthfully, be added to dairy products, meal-replacement bars, soy milk and fruit juice.

The word “trans” refers to the arrangement of hydrogen and carbon atoms in a fatty acid. The trans formation linked to heart disease is formed when vegetable oils are hardened to prolong shelf life in a manufacturing process called hydrogenation. Natural trans fats, like those in meat and dairy products, take a slightly different form, resulting in an entirely different effect on health.

The most widely consumed “good” trans fat is conjugated linoleic acid, which research has shown can help weight-conscious people lose fat and gain muscle. Various studies have suggested that C.L.A., now widely sold as a supplement, also can enhance immune function and reduce atherosclerosis, high blood pressure and inflammation.

ORGANIC OR NOT? Wherever I shop for food these days, I find an ever-widening array of food products labeled “organic” and “natural.” But are consumers getting the health benefits they pay a premium for?

Until the 20th century, Dr. Schwarcz wrote, all farming was “organic,” with manure and compost used as fertilizer and “natural” compounds of arsenic, mercury and lead used as pesticides.

Might manure used today on organic farms contain disease-causing micro-organisms? Might organic produce unprotected by insecticides harbor cancer-causing molds? It’s a possibility, Dr. Schwarcz said. But consumers aren’t looking beyond the organic sales pitch.

Also questionable is whether organic foods, which are certainly kinder to the environment, are more nutritious. Though some may contain slightly higher levels of essential micronutrients, like vitamin C, the difference between them and conventionally grown crops may depend more on where they are produced than how.

A further concern: Organic producers disavow genetic modification, which can be used to improve a crop’s nutritional content, enhance resistance to pests and diminish its need for water. A genetically modified tomato developed at the University of Exeter, for example, contains nearly 80 times the antioxidants of conventional tomatoes. Healthier, yes — but it can’t be called organic.

FARMED SALMON Most of the salmon consumed nowadays is farmed. Even if we all could afford the wild variety, there’s simply not enough of it to satisfy the current demand for this heart-healthy fish.

There may be legitimate concerns about possible pollutants in farmed salmon, but one concern that is a nonissue involves that “salmon” color, produced by adding astaxanthin to fish feed. This commercially made pigment is an antioxidant found naturally in algae, and it is carried up the food chain to give wild salmon its color, too.

NUTS Growing up, I was often warned to avoid nuts because they’re “fattening.” Now I know better. Research has shown that people who regularly eat nuts and nut butters in normal amounts weigh less, on average, than nut avoiders.

The fat in nuts is unsaturated and heart-healthy. Nuts are also good sources of protein, antioxidants, vitamins, minerals and fiber, and can help keep between-meal hunger at bay. The same is true of avocados — just don’t go overboard.

Read More..

Elwood V. Jensen, Pioneer in Breast Cancer Treatment, Dies at 92

Tony Jones/Cincinnati Enquirer, via Associated Press

Elwood V. Jensen in 2004.

Elwood V. Jensen, a medical researcher whose studies of steroid hormones led to new treatments for breast cancer that have been credited with saving or extending hundreds of thousands of lives, died on Dec. 16 in Cincinnati. He was 92.

The cause was complications of pneumonia, his son, Thomas Jensen, said.

In 2004 Dr. Jensen received the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award, one of the most respected science prizes in the world.

When Dr. Jensen started his research at the University of Chicago in the 1950s, steroid hormones, which alter the functioning of cells, were thought to interact with cells through a series of chemical reactions involving enzymes.

However, Dr. Jensen used radioactive tracers to show that steroid hormones actually affect cells by binding to a specific receptor protein inside them. He first focused on the steroid hormone estrogen.

By 1968, Dr. Jensen had developed a test for the presence of estrogen receptors in breast cancer cells. He later concluded that such receptors were present in about a third of those cells.

Breast cancers that are estrogen positive, meaning they have receptors for the hormone, can be treated with medications like Tamoxifen or with other methods of inhibiting estrogen in a patient’s system, like removal of the ovaries. Women with receptor-rich breast cancers often go into remission when estrogen is blocked or removed.

By the mid-1980s, a test developed by Dr. Jensen and a colleague at the University of Chicago, Dr. Geoffrey Greene, could be used to determine the extent of estrogen receptors in breast and other cancers. That test became a standard part of care for breast cancer patients.

