IHT Rendezvous: Another 'nail house' in China gets hammered

HONG KONG — A renowned “nail house” in eastern China was finally hammered to the ground on Saturday, as the authorities demolished the house that was sitting smack dab in the middle of a new roadway.

The duck farmers who owned the five-story house, Luo Baogen and his wife, had refused to sell when local officials began buying up property in 2008 for a new highway in Zhejiang Province. More than 450 homeowners in the neighborhood took the government’s relocation offer, reportedly about $35,000 each.

But Mr. Luo resisted, even as construction began last year. The road, leading to a new train station outside the city of Wenling, was completed anyway — completely encircling the Luo house in a strange, bulging loop of tarmac.

Homes like Mr. Luo’s are known in China as nail houses “because such buildings stick out and are difficult to remove, like a stubborn nail,” according to Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency.

His refusal to move became something of a cause célébre in China, especially on social media, and he was seen as a symbol of resistance to government land grabs, illegal midnight demolitions and rapacious development.

Mr. Luo’s home still had electricity and water, unlike other nail houses whose owners usually relent when their utilities are cut off.

Late last week, however, the couple agreed to move, accepting about $42,000 and a plot of ground for a new house, Xinhua said. New reports said Mr. Luo, 67, had originally put the value of his house at 600,000 renminbi, or about $96,000.

There was no clear or immediate explanation of why he gave in, although Xinhua quoted him as saying, “It was never a final solution for us to live in a lone house in the middle of the road. After the government’s explanations, I finally decided to move.”

Another Chinese nail house, in the sprawling city of Chongqing, drew nationwide attention in 2007 when its owner, a plucky woman named Wu Ping, refused to surrender her house for a new commercial development.

She was the lone holdout among 280 homeowners, and her husband, Yang Wu, stayed in the house as excavation went on around him. Their house eventually came to sit atop a free-standing mesa of land, and Mr. Yang was essentially marooned up there.

Ms. Wu brought him food, water and propane, which he hauled up on ropes, and he defiantly flew a Chinese flag above the house. Five stories below, Ms. Wu gave impassioned interviews and staged impromptu news conferences.

As my former colleague Howard W. French Jr. reported at the time, Ms. Wu’s defiance struck the same sort of nerve as Mr. Luo has:

It has a universal resonance in a country where rich developers are seen to be in cahoots with politicians and where both enjoy unchallenged sway. Each year, China is roiled by tens of thousands of riots and demonstrations, and few issues pack as much emotional force as the discontent of people who are suddenly uprooted, told that they must make way for a new skyscraper or golf course or industrial zone.

What drove interest in the Chongqing case was the uncanny ability of the homeowner to hold out for so long. Stories are legion in Chinese cities of the arrest or even beating of people who protest too vigorously against their eviction and relocation. In one often-heard twist, holdouts are summoned to the local police station and return home only to find their house already demolished.

Even the state-run newspaper China Daily seemed to sympathize, writing at the time that “experts believe that the outcry reflects a growing dissatisfaction among common people about the way sites are commandered and buildings demolished. On China’s portal Web sites like Sina, 85 percent of those polled showed support for the couple.”

Ms. Wu reached a settlement with the developer in April 2007, her home was promptly demolished and she became a national celebrity.

Eminent domain is a sensitive issue in many countries, of course, and a handful of Japanese farmers have held on to their small parcels for decades, despite efforts to expand Narita Airport outside Tokyo. Farmers, activists and leftist students fought the police to block construction at Narita in the 1970s, and one riot there left three police officers dead.

“The original plan drafted by the government in the 1970s envisioned three runways at Narita,” The Japan Times reported in April. “But it was unable to acquire the necessary land due to violent opposition from local residents and farmers, forcing it to open with just a single runway in May 1978.”

A second, short, provisional runway was built in time for the 2002 World Cup, but since then, the paper said, “the airport has relied entirely on a single 4,000-meter strip for all passenger and cargo flights.”

Part of the resistance efforts included the building of huts on the contested land, and in a compromise reached more than 40 years later, two of those huts were demolished last week.

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Most Americans Face Lower Tax Burden Than in the 80s

What Is Fair?:
Taxes are still a hot topic after the presidential election. But as a country that spends more than it collects in taxes, are we asking the right taxpayers to pay the right amounts?

BELLEVILLE, Ill. — Alan Hicks divides long days between the insurance business he started in the late 1970s and the barbecue restaurant he opened with his sons three years ago. He earned more than $250,000 last year and said taxes took more than 40 percent. What’s worse, in his view, is that others — the wealthy, hiding in loopholes; the poor, living on government benefits — are not paying their fair share.

Kirsten Luce for The New York Times

"I don't have the answer of where to pull back. I want the state parks to stay open. I want, I want, I want. I want Big Bird, I think it's beautiful. What don't I want? I don't know," said Anita Thole, a safety supervisor for a utility contractor.

“It feels like the harder we work, the more they take from us,” said Mr. Hicks, 55, as he waited for a meat truck one recent afternoon. “And it seems like there’s an awful lot of people in the United States who don’t pay any taxes.”

