Facebook Gift Store Urges Users to Shop While They Share

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook is already privy to its users’ e-mail addresses, wedding pictures and political beliefs. Now the company is nudging them to share a bit more: credit card numbers and offline addresses.

James Best Jr./The New York Times

Facebook Gifts is a service that prompts users to buy things for friends on the social network.

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What do you think about Facebook’s plan to have users buy gifts for their friends through the site using their credit cards?

A screenshot of Facebook Gifts.

The nudge comes from a new Facebook service called Gifts. It allows Facebook users — only in the United States for now — to buy presents for their friends on the social network. On offer are items as varied as spices from Dean & DeLuca, pajamas from BabyGap and subscriptions to Hulu Plus, the video service. This week Facebook added iTunes gift cards.

The gift service is part of an aggressive moneymaking push aimed at pleasing Facebook’s investors after the company’s dismal stock market debut. Facebook has stepped up mobile advertising and is starting to customize the marketing messages it shows to users based on their Web browsing outside Facebook.

Those efforts seem to have brought some relief to Wall Street. Analysts issued more bullish projections for the company in recent days, and the stock was up 49 percent from its lowest point, closing Tuesday at $26.15, although that is still well below the initial offering price of $38. The share price has been buoyed in part by the fact that a wave of insider lockup periods expired without a flood of shares hitting the market.

To power the Gifts service, Facebook rented a warehouse in South Dakota and created its own software to track inventory and shipping. It will not say how much it earns from each purchase made through Gifts, though merchants that have a similar arrangement with Amazon.com give it a roughly 15 percent cut of sales.

If it catches on, the service would give Facebook a toehold in the more than $200 billion e-commerce market. Much more important, it would let the company accumulate a new stream of valuable personal data and use it to refine targeted advertisements, its bread and butter. The company said it did not now use data collected through Gifts for advertising purposes, but could not rule it out in the future.

“The hard part for Facebook was aggregating a billion users. Now it’s more about how to monetize those users without scaring them away,” said Colin Sebastian, an analyst with Robert W. Baird.

He added: “Gifts should also contribute more to Facebook’s treasure trove of user data, which has the benefit of a virtuous cycle, driving more personalization of the site, leading to better and more targeted ads, which improves overall monetization.”

Facebook already collects credit card information from users who play social games on its site. But they are a limited constituency, and a wider audience may be persuaded to buy a gift when Facebook reminds them that a friend is expecting a baby or a cousin is approaching her 40th birthday.

The Gifts service, which grew out of Facebook’s acquisition of a mobile application called Karma, was introduced in September and expanded earlier this month on the eve of the holiday shopping season.

Magnolia Bakery, based in New York, was among Facebook’s early partners for Gifts. Its vice president for public relations, Sara Gramling, said the company had sold roughly 200 packages of treats since then. She counted it as a marketing success. The bakery, which gained fame thanks to “Sex and the City,” had only recently begun shipping its goods. “It was a great opportunity to expand our network,” she said.

Magnolia Bakery isn’t exactly catering to the masses. A half-dozen cupcakes cost $35, plus about $12 for shipping. Facebook, Ms. Gramling said, takes care of the billing. The bakery is eyeing Facebook’s global reach, too, as it opens outlets internationally, especially in the Middle East.

One of the appeals of Facebook Gifts is the ease of making a purchase. Facebook users are nudged to buy a gift (a gift-box icon pops up) for Facebook friends on their birthdays. They are offered a vast menu to choose from: beer glasses, cake pops, quilts, marshmallows, magazine subscriptions and donations to charity. They are asked to choose a greeting card. Then they are asked for credit card details. Facebook says it stores that credit card information, unless users remove it after making a purchase.

Facebook has declined to say how many users have bought gifts, only that among those who have, the average purchase is $25.

David Streitfeld contributed reporting.

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Man suspected of plotting to join Al Qaeda is held without bail

A Riverside man arrested on suspicion of plotting to join Al Qaeda with three other suspects was ordered Monday to be held without bail until trial.

Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym found that Arifeen Gojali, 21, was too much of a flight risk and danger to the community, based on the allegations by federal investigators.