Scientists like Dr. Pierre Chambon and Dr. Ronald M. Evans, who shared the 2004 Lasker prize with Dr. Jensen, went on to show that many types of receptors exist. The receptors are crucial components of the cell’s control system and transmit signals in an array of vital functions, from the development of organs in the womb to the control of fat cells and the regulation of cholesterol.

Dr. Jensen’s work also led to the development of drugs that can enhance or inhibit the effects of hormones. Such drugs are used to treat prostate and other cancers.

Elwood Vernon Jensen was born in Fargo, N.D., on Jan. 13, 1920, to Eli and Vera Morris Jensen. He majored in chemistry at what was then Wittenberg College in Springfield, Ohio, and had begun graduate training in organic chemistry at the University of Chicago when World War II began.

Dr. Jensen wanted to join the Army Air Forces, but his poor vision kept him from becoming a pilot. During the war he synthesized poison gases at the University of Chicago, exposure to which twice put him in the hospital. His work on toxic chemicals, he said, inspired him to pursue biology and medicine.

Dr. Jensen studied steroid hormone chemistry at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology on a Guggenheim Fellowship after the war. While there, he climbed the Matterhorn, one of the highest peaks in the Alps, even though he had no mountaineering experience. He often equated his successful research to the novel approach taken by Edward Whymper, the first mountaineer to reach the Matterhorn’s summit. Mr. Whymper went against conventional wisdom and scaled the mountain’s Swiss face, after twice failing to reach the summit on the Italian side.

Dr. Jensen joined the University of Chicago as an assistant professor of surgery in 1947, working closely with the Nobel laureate Charles Huggins. He became an original member of the research team at the Ben May Laboratory for Cancer Research (now the Ben May Department for Cancer Research) in 1951, and became the director after Dr. Huggins stepped down.

He came to work at the University of Cincinnati in 2002, and continued to do research there until last year.

His first wife, the former Mary Collette, died in 1982. In addition to his son, Dr. Jensen is survived by his second wife, the former Hiltrud Herborg; a daughter, Karen C. Jensen; a sister, Margaret Brennan; two grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.

Dr. Jensen’s wife was found to have breast cancer in 2005. She had the tumor removed, he said in an interview, but tested positive for the estrogen receptor and was successfully treated with a medication that prevents estrogen synthesis.

Read More..

Well: Exercise and the Ever-Smarter Human Brain

Anyone whose resolve to exercise in 2013 is a bit shaky might want to consider an emerging scientific view of human evolution. It suggests that we are clever today in part because a million years ago, we could outrun and outwalk most other mammals over long distances. Our brains were shaped and sharpened by movement, the idea goes, and we continue to require regular physical activity in order for our brains to function optimally.

Phys Ed

Gretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness.

The role of physical endurance in shaping humankind has intrigued anthropologists and gripped the popular imagination for some time. In 2004, the evolutionary biologists Daniel E. Lieberman of Harvard and Dennis M. Bramble of the University of Utah published a seminal article in the journal Nature titled “Endurance Running and the Evolution of Homo,” in which they posited that our bipedal ancestors survived by becoming endurance athletes, able to bring down swifter prey through sheer doggedness, jogging and plodding along behind them until the animals dropped.

Endurance produced meals, which provided energy for mating, which meant that adept early joggers passed along their genes. In this way, natural selection drove early humans to become even more athletic, Dr. Lieberman and other scientists have written, their bodies developing longer legs, shorter toes, less hair and complicated inner-ear mechanisms to maintain balance and stability during upright ambulation. Movement shaped the human body.

But simultaneously, in a development that until recently many scientists viewed as unrelated, humans were becoming smarter. Their brains were increasing rapidly in size.

Today, humans have a brain that is about three times larger than would be expected, anthropologists say, given our species’ body size in comparison with that of other mammals.

To explain those outsized brains, evolutionary scientists have pointed to such occurrences as meat eating and, perhaps most determinatively, our early ancestors’ need for social interaction. Early humans had to plan and execute hunts as a group, which required complicated thinking patterns and, it’s been thought, rewarded the social and brainy with evolutionary success. According to that hypothesis, the evolution of the brain was driven by the need to think.

But now some scientists are suggesting that physical activity also played a critical role in making our brains larger.

To reach that conclusion, anthropologists began by looking at existing data about brain size and endurance capacity in a variety of mammals, including dogs, guinea pigs, foxes, mice, wolves, rats, civet cats, antelope, mongooses, goats, sheep and elands. They found a notable pattern. Species like dogs and rats that had a high innate endurance capacity, which presumably had evolved over millenniums, also had large brain volumes relative to their body size.

