Members of the Attar family, Palestinians who were displaced during the eight-day conflict with Israel, return to their home in the Atatra area in the northern Gaza Strip on Thursday, a day after a cease-fire took hold. (Marco Longari / AFP/Getty Imagesa / November 22, 2012)
By Edmund Sanders
November 22, 2012, 10:14 a.m.
RAFAH, Gaza Strip – As the truce between Israel and Hamas appeared to be enduring through its first 24 hours, Gazans spent Thursday sweeping up, digging out and looking forward.
Hamas declared a public holiday, but most shops and many businesses opened their doors. Israeli warships were replaced on the horizon with Palestinian fishing boats for the first time in a week.
Having endured many conflicts, it’s a day-after drill Gazans know well. Residents who sought shelter in United Nations schools went home. A steady stream of families returning from Egypt arrived at the Rafah border crossing. Bulldozers tried to clear alternate roads around bombed-out bridges.
PHOTOS: Gaza conflict
Glass shop owner Kamal Habboush, 45, had seven walk-in customers by lunchtime to replace broken windows. Usually he’s lucky to have one.
But after 16 years in the business, he predicts the real rush won’t come for a few more days.
“People tend to wait to make sure the fighting is really over,’’ he said. “Just in case.”
TIMELINE: Israel-Gaza conflict
The eight-day conflict left at least 162 Palestinians and six Israelis dead. The Israeli military reported the sixth death Thursday, saying a soldier had died from injuries sustained in a rocket attack by Gazan militants, the Associated Press reported.
ALSO:
Gaza City's Mukhabarat building defies Israeli airstrikes
Israel-Hamas cease-fire gives each side enough to claim success
Judge questions former French leader Sarkozy in fundraising probe
It’s the day before Thanksgiving, and you forgot to reserve a turkey. Or maybe you are short on time, or just really lazy and don’t want to actually cook the meal. Either way, modern food science has the entire turkey day menu covered: Just add water.
We put together an all-instant menu, made up of only room-temperature foodstuffs requiring, at most, boiling water or a microwave to prepare. No baking, barbecuing, broiling, frying, grilling, roasting, sauteing or stewing necessary.
When it comes to instant gratification, freeze-drying is king, we’re told by Washington State University food engineer Juming Tang. And it preserves flavor while making food inhospitable to bacteria.
“It was developed in the 1950s, and gives you the highest quality product over canning, pickling and other food-preservation techniques,” Tang said. “But it’s also the most expensive, about three to 10 times as much.”
So if you are ready to boil and microwave your way out of any kind of really labor-intensive Thanksgiving preparations, here’s what you need.
Turkey
You must abandon the idea of a glistening, crispy skinned bird sitting on the dinner table. No room-temperature substitute comes close. But if there must be turkey, your options abound.
Ideally, you’ve already saved some cooked turkey for a rainy day by freeze-drying it. A more readily available choice is canned turkey, but it’s not a good sign when turkey products for your cat or dog (usually made from industrial food factory offal) overwhelm the human selection.
Beyond that, your best bet is an MRE, or “Meal, Ready to Eat,” developed by food scientists to feed troops hot dishes on the front line. Simply pour a little water in a magnesium-filled pouch for an exothermic reaction, and let ‘er cook.
As a last resort, take a hike to your local gas station for some turkey jerky.
Gravy
Kitchen wars have been fought over what gravy is, exactly, but we think it should be brownish, salty, gooey and bad for you.
Gravy cubes, gravy powder and cans of gravy make it one of the easiest Thanksgiving sides to instantly produce, but we vote for the canned species. That’s because they’re less likely to contain strange ingredients such as hydrogenated oils, monosodium glutamate, sulfiting agents, anti-caking agents, artificial colors and the ever-mysterious “artificial flavoring.” But if you like that sort of thing, go for the powder.
Stuffing
Homemade stuffing calls for a lot of toasting and mixing and baking, but we don’t have time for that. Grab any preservative-rich box of the instant variety, plus some butter (see below), and add boiling water.
Butter
Whoever said turkey is the essential element to any Thanksgiving dinner never looked at the ingredients list. Butter sneaks it way onto just about every fixin’, especially dessert.