Gojali was led by federal marshals into U.S. District Court in Riverside on Monday, bound by handcuffs and leg irons and wearing a bright orange, jail-issued uniform. He showed little emotion during the hearing, chatting briefly with his attorney, John Aquilina.

Aquilina told the judge that neither his client nor his family had the financial means to post bail.

"If we can't get over that hurdle, what's the point?" Aquilina told reporters outside the courtroom after the brief hearing.

Gojali and three other men from the Inland Empire have been accused of plotting to join Al Qaeda or the Taliban in Afghanistan to attack American troops or coalition forces.

Gojali and two other suspects, Bart Deleon of Ontario, 24, and Miguel Santana of Upland, were arrested during a vehicle stop in Chino on Nov. 16, a day after they booked airline tickets from Mexico to Afghanistan.

Deleon and Santana are being held without bail. The alleged ringleader, Sohiel Omar Kabir, 34, was taken into custody the next day. Kabir has lived in Pomona and served a year in the U.S. Air Force.

The native Afghan and naturalized U.S. citizen converted Deleon and Santana to Islam in 2010, then left for Afghanistan, intent on joining the Taliban or Al Qaeda and paving the way for Santana and Deleon to join him, according to authorities.

Santana and Deleon allegedly recruited Gojali in September. Deleon's attorney, Randolph K. Driggs, last week criticized the federal government's case for hinging on evidence gathered by a paid confidential informant who had been convicted of drug-related charges.

The informant, who received $250,000 from the FBI and "immigration benefits" for his work over a four-year period, infiltrated the group in March and wore recording devices that provided evidence crucial to the case.

phil.willon@latimes.com

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HTC confirms 5-inch ‘Deluxe’ smartphone won’t launch in Europe

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Halle Berry’s ex claims he was victim in Thanksgiving brawl

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Halle Berry‘s ex-boyfriend Gabriel Aubry on Monday won a restraining order against the actress’s current lover, as the two men fought in the Los Angeles courts over who started their Thanksgiving Day brawl.

Releasing photos of himself with a black eye and cuts to his face, Aubry claimed that he was the victim in the November 22 punch-up with Berry’s fiancé, French actor Olivier Martinez, in the driveway of her Los Angeles house.

“I suffered numerous injuries as a result of the attack, including a fractured rib, multiple bruises on my face and a number of cuts which required stitches,” Aubry said in court papers, alleging that Martinez had threatened the day before to kill him.

“It all happened so fast and so suddenly; I did not see Mr Martinez’s actions coming and thus I was not ready for it and was not able to defend myself,” Aubry wrote.

Aubry, Martinez, and the Oscar-winning “Monster’s Ball” actress have been embroiled for months in a custody fight over Berry’s 4-year-old daughter, Nahla. Berry wants to take the daughter she had with Aubry to live with her and Martinez in France, but a Los Angeles judge denied that request earlier in November.

Aubry claimed in his request for a restraining order on Monday that Martinez told him, “You cost us $ 3 million,” while the French actor punched and kicked him on November 22.

Aubry, a Canadian model, was arrested last week for battery after the fist fight, and ordered to stay away from Berry, the child, and Martinez.

Neither man has been yet been formally charged in the case.

(Reporting by Jill Serjeant; Editing by Jackie Frank)

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The New Old Age Blog: New Efforts to Close Hospitals' Revolving Doors

In the past, the only thing a patient was sure to get after a hospital stay was a bill. But as Medicare cracks down on high readmission rates, hospitals are dispatching nurses, transportation, culturally specific diet tips, free medications and even bathroom scales to patients deemed at risk of relapsing.

Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, N.J., has nurses visit high-risk patients at their home within two days of leaving the hosital. Teresa De Peralta, a nurse practitioner who runs the program, said they frequently find that patients don’t realize a drug they were prescribed in the hospital does the same thing as one they have already been taking.

“When medications are changed, they don’t want to throw things out, they think it’s a waste,” Ms. De Peralta said. “We actually go through the cupboards and painstakingly write out in big letters what they should be taking during the day.”

Many hospital officials say their efforts to keep patients healthy after discharge have been spurred by new financial penalties Medicare started imposing in October on places with too many readmissions. Increasingly, hospitals are no longer leaving to patients the responsibility for setting up follow-up appointments or filling new prescriptions.

