France Sends Troops to Mali to Help Counter Islamist Advance

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Romaric Hien/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images


Fighters of the hard-line Salafi group Ansar Dine in August. The group has controlled Timbuktu and much of northern Mali since a coup d’état and a successful revolt against the central authority in March.







BAMAKO, Mali — France sent armed forces into combat in Mali on Friday, answering an urgent plea from the government of its former colony in West Africa to help blunt a sudden and aggressive advance into the center of the country by Islamist extremist militants who have been in control of the north for much of the past year.




French officials confirmed that the French forces, which included paratroopers and helicopter gunships, had engaged in fighting with the Islamists after landing at a major airfield in the central Mali town of Sévaré.


It was unclear how many French troops had been sent or from where, but a Western diplomat in neighboring Niger said the Islamist forces numbered between 800 and 900 fighters, with about 200 vehicles.


“French forces brought their support this afternoon to Malian army units to fight against terrorist elements,” President François Hollande of France said in a statement to reporters in Paris. “This operation will last as long as is necessary.”


Mr. Hollande has been especially outspoken in his animosity toward northern Mali’s Islamist occupiers and their harsh practices, which rights activists say include arbitrary killings, stonings, amputations, forced marriages and the destruction of non-Islamist cultural shrines. Thousands of Malians have sought to flee the north in recent months.


“Mali is dealing with terrorist elements form the north, whose brutality and fanaticism are now clear to the entire world,” Mr. Hollande said. “The very existence of the friendly state of Mali is at stake, as is the security of its people and that of our citizens. There are 6,000 of them there.”


The French president was responding to an urgent request received the day before from Mali’s interim president, Dioncounda Traore, who said Malian government forces were in dire need of help to stop the Islamists, who have turned the northern half of the country into a militant haven since seizing the territory, about twice of the size of Germany, last April.


The United Nations Security Council, which has repeatedly condemned the Islamist takeover of northern Mali and last month authorized an African-led force to enter the country to help drive the Islamists out, said Thursday that it was closely monitoring events there and may take additional steps. Mr. Hollande is also to meet with the Malian president next week.


The swift French response came after two days of clashes between the Malian Army and militants around Konna, a sleepy mud-brick village that for months had marked the outer limit of the Malian Army’s control after it lost half of the country to the Islamists and their allies eight months ago.


“It’s a very serious situation, very dangerous,” said a Malian officer here in Bamako, the capital, who was not authorized to speak publicly.


The Islamists had been threatening a major airfield 25 miles away in Sévaré, also the home of a significant army base. And 10 miles from Sévaré is the historic river city of Mopti, the last major town controlled by the Malian government, with a population of more than 100,000.


“There were hard fights, but we lost,” the officer said.


A spokesman for the Islamists, Sanda Ould Boumana, said Thursday from rebel-held Timbuktu: “We have taken the town of Konna. We control Konna, and the Malian Army has fled. We have pushed them back.” Gen. Carter F. Ham, the commander of the Pentagon’s Africa Command, who was traveling in neighboring Niger, said he understood that French paratroopers and helicopter gunships had landed in Sévaré and had engaged the Islamists in combat. He also said the United States, which shares France’s deep concern about the Islamist seizure of northern Mali, was considering what it could do to help, perhaps by repositioning satellites or sending in surveillance drones.


This week’s clashes were the first time that the two sides had fought since Islamists and their Tuareg rebel allies conquered the north of Mali last spring, splitting the country in two and leaving the Malian Army in disarray.


For months, the United Nations and Mali’s neighbors have been debating and planning a military campaign to retake the north by force, if necessary, an international push that is supposed to be led by Malian forces. Analysts had previously said that the outcome of this week’s fighting at Konna would be a significant indicator of the army’s fitness to undertake the reconquest of the north.


Malian politicians reacted with shock to news of Konna’s loss.


“This is a very disagreeable surprise. Terrible. A dagger blow,” said Fatoumata Dicko, a deputy in Mali’s Parliament in Bamako. “People are fleeing Sévaré. They think there is nothing to hold the Islamists back.”


Adam Nossiter reported from Bamako and Eric Schmitt from Niamey, Niger. Reporting was contributed by Cheick Diouara from Accra, Ghana; Rick Gladstone from New York; and Richard Berry from Paris.