These are common sentiments in the eastern suburbs of St. Louis, a region of fading factory towns fringed by new subdivisions. Here, as across the country, people like Mr. Hicks are pained by the conviction that they are paying ever more to finance the expansion of government.

But in fact, most Americans in 2010 paid far less in total taxes — federal, state and local — than they would have paid 30 years ago. According to an analysis by The New York Times, the combination of all income taxes, sales taxes and property taxes took a smaller share of their income than it took from households with the same inflation-adjusted income in 1980.

Households earning more than $200,000 benefited from the largest percentage declines in total taxation as a share of income. Middle-income households benefited, too. More than 85 percent of households with earnings above $25,000 paid less in total taxes than comparable households in 1980.

Lower-income households, however, saved little or nothing. Many pay no federal income taxes, but they do pay a range of other levies, like federal payroll taxes, state sales taxes and local property taxes. Only about half of taxpaying households with incomes below $25,000 paid less in 2010.

The uneven decline is a result of two trends. Congress cut federal taxation at every income level over the last 30 years. State and local taxes, meanwhile, increased for most Americans. Those taxes generally take a larger share of income from those who make less, so the increases offset more and more of the federal savings at lower levels of income.

In a half-dozen states, including Connecticut, Florida and New Jersey, the increases were large enough to offset the federal savings for most households, not just the poorer ones.

Now an era of tax cuts may be reaching its end. The federal government depends increasingly on borrowed money to pay its bills, and many state and local governments are similarly confronting the reality that they are spending more money than they collect. In Washington, debates about tax cuts have yielded to debates about who should pay more.

President Obama campaigned for re-election on a promise to take a larger share of taxable income above roughly $250,000 a year. The White House is now negotiating with Congressional Republicans, who instead want to raise some money by reducing tax deductions. Federal spending cuts also are at issue.

If a deal is not struck by year’s end, a wide range of federal tax cuts passed since 2000 will expire and taxes will rise for roughly 90 percent of Americans, according to the independent Tax Policy Center. For lower-income households, taxation would spike well above 1980 levels. Upper-income households would lose some but not all of the benefits of tax cuts over the last three decades.

Public debate over taxes has typically focused on the federal income tax, but that now accounts for less than a third of the total tax revenues collected by federal, state and local governments. To analyze the total burden, The Times created a model, in consultation with experts, which estimated total tax bills for each taxpayer in each year from 1980, when the election of President Ronald Reagan opened an era of tax cutting, up to 2010, the most recent year for which relevant data is available.

The analysis shows that the overall burden of taxation declined as a share of income in the 1980s, rose to a new peak in the 1990s and fell again in the 2000s. Tax rates at most income levels were lower in 2010 than at any point during the 1980s.

Governments still collected the same share of total income in 2010 as in 1980 — 31 cents from every dollar — because people with higher incomes pay taxes at higher rates, and household incomes rose over the last three decades, particularly at the top.

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Medicare Is Faulted in Electronic Medical Records Conversion

The conversion to electronic medical records — a critical piece of the Obama administration’s plan for health care reform — is “vulnerable” to fraud and abuse because of the failure of Medicare officials to develop appropriate safeguards, according to a sharply critical report to be issued Thursday by federal investigators.

Mike Spencer/Wilmington Star-News, via Associated Press

Celeste Stephens, a nurse, leads a session on electronic records at New Hanover Regional Medical Center in Wilmington, N.C.

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services

Marilyn Tavenner, acting administrator for Medicare.

The use of electronic medical records has been central to the aim of overhauling health care in America. Advocates contend that electronic records systems will improve patient care and lower costs through better coordination of medical services, and the Obama administration is spending billions of dollars to encourage doctors and hospitals to switch to electronic records to track patient care.

But the report says Medicare, which is charged with managing the incentive program that encourages the adoption of electronic records, has failed to put in place adequate safeguards to ensure that information being provided by hospitals and doctors about their electronic records systems is accurate. To qualify for the incentive payments, doctors and hospitals must demonstrate that the systems lead to better patient care, meeting a so-called meaningful use standard by, for example, checking for harmful drug interactions.

Medicare “faces obstacles” in overseeing the electronic records incentive program “that leave the program vulnerable to paying incentives to professionals and hospitals that do not fully meet the meaningful use requirements,” the investigators concluded. The report was prepared by the Office of Inspector General for the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees Medicare.

The investigators contrasted the looser management of the incentive program with the agency’s pledge to more closely monitor Medicare payments of medical claims. Medicare officials have indicated that the agency intends to move away from a “pay and chase” model, in which it tried to get back any money it has paid in error, to one in which it focuses on trying to avoid making unjustified payments in the first place.

Late Wednesday, a Medicare spokesman said in a statement: “Protecting taxpayer dollars is our top priority and we have implemented aggressive procedures to hold providers accountable. Making a false claim is a serious offense with serious consequences and we believe the overwhelming majority of doctors and hospitals take seriously their responsibility to honestly report their performance.”