And hospitals are not assuming that personnel in nursing homes and other facilities know how to properly care for their patients and follow the hospital discharge instructions.

Patients taking the wrong dose or mixing medicines that react badly often end up back in the hospital. A survey of 377 elderly patients at Yale-New Haven Hospital, published this year in The Journal of General Internal Medicine, discovered that 81 percent of the patients either didn’t understand what all their prescriptions were for; were prescribed the wrong drug or the wrong dose; were taken off a drug they needed, or never picked up a new prescription.

Dr. Leora Horwitz, the study’s leader, said patients who were called a week after their discharge and were asked what changes to their medication they were supposed to make “overwhelmingly” couldn’t tell them.

A big part of reducing readmissions is making sure that patients understand early warning signs that their health is deteriorating. Sun Health Care Transitions, a foundation-supported program in Sun City, Ariz., gives scales to some patients with congestive heart failure because small weight gains indicate they are retaining water, a sign that their heart isn’t pumping adequately.

“We have them keep a log,” said Jennifer Drago, a Sun Health vice president. “We want them to be looking for a two-pound daily weight gain, or five pounds over the week.”

Patients whose weight creeps up are quickly sent back to their doctor. Debra Richards, director of case management at Banner Del E. Webb Medical Center, one of the hospitals Sun Health is assisting, said, “That program has helped us quite a bit.”

Shady Grove Adventist Hospital in Rockville, Md., has started taking patients’ cultural backgrounds into consideration when doling out advice about maintaining their health. For example, the hospital encourages Salvadoran patients to substitute olive oils for the palm oils their cuisine traditionally calls for, to roast or bake meat instead of frying it and to use sugar substitutes when making horchata, a popular Central American drink.

When Hackensack University Medical Center sent staff members to teach caregivers how to take care of their patients, one place “didn’t even know what a low-salt diet was,” even though that’s a critical part of keeping heart failure patients from retaining fluids, said Dr. Charles Riccobono, chief quality and safety officer at the New Jersey hospital.

Aurora Health Care, a Milwaukee-based health system, now places its own nurse practitioners in several nursing homes to watch over Aurora’s discharged patients. Aurora says readmission rates of those patients have decreased, in some months by as much as half.

Dr. Eric Coleman, a Denver geriatrician whose ideas on reducing readmissions have been adopted by a number of hospitals and Medicare, said that while some hospital changes are “exciting and new,” others are “relabeling old wine in new bottles.”

“Yesterday we had ‘discharge planning’ and today we have a ‘rapid response transition team,’ and content-wise they’re doing the same thing,” Dr. Coleman said. “But it’s a nice thing to report out to the board of trustees.”

Jordan Rau is a reporter for Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan health policy research and communication organization not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

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Puerto Rico Races to Rescue Its Pension Fund

Puerto Rico is fighting to stay afloat in a rising sea of debt.

Its economy is sputtering. Its population is shrinking. Its recent election is disputed. Its public pension fund is perilously low on cash. The American territory has just been through a brutal five-year recession, something not experienced in the United States as a whole since the 1930s.

Desperate to raise cash, Puerto Rican officials have been selling off anything they can: two toll roads and the main airport so far.

To bring in tax revenue, they are trying to lure people out of the underground economy. Coffee shops, hairdressers, even outdoor market stalls are being required to issue printed receipts with every sale. The receipts carry a lottery number, with a chance to win cars or cash, as an incentive to get shoppers to pay the island’s 7 percent sales tax.

Though many of Puerto Rico’s problems are reminiscent of Greece’s — tax noncompliance, a stagnant economy, years of issuing long-term debt to cover short-term payments — investors have had a nearly insatiable appetite for its bonds.

But now their support is dwindling. Some big investors are pruning their holdings. That is beginning to widen the cost of borrowing for Puerto Rico relative to other states and municipalities, which are benefiting from a big decline in borrowing costs. The interest rate its 30-year bonds now pay is about 2.5 percentage points higher than other municipal borrowers’, up from a difference of just 1.5 percentage points at the beginning of 2012, according to Municipal Market Data.

The possibility of a credit downgrade also hangs in the air, something that could lead to more selling.