The average stick of butter lasts only a few months in a refrigerator, but powdered butter lasts for about 5 years. That’s because it’s a dry powder, and bacteria need water to thrive. Go ahead and grab the big can — you’ll need it.
Cranberry Sauce
Don’t over-think this one. Secure a can of gelatin-infused cranberry sauce and be merry.
Mashed Potatoes
You will have no problem securing some instant mashed potatoes, thanks again to the wonders of freeze-drying.
Green Bean Casserole
Merge one can of French-style green beans with one can of cream of mushroom soup, then top with FUNYUNS® or some other mysterious fried onion substitute. Not your grandmother’s recipe, but it’s functional.
Candied Yams
Replicating the crusty-gooey mouth feel of yams, brown sugar and marshmallows without an oven isn’t impossible.
If you’re boiling water on the stove top for another dish, roast the marshmallows on a stick over the flames, then drop them onto the yam and brown sugar mixture. Better yet, cram your dish into the microwave and watch the marshmallows turn into goo.
Bread
Who needs the yeasty aroma of fresh-baked bread when you’ve got bread-in-a-can?
Pie
Making a pie using by only adding water may sound ludicrous, but it’s as easy as… not baking a pie.
For the crust, mash up vanilla wafers or graham crackers, drip in a few tablespoons of butter and shape the mix into a proper pie-filling receptacle.
Opinions on essential Thanksgiving pie fillings vary, but whatever you’re making, gelatin — collagen extracted from ground-up animal bones, hides and skin — is your friend. Mix spices, primary filling (e.g. canned pumpkin), condensed milk, reconstituted eggs (see below) and any other ingredients into some water and gelatin, heat it in the microwave for a bit, then dump it into your crust.
Cooling helps gelatin molecules solidify into a wiggly matrix, so take advantage of chilly weather by setting the pie outside.
Eggs
A few dinner menu staples call for eggs as a binding agent, especially the pies. Thanks again to freeze-drying methods, there’s a powder for that.
Whipped Cream
We don’t know what’s in it, but whipped cream powder is out there.
To play it on the safer side, get some freeze-dried heavy cream powder, add water and whip it up with an electric beater.
If we missed anything, let us know in the comments. And if anyone actually makes the Wired.com instant Thanksgiving dinner, send a photo to @wiredscience on Twitter.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The producers of “The Price is Right” owe a former model on the show more than $ 7.7 million in punitive damages for discriminating against her after a pregnancy, a jury determined Wednesday.
The judgment came one day after the panel determined the game show’s producers discriminated against Brandi Cochran. They awarded her nearly $ 777,000 in actual damages.
Cochran, 41, said she was rejected when she tried to return to work in early 2010 after taking maternity leave. The jury agreed and determined that FremantleMedia North America and The Price is Right Productions owed her more than $ 8.5 million in all.
“I’m humbled. I’m shocked,” Cochran said after the jury announced its verdict. “I’m happy that justice was served today not only for women in the entertainment industry, but women in the workplace.”
FremantleMedia said it was standing by its previous statement, which said it expected to be “fully vindicated” after an appeal.
“We believe the verdict in this case was the result of a flawed process in which the court, among other things, refused to allow the jury to hear and consider that 40 percent of our models have been pregnant,” and further “important” evidence, FremantleMedia said.
In their defense, producers said they were satisfied with the five models working on the show at the time Cochran sought to return.
Several other former models have sued the series and its longtime host, Bob Barker, who retired in 2007.
Most of the cases involving “Barker’s Beauties” — the nickname given the gown-wearing women who presented prizes to contestants — ended with out-of-court settlements.
Comedian-actor Drew Carey followed Barker as the show’s host.
___
Anthony McCartney can be reached at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP .
This strudel is made with phyllo dough. When I tested it the first time, I found that I had enough filling for two strudels. Rather than cut the amount of filling, I increased the number of strudels to 2, as this is a dessert you can assemble and keep, unbaked, in the freezer.