The researchers also looked at recent experiments in which mice and rats were systematically bred to be marathon runners. Lab animals that willingly put in the most miles on running wheels were interbred, resulting in the creation of a line of lab animals that excelled at running.

Interestingly, after multiple generations, these animals began to develop innately high levels of substances that promote tissue growth and health, including a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF. These substances are important for endurance performance. They also are known to drive brain growth.

What all of this means, says David A. Raichlen, an anthropologist at the University of Arizona and an author of a new article about the evolution of human brains appearing in the January issue of Proceedings of the Royal Society Biology, is that physical activity may have helped to make early humans smarter.

“We think that what happened” in our early hunter-gatherer ancestors, he says, is that the more athletic and active survived and, as with the lab mice, passed along physiological characteristics that improved their endurance, including elevated levels of BDNF. Eventually, these early athletes had enough BDNF coursing through their bodies that some could migrate from the muscles to the brain, where it nudged the growth of brain tissue.

Those particular early humans then applied their growing ability to think and reason toward better tracking prey, becoming the best-fed and most successful from an evolutionary standpoint. Being in motion made them smarter, and being smarter now allowed them to move more efficiently.

And out of all of this came, eventually, an ability to understand higher math and invent iPads. But that was some time later.

The broad point of this new notion is that if physical activity helped to mold the structure of our brains, then it most likely remains essential to brain health today, says John D. Polk, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and co-author, with Dr. Raichlen, of the new article.

And there is scientific support for that idea. Recent studies have shown, he says, that “regular exercise, even walking,” leads to more robust mental abilities, “beginning in childhood and continuing into old age.”

Of course, the hypothesis that jogging after prey helped to drive human brain evolution is just a hypothesis, Dr. Raichlen says, and almost unprovable.

But it is compelling, says Harvard’s Dr. Lieberman, who has worked with the authors of the new article. “I fundamentally agree that there is a deep evolutionary basis for the relationship between a healthy body and a healthy mind,” he says, a relationship that makes the term “jogging your memory” more literal than most of us might have expected and provides a powerful incentive to be active in 2013.

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Bits Blog: Facebook Poke and the Tedium of Success Theater

There’s a big problem in social media right now.

It’s boring.

A crucial and indispensable source of news and information, absolutely. But more often than not, it’s also tedious and predictable.

Don’t get me wrong: My use of Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter and Facebook has never been greater. But I’m growing tired of seeing everyone’s perfectly framed, glittering nightscapes of the Manhattan skyline, their impeccably prepared meals, those beautifully blurred views of the world from an airplane window seat. I’m getting tired of carefully crafting and sharing them myself.

As these media have matured and more of our colleagues, former flings, in-laws and friends have migrated to them, our use of them has changed. We’ve become better at choreographing ourselves and showing our best sides to the screen, capturing the most flattering angle of our faces, our homes, our evenings out, our loved ones and our trips.

It’s success theater, and we’ve mastered it. We’ve gotten better at it because it matters more. You never know who is looking or how it might affect your relationships and career down the road, and as a result, we have become more cautious about the version of ourselves that we present to each other and the world. Even Twitter, a service steeped in real-time and right-nowness, has added filters to its photo uploads, letting its users add a washed-out effect to their posts. It makes me miss the raw and unfiltered glimpses those services used to provide of the lives of my friends and the people I follow.

But the ubiquity of success theater is why I’ve become so fascinated with Snapchat and, more recently, Facebook Poke, services that let you send photos, messages and videos with a built-in shelf life, that self-destruct after a time interval that you choose. The beauty of these applications, perhaps their main redemptive quality, is that you can only send photos, messages and videos that you have created within the application. You cannot access your phone’s photo library for a more attractive self-portrait or an exotic locale to mask that you’re really sitting on the couch on Friday night in pajamas, wearing a face mask.

These applications are the opposite of groomed; they practically require imperfection, a sloppiness and a grittiness that conveys a sense of realness, something I’ve been craving in my communication. They transform the screen of your phone into a window into the life of your friend, wherever they are at that exact moment.