“There is no specific event looming on the horizon,” said Alan Schankel, a managing director at Janney Capital Markets in Philadelphia. “But it’s a problem of immense magnitude, and it’s very challenging to sit here and see how they work their way out of it.”

Puerto Rico needs to be able to issue bonds at attractive rates to cover its short-term financing needs. Perhaps more important, it has to figure out how to salvage its retirement funds. After shortchanging them for years, it now has the weakest major public pension system in America.

The main fund, which serves about 250,000 government workers, past and present, is only 6 percent funded — a small percentage of what is considered the minimum needed for a marginally healthy pension plan — and could run out of money as soon as 2014. Another fund, for about 80,000 teachers, which is 20 percent funded, will last just a few years longer if nothing is done. Police officers and teachers in Puerto Rico have opted out of Social Security and rely entirely on their pensions.

“For now, I’m not totally shaken about the possibility of the fund going broke,” said Jorge Ramón Román, a 78-year-old retired instructor for the island’s Civil Air Patrol. “But I do fear for the future, when I’ll be an even older person, more infirm and with less of a pension.”

Héctor M. Mayol Kauffman, the executive director of the pension system, said it would be impossible to cut the benefits of people who are already retired, citing court precedent.

Puerto Rican officials were racing this fall to put together a rescue plan for the pension fund. Voters, though, pushed out Gov. Luis Fortuño, who had tried austerity measures that included cutting tens of thousands of government workers along with a revamping of the fund.

They elected Alejandro García Padilla, who promised to create 50,000 new jobs in the next 18 months. But the margin was razor-thin and Mr. Fortuño has requested a recount. Mr. García Padilla’s party had dropped out of the retirement overhaul effort, but the governor-elect says he will deal with the looming pension crisis with “diligence and promptness” and has put together a task force of economists and financial advisers.

“We will not leave retired government workers stranded at a bus stop in their older years,” he said.

Since the election, yields on the island’s 30-year bonds have continued to widen.

“I don’t think that there’s a default that’s about to happen, but a default isn’t the only bad thing that can happen when you’ve got bonds,” Mr. Schankel said. Puerto Rico’s bonds are just a notch or two above junk status. If they fall to that level, at least some institutions would be forced to sell, potentially setting off a chain reaction. And individual investors could get a jolt if they saw the value of their holdings fall. Many people own Puerto Rican debt without knowing it, through their mutual funds.

“The concern is that Puerto Rico is a systemic risk to the municipal bond market because it’s so widely held,” said Robert Donahue, a managing director with Municipal Market Advisors.

Rafael Matos contributed reporting from San Juan, P.R.

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Military's dogs of war also suffer post-traumatic stress disorder

LACKLAND AIR FORCE BASE, Texas — Not long after a Belgian Malinois named Cora went off to war, she earned a reputation for sniffing out the buried bombs that were the enemy's weapon of choice to kill or maim U.S. troops.

Cora could roam a hundred yards or more off her leash, detect an explosive and then lie down gently to signal danger. All she asked in return was a kind word or a biscuit, maybe a play session with a chew toy once the squad made it back to base.

"Cora always thought everything was a big game," said Air Force Tech. Sgt. Garry Laub, who trained Cora before she deployed. "She knew her job. She was a very squared-away dog."

PHOTOS: Military dogs

But after months in Iraq and dozens of combat patrols, Cora changed. The transformation was not the result of one traumatic moment, but possibly the accumulation of stress and uncertainty brought on by the sharp sounds, high emotion and ever-present death in a war zone.

Cora — deemed a "push-button" dog, one without much need for supervision — became reluctant to leave her handler's side. Loud noises startled her. The once amiable Cora growled frequently and picked fights with other military working dogs.

When Cora returned to the U.S. two years ago, there was not a term for the condition that had undercut her combat effectiveness and shattered her nerves. Now there is: canine post-traumatic stress disorder.

"Dogs experience combat just like humans," said Marine Staff Sgt. Thomas Gehring, a dog handler assigned to the canine training facility at Lackland Air Force Base, who works with Cora daily.

Veterinarians and senior dog handlers at Lackland have concluded that dogs, like humans, can require treatment for PTSD, including conditioning, retraining and possibly medication such as the anti-anxiety drug Xanax. Some dogs, like 5-year-old Cora, just need to be treated as honored combat veterans and allowed to lead less-stressful lives.