4. Place 8 sheets of phyllo dough on your work surface. Cover with a dish towel and place another, damp dish towel on top of the first towel. Place a sheet of parchment on your work surface horizontally, with the long edge close to you. Lay a sheet of phyllo dough on the parchment. Brush lightly with butter and top with the next sheet. Continue to layer all eight sheets, brushing each one with butter before topping with the next one.
5. Brush the top sheet of phyllo dough with butter. Sprinkle on half of the almond powder (50 grams). With the other half, create a line 3 inches from the base of the dough, leaving a 2 1/2-inch margin on the sides. Top this line with one portion of the fruit mixture. Fold the bottom edge of the phyllo up over the filling, then fold the ends over and roll up like a burrito. Using the parchment paper to help you, lift the strudel and place it on the other parchment-lined baking sheet. Brush with butter and make 3 or 4 slits on the diagonal along the length of the strudel. Repeat with the other sheets of phyllo to make a second strudel. If you are freezing one of them, double-wrap tightly in plastic.
6. Place the strudel in the oven and bake 20 minutes. Remove from the oven, brush again with butter, rotate the pan and return to the oven. Continue to bake for another 20 to 25 minutes, or until golden brown. Remove from the heat and allow to cool for at least 15 minutes. Serve warm or room temperature.
Yield: 2 strudels, each serving 8
Advance preparation: The fruit filling will keep for a couple of days in the refrigerator. The strudel can be baked a few hours before serving it. Recrisp in a medium oven for 10 minutes. It can also be frozen before baking, double-wrapped in plastic. Transfer directly from the freezer to the oven and add 10 minutes to the baking time.
From left, Tara Niebeling, Sarah Schmidt, Bridget Jewell and Erin Vande Steeg are members of the social media team at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn.
Retailers are trying to lure shoppers away from the Internet, where they have increasingly been shopping to avoid Black Friday madness, and back to the stores. The bait is technological tools that will make shopping on the busiest day of the year a little more sane — and give shoppers an edge over their competition.
Those with smartphones in hand will get better planning tools, prices and parking spots. Walmart has a map that shows shoppers exactly where the top Black Friday specials can be found. A Mall of America Twitter feed gives advice on traffic and gifts, and the Macy’s app sends special deals for every five minutes a shopper stays in a store.
“The crazy mad rush to camp out and the crazy mad rush to hit the doorbusters have really made people think, ‘I’m just going to stay home on Black Friday,’ ” said Carey Rossi, editor in chief of ConsumerSearch.com, a review site. “This is going to invite some people back and say, ‘You know what? It doesn’t have to be that crazy.’ ”
Part of the retailers’ strategy is to slap back at online stores like Amazon.com, which last year used apps to pick off shoppers as they browsed in physical stores. But the stores are also recognizing that shopping on the Friday after Thanksgiving need not require an overnight wait in line, a helmet and elbow pads. A smartphone gives shoppers enough of an edge.
“This takes away that frantic Black Friday anxiety,” said Lawrence Fong, co-founder of BuyVia, an app that sends people price alerts and promotions. “While there’s a sport to it, life’s a little too short.”
Denise Fouts, 45, who works repairing fire and water damage in Chandler, Ariz., is already using apps to prepare for Black Friday, including Shopkick, Target’s app and one called Black Friday. “There still are going to be the crowds, but at least I already know ahead of time what I’m going specifically for,” Ms. Fouts said.
Last week, Macy’s released an update to its app with about 300 Black Friday specials and their location. In the Herald Square store, for instance, the $49.99 cashmere sweater specials will be in the Broadway side of the fifth-floor women’s department.
“With the speed that people are shopping with on Black Friday, they need to be really efficient about how they’re spending their time,” said Jennifer Kasper, group vice president for digital media at Macy’s.
When shoppers keep the app open, Macy’s will start sending special deals to the phone every five minutes. The deals are not advertised elsewhere.
Walmart has had an app for several years, but recently introduced an in-store mode, which shows things like the current circular or food tastings when a shopper is near a certain location. Twelve percent of Walmart’s mobile revenue now comes from when a person is inside a store.