The government’s investment in electronic records was authorized under the broader stimulus package passed in 2009. Medicare expects to spend nearly $7 billion over five years as a way of inducing doctors and hospitals to adopt and use electronic records. So far, the report said, the agency has paid 74, 317 health professionals and 1,333 hospitals. By attesting that they meet the criteria established under the program, a doctor can receive as much as $44,000 for adopting electronic records, while a hospital could be paid as much as $2 million in the first year of its adoption. The inspector general’s report follows earlier concerns among regulators and others over whether doctors and hospitals are using electronic records inappropriately to charge more for services, as reported by The New York Times last September, and is likely to fuel the debate over the government’s efforts to promote electronic records. Critics say the push for electronic records may be resulting in higher Medicare spending with little in the way of improvement in patients’ health. Thursday’s report did not address patient care.

Even those within the industry say the speed with which systems are being developed and adopted by hospitals and doctors has led to a lack of clarity over how the records should be used and concerns about their overall accuracy.

“We’ve gone from the horse and buggy to the Model T, and we don’t know the rules of the road. Now we’ve had a big car pileup,” said Lynne Thomas Gordon, the chief executive of the American Health Information Management Association, a trade group in Chicago. The association, which contends more study is needed to determine whether hospitals and doctors actually are abusing electronic records to increase their payments, says it supports more clarity.

Although there is little disagreement over the potential benefits of electronic records in reducing duplicative tests and avoiding medical errors, critics increasingly argue that the federal government has not devoted enough time or resources to making certain the money it is investing is being well spent.

House Republicans echoed these concerns in early October in a letter to Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of health and human services. Citing the Times article, they called for suspending the incentive program until concerns about standardization had been resolved. “The top House policy makers on health care are concerned that H.H.S. is squandering taxpayer dollars by asking little of providers in return for incentive payments,” said a statement issued at the same time by the Republicans, who are likely to seize on the latest inspector general report as further evidence of lax oversight. Republicans have said they will continue to monitor the program.

In her letter in response, which has not been made public, Ms. Sebelius dismissed the idea of suspending the incentive program, arguing that it “would be profoundly unfair to the hospitals and eligible professionals that have invested billions of dollars and devoted countless hours of work to purchase and install systems and educate staff.” She said Medicare was trying to determine whether electronic records had been used in any fraudulent billing but she insisted that the current efforts to certify the systems and address the concerns raised by the Republicans and others were adequate.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 30, 2012

An article on Thursday about a federal report critical of Medicare’s performance in assuring accuracy as doctors and hospitals switch to electronic medical records misstated, in some copies, the timing of a statement from a Medicare spokesman in response to the report. The statement was released late Wednesday, not late Thursday.

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Medicare Is Faulted in Electronic Medical Records Conversion

The conversion to electronic medical records — a critical piece of the Obama administration’s plan for health care reform — is “vulnerable” to fraud and abuse because of the failure of Medicare officials to develop appropriate safeguards, according to a sharply critical report to be issued Thursday by federal investigators.

Mike Spencer/Wilmington Star-News, via Associated Press

Celeste Stephens, a nurse, leads a session on electronic records at New Hanover Regional Medical Center in Wilmington, N.C.

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services

Marilyn Tavenner, acting administrator for Medicare.

The use of electronic medical records has been central to the aim of overhauling health care in America. Advocates contend that electronic records systems will improve patient care and lower costs through better coordination of medical services, and the Obama administration is spending billions of dollars to encourage doctors and hospitals to switch to electronic records to track patient care.

But the report says Medicare, which is charged with managing the incentive program that encourages the adoption of electronic records, has failed to put in place adequate safeguards to ensure that information being provided by hospitals and doctors about their electronic records systems is accurate. To qualify for the incentive payments, doctors and hospitals must demonstrate that the systems lead to better patient care, meeting a so-called meaningful use standard by, for example, checking for harmful drug interactions.

Medicare “faces obstacles” in overseeing the electronic records incentive program “that leave the program vulnerable to paying incentives to professionals and hospitals that do not fully meet the meaningful use requirements,” the investigators concluded. The report was prepared by the Office of Inspector General for the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees Medicare.

The investigators contrasted the looser management of the incentive program with the agency’s pledge to more closely monitor Medicare payments of medical claims. Medicare officials have indicated that the agency intends to move away from a “pay and chase” model, in which it tried to get back any money it has paid in error, to one in which it focuses on trying to avoid making unjustified payments in the first place.

Late Wednesday, a Medicare spokesman said in a statement: “Protecting taxpayer dollars is our top priority and we have implemented aggressive procedures to hold providers accountable. Making a false claim is a serious offense with serious consequences and we believe the overwhelming majority of doctors and hospitals take seriously their responsibility to honestly report their performance.”

The government’s investment in electronic records was authorized under the broader stimulus package passed in 2009. Medicare expects to spend nearly $7 billion over five years as a way of inducing doctors and hospitals to adopt and use electronic records. So far, the report said, the agency has paid 74, 317 health professionals and 1,333 hospitals. By attesting that they meet the criteria established under the program, a doctor can receive as much as $44,000 for adopting electronic records, while a hospital could be paid as much as $2 million in the first year of its adoption. The inspector general’s report follows earlier concerns among regulators and others over whether doctors and hospitals are using electronic records inappropriately to charge more for services, as reported by The New York Times last September, and is likely to fuel the debate over the government’s efforts to promote electronic records. Critics say the push for electronic records may be resulting in higher Medicare spending with little in the way of improvement in patients’ health. Thursday’s report did not address patient care.