All of this is not to say that Snapchat or Facebook Poke have any permanent home in our daily routines. The applications, in their current iterations, have yet to gain significant traction in any of my social circles. Part of the fun is the novelty, as with any new service. And both have specific uses that are not as mainstream as services like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or even Tumblr. After all, it’s much harder to find your comfort level within them. It’s startling, at first, to see the poorly lit, grainy pictures of your friends’ unfiltered faces, to adjust to the intimacy of realizing that the video of your friend that just landed in your in-box is meant for your eyes only, and that you are expected to send something of equal or greater intimacy in return. It is also possible that over time, Snapchat, VidBurn and Facebook Poke will become warped by their own versions of success theater, or lose steam if they gain seedier reputations.

But they capture a behavior my closest friends and I had already begun to adopt: The practice of showing each other where we are at any given moment in time, either through a short video or photo of our workstations, our faces as we lie half-asleep in bed on rainy Sunday afternoons, a look into our lives that is reserved for only those closest to each other. It is an acknowledgement that the version of ourselves we share through other social media is not the truest one, and has not been for a long time.

This is a variation of the same impulse that made Chatroulette a viral hit, and something that Apple has tried to capture with FaceTime, Google with its Hangouts, even Color’s ill-fated last and final iteration. It’s enough to make me think that the real real-time social Web is coming, in one form or another.

Read More..

Cold Afghan Camps Receive Some Aid, but Shortages Loom

KABUL, Afghanistan — The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees on Sunday distributed emergency cold weather supplies to families in a refugee camp where two days earlier a 3-year-old child died of exposure to the cold.

Immediately, however, camp leaders and Afghan government officials criticized the aid delivery as inadequate to protect camp residents from continued cold weather conditions and to prevent further deaths of children from the cold.

Last winter more than 100 children died of the cold in refugee camps around Kabul, with 26 of the deaths in the Charahi Qambar camp in Kabul alone. That is also where the child died Friday, the first confirmed cold death this winter.

The distribution at the camp in western Kabul city, which has about 900 families, had previously been scheduled and was not prompted by news reports about the child’s death, according to Mohammad Nader Farhad, a spokesman for the U.N.H.C.R. in Kabul.

On less than an hour’s notice, the agency convened a news conference with Afghan government officials at the camp to announce the distribution.

Each family was given warm children’s clothing, blankets, tarps, cooking utensils and soap. Separately, other aid groups, financed by the United Nations and other donors, will be distributing charcoal once every month through February.

United Nations officials acknowledged, however, that the fuel distributions in themselves were not enough to heat the mud and tarp huts throughout the cold season, and there are no plans to distribute food to the families. In most cases the men, who are largely war-displaced refugees, are unable to find casual day labor work in the cold weather, so they are usually unable to buy food.

“We are happy to receive this,” said Tawoos Khan, one of the camp representatives. “But we want food and we need more fuel, we have all run out of firewood and charcoal.” He and other camp officials said large sacks of charcoal were distributed to every family more than two weeks ago, but supplies had run out.

“It’s supplementary,” said Douglas DiSalvo, a U.N.H.C.R. protection officer who was at the Charahi Qambar camp. “People have some level of support they can achieve for themselves.”

Mr. Farhad said: “The assistance we are providing, at least it is mitigating the harsh winter these families are experiencing right now.”

The estimated 35,000 people in 50 camps in and around Kabul city are not classified as refugees from an international legal point of view, but as “internally displaced persons.” Since the U.N.H.C.R.’s mandate is primarily to help refugees, defined as those who flee across international borders, in the past it has not provided support to these camps. That changed late last winter when the Afghan government asked it to do so in response to the emergency conditions that were taking so many lives.

This year, the agency is spearheading the effort to supply the camps, along with the Afghan government’s Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation, other United Nations agencies, and several aid groups, in order to prevent a recurrence of last winter’s crisis.

Ministry officials, however, were vocally critical of the effort on Sunday — even though they were joint sponsors of the distribution. “We have never claimed that we provided the internally displaced Afghans with sufficient food items, clothing or means of heat. We admit this, what the internally displaced people have received so far is not adequate at all,” said Islamuddin Jurat, a spokesman for the Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation.

“Before the arrival of harsh winter, we asked the international community and donor countries to help the internally displaced people, and luckily today U.N.H.C.R. provided them with some humanitarian assistance, but again we believe it’s not sufficient at all,” he added.

In the past, both aid officials and Afghan government officials have said they were wary about providing too much aid to the Kabul camps, for fear that it would turn the camps into magnets and encourage more people to leave their homes elsewhere in the country. That fear has also been why the Afghan government has refused to allow permanent buildings to be built in the camps, many of which are five or more years old.