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2 Years Into Its Turnaround, Nokia Shows Promise

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BERLIN — Nearly two years ago, Stephen Elop, fresh from a senior post at Microsoft, spoke of flaming ocean platforms and shark-infested waters to describe the competitive climate he inherited at Nokia, the erstwhile leader in mobile phones that was then teetering on the brink of irrelevance.


Mr. Elop, an affable Canadian engineer, painted the bleak outlook as he prescribed a radical cure on the once-proud Finnish mobile phone pioneer: The rejection of the company’s own Symbian smartphone operating system for a shotgun collaboration with Microsoft, itself stumbling badly in the sector.


On Thursday, the Nokia chief executive delivered the biggest news from the Finnish company since he started the last-ditch transformation: Nokia may be on its way back.


Thanks in part to an all-out marketing push, sales of its new smartphone line, the Lumia, powered by Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system, soared more than 50 percent in the fourth quarter of last year, leading Nokia to an unexpected profit. Thanks largely to demand for its newest models, Nokia had to correct its financial forecasts — upward.


In what was seen as a make-or-break quarter, Mr. Elop was able to tell investors that Nokia would break even or turn a 2 percent profit rather than report a loss as large as 10 percent.


“While we definitely experienced some tough challenges in the first half of 2012, we are managing through these issues,” Mr. Elop said during a conference call with journalists.


What Nokia has accomplished under Mr. Elop, whose professional future is tied to resuscitating the company, is to produce a line of increasingly competitive smartphones that are starting to draw favorable comparisons with Samsung and Apple, the two companies most responsible for knocking Nokia from its lofty perch, according to analysts.


“The Lumia smartphones are night-and-day different from Nokia’s old Symbian handsets,” said Francisco Jeronimo, an analyst in London at International Data Corp. “I think what we are starting to see now is what will be a steady turnaround in Nokia’s fortunes.”


The company, which dominated the cellphone business until Apple introduced its iPhone in 2007, still has a long way to go to approach its former stature. In the third quarter, Nokia had just a 4 percent share of the global smartphone market, and was a distant No.10 in the sector, trailing the not-so-illustrious likes of LG and ZTE, among others, according to Strategy Analytics, a research firm.


Samsung and Apple, the No.1 and No.2 smartphone makers, together had 50 percent of the global smartphone market, and their shares were growing. While its competitors rose, Nokia has generated nearly €5 billion, or $6.5 billion, in losses under Mr. Elop, and eliminated of a third of its work force.


In October, Microsoft introduced the Windows Phone 8, the operating system that would be used in the top-of-the-line Lumia 920 and 820. Since then, Nokia has spent heavily on advertising in Britain and Europe to promote the models. The company will not disclose how much it had spent on its campaign, but its television ads were ubiquitous over the holidays, said Neil Mawston, an analyst at Strategy Analytics in London.


The heavy promotion, which was aided by Microsoft, whose own mobile strategy is intimately tied up with Nokia’s, has helped the company recapture some of its lost glory, Mr. Mawston said.


But Mr. Mawston warned that “Nokia still lacks the true killer phone that will enable it to compete with the iPhone 5 or Samsung Galaxy S III.”


Mr. Mawston said he expected Nokia’s share of the global smartphone market to rise to 6 percent by the end of the year.


The company’s financial position is likely to revive even more quickly as a result of the strict cost-cutting imposed by Mr. Elop, who used to run Microsoft’s business software division before coming to Nokia in late 2010.


Mr. Elop has eliminated a third of Nokia’s work force and shut factories across Europe. Last month, Nokia even sold its 540,000 square-foot, or 50,000 square-meter, glass-and-wood headquarters in the Helsinki suburb of Espoo to Finnish investors, and leased it back. The maneuver netted Nokia €170 million.


Besides a more competitive array of phones, Nokia has discarded its market-leader mentality. Employees are now routinely traveling in economy class and sharing rides to airports. Workers no longer use costly telephone conference calling but speak in group teleconferences using less expensive Internet calling services.


“The company is a lot smaller now but people are working better together,” said Susan Sheehan, a Nokia spokeswoman. “Everyone has been pitching in.”


Even at Nokia Siemens, the company’s long-suffering network equipment venture, the future is looking brighter than it was two years ago. On Thursday, Nokia said the unit, which contributes about 40 percent of its total sales, would report an operating profit for the third quarter, its third straight quarterly profit.