Even those within the industry say the speed with which systems are being developed and adopted by hospitals and doctors has led to a lack of clarity over how the records should be used and concerns about their overall accuracy.

“We’ve gone from the horse and buggy to the Model T, and we don’t know the rules of the road. Now we’ve had a big car pileup,” said Lynne Thomas Gordon, the chief executive of the American Health Information Management Association, a trade group in Chicago. The association, which contends more study is needed to determine whether hospitals and doctors actually are abusing electronic records to increase their payments, says it supports more clarity.

Although there is little disagreement over the potential benefits of electronic records in reducing duplicative tests and avoiding medical errors, critics increasingly argue that the federal government has not devoted enough time or resources to making certain the money it is investing is being well spent.

House Republicans echoed these concerns in early October in a letter to Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of health and human services. Citing the Times article, they called for suspending the incentive program until concerns about standardization had been resolved. “The top House policy makers on health care are concerned that H.H.S. is squandering taxpayer dollars by asking little of providers in return for incentive payments,” said a statement issued at the same time by the Republicans, who are likely to seize on the latest inspector general report as further evidence of lax oversight. Republicans have said they will continue to monitor the program.

In her letter in response, which has not been made public, Ms. Sebelius dismissed the idea of suspending the incentive program, arguing that it “would be profoundly unfair to the hospitals and eligible professionals that have invested billions of dollars and devoted countless hours of work to purchase and install systems and educate staff.” She said Medicare was trying to determine whether electronic records had been used in any fraudulent billing but she insisted that the current efforts to certify the systems and address the concerns raised by the Republicans and others were adequate.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 30, 2012

An article on Thursday about a federal report critical of Medicare’s performance in assuring accuracy as doctors and hospitals switch to electronic medical records misstated, in some copies, the timing of a statement from a Medicare spokesman in response to the report. The statement was released late Wednesday, not late Thursday.

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High & Low Finance: A Clash of Auditors in H.P. Deal and Loss

The battle over Hewlett-Packard’s claim that it was bamboozled when it bought Autonomy, a British software company, has been long on angry rhetoric and short on details about the accounting that was supposedly wrong and led to an $8.8 billion write-down.

But the eternal question asked whenever a fraud surfaces — “Where were the auditors?” — does have an answer in this case.

They were everywhere.

They were consulting. They were advising, according to one account, on strategies for “optimizing” revenue. They were investigating whether books were cooked, and they were signing off on audits approving the books that are now alleged to have been cooked. They were offering advice on executive pay. There are four major accounting firms, and each has some involvement.

Herewith a brief summary of the Autonomy dispute:

Hewlett-Packard, a computer maker that in recent years has gone from one stumble to another, bought Autonomy last year. The British company’s accounting had long been the subject of harsh criticism from some short-sellers, but H.P. evidently did not care. The $11 billion deal closed in October 2011.

Last week, H.P. said Autonomy had been cooking its books in a variety of ways. Mike Lynch, who founded Autonomy and was fired by H.P. this year, says the company’s books were fine. If the company has lost value, he says, it is because of H.P.’s mismanagement.

Autonomy was audited by the British arm of Deloitte. H.P., which is audited by Ernst & Young, hired KPMG to perform due diligence in connection with the acquisition — due diligence that presumably found no big problems with the books.

That covered three of the four big firms, so it should be no surprise that the final one, PricewaterhouseCoopers, was brought in to conduct a forensic investigation after an unnamed whistle-blower told H.P. that the books were not kosher. H.P. says the PWC investigation found “serious accounting improprieties, misrepresentation and disclosure failures.”

That would seem to make the Big Four tally two for Autonomy and two for H.P., or at least it would when Ernst approves H.P.’s annual report including the write-down.

But KPMG wants it known that it “was not engaged by H.P. to perform any audit work on this matter. The firm’s only role was to provide a limited set of non-audit-related services.” KPMG won’t say what those services were, but states, “We can say with confidence that we acted responsibly and with integrity.’

Deloitte did much more for Autonomy than audit its books, perhaps taking advantage of British rules, which are more relaxed about potential conflicts of interest than are American regulations enacted a decade ago in the Sarbanes-Oxley law. In 2010, states the company’s annual report, 44 percent of the money paid to Deloitte by Autonomy was for nonaudit services. Some of the money went for “advice in relation to remuneration,” which presumably means consultations on how much executives should be paid.

The consulting arms of the Big Four also have relationships that can be complicated. At an auditing conference this week at New York University, Francine McKenna of Forbes.com noted that Deloitte was officially a platinum-level “strategic alliance technology implementation partner” of H.P. and said she had learned of “at least two large client engagements where Autonomy and Deloitte Consulting worked together before the acquisition.” A Deloitte spokeswoman did not comment on that report.