“The illegal nature of these squatter settlements poses an obstacle to more lasting interventions and improvements,” Mr. Farhad said. “Coordination this year has been very strong, and we expect that the multiagency effort will help us to detect and respond to particular problem areas as the winter progresses. “

Little is provided in the way of food aid. The only food program in the Charahi Qambar camp, for instance, is a hot lunch program for 750 students run at a tented school staffed by an Afghan aid group, Aschiana.

The U.N.H.C.R. is providing the cold weather packages to 40,000 families throughout the country, 5,000 of them in the Kabul camps, at a total cost of $6 million. Other Kabul camps will receive distributions in the next two days, Mr. Farhad said.

The packages, which cost about $150 each, include two tarpaulins, three blankets, six bars of soap, a cooking utensils set, and 26 clothing items ranging from jackets and sweaters to socks and hats, mostly for children.

Taj Mohammad, the father of the child who died, Janan, said Sunday that he believed his son might have survived if the cold weather kit had arrived earlier. But like many of the refugees, he was critical of its contents, which he said were hard to sell in exchange for food.

“I didn’t know a package costs $150,” he said. “It’s a lot of money. It would have been much better if they had given us the money, and we would have spent it on what we need the most.”

Read More..

China Toughens Restrictions on Internet Use

HONG KONG — The Chinese government issued new rules on Friday requiring Internet users to provide their real names to service providers, while assigning Internet companies greater responsibility for deleting forbidden postings and reporting them to the authorities.

The decision came as government censors have sharply stepped up restrictions on China’s international Internet traffic in recent weeks. The restrictions are making it harder for businesses to protect commercial secrets and for individuals to view overseas Web sites that the Chinese Communist Party deems politically sensitive.

The new regulations, issued by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, allow Internet users to continue to adopt pseudonyms for their online postings, but only if they first provide their real names to service providers, a measure that could chill some of the vibrant discourse on the country’s Twitter-like microblogs. The authorities periodically detain and even jail Internet users for politically sensitive comments, such as calls for a multiparty democracy or accusations of impropriety by local officials.

Any entity providing Internet access, including over fixed-line or mobile phones, “should when signing agreements with users or confirming provision of services, demand that users provide true information about their identities,” the committee ordered.

In recent weeks, Internet users in China have exposed a series of sexual and financial scandals that have led to the resignations or dismissals of at least 10 local officials. International news media have also published a series of reports in recent months on the accumulation of wealth by the family members of China’s leaders, and some Web sites carrying such reports, including Bloomberg’s and the English- and Chinese-language sites of The New York Times, have been assiduously blocked, while Internet comments about them have been swiftly deleted.

The regulations issued Friday build on a series of similar administrative guidelines and municipal rules issued over the past year. China’s mostly private Internet service providers have been slow to comply with them, fearing the reactions of their customers. The committee’s decision has much greater legal force, and puts far more pressure on Chinese Internet providers to comply more quickly and more comprehensively, Internet specialists said.

In what appeared to be an effort to make the decision more palatable to the Chinese public, the committee also included a mandate for businesses in China to be more cautious in gathering and protecting electronic data.

“Nowadays on the Internet there are very serious problems with citizens’ personal electronic information being recklessly collected, used without approval, illegally disclosed, and even traded and sold,” Li Fei, a deputy director of the committee’s legislative affairs panel, said on Friday at a news conference in Beijing. “There are also a large number of cases of invasive attacks on information systems to steal personal electronic information, as well as lawbreaking on the Internet through swindles and through defaming and slandering others.”

Mr. Li denied that the government was seeking to prevent the exposure of corruption.

“When citizens exercise these rights according to the law, no organization or individual can use any reason or excuse to interfere, and cannot suppress them or exact revenge,” he said. “At the same time, when citizens exercise their rights, including through use of the Internet, they should stay within the bounds of the Constitution and the laws, and must not harm the legitimate rights and interests of the state, society, the collective or of other citizens.”

A spokesman for the National People’s Congress said that 145 members of the committee voted in favor of the new rules, with 5 abstaining and 1 voting against them.

The requirement for real names appeared to be aimed particularly at cellphone companies and other providers of mobile Internet access. At the news conference, an official from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Zhao Zhiguo, said that nearly all fixed-line services now had real-name registration, but that only about 70 percent of mobile phones were registered under real names.