Nokia, in its information to investors, even revised the operating profit forecast at the venture to 13 percent to 15 percent of sales, up from a range of 4 percent to 12 percent.


Looking ahead, Nokia said it expected to return to an operating loss of 2 percent of sales in the first quarter amid the post-holiday buying lull and harsh competition. But the results for the coming three months could vary widely, Nokia warned, from an even bigger 6 percent operating loss to a 2 percent profit.


Pete Cunningham, an analyst at Canalys, a research firm in Reading, England, said that Nokia’s improving financial position was a positive step but that the company still faced challenges.


“On face value, this is a positive for Nokia,” Mr. Cunningham said. “But 2013 could still turn out to be another very difficult year for Nokia. It is way too premature to say that the company has made a turnaround.”


Mr. Cunningham said he used the Lumia 920, Nokia’s newest smartphone, during the Christmas holidays and liked the experience.


“But the more I used the phone, the more apparent it became to me that there are big gaps between Lumia and its competitors in terms of the functionality and usability of its apps,” Mr. Cunningham said. “I still think there is a lot of work to be done on Lumia.”


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City Room: How Are You Warding Off the Flu?

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Sure, you could go out and get a flu shot like everyone keeps telling you to do. It’s relatively cheap, and available just about everywhere.

But the shot is not 100 percent effective. And it takes two weeks to kick in. And needles are scary. (The spray vaccine, on the other hand — up your nose! — is just gross.) Plus, the flu has its upsides.

If you’re holding out, or procrastinating, or have decided against getting vaccinated altogether, what alternative means are you using to keep those bad bugs away? Comment in the box below.

Read More..

City Room: How Are You Warding Off the Flu?

Label:

Sure, you could go out and get a flu shot like everyone keeps telling you to do. It’s relatively cheap, and available just about everywhere.

But the shot is not 100 percent effective. And it takes two weeks to kick in. And needles are scary. (The spray vaccine, on the other hand — up your nose! — is just gross.) Plus, the flu has its upsides.

If you’re holding out, or procrastinating, or have decided against getting vaccinated altogether, what alternative means are you using to keep those bad bugs away? Comment in the box below.

Read More..

2 Years Into Its Turnaround, Nokia Shows Promise

Label:


BERLIN — Nearly two years ago, Stephen Elop, fresh from a senior post at Microsoft, spoke of flaming ocean platforms and shark-infested waters to describe the competitive climate he inherited at Nokia, the erstwhile leader in mobile phones that was then teetering on the brink of irrelevance.


Mr. Elop, an affable Canadian engineer, painted the bleak outlook as he prescribed a radical cure on the once-proud Finnish mobile phone pioneer: The rejection of the company’s own Symbian smartphone operating system for a shotgun collaboration with Microsoft, itself stumbling badly in the sector.


On Thursday, the Nokia chief executive delivered the biggest news from the Finnish company since he started the last-ditch transformation: Nokia may be on its way back.


Thanks in part to an all-out marketing push, sales of its new smartphone line, the Lumia, powered by Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system, soared more than 50 percent in the fourth quarter of last year, leading Nokia to an unexpected profit. Thanks largely to demand for its newest models, Nokia had to correct its financial forecasts — upward.


In what was seen as a make-or-break quarter, Mr. Elop was able to tell investors that Nokia would break even or turn a 2 percent profit rather than report a loss as large as 10 percent.


“While we definitely experienced some tough challenges in the first half of 2012, we are managing through these issues,” Mr. Elop said during a conference call with journalists.


What Nokia has accomplished under Mr. Elop, whose professional future is tied to resuscitating the company, is to produce a line of increasingly competitive smartphones that are starting to draw favorable comparisons with Samsung and Apple, the two companies most responsible for knocking Nokia from its lofty perch, according to analysts.


“The Lumia smartphones are night-and-day different from Nokia’s old Symbian handsets,” said Francisco Jeronimo, an analyst in London at International Data Corp. “I think what we are starting to see now is what will be a steady turnaround in Nokia’s fortunes.”


The company, which dominated the cellphone business until Apple introduced its iPhone in 2007, still has a long way to go to approach its former stature. In the third quarter, Nokia had just a 4 percent share of the global smartphone market, and was a distant No.10 in the sector, trailing the not-so-illustrious likes of LG and ZTE, among others, according to Strategy Analytics, a research firm.