To an outsider, making sense of this brouhaha is not easy. In a normal accounting scandal, if there is such a thing, the company restates its earnings and details how revenue was inflated or costs hidden. That has not happened here, and it may never happen. There is not even an accusation of how much Autonomy inflated its profits, but if there were, it would be a very small fraction of the $8.8 billion write-off that H.P. took. Autonomy never reported earning $1 billion in a year.

That $8.8 billion represents a write-off of much of the good will that H.P. booked when it made the deal, based on the conclusion that Autonomy was not worth nearly as much as it had paid. It says more than $5 billion of that relates to the accounting irregularities, with the rest reflecting H.P.’s low stock price and “headwinds against anticipated synergies and marketplace performance,” whatever that might mean.

Some of the accounting accusations relate to how Autonomy booked expenses. The H.P. version is that the British company made sales of hardware — personal computers it bought and resold — look like sales of valuable software. It hid some costs as marketing expenses when they should have been reported as costs of goods sold.

All that, if true, would inflate operating profit margins and growth rates for the most important part of the business. But it would not change net earnings.

Floyd Norris comments on finance and the economy at nytimes.com/economix.

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Demographic Shifts Redefine Society in South Korea

Woohae Cho for the International Herald Tribune

Assemblywoman Jasmine Lee of South Korea attended a joint wedding for 20 multicultural couples in Seoul.

SEOUL — Jasmine Lee realizes just how Korean she’s become when she breaks out in the language, forgetting that her Filipino mother on the other end of the phone can’t understand her. But she is reminded of the limits of assimilation when Koreans, impressed by her fluency, comment: “You sound more Korean than Koreans do.”

Ms. Lee, 35, who was born Jasmine Bacurnay in the Philippines, made history in April when she became the first naturalized citizen — and the first non-ethnic Korean — to win a seat in South Korea’s National Assembly. Her election reflected one of the most significant demographic shifts in the country’s modern history, a change Ms. Lee says “Koreans understand with their brain, but have yet to embrace with their heart.”

Only a decade ago, school textbooks still urged South Koreans to take pride in being of “one-blood” and “ethnically homogeneous.” Now, the country is facing the prospect of becoming a multiethnic society. While the foreign-born population is still small compared with countries with a tradition of immigration, it’s enough to challenge how South Koreans see themselves.

“It’s time to redefine a Korean,” said Kim Yi-seon, chief researcher on multiculturalism at the government-financed Korean Women’s Development Institute. “Traditionally, a Korean meant someone born to Korean parents in Korea, who speaks Korean and has Korean looks and nationality. People don’t think someone is a Korean just because he has a Korean citizenship.”

Among the factors driving this development is the influx of women from Southeast Asia who have come to marry rural South Korean men who have difficulty attracting Korean women willing to embrace country life. The number of marriage migrants grew to 211,000 last year from 127,000 in 2007, most of them women from Vietnam and other poorer Asian countries drawn to a better life in South Korea.

In industrial towns, young men from Bangladesh and Pakistan toil at jobs shunned by Koreans as too dirty and dangerous, providing cheap labor that South Korea’s export-driven economy needs to compete with China. The number of such workers almost doubled to 553,000 last year from 260,000 in 2007 — not counting those who overstay their visas and work illegally.

One of every 10 marriages in South Korea now involves a foreign spouse. Although overall numbers of schoolchildren in South Korea have been declining — to 6.7 million this year from 7.7 million in 2007 — as a result of one of the world’s lowest birth rates, the number of multiethnic students has been climbing by 6,000 a year in the same period.

“A multicultural society is not just coming; it’s already here,” Ms. Lee, a member of the governing Saenuri Party, said in an interview at her office in the National Assembly.

Still, her election exposed how far South Korea remains from that ideal, suggesting a rough road ahead as it grapples with the demographic changes.

After Ms. Lee’s election, anti-immigration activists warned that “poisonous weeds” from abroad were “corrupting the Korean bloodline” and “exterminating the Korean nation” and urged political parties to “purify” themselves by expelling Ms. Lee from the National Assembly.

Prime Minister Kim Hwang-sik has condemned such xenophobic outbursts as “pathological,” and he urged South Koreans to take the transition to a multicultural society “not as a choice, but as an imperative.”

The role of ethnicity in South Koreans’ self-image explains why they take such pride in the success of ethnic Koreans abroad, like the new president of the World Bank, the Korean-American Jim Yong Kim. It also explains why they considered it a national shame that a 23-year-old Korean-born permanent resident in the United States,  Seung-Hui Cho, killed 32 in a shooting rampage at Virginia Tech in 2007, even though he had emigrated with his family when he was 8.

Given this cultural backdrop, Korean policy makers face a difficult task integrating multiethnic families while avoiding the social and economic turmoil often blamed on immigrants elsewhere.

“They bring religious and ethnic strife to our country, where we had none before,” said Kim Ky-baek, publisher of the nationalist Web site Minjokcorea and a critic of the government’s policy of admitting and providing social benefits to foreign-born brides and migrant workers. “They create an obstacle to national unification. North Korea adheres to pure-blood nationalism, while the South is turning into a hodgepodge of mixed blood.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 29, 2012

An earlier version of this story described Seung Hui Cho, who killed 32 students in a 2007 shooting rampage at Virginia Tech before committing suicide, as a Korean-American citizen. While he was a permanent resident in the United States, he was not a citizen.