For Black Friday, the app will have a map of each store, with the precise location of the top sale items — so planners can determine the best way to run. “The blitz items are not where you think they would be, because for traffic reasons, maybe the hot game console is in the lawn and garden center,” said Gibu Thomas, senior vice president for mobile and digital for Walmart Global eCommerce.
Target is also testing a way-finding feature on its app at stores that include some in Seattle, Chicago and Los Angeles. If a shopper types in an item, the app will give its location.
Other app makers are betting that shoppers want apps that pull in information from many stores.
RedLaser, an eBay app, lets shoppers use their phones to compare prices and recently started using location data to give shoppers personalized promotions when they walk into stores, including items not on store shelves at Best Buy, for instance. RetailMeNot, which offers e-commerce coupons, now has offline coupons that will pop up on users’ cellphones when they step near 500 malls on Black Friday.
“Consumers are not going to download 40 different apps for 40 different stores,” said Cyriac Roeding, co-founder of Shopkick, a location-based app that gives shoppers points, redeemable for perks, when they walk into stores or scan certain items.
For Black Friday, Shopkick is publishing what it calls a little black book with the top doorbusters. Shoppers will earn extra points and rewards for shopping on Black Friday.
WASHINGTON -- Federal prosecutors on Tuesday charged a former hedge fund portfolio manager with securities fraud in connection with what they said was the most lucrative insider-trading case ever prosecuted.
In complaints filed in New York, authorities said investment advisors and hedge funds made more than $276 million in illegal profits or avoided losses by trading before the announcement in 2008 of negative results from clinical trials for an Alzheimer's disease drug being developed by Elan Corp. and Wyeth.
Prosecutors charged Mathew Martoma, a former portfolio manager at CR Intrinsic, an unregistered investment adviser, with securities fraud for allegedly illegally using information about the clinical trial results that he obtained from a neurologist at a hospital involved in the testing.
The criminal complaint did not name the neurologist, which it said was a cooperating witness in the case.
The Securities and Exchange Commission filed a a related civil suit Tuesday against Martoma, CR Intrinsic and Dr. Sidney Gilman, a neurology professor at the University of Michigan Medical School. The SEC suit said Gilman was chairman of the safety monitoring committee overseeing the clinical trials of the Alzheimer's drug.
Martoma met Gilman some time between 2006 and 2008 through paid consultations, the SEC complaint says. "During these consultations, Gilman provided Martoma with material, nonpublic information about the ongoing trial," the SEC complaint said.
In mid-July 2008, "Gilman provided Martoma with the actual, detailed results of the clinical trial" before an official announcement on July 29, 2008, the SEC said.
The FBI, SEC and U.S. attorney's office in New York scheduled a 12:30 p.m. EST news conference to discuss the case.
"The charges unsealed today describe cheating coming and going – specifically, insider trading first on the long side, and then on the short side, on a scale that has no historical precedent," said Preet Bharara, U.S. attorney for Manhattan. "As alleged, by cultivating and corrupting a doctor with access to secret drug data, Mathew Martoma and his hedge fund benefited from what might be the most lucrative inside tip of all time."
Follow Jim Puzzanghera on Twitter and Google+.
Also:
Senate moves insider trading bill to Obama's desk.
Baseball star Eddie Murray settles insider-trading investigation.
Former Goldman Sachs director Rajat Gupta guilty of insider trading.
Patrick Leahy, the Vermont chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and legislative aides denied a report Tuesday that the Democrat had reversed himself on legislation that would require authorities to obtain a probable-cause warrant to get access to all e-mail and other content stored in the cloud.
Leahy’s comments on Twitter and on his website came hours after CNET News.com reported that Leahy was pushing a new draft of the proposal that, instead of tightening the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, would actually expand the government’s authority to obtain e-mail without warrants.
He did not deny that the anti-privacy version of the bill was circulating on the Hill, but said it did not have his support, and that he would not be backing it at a planned November 29 public committee hearing.
“The rumors about warrant exceptions being added to ECPA are incorrect. Many have come forward with ideas for discussion before markup resumes on my bill to strengthen privacy protections under ECPA,” Leahy said on his site. “As normally happens in the legislative process, these ideas are being circulated for discussion. One of them, having to do with a warrant exception, is one that I have not supported and do not support.”