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Surgery Returns to NYU Langone Medical Center

Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

Senator Charles E. Schumer spoke at a news conference Thursday about the reopening of NYU Langone Medical Center.

NYU Langone Medical Center opened its doors to surgical patients on Thursday, almost two months after Hurricane Sandy overflowed the banks of the East River and forced the evacuation of hundreds of patients.

While the medical center had been treating many outpatients, it had farmed out surgery to other hospitals, which created scheduling problems that forced many patients to have their operations on nights and weekends, when staffing is traditionally low. Some patients and doctors had to postpone not just elective but also necessary operations for lack of space at other hospitals.

The medical center’s Tisch Hospital, its major hospital for inpatient services, between 30th and 34th Streets on First Avenue, had been closed since the hurricane knocked out power and forced the evacuation of more than 300 patients, some on sleds brought down darkened flights of stairs.

“I think it’s a little bit of a miracle on 34th Street that this happened so quickly,” Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York said Thursday.

Mr. Schumer credited the medical center’s leadership and esprit de corps, and also a tour of the damaged hospital on Nov. 9 by the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, W. Craig Fugate, whom he and others escorted through watery basement hallways.

“Every time I talk to Fugate there are a lot of questions, but one is, ‘How are you doing at NYU?’ ” the senator said.

The reopening of Tisch to surgery patients and associated services, like intensive care, some types of radiology and recovery room anesthesia, was part of a phased restoration that will continue. Besides providing an essential service, surgery is among the more lucrative of hospital services.

The hospital’s emergency department is expected to delay its reopening for about 11 months, in part to accommodate an expansion in capacity to 65,000 patient visits a year, from 43,000, said Dr. Andrew W. Brotman, its senior vice president and vice dean for clinical affairs and strategy.

In the meantime, NYU Langone is setting up an urgent care center with 31 bays and an observation unit, which will be able to treat some emergency patients. It will initially not accept ambulances, but might be able to later, Dr. Brotman said. Nearby Bellevue Hospital Center, which was also evacuated, opened its emergency department to noncritical injuries on Monday.

Labor and delivery, the cancer floor, epilepsy treatment and pediatrics and neurology beyond surgery are expected to open in mid-January, Langone officials said. While some radiology equipment, which was in the basement, has been restored, other equipment — including a Gamma Knife, a device using radiation to treat brain tumors — is not back.

The flooded basement is still being worked on, and electrical gear has temporarily been moved upstairs. Mr. Schumer, a Democrat, said that a $60 billion bill to pay for hurricane losses and recovery in New York and New Jersey was nearing a vote, and that he was optimistic it would pass in the Senate with bipartisan support. But the measure’s fate in the Republican-controlled House is far less certain.

The bill includes $1.2 billion for damage and lost revenue at NYU Langone, including some money from the National Institutes of Health to restore research projects. It would also cover Long Beach Medical Center in Nassau County, Bellevue, Coney Island Hospital and the Veterans Affairs hospital in Manhattan.

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Russian Acquittal Escalates Human Rights Feud With U.S.

MOSCOW — A judge issued an acquittal on Friday of the only official to have gone to trial in Russia in the case of Sergei L. Magnitsky, a lawyer whose death in prison three years ago inspired the United States Congress to pass a law addressing human rights abuses in Russia.

The official, Dr. Dmitry Kratov, the former head of the medical service at Butyrka Prison, where Mr. Magnitsky had been held, was accused of negligence for refusing repeated requests for treatment for a life-threatening illness.

Charges against another doctor had been dismissed earlier, elevating the significance of Dr. Kratov’s trial, coming just weeks after Congress passed the Magnitsky Act, which was critical of the Russian courts for failing to prosecute any suspects in the lawyer’s death.

But far from pursuing the case, prosecutors announced at a hearing on Monday that they would no longer press for a conviction and instead asked the judge, Tatiana Neverova, to acquit Dr. Kratov.

That reversal came four days after President Vladimir V. Putin said at a news conference that Mr. Magnitsky had died of natural causes, a statement that a lawyer for the family said had sent a message to prosecutors to drop the case.

In granting the prosecutor’s request for an acquittal, Judge Neverova also indicated that Dr. Kratov could sue the government for damages under a Russian law related to illegal prosecution, Interfax reported. Dr. Kratov told journalists at the Tverskoi Court that he had not decided whether to sue.