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The Next War: In Federal Budget Cutting, F-35 Fighter Jet Is at Risk

Luke Sharrett for The New York Times

Vice Adm. David Venlet was named to lead the Joint Strike Fighter program in 2010 after problems had left it behind schedule and over budget.

LEXINGTON PARK, Md. — The Marine version of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, already more than a decade in the making, was facing a crucial question: Could the jet, which can soar well past the speed of sound, land at sea like a helicopter?

Luke Sharrett for The New York Times

An F-35B, the Marine Corps version of the Joint Strike Fighter.

On an October day last year, with Lt. Col. Fred Schenk at the controls, the plane glided toward a ship off the Atlantic coast and then, its engine rotating straight down, descended gently to the deck at seven feet a second.

There were cheers from the ship’s crew members, who “were all shaking my hands and smiling,” Colonel Schenk recalled.

The smooth landing helped save that model and breathed new life into the huge F-35 program, the most expensive weapons system in military history. But while Pentagon officials now say that the program is making progress, it begins its 12th year in development years behind schedule, troubled with technological flaws and facing concerns about its relatively short flight range as possible threats grow from Asia.

With a record price tag — potentially in the hundreds of billions of dollars — the jet is likely to become a target for budget cutters. Reining in military spending is on the table as President Obama and Republican leaders in Congress look for ways to avert a fiscal crisis. But no matter what kind of deal is reached in the next few weeks, military analysts expect the Pentagon budget to decline in the next decade as the war in Afghanistan ends and the military is required to do its part to reduce the federal debt.

Behind the scenes, the Pentagon and the F-35’s main contractor, Lockheed Martin, are engaged in a conflict of their own over the costs. The relationship “is the worst I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been in some bad ones,” Maj. Gen. Christopher Bogdan of the Air Force, a top program official, said in September. “I guarantee you: we will not succeed on this if we do not get past that.”

In a battle that is being fought on other military programs as well, the Pentagon has been pushing Lockheed to cut costs much faster while the company is fighting to hold onto a profit. “Lockheed has seemed to be focused on short-term business goals,” Frank Kendall, the Pentagon’s top weapons buyer, said this month. “And we’d like to see them focus more on execution of the program and successful delivery of the product.”

The F-35 was conceived as the Pentagon’s silver bullet in the sky — a state-of-the art aircraft that could be adapted to three branches of the military, with advances that would easily overcome the defenses of most foes. The radar-evading jets would not only dodge sophisticated antiaircraft missiles, but they would also give pilots a better picture of enemy threats while enabling allies, who want the planes, too, to fight more closely with American forces.

But the ambitious aircraft instead illustrates how the Pentagon can let huge and complex programs veer out of control and then have a hard time reining them in. The program nearly doubled in cost as Lockheed and the military’s own bureaucracy failed to deliver on the most basic promise of a three-in-one jet that would save taxpayers money and be served up speedily.

Lockheed has delivered 41 planes so far for testing and initial training, and Pentagon leaders are slowing purchases of the F-35 to fix the latest technical problems and reduce the immediate costs. A helmet for pilots that projects targeting data onto its visor is too jittery to count on. The tail-hook on the Navy jet has had trouble catching the arresting cable, meaning that version cannot yet land on carriers. And writing and testing the millions of lines of software needed by the jets is so daunting that General Bogdan said, “It scares the heck out of me.”

With all the delays — full production is not expected until 2019 — the military has spent billions to extend the lives of older fighters and buy more of them to fill the gap. At the same time, the cost to build each F-35 has risen to an average of $137 million from $69 million in 2001.

The jets would cost taxpayers $396 billion, including research and development, if the Pentagon sticks to its plan to build 2,443 by the late 2030s. That would be nearly four times as much as any other weapons system and two-thirds of the $589 billion the United States has spent on the war in Afghanistan. The military is also desperately trying to figure out how to reduce the long-term costs of operating the planes, now projected at $1.1 trillion.

“The plane is unaffordable,” said Winslow T. Wheeler, an analyst at the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit group in Washington.

Todd Harrison, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a research group in Washington, said Pentagon officials had little choice but to push ahead, especially after already spending $65 billion on the fighter. “It is simultaneously too big to fail and too big to succeed,” he said. “The bottom line here is that they’ve crammed too much into the program. They were asking one fighter to do three different jobs, and they basically ended up with three different fighters.”

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Well: Weight Loss Surgery May Not Combat Diabetes Long-Term

Weight loss surgery, which in recent years has been seen as an increasingly attractive option for treating Type 2 diabetes, may not be as effective against the disease as it was initially thought to be, according to a new report. The study found that many obese Type 2 diabetics who undergo gastric bypass surgery do not experience a remission of their disease, and of those that do, about a third redevelop diabetes within five years of their operation.