The draft uncovered by CNET would have given 22 federal agencies access to Americans’ e-mails with an administrative subpoena, which does not require judicial approval based on probable cause.
The ACLU, which has been involved in discussions over the legislation, backed Leahy’s version of events, and said he never supported the anti-privacy draft.
“This was a discussion point,” said Chris Calabrese, the legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. “He’s not interested in doing that.”
The amendment was virtually identical to a proposal by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who floated the amendment during a September hearing before the Judiciary Committee, Calabrese said.
The current law covering access to e-mail gives the government the right to snoop without a court order on e-mail that’s older than 180 days, but requires a court order for missives that are newer than this, a fact that privacy activists and Leahy have been trying to change for years.
A legislative aide to Leahy, who declined to be quoted, said via a telephone call that there still might be “some tweaks” to Leahy’s proposal before the committee vote. Others familiar with the discussions suggested the tweaks might include granting the authorities warrantless access to university and corporate e-mail, but noted that no proposal has been finalized.
A Leahy aide said the senator was not immediately available for comment.
Jim Dempsey, the vice president for the lobbying group, Center for Democracy & Technology, said Leahy was floating a draft that supports CNET’s story. But it was only to weigh interest, Dempsey said, because so many Washington insiders, including the Justice Department and an army of lawmakers, oppose Leahy’s initial version.
“Leahy was trying to figure out some way to meet those concerns. He tried to put some words on paper to try to address those concerns,” Dempsey said. “But various people explained that his proposal was not going to be a step forward and would not be the privacy improvement the senator had hoped for.”
Leahy initially proposed the sweeping digital privacy protections in September after first failing to push them through last year. But he quietly had been circulating a revised draft following the elections, Dempsey said.
Leahy’s initial package, if approved as proposed, would nullify the provision of ECPA that allows the government to acquire a suspect’s e-mail or other stored content from an internet service provider without showing probable cause that a crime was committed, as long as the content has been stored on a third-party server for 180 days or more. Currently, to acquire such data, the government only needs to show, often via an administrative subpoena, that it has “reasonable grounds to believe” the information would be useful in an investigation.
When enacted two decades ago, ECPA provided much more privacy than it does today. The act was adopted at a time when e-mail wasn’t stored on servers for a long time, but instead was held there briefly on its way to a recipient’s inbox. E-mail more than 6 months old was assumed abandoned.
As technology advanced, more and more people began storing e-mail on cloud servers indefinitely. And Congress has so far been unwilling to change course, despite the Fourth Amendment implications as data storage in the cloud has grown.
No matter what package comes out of the Judiciary Committee, if anything at all, the full Senate would have to approve it, as well as the House and President Barack Obama.
PARIS (Reuters) – The broadest-ever retrospective of Salvador Dali, opening in Paris this week, seeks to move beyond the shameless self-promotion that the 20th century Surrealist was often derided for and stress his indelible influence on artists today.
Once dubbed “Avida Dollars” for his love of money, Dali is regarded by some as little more than a marketing product, his Spanish home an obligatory tourist stop, his trademark melting watches the inspiration for money-spinning souvenirs.
But a new show at the Pompidou Centre lays bare the extent of his creative genius, exploring how his experiments with painting, cinema, advertising and installations influenced movements from Pop Art to today’s performance art.
The show, which runs from November 21 to March 25, is set to be a blockbuster of the Parisian art calendar. The last Dali retrospective at the Pompidou in 1979 remains the most visited exhibition in the museum’s history.
“There’s this vision we have of there being a good Dali, the Surrealist, and then the one who came after, who made money,” said exhibition curator Jean-Michel Bouhours.
“We needed to go beyond this distinction between the good and the bad and show how the experimental Dali was extraordinarily important in the history of art and the artistic models that developed in the 60s and 70s.”
The exhibition features some 200 works by the Spanish master, including the famous 1931 “The Persistence of Memory” with melting pocket watches, which Dali said was inspired by watching camembert cheese liquefying in the sun.
Also on show are dozens of works on paper, projects for stage and screen, photographs and films such as the 1929 “Un Chien Andalou“, written with Spanish director Luis Bunuel.