Samsung and Apple, the No.1 and No.2 smartphone makers, together had 50 percent of the global smartphone market, and their shares were growing. While its competitors rose, Nokia has generated nearly €5 billion, or $6.5 billion, in losses under Mr. Elop, and eliminated of a third of its work force.


In October, Microsoft introduced the Windows Phone 8, the operating system that would be used in the top-of-the-line Lumia 920 and 820. Since then, Nokia has spent heavily on advertising in Britain and Europe to promote the models. The company will not disclose how much it had spent on its campaign, but its television ads were ubiquitous over the holidays, said Neil Mawston, an analyst at Strategy Analytics in London.


The heavy promotion, which was aided by Microsoft, whose own mobile strategy is intimately tied up with Nokia’s, has helped the company recapture some of its lost glory, Mr. Mawston said.


But Mr. Mawston warned that “Nokia still lacks the true killer phone that will enable it to compete with the iPhone 5 or Samsung Galaxy S III.”


Mr. Mawston said he expected Nokia’s share of the global smartphone market to rise to 6 percent by the end of the year.


The company’s financial position is likely to revive even more quickly as a result of the strict cost-cutting imposed by Mr. Elop, who used to run Microsoft’s business software division before coming to Nokia in late 2010.


Mr. Elop has eliminated a third of Nokia’s work force and shut factories across Europe. Last month, Nokia even sold its 540,000 square-foot, or 50,000 square-meter, glass-and-wood headquarters in the Helsinki suburb of Espoo to Finnish investors, and leased it back. The maneuver netted Nokia €170 million.


Besides a more competitive array of phones, Nokia has discarded its market-leader mentality. Employees are now routinely traveling in economy class and sharing rides to airports. Workers no longer use costly telephone conference calling but speak in group teleconferences using less expensive Internet calling services.


“The company is a lot smaller now but people are working better together,” said Susan Sheehan, a Nokia spokeswoman. “Everyone has been pitching in.”


Even at Nokia Siemens, the company’s long-suffering network equipment venture, the future is looking brighter than it was two years ago. On Thursday, Nokia said the unit, which contributes about 40 percent of its total sales, would report an operating profit for the third quarter, its third straight quarterly profit.


Nokia, in its information to investors, even revised the operating profit forecast at the venture to 13 percent to 15 percent of sales, up from a range of 4 percent to 12 percent.


Looking ahead, Nokia said it expected to return to an operating loss of 2 percent of sales in the first quarter amid the post-holiday buying lull and harsh competition. But the results for the coming three months could vary widely, Nokia warned, from an even bigger 6 percent operating loss to a 2 percent profit.


Pete Cunningham, an analyst at Canalys, a research firm in Reading, England, said that Nokia’s improving financial position was a positive step but that the company still faced challenges.


“On face value, this is a positive for Nokia,” Mr. Cunningham said. “But 2013 could still turn out to be another very difficult year for Nokia. It is way too premature to say that the company has made a turnaround.”


Mr. Cunningham said he used the Lumia 920, Nokia’s newest smartphone, during the Christmas holidays and liked the experience.


“But the more I used the phone, the more apparent it became to me that there are big gaps between Lumia and its competitors in terms of the functionality and usability of its apps,” Mr. Cunningham said. “I still think there is a lot of work to be done on Lumia.”


Read More..

Two Separate Bombs Kill 32 in Pakistan

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Waheed Khan/European Pressphoto Agency


A bomb in Quetta, Pakistan, on Thursday killed 11 people and wounded 27 others.









PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) — Bomb blasts in two Pakistani cities on Thursday killed 32 people and injured more than 100, police and hospital officials said.




A bomb in Quetta, the capital of the western province of Balochistan, killed 11 people and injured more than 40, police officer Zubair Mehmood said. A local militant group claimed responsibility.


Another 21 were killed and more than 60 injured in a bombing where people had gathered to hear a religious leader speak in Mingora, the largest city in the northwestern province of Swat, police and officials at the Saidu Sharif hospital said.


“The death toll may rise as some of the injured are in critical condition and we are receiving more and more injured people,” said Dr. Niaz Mohammad.


Police initially said the Swat blast was caused by an exploding gas cylinder but later police chief Akhtar Hayat said it was a bomb.