The findings contrast with the growing perception that surgery is essentially a cure for Type II diabetes. Earlier this year, two widely publicized studies reported that surgery worked better than drugs, diet and exercise in causing a remission of Type 2 diabetes in overweight people whose blood sugar was out of control, leading some experts to call for greater use of surgery in treating the disease. But the studies were small and relatively short, lasting under two years.

The latest study, published in the journal Obesity Surgery, tracked thousands of diabetics who had gastric bypass surgery for more than a decade. It found that many people whose diabetes at first went away were likely to have it return. While weight regain is a common problem among those who undergo bariatric surgery, regaining lost weight did not appear to be the cause of diabetes relapse. Instead, the study found that people whose diabetes was most severe or in its later stages when they had surgery were more likely to have a relapse, regardless of whether they regained weight.

“Some people are under the impression that you have surgery and you’re cured,” said Dr. Vivian Fonseca, the president for medicine and science for the American Diabetes Association, who was not involved in the study. “There have been a lot of claims about how wonderful surgery is for diabetes, and I think this offers a more realistic picture.”

The findings suggest that weight loss surgery may be most effective for treating diabetes in those whose disease is not very advanced. “What we’re learning is that not all diabetic patients do as well as others,” said Dr. David E. Arterburn, the lead author of the study and an associate investigator at the Group Health Research Institute in Seattle. “Those who are early in diabetes seem to do the best, which makes a case for potentially earlier intervention.”

One of the strengths of the new study was that it involved thousands of patients enrolled in three large health plans in California and Minnesota, allowing detailed tracking over many years. All told, 4,434 adult diabetics were followed between 1995 and 2008. All were obese, and all underwent Roux-en-Y operations, the most popular type of gastric bypass procedure.

After surgery, about 68 percent of patients experienced a complete remission of their diabetes. But within five years, 35 percent of those patients had it return. Taken together, that means that most of the subjects in the study, about 56 percent — a figure that includes those whose disease never remitted — had no long-lasting remission of diabetes after surgery.

The researchers found that three factors were particularly good predictors of who was likely to have a relapse of diabetes. If patients, before surgery, had a relatively long duration of diabetes, had poor control of their blood sugar, or were taking insulin, then they were least likely to benefit from gastric bypass. A patient’s weight, either before or after surgery, was not correlated with their likelihood of remission or relapse.

In Type 2 diabetes, the beta cells that produce insulin in the pancreas tend to wear out as the disease progresses, which may explain why some people benefit less from surgery. “If someone is too far advanced in their diabetes, where their pancreas is frankly toward the latter stages of being able to produce insulin, then even after losing a bunch of weight their body may not be able to produce enough insulin to control their blood sugar,” Dr. Arterburn said.

Nonetheless, he said it might be the case that obese diabetics, even those whose disease is advanced, can still benefit from gastric surgery, at least as far as their quality of life and their risk factors for heart disease and other complications are concerned.

“It’s not a surefire cure for everyone,” he said. “But almost universally, patients lose weight after weight loss surgery, and that in and of itself may have so many health benefits.”

Read More..

Well: Weight Loss Surgery May Not Combat Diabetes Long-Term

Weight loss surgery, which in recent years has been seen as an increasingly attractive option for treating Type 2 diabetes, may not be as effective against the disease as it was initially thought to be, according to a new report. The study found that many obese Type 2 diabetics who undergo gastric bypass surgery do not experience a remission of their disease, and of those that do, about a third redevelop diabetes within five years of their operation.

The findings contrast with the growing perception that surgery is essentially a cure for Type II diabetes. Earlier this year, two widely publicized studies reported that surgery worked better than drugs, diet and exercise in causing a remission of Type 2 diabetes in overweight people whose blood sugar was out of control, leading some experts to call for greater use of surgery in treating the disease. But the studies were small and relatively short, lasting under two years.

The latest study, published in the journal Obesity Surgery, tracked thousands of diabetics who had gastric bypass surgery for more than a decade. It found that many people whose diabetes at first went away were likely to have it return. While weight regain is a common problem among those who undergo bariatric surgery, regaining lost weight did not appear to be the cause of diabetes relapse. Instead, the study found that people whose diabetes was most severe or in its later stages when they had surgery were more likely to have a relapse, regardless of whether they regained weight.

“Some people are under the impression that you have surgery and you’re cured,” said Dr. Vivian Fonseca, the president for medicine and science for the American Diabetes Association, who was not involved in the study. “There have been a lot of claims about how wonderful surgery is for diabetes, and I think this offers a more realistic picture.”

The findings suggest that weight loss surgery may be most effective for treating diabetes in those whose disease is not very advanced. “What we’re learning is that not all diabetic patients do as well as others,” said Dr. David E. Arterburn, the lead author of the study and an associate investigator at the Group Health Research Institute in Seattle. “Those who are early in diabetes seem to do the best, which makes a case for potentially earlier intervention.”

One of the strengths of the new study was that it involved thousands of patients enrolled in three large health plans in California and Minnesota, allowing detailed tracking over many years. All told, 4,434 adult diabetics were followed between 1995 and 2008. All were obese, and all underwent Roux-en-Y operations, the most popular type of gastric bypass procedure.