His designs for ballet, decorative arts and even a pavilion for the 1939 New York World Fair earned him the derision of fellow Surrealists such as Andre Breton.
But Dali saw mass media as a more efficient way than painting of getting across his “paranoid critique” of the world.
His 1935 installation, “Mae West’s Face Which May be Used As An Apartment” with its lip-shaped sofa showed an obsession with celebrity that would later influence the Pop Art of Andy Warhol.
Born Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dali in 1904 in the Catalan town of Figueres, Spain, Dali remains a controversial artist, loved for his creative genius but dismissed by some as a madman and hated for his at times grotesque artistic vision.
Although an anarchist in his youth and deeply attached to his native Catalonia, he was criticized for later declaring himself a monarchist, turning to religion and moving closer to the post-war authoritarian regime of Francisco Franco.
His love of show business and manic declarations such as “Surrealism is me”, alienated many. But he is cited as an influence for many artists such as Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons.
Dali died of heart failure in Figueres in 1989, seven years after the death of his wife and muse Gala.
(Reporting By Vicky Buffery, editing by Paul Casciato)
In what may prove to be a major advance for Africa’s “meningitis belt,” regulatory authorities have decided that a new meningitis vaccine could be stored without refrigeration for up to four days.
The announcement was made last week at a conference in Atlanta of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. While a few days may seem trivial, the hardest part of protecting poor countries is often keeping a vaccine cold while moving it from electrified cities to villages with no power. In antipolio drives, for example, the freezers, generators and fuel needed to make ice for the shoulder bags of vaccinators can cost more than the vaccine.
The new vaccine, MenAfriVac, made in India for 50 cents a dose, was introduced in 2010. In bad years, epidemics during the hot harmattan winds have killed as many as 25,000 Africans and disabled 50,000 more. In Chad this year, vaccination drove down cases to near zero in districts where it was used, while others nearby had serious outbreaks.
Experts decided that the vaccine is safe for four days as long as it stays below 104 degrees.
While temperatures get higher than that in Africa, said Dr. Godwin Enwere, medical director for the Meningitis Vaccine Project, teams normally get the vaccine out of coolers at dawn, drive to villages and finish before the day heats up. Other experts said it should be kept in the shade and monitored with colored paper “dots” that darken after hours in the heat.
Federal prosecutors brought what they called “the most lucrative insider trading scheme ever charged,” filing a criminal case on Tuesday against a former trader at a unit of the hedge fund SAC Capital.
Mathew Martoma, a former trader at CR Intrinsic, a division of SAC Capital, was charged with making about $276 million in combined profits and avoided losses by obtaining confidential information about a drug trial for an Alzheimer’s drug developed by the pharmaceutical companies Elan and Wyeth.
The case is the latest to put the billionaire investor Steven A. Cohen and his hedge fund, SAC Capital, in the spotlight over insider trading crimes committed by former employees.
Mr. Martoma received the information from Sidney Gilman, a neurology professor at the University of Michigan, a leading expert in Alzheimer’s disease. Mr. Gilman is cooperating with the government and has entered into a nonprosecution agreement with the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan.
Mr. Gilman connected with Mr. Martoma through an expert network firm based in New York. Expert networks became popular on Wall Street in the last decade, linking Wall Street money managers to specialists in various industries to help give them an edge on their investments. Expert networks have been a focus of the government’s widespread crackdown on insider trading at hedge funds.
His consulting work at the expert network firm earned Mr. Gilman more than $100,000, according to a parallel civil complaint against Mr. Martoma and Mr. Gilman filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday.
According to the complaint, between 2006 and 2008, Mr. Martoma consulted with Mr. Gilman on dozens of occasions about the preliminary results of the drug trial and accumulated a roughly $700 million position in the stocks of Wyeth and Elan. Mr. Gilman was chairman of the safety committee overseeing the drug trial.
In June 2008, the complaint says, Mr. Martoma received secret information about negative data relating to the drug trials. After receiving that information, Mr. Martoma caused SAC Capital to sell its entire inventory of roughly 10.5 million shares in Elan and about 7 million shares of Wyeth before the public release of the data.