It has been more than two years since a militant attack has claimed that many lives in Swat.


The mountainous region, formerly a tourist destination, has been administered by the Pakistani army since their 2009 offensive drove out Taliban militants who had taken control.


But the Taliban retain their ability to mount attacks in Swat and shot schoolgirl campaigner Malala Yousafzai in Mingora last October.


The bomb in a market in Quetta targeted a police patrol and mostly killed sellers of vegetable and second-hand clothes, officer Mehmood said.


Three police officers nearby were injured and a child was among the dead, he said.


The United Baloch Army claimed responsibility for the blast.


The group is one of several who are fighting for independence for Balochistan, an arid and impoverished region with substantial gas, copper and gold reserves.


It constitutes just under half of Pakistan’s territory and is home to about 8 million of the country’s population of 180 million.


Human rights groups say hundreds of bodies have been recovered in the region since 2011. Many have broken limbs, cigarette burns or other signs of torture. Local activists blame the security services.


The state denies the accusations and says that insurgents sometimes put on military uniforms before kidnapping people.


Sectarian attacks are also on the rise, and militant groups frequently bomb or shoot Shia passengers on buses travelling to neighbouring Iran.


(Writing by Katharine Houreld; Editing by Louise Ireland)


This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 10, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the location of Balochistan Province. It is in western Pakistan, not eastern.



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Obama’s Pick for Treasury Is Said to Be His Chief of Staff

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WASHINGTON – President Obama will announce on Thursday that he intends to elevate his chief of staff and former budget director, Jacob J. Lew, to be his next secretary of Treasury, according to officials familiar with the decision.




If confirmed by the Senate, Mr. Lew, 57, would be Mr. Obama’s second Treasury secretary, replacing Timothy F. Geithner, the last remaining principal on Mr. Obama’s original economic team, at the head of that team.


While Mr. Lew has much less experience than Mr. Geithner in international economics and financial markets, he would come to the job with far more expertise in fiscal policy and in dealing with Congress than Mr. Geithner did when he became secretary at the start of Mr. Obama’s term. That shift in skills reflects the changed demands of the times, as emphasis has shifted from the global recession and financial crisis of the president’s first years to the continuing budget fights with Republicans in Congress to stabilize the growth of federal debt.


The partisan tension over the budget between Mr. Obama and Republicans suggests that Mr. Lew will face a grilling by Senate Republicans in confirmation hearings. But despite weeks of speculation that Mr. Lew would be named Treasury secretary, Republicans have not signaled that they plan to mount the kind of opposition they raised to Mr. Obama’s potential nomination of Susan E. Rice, the ambassador to the United Nations, for secretary of state, and Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense; the president named Mr. Hagel on Monday, and eventually settled on Senator John F. Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, for secretary of state.


Mr. Lew’s departure would create an important vacancy for what would be Mr. Obama’s fifth White House chief of staff, a turnover rate that is in contrast with the stability at Mr. Geithner’s Treasury. The leading candidate is said to be Denis McDonough, currently the deputy national security adviser in the White House.


Mr. Lew had a brief turn in the financial industry before joining the Obama administration four years ago, working at the financial giant Citicorp, first as managing director of Citi Global Wealth Management and then as chief operating officer of Citigroup Alternative Investments.


His first job with Mr. Obama was at the State Department, where Mr. Lew was the deputy secretary responsible for managing day-to-day operations of the department and its international economic policy. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton protested to Mr. Obama when the president in 2010 tapped Mr. Lew to replace Peter R. Orszag as budget director.


It was Mr. Lew’s second stint heading the Office of Management and Budget. He previously served in President Bill Clinton’s second term, helping to negotiate a bipartisan budget deal with Congressional Republicans that led to four years of budget surpluses. In the 1980s, Mr. Lew was a senior aide to House Speaker Thomas P. O’Neill, a Democrat, also advising in budget negotiations with President Ronald Reagan.


He has been deeply involved in the deficit negotiations over the last two years. And, if he were quickly confirmed, as Treasury secretary his first test could come as soon as next month, when analysts expect a fight over raising the debt ceiling, which is the legal limit on the amount that the government can borrow.


Republican leaders have said they would refuse to raise the ceiling unless Mr. Obama agrees to equal spending cuts, particularly in entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security. Mr. Obama has said that he will not negotiate over the ceiling, with the country’s full faith and credit at stake.