Walter Burghardt Jr., chief of behavioral medicine and military working-dog studies at Lackland, estimates that at least 10% of the hundreds of dogs sent to Iraq and Afghanistan to protect U.S. troops have developed canine PTSD.

Cora appears to have a mild case. Other dogs come home traumatized.

"They're essentially broken and can't work," Burghardt said.

There are no official statistics, but Burghardt estimates that half of the dogs that return with PTSD or other behavioral hitches can be retrained for "useful employment" with the military or law enforcement, such as police departments, the Border Patrol or the Homeland Security Department.

The others dogs are retired and made eligible for adoption as family pets.

The decision to officially label the dogs' condition as PTSD was made by a working group of dog trainers and other specialists at Lackland. In most cases, such labeling of animal behavior would be subjected to peer review and scrutiny in veterinary medical journals.

But Burghardt and others in the group decided that they could not wait for that kind of lengthy professional vetting — that a delay could endanger those who depend on the dogs.

Since the terrorist attacks of 2001, the military has added hundreds of canines and now has about 2,500 — Dutch and German shepherds, Belgian Malinois and Labrador retrievers — trained in bomb detection, guard duty or "controlled aggression" for patrolling.

Lackland trains dogs and dog handlers for all branches of the military. The huge base, located in San Antonio, has a $15-million veterinary hospital devoted to treating dogs working for the military or law enforcement, like a Border Patrol dog who lost a leg during a firefight between agents and a suspected drug smuggler.

"He's doing fine, much better," the handler yelled out when asked about the dog's condition.

Cora received her initial training here and then additional training with Laub at Moody Air Force Base in Georgia. Before they could deploy, however, Laub was transferred to Arkansas, and Cora shipped off to Iraq with a different handler, much to Laub's regret.

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Betfair pulls out of Greece over permits row

LONDON (Reuters) – Online gambling exchange Betfair said it would withdraw from the Greek market until there was greater clarity on gaming regulation in the country.

Betfair, which has not yet applied for a permit to operate in Greece, questioned the cost and conditions attached to permits required by gaming firms to trade in the country.

“According to legal advice received, the value of these permits is unclear and we consider the gambling legislation in the country to be inconsistent with European law,” Betfair said on Monday.

“The associated fiscal conditions attached to these permits, which may include payment of taxes on historical revenues, make the market economically unattractive.”

Earlier this month the Greek Gaming Commission said gambling firms operating in Greece without a permit would face financial penalties and criminal sanctions.

Betfair said it believes there are “significant issues with the legality of this decision” by the Greek Gaming Commission.

It added that it was disappointed the European Commission had not moved to prevent what Betfair calls “protectionist behavior.”

Earlier this month Betfair, which launched 12 years ago and operates an exchange system that allows gamblers to bet against each other rather than the bookmaker, withdrew its online sports betting exchange in Germany because of a tax levied on stakes on sports events from July 2012.

The European Commission last month said it was not proposing EU-wide legislation to regulate online gambling.

Prior to Betfair’s decision to withdraw from the market, it had been expected to generate 13 million pounds ($ 20.81 million) of revenue from the Greek market in the current financial year.

($ 1 = 0.6246 British pounds)

(Reporting by Rhys Jones; editing by James Davey)

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Jose Luis Borau, Spanish Filmmaker, dies at 83

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Influential Spanish filmmaker Jose Luis Borau died Friday in Madrid, the Spanish Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences said. He was 83.

Borau had reportedly been suffering from throat cancer.

Though Borau, who was born in Zaragoza in 1929, only made a handful of films since his 1960 directorial debut “En el Rio,” his talents were widely respected, and he received a Goya award for Best Director in 2000 for his final film, “Leo.”

Borau was also a screenwriter and producer, and acted in some of his films. According to the Academy, his other pursuits included editing the first published biography of director-producer Samuel Bronston and short-story writing. He also “dabbled in advertising,” the Academy said.

Borau was probably best known for his 1975 drama “Furtivos” (“Poachers”), a film whose success, he later said, made him “a little sad.”