The day after the study was announced, Elan stock lost about 42 percent of its value and Wyeth dropped about 12 percent. The inside information allowed SAC Capital to make about $276 million in illegal gains.
Mr. Martoma left SAC Capital in 2010, according to a spokesman at the hedge fund. A lawyer for Mr. Martoma could not be reached immediately for comment.
In a statement, Preet Bharara, the United States attorney, said: “The charges unsealed today describe cheating coming and going – specifically, insider trading first on the long side, and then on the short side, on a scale that has no historical precedent. As alleged, by cultivating and corrupting a doctor with access to secret drug data, Mathew Martoma and his hedge fund benefited from what might be the most lucrative inside tip of all time.”
Mr. Martoma is the latest person to have worked at SAC to be ensnared in an insider trading investigation. Jon Horvath, a former technology industry analyst at SAC, pleaded guilty in September to participating in a conspiracy that illegally traded in the shares of Dell computer. His boss, the former portfolio manager Michael Steinberg, has been named as an unindicted co-conspirator but has not been charged in the case. Mr. Steinberg’s lawyer, Barry Berke, declined to comment.
Last year, two former SAC portfolio managers – Donald Longueuil and Noah Freeman – admitted to trading on illegal tips about publicly traded technology companies. Mr. Longueuil is serving a two-and-a-half-year term at a federal prison in Otisville, N.Y.; Mr. Freeman, who is cooperating with prosecutors, has yet to be sentenced.
SAC CAPITAL UNDER A MICROSCOPE The firm has been under a cloud since a former employee, Richard Choo-Beng Lee, pleaded guilty in 2009 to insider trading and began helping the government in its investigation. The crimes he confessed to were committed after he left SAC, but he agreed to provide information about his five years at the firm, which ended in 2004.
NAMES
THE CASES
Jonathan Hollander
The former analyst paid more than $220,000 to settle civil charges brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission accusing him of trading in his personal account on confidential information about the 2006 takeover of the Albertsons grocery store chain.
Jon Horvath and Michael Steinberg
Mr. Horvath, right, a former technology industry analyst, pleaded guilty in September to participating in a conspiracy that illegally traded in the shares of Dell computer. His boss, the former portfolio manager Mr. Steinberg, has been named as an unindicted co-conspirator but has not been charged in the case. Federal prosecutors contend they were part of a seven-person conspiracy — a “circle of friends” — that earned about $62 million in illegal gains trading on secret tips from executives at publicly traded technology companies.
Donald Longueuil and Noah Freeman
The two former portfolio managers admitted in 2011 to trading on illegal tips about publicly traded technology companies. Mr. Longueuil, right, was swept up in a crackdown on so-called expert networks. He is one of roughly a dozen implicated in the case. Mr. Longueuil is serving a two-and-a-half-year jail term at a federal prison in Otisville, N.Y.; Mr. Freeman, who is cooperating with prosecutors, has yet to be sentenced.
Mathew Martoma
The former trader at CR Intrinsic, a unit of the hedge fund, was charged with making about $276 million in combined profits and avoided losses by obtaining confidential information about a drug trial for an Alzheimer’s drug developed by the pharmaceutical companies Elan and Wyeth.
Mr. Horvath, right, a former technology industry analyst, pleaded guilty in September to participating in a conspiracy that illegally traded in the shares of Dell computer. His boss, the former portfolio manager Mr. Steinberg, has been named as an unindicted co-conspirator but has not been charged in the case. Federal prosecutors contend they were part of a seven-person conspiracy — a “circle of friends” — that earned about $62 million in illegal gains trading on secret tips from executives at publicly traded technology companies.
The two former portfolio managers admitted in 2011 to trading on illegal tips about publicly traded technology companies. Mr. Longueuil, right, was swept up in a crackdown on so-called expert networks. He is one of roughly a dozen implicated in the case. Mr. Longueuil is serving a two-and-a-half-year jail term at a federal prison in Otisville, N.Y.; Mr. Freeman, who is cooperating with prosecutors, has yet to be sentenced.