With battle lines already drawn, the country is expected to run out of room under the ceiling sometime between mid-February and March. At that point, Congress would need to raise the borrowing limit, or the country would start defaulting on obligated payments, like those promised to seniors, doctors, contractors and bondholders.


Mr. Lew’s role as an Obama negotiator in 2011 did not endear him to Republicans, in particular House Speaker John A. Boehner, and he took a lower-profile role in the most recent negotiations at year-end. The White House was eager to avoid controversy given the likelihood of Mr. Lew’s nomination to Treasury. Instead Mr. Geithner and Rob Nabors, the director of legislative affairs, were lead negotiators.


Mr. Lew, a native of New York, is known for his low-key, professorial style and organizational skills. While he was a favorite of Mr. Obama and other staff members as chief of staff, Mr. Lew made it known that he did not want to continue in that post for a second term.


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Gaps Seen in Therapy for Suicidal Teenagers

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Most adolescents who plan or attempt suicide have already received at least some mental health treatment, raising questions about the effectiveness of current approaches to helping troubled youths, according to the largest in-depth analysis to date of suicidal behaviors in American teenagers.




The study, in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, found that 55 percent of suicidal teenagers had received some therapy before they thought about suicide, planned it or tried to kill themselves, contradicting the widely held belief that suicide is due in part to a lack of access to treatment.


The findings, based on interviews with a nationwide sample of more than 6,000 teenagers and at least one parent of each, linked suicidal behavior to complex combinations of mood disorders like depression and behavior problems like attention-deficit and eating disorders, as well as alcohol and drug abuse.


The study found that about one in eight teenagers had persistent suicidal thoughts at some point, and that about a third of those who had suicidal thoughts had made an attempt, usually within a year of having the idea.


Previous studies have had similar findings, based on smaller, regional samples. But the new study is the first to suggest, in a large nationwide sample, that access to treatment does not make a big difference.


The study suggests that effective treatment for severely suicidal teenagers must address not just mood disorders, but also behavior problems that can lead to impulsive acts, experts said. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1,386 people between the ages of 13 and 18 committed suicide in 2010, the latest year for which numbers are available.


“I think one of the take-aways here is that treatment for depression may be necessary but not sufficient to prevent kids from attempting suicide,” said Dr. David Brent, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh, who was not involved in the study. “We simply do not have empirically validated treatments for recurrent suicidal behavior.”


The report said nothing about whether the therapies given were state of the art or carefully done, said Matt Nock, a professor of psychology at Harvard and the lead author, and it is possible that some of the treatments prevented suicide attempts. “But it’s telling us we’ve got a long way to go to do this right,” Dr. Nock said. His co-authors included Ronald C. Kessler of Harvard and researchers from Boston University and Children’s Hospital Boston.


Margaret McConnell, a consultant in Alexandria, Va., said her daughter Alice, who killed herself in 2006 at the age of 17, was getting treatment at the time. “I think there might have been some carelessness in the way the treatment was done,” Ms. McConnell said, “and I was trusting a 17-year-old to manage her own medication. We found out after we lost her that she wasn’t taking it regularly.”


In the study, researchers surveyed 6,483 adolescents from the ages of 13 to 18 and found that 9 percent of male teenagers and 15 percent of female teenagers experienced some stretch of having persistent suicidal thoughts. Among girls, 5 percent made suicide plans and 6 percent made at least one attempt (some were unplanned).


Among boys, 3 percent made plans and 2 percent carried out attempts, which tended to be more lethal than girls’ attempts.


(Suicidal thinking or behavior was virtually unheard-of before age 10.)


Over all, about one-third of teenagers with persistent suicidal thoughts went on to make an attempt to take their own lives.


Almost all of the suicidal adolescents in the study qualified for some psychiatric diagnosis, whether depression, phobias or generalized anxiety disorder. Those with an added behavior problem — attention-deficit disorder, substance abuse, explosive anger — were more likely to act on thoughts of self-harm, the study found.


Doctors have tested a range of therapies to prevent or reduce recurrent suicidal behaviors, with mixed success. Medications can ease depression, but in some cases they can increase suicidal thinking. Talk therapy can contain some behavior problems, but not all.


One approach, called dialectical behavior therapy, has proved effective in reducing hospitalizations and suicide attempts in, among others, people with borderline personality disorder, who are highly prone to self-harm.