“Nobody is bitter sweet, but I’m a little sad,” the filmmaker once said. “My scale is a bit like what happened to Orson Welles, who made great films after ‘Citizen Kane,’ but just remember that title. “

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Agency Investigates Deaths and Injuries Associated With Bed Rails

Thomas Patterson for The New York Times

Gloria Black’s mother died in her bed at a care facility.

In November 2006, when Clara Marshall began suffering from the effects of dementia, her family moved her into the Waterford at Fairway Village, an assisted living home in Vancouver, Wash. The facility offered round-the-clock care for Ms. Marshall, who had wandered away from home several times. Her husband Dan, 80 years old at the time, felt he could no longer care for her alone.

Thomas Patterson for The New York Times

Gloria Black, visiting her mother’s grave in Portland, Ore. She has documented hundreds of deaths associated with bed rails and said families should be informed of their possible risks.

But just five months into her stay, Ms. Marshall, 81, was found dead in her room apparently strangled after getting her neck caught in side rails used to prevent her from rolling out of bed.

After Ms. Marshall’s death, her daughter Gloria Black, who lives in Portland, Ore., began writing to the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the Food and Drug Administration. What she discovered was that both agencies had known for more than a decade about deaths from bed rails but had done little to crack down on the companies that make them. Ms. Black conducted her own research and exchanged letters with local and state officials. Finally, a letter she wrote in 2010 to the federal consumer safety commission helped prompt a review of bed rail deaths.

Ms. Black applauds the decision to study the issue. “But I wish it was done years ago,” she said. “Maybe my mother would still be alive.” Now the government is studying a problem it has known about for years.

Data compiled by the consumer agency from death certificates and hospital emergency room visits from 2003 through May 2012 shows that 150 mostly older adults died after they became trapped in bed rails. Over nearly the same time period, 36,000 mostly older adults — about 4,000 a year — were treated in emergency rooms with bed rail injuries. Officials at the F.D.A. and the commission said the data probably understated the problem since bed rails are not always listed as a cause of death by nursing homes and coroners, or as a cause of injury by emergency room doctors.

Experts who have studied the deaths say they are avoidable. While the F.D.A. issued safety warnings about the devices in 1995, it shied away from requiring manufacturers to put safety labels on them because of industry resistance and because the mood in Congress then was for less regulation. Instead only “voluntary guidelines” were adopted in 2006.

More warnings are needed, experts say, but there is a technical question over which regulator is responsible for some bed rails. Are they medical devices under the purview of the F.D.A., or are they consumer products regulated by the commission?

“This is an entirely preventable problem,” said Dr. Steven Miles, a professor at the Center for Bioethics at the University of Minnesota, who first alerted federal regulators to deaths involving bed rails in 1995. The government at the time declined to recall any bed rails and opted instead for a safety alert to nursing homes and home health care agencies.

Forcing the industry to improve designs and replace older models could have potentially cost bed rail makers and health care facilities hundreds of million of dollars, said Larry Kessler, a former F.D.A. official who headed its medical device office. “Quite frankly, none of the bed rails in use at that time would have passed the suggested design standards in the guidelines if we had made them mandatory,” he said. No analysis has been done to determine how much it would cost the manufacturers to reduce the hazards.

Bed rails are metal bars used on hospital beds and in home care to assist patients in pulling themselves up or helping them out of bed. They can also prevent people from rolling out of bed. But sometimes patients — particularly those suffering from Alzheimer’s — can get confused and trapped between a bed rail and a mattress, which can lead to serious injury or even death.

While the use of the devices by hospitals and nursing homes has declined as professional caregivers have grown aware of the dangers, experts say dozens of older adults continue to die each year as more rails are used in home care and many health care facilities continue to use older rail models.

Since those first warnings in 1995, about 550 bed rail-related deaths have occurred, a review by The New York Times of F.D.A. data, lawsuits, state nursing home inspection reports and interviews, found. Last year alone, the F.D.A. data shows, 27 people died.

As deaths continued after the F.D.A. warning, a working group put together in 1999 and made up of medical device makers, researchers, patient advocates and F.D.A. officials considered requiring bed rail makers to add warning labels.

But the F.D.A. decided against it after manufacturers resisted, citing legal issues. The agency said added cost to small manufacturers and difficulties of getting regulations through layers of government approval, were factors against tougher standards, according to a meeting log of the group in 2000 and interviews.

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