After surgery, about 68 percent of patients experienced a complete remission of their diabetes. But within five years, 35 percent of those patients had it return. Taken together, that means that most of the subjects in the study, about 56 percent — a figure that includes those whose disease never remitted — had no long-lasting remission of diabetes after surgery.

The researchers found that three factors were particularly good predictors of who was likely to have a relapse of diabetes. If patients, before surgery, had a relatively long duration of diabetes, had poor control of their blood sugar, or were taking insulin, then they were least likely to benefit from gastric bypass. A patient’s weight, either before or after surgery, was not correlated with their likelihood of remission or relapse.

In Type 2 diabetes, the beta cells that produce insulin in the pancreas tend to wear out as the disease progresses, which may explain why some people benefit less from surgery. “If someone is too far advanced in their diabetes, where their pancreas is frankly toward the latter stages of being able to produce insulin, then even after losing a bunch of weight their body may not be able to produce enough insulin to control their blood sugar,” Dr. Arterburn said.

Nonetheless, he said it might be the case that obese diabetics, even those whose disease is advanced, can still benefit from gastric surgery, at least as far as their quality of life and their risk factors for heart disease and other complications are concerned.

“It’s not a surefire cure for everyone,” he said. “But almost universally, patients lose weight after weight loss surgery, and that in and of itself may have so many health benefits.”

Read More..

App Smart: Apps for Home Repairs for the Handy and the Less So

With the holiday season approaching, the last thing you need is to worry about home repairs. And as rain and cold try to penetrate your house, it’s inevitable that something will go awry — a pipe will burst or that warped window frame will let in too much of the cold. That’s my problem right now — a window frame in my bathroom just won’t seal against the breeze (a minor problem, certainly, considering the damage from Hurricane Sandy, but a problem that is crying to be fixed). I could try to repair it myself, but I’m not too confident in working with aluminum windows, so I may end up calling a professional.

Multi Measures HD for iPad can become a spirit level, a surface level, a ruler, a protractor, a plumb bob and more.

The Finding Home & Hardware app locates suppliers.

Tips for fixing frozen pipes on wikiHow.

For issues like this, or even just to while away hours doing some D.I.Y. research, there are many apps to help.

If you find yourself struggling to repair something and really need a handyman, a simple way to find a suitable one nearby is Yelp’s app, free on iOS and Android. Yelp, often a go-to for restaurant advice, works for home repair experts, too. Type “handyman” or “plumber” into the app’s “Filter” boxes, along with location, and it will show a list of people and businesses. The advantage of Yelp is the ability to see how previous clients rated the quality of work. Read several reviews, as people’s experiences and expectations can vary.

For a more controlled experience, try RedBeacon (free on iOS and Android), a popular app with many positive reviews. RedBeacon covers only certain metropolitan areas across the United States, however, and may not help everyone. Unlike Yelp’s more open platform, RedBeacon has a list of approved businesses and tries to match the task at hand with the right worker. The app operates through a “request” system: users enter job details, and can provide photos and video. The system also has reviews, and can help schedule a time for the work.

More confident do-it-yourselfers may tackle a problem on their own. If it’s urgent, like a broken water heater or even water damage after a leak, the WikiHow How To and DIY Survival guide (free on Android and iOS) might be useful. Type in a few key words about the problem into the app’s Search page and the guide will return some advice. Its information pages are clear and well laid-out. They begin with an introductory description, then offer a list of steps to follow. The app displays the necessary tools and items, and includes tips and warnings (like shutting off the electricity before trying to fix a water heater). When you’re done with the home repair tasks, this app can teach self-defense tricks or help you fix your car. But it’s not an exhaustive reference on home upkeep or emergency repairs.

Some apps can turn a smartphone into an actual work tool. One app for iOS devices is Multi Measures ($1, or $2 for an “HD” iPad version). The app’s interfaces are attractive and easy to read, and it offers a long list of measurement options that use the device’s sensors. It can become a spirit level, a surface level, a ruler, a protractor, a plumb bob and more. It even has a decibel meter to measure volume, and a teslameter, which measures magnetic fields. This last option turns the device into a metal detector, which could be useful if you’re trying to find buried treasure, or just nailheads that show where the studs are in your walls.

The Smart Tools app is roughly equivalent to Multi Measures, on Android, for $2.50. And some free apps for iOS and Android promise similar features (sometimes separately — for example, Smart Protractor for angles, free on Android, or Dual Level, free on iOS). The apps’ quality can vary significantly, but they cost nothing to download and test-drive.

Finally, when it comes to buying supplies, an app like Finding HOME & Hardware ($1 on iOS and Android) is invaluable. It shows nearby hardware stores that meet your needs.

Happy D.I.Y.-ing. (Or, at least, I hope your apps find you an efficient and cheap plumber!)

Quick Calls

For smartphone or tablet users who dislike the map services from Apple and Google, Nokia’s Here app is a new, free alternative. It is available on iOS now and will be on Android devices later. You may prefer its clean, elegant design to the alternatives. ... In time for holiday shopping, Amazon now has an Android tablet-optimized version of its free Amazon Mobile shopping app ready, with one-click purchase options.

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