But suicidal teenagers who have a mixture of mood and behavior issues are difficult to reach. In one 2011 study, researchers at George Mason University reduced suicide attempts, hospitalizations, drinking and drug use among suicidal adolescent substance abusers. The study found that a combination of intensive treatments — talk therapy for mood problems, family-based therapy for behavior issues and patient-led reduction in drug use — was more effective than regular therapies.


“But that’s just one study, and it’s small,” said Dr. Brent of the University of Pittsburgh. “We can treat components of the overall problem, but that’s about all.”


Ms. McConnell said that her daughter’s depression had seemed mild and that there was no warning that she would take her life. “I think therapy does help a lot of people, if it’s handled right,” she said.


Read More..

Gaps Seen in Therapy for Suicidal Teenagers

Label:




Most adolescents who plan or attempt suicide have already received at least some mental health treatment, raising questions about the effectiveness of current approaches to helping troubled youths, according to the largest in-depth analysis to date of suicidal behaviors in American teenagers.




The study, in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, found that 55 percent of suicidal teenagers had received some therapy before they thought about suicide, planned it or tried to kill themselves, contradicting the widely held belief that suicide is due in part to a lack of access to treatment.


The findings, based on interviews with a nationwide sample of more than 6,000 teenagers and at least one parent of each, linked suicidal behavior to complex combinations of mood disorders like depression and behavior problems like attention-deficit and eating disorders, as well as alcohol and drug abuse.


The study found that about one in eight teenagers had persistent suicidal thoughts at some point, and that about a third of those who had suicidal thoughts had made an attempt, usually within a year of having the idea.


Previous studies have had similar findings, based on smaller, regional samples. But the new study is the first to suggest, in a large nationwide sample, that access to treatment does not make a big difference.


The study suggests that effective treatment for severely suicidal teenagers must address not just mood disorders, but also behavior problems that can lead to impulsive acts, experts said. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1,386 people between the ages of 13 and 18 committed suicide in 2010, the latest year for which numbers are available.


“I think one of the take-aways here is that treatment for depression may be necessary but not sufficient to prevent kids from attempting suicide,” said Dr. David Brent, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh, who was not involved in the study. “We simply do not have empirically validated treatments for recurrent suicidal behavior.”


The report said nothing about whether the therapies given were state of the art or carefully done, said Matt Nock, a professor of psychology at Harvard and the lead author, and it is possible that some of the treatments prevented suicide attempts. “But it’s telling us we’ve got a long way to go to do this right,” Dr. Nock said. His co-authors included Ronald C. Kessler of Harvard and researchers from Boston University and Children’s Hospital Boston.


Margaret McConnell, a consultant in Alexandria, Va., said her daughter Alice, who killed herself in 2006 at the age of 17, was getting treatment at the time. “I think there might have been some carelessness in the way the treatment was done,” Ms. McConnell said, “and I was trusting a 17-year-old to manage her own medication. We found out after we lost her that she wasn’t taking it regularly.”


In the study, researchers surveyed 6,483 adolescents from the ages of 13 to 18 and found that 9 percent of male teenagers and 15 percent of female teenagers experienced some stretch of having persistent suicidal thoughts. Among girls, 5 percent made suicide plans and 6 percent made at least one attempt (some were unplanned).


Among boys, 3 percent made plans and 2 percent carried out attempts, which tended to be more lethal than girls’ attempts.


(Suicidal thinking or behavior was virtually unheard-of before age 10.)


Over all, about one-third of teenagers with persistent suicidal thoughts went on to make an attempt to take their own lives.


Almost all of the suicidal adolescents in the study qualified for some psychiatric diagnosis, whether depression, phobias or generalized anxiety disorder. Those with an added behavior problem — attention-deficit disorder, substance abuse, explosive anger — were more likely to act on thoughts of self-harm, the study found.


Doctors have tested a range of therapies to prevent or reduce recurrent suicidal behaviors, with mixed success. Medications can ease depression, but in some cases they can increase suicidal thinking. Talk therapy can contain some behavior problems, but not all.


One approach, called dialectical behavior therapy, has proved effective in reducing hospitalizations and suicide attempts in, among others, people with borderline personality disorder, who are highly prone to self-harm.