The judge said she had seen no evidence in the course of the proceedings incriminating Dr. Kratov or convincing her that any connection existed between his actions and Mr. Magnitsky’s death, Interfax reported.

Dr. Kratov was the only person on a list of 60 Russian officials implicated in the Magnitsky case by the United States Helsinki Commission to have stood trial in Russia. Fewer than 1 percent of suspects are acquitted in Russian criminal trials.

Nikolai Gorokhov, a lawyer representing the Magnitsky family, said that Dr. Kratov had signed documents refusing Mr. Magnitsky’s request to be moved to an infirmary and that he had been aware of a diagnosis of pancreatitis and gallstones five days before Mr. Magnitsky death.

In the United States, the Magnitsky Act bans suspects like Dr. Kratov from entering the country and freezes assets in the American banking system.

In retaliation, Mr. Putin signed the Dmitri Yakovlev Act on Friday, named for a Russian child adopted in the United States who died after being forgotten in a hot car. The law bans Americans from adopting Russian orphans because of cases of abuse like Dmitri’s.

Mr. Magnitsky’s employer, the hedge fund Hermitage Capital, issued a statement Friday calling the ruling “a total miscarriage of justice.”

“There is no doubt that people responsible for Magnitsky’s death are being protected by the president of Russia,” the statement said. “Now that President Putin is personally involved in the obstruction of justice in a major case of extrajudicial killing, he will have to face the consequences of his actions.”

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Reid Says a Deal Is Unlikely Before the Fiscal Deadline

WASHINGTON — Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, warned Thursday morning that there was scant time to put together a Congressional deal to avert the impending fiscal crisis and that no resolution was in sight.

“I have to be very honest,” Mr. Reid said as the Senate convened Thursday in an unusual session between Christmas and New Year’s Day. “I don’t know time-wise how it can happen now.”

Mr. Reid offered his pessimistic assessment shortly before President Obama, cutting his vacation short, arrived back in Washington on Air Force One. White House officials said that before leaving Hawaii, Mr. Obama had spoken separately by phone with each of the four Congressional leaders about the status of negotiations, but they gave no details of the discussion.

On the Senate floor, Mr. Reid excoriated House Republicans for failing to consider a Senate-passed measure that would extend lower tax rates on household income up to $250,000. He urged House members, who remained away from Washington, to return to the Capitol to put together at least a modest deal to avoid the more than half-a-trillion dollars in automatic tax increases and spending cuts set to begin in January.

“The American people are waiting for the ball to drop,” Mr. Reid said, “but it’s not going to be a good drop.”

House Republicans planned a midafternoon conference call among members to discuss, among other things, their possible return this weekend; members were told they would be given 48 hours’ notice before any impending return. Republican senators were also planning to convene at the Capitol — normally somnolent during Christmas week — to strategize.

A spokesman for Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader, confirmed that he had spoken with the president, and said that Mr. McConnell was “happy to review what the president has in mind.” But the spokesman, Don Stewart, said Senate Democrats had not come ahead with a plan.

“When they do, members on both sides of the aisle will review the legislation and make decisions on how best to proceed,” Mr. Stewart said.

Mr. Reid said that absent a move from Republicans, the Senate would move forward this week on the national security measure concerning espionage, as well as a bill to help states that have suffered hurricane damage, with multiple votes possible.

“We are here in Washington working,” Mr. Reid said, “while the members of the House of Representatives are out watching movies and watching their kids play soccer and basketball and doing all kinds of things. They should be here.”

Senators, frustrated, pessimistic and in some cases downright miserable, returned to Washington with no clear fiscal agenda. Senator Ben Nelson, a retiring Democrat of Nebraska, arrived shortly after midnight on Thursday on a flight that was delayed more than four hours. As he walked through the airport, he lamented the deteriorating political comity that he has observed during two terms in the Senate and two terms as a Democratic governor of a conservative state.

“There are folks who are elected who have come here with an agenda to do nothing and want to stop everything,” Mr. Nelson said in an interview. “It may be the new norm – blocking everything.”

For Mr. Nelson, who decided against seeking a third term, the looming fiscal crisis would be the final legislative act of a political career built around a bipartisan voting record. He said he was not confident that a real deal could be reached that would be acceptable to both sides, considering that Congress is filled with many people “who didn’t accept the 2008 presidential election and haven’t accepted the 2012 election either.”

Jeff Zeleny contributed reporting.

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