But suicidal teenagers who have a mixture of mood and behavior issues are difficult to reach. In one 2011 study, researchers at George Mason University reduced suicide attempts, hospitalizations, drinking and drug use among suicidal adolescent substance abusers. The study found that a combination of intensive treatments — talk therapy for mood problems, family-based therapy for behavior issues and patient-led reduction in drug use — was more effective than regular therapies.


“But that’s just one study, and it’s small,” said Dr. Brent of the University of Pittsburgh. “We can treat components of the overall problem, but that’s about all.”


Ms. McConnell said that her daughter’s depression had seemed mild and that there was no warning that she would take her life. “I think therapy does help a lot of people, if it’s handled right,” she said.


Read More..

State of the Art: Mixing and Matching to Create the Near-Perfect Digital Calendar - State of the Art

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You know what’s kind of wild? We can identify products by their container designs. You’d know a ketchup bottle, even if it was empty and unlabeled, no matter what the brand. You’d know a pickle jar, or a milk jug, or a bottle of salad dressing, or a cereal box just by their container shapes.




Same goes for the big software categories. You’d know a spreadsheet anywhere — formula bar at the top, grid below — no matter what company made it. Or e-mail program, word processor, Web browser. They all work pretty much alike.


But there’s one software category, an incredibly important one, where there’s no standard design or set of features: calendar software. Each one seems to have evolved on its own Galápagos island.


Take the new Calendar app in Windows 8. So much of Windows 8’s touch-screen mode is modern, updated and fresh — color, gestures, typography — that you’d expect an equally modernized calendar app at its heart.


Wow, would you be wrong. Listen, Microsoft: 1990 called. It wants its calendar back.


You can’t drag vertically through the Day-view column to create an appointment. You can’t drag an appointment to reschedule it. You can’t record an auto-repeating appointment like “Monday, Wednesday, Friday” or “first Tuesday of the month.”


And incredibly, you can’t create separate categories, like Home, Work and Social. There’s no way to color-code your appointments or hide certain categories.


That same week, on another computer, I installed a Mac calendar program called BusyCal 2.0. You know what’s so brilliant? When you open it, today’s date is always in the top row, no matter what week of the month this is. You always see the next four or five weeks, even if some are in the following month.


And why not? Almost always, you open your calendar to check coming dates — so why fill the screen with dates that have already gone by? That’s a limitation of paper calendars, where every month shows 1 in the first square.


And that’s when I had my epiphany. Our electronics are capable of fantastic flexibility, features and design; why are we still modeling our digital calendars on paper ones?


Apple’s Calendar app for the Mac goes so far as to display a little leather “binding” at the top, complete with scraps of torn-off “paper” to indicate where previous months’ “pages” have been torn off. Why?


If you spend enough time with the world’s calendar apps, you can see, through the mist, a vision of the ultimate digital calendar program. If you could mix and match the best of all the motley calendar apps, here’s what you might come up with.


¶ Give us an alternative to tabbing from Start Time to End Time and typing numbers into a tiny New Event box. Let us drag to indicate a meeting’s length. Or give us speech — intelligent speech, like Siri on the iPhone. “Make an appointment next Tuesday morning at seven: tennis with Casey,” you can say. Your hands never leave the wheel, the cat or the delicious beverage.


We should also be able to type plain-English phrases like “tomorrow 1pm lunch mtg” or “4/15 730p Dinner with boss,” and marvel as it creates the right appointment on the right calendar square at the right time. (Google, Apple’s Calendar for the Mac, BusyCal and, in particular, the iPhone app Fantastical can all do this.) Here again, you’re not fiddling with a dialogue box to enter a new event.


¶ Microsoft’s greatest calendaring effort remains Outlook, the e-mail program that comes with some versions of Microsoft Office. Outlook has its detractors, but one thing it got right is integration with your e-mail and address book. What are appointments, after all, but interactions with people you know — and how better to set up meetings with them than with e-mail?¶ Some calendars, like Apple’s Calendar and BusyCal, offer a “heat map.” It’s a year view in which deepening colors in the yellow-orange-red scale indicate increasingly busy times of your life. When it’s time to figure out when to schedule time off (or time to finish writing your novel), you can easily spot the best months — those with the least red on your year calendar.


¶ Why are we limited to words when our gadgets are digital? We should be able to put pictures, voice recordings, videos and documents on our calendars, too.



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