Combes Named to Lead Alcatel-Lucent Through Troubled Time

BERLIN — Alcatel-Lucent, the struggling French telecom equipment maker, on Friday hired a former Vodafone and France Télécom executive, Michel Combes, to lead the company through what might be a major downsizing.

Mr. Combes, 51, will take over for Ben Verwaayen, who had failed in four years to bring the equipment maker, created by the 2006 merger of Alcatel of France and Lucent Technologies of New Jersey, to sustained profit.

Mr. Combes left Vodafone last summer after agreeing to take over as chief executive of SFR, a French mobile operator owned by Vivendi. But the sudden departure of Jean-Bernard Lévy as Vivendi chief executive caused Mr. Combes to withdraw from the job.

In brief remarks to Alcatel-Lucent senior executives this morning in Paris, Mr. Combes outlined his plans to conduct a “listening tour” of employees, shareholders and other stakeholders before formulating a strategy for Alcatel-Lucent, which lost €1.4 billion, or $1.9 billion, in 2012 as sales fell 6 percent.

The company is in the midst of cutting 7 percent of its global workforce, some 5,500 of 76,000 jobs, by the end of this year.

In a statement, Mr. Combes said he would work to return Alcatel-Lucent to lasting profitability, something that has eluded the company since the trans-Atlantic merger.

“This is a company I know well and I look forward to succeeding Ben, working with the key international customers, and driving the business into sustained profitability for its customers, employees and shareholders,” Mr. Combes said in a statement.

But Alcatel-Lucent’s shares fell 1 percent in Paris trading following the announcement to €1.13. Alexander Peterc, an analyst in London at Exane BNP Paribas, said investors had been hoping for an executive with more of a proven track record as a cost-cutter. Mr. Peterc said that Mr. Combes should quickly identify which businesses are for sale.

The company has indicated that its optical submarine cable business and its enterprise business of selling equipment to large companies and organizations, are both on the block, Mr. Peterc said.

“Alcatel-Lucent is in a crisis situation and even just identifying which businesses it intends to sell would be a step forward that could save thousands of jobs,” Mr. Peterc said. “They have tried for six years since the merger and have spent €4 billion on restructuring to turn this company around and it hasn’t worked yet.”

Mr. Verwaayen, the former chief of the British operator BT, had integrated the Alcatel and Lucent product lines and organizations under a unified brand. When he announced on Feb. 7 that he would step down, he said in a conference call with analysts that the company was reviewing its entire business portfolio with an eye to possible asset sales.

In December, the company secured €1.62 billion in emergency financing from to buy more time. As a condition of the loans, the company pledged a percentage of revenues derived from future asset sales.

Martin Nilsson, an analyst at Handelsbanken in Stockholm, said that Mr. Combes would likely be forced to take major steps to expedite the resizing of the French company, including selling some businesses. The company employs only 12 percent of its work force, roughly 9,000 people, in France. The rest are spread around the world, mostly in the United States, China, India, the Netherlands, Japan and South Korea.

“I think irrespective of the C.E.O. they had chosen, this is the main challenge for Alcatel-Lucent at this time,” Mr. Nilsson said. “It has been seemingly very difficult for this company to reach sustained profitability. That is a very hard for any company to maintain.”

In another potential signal that Alcatel-Lucent may be entering a phase of greater reorganization, the company announced it had appointed Jean C. Monty, the former president and chief executive of Nortel Networks and of Bell Canada, as vice chairman of the board, a new position.

Philippe Camus, the Alcatel-Lucent chairman, said in a statement that Mr. Monty would be working closely with Mr. Combes to sort out the company’s future.

“We are fortunate to have such an experienced colleague to support Michel Combes in his new role,” Mr. Camus said. “I’m looking forward to working more closely with Jean and I’m convinced Alcatel-Lucent will benefit from his incredible knowledge of our business.”

Mr. Nilsson said that Alcatel-Lucent’s turnaround will not be easy. Selling money-losing businesses and cutting research and development spending to increase profit will also decrease Alcatel-Lucent’s base of sales and could limit its future growth potential by slowing the development of new products.

“It is very easy for tech companies to get into a downward spiral,” Mr. Nilsson said.

The company has declined to say which businesses it might sell. In 2012, sales of Alcatel-Lucent’s optical networking and wireless networking businesses fell by 20.3 percent and 17.2 percent, respectively, from 2011. The company blamed the declines on the rapid transition by U.S. operators to faster network gear based on Long Term Evolution technology, which reduced demand for Alcatel-Lucent’s second- and third-generation products.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 22, 2013

An earlier version of this article misspelled, in one reference, the last name of the departing Alcatel-Lucent chief executive. He is Ben Verwaayen, not Verwaaven. It also misspelled the given name of an Exane BNP Paribas analyst. He is Alexander Peterc, not Aleksander. Additionally, an earlier summary for the article misstated the size of Alcatel-Lucent’s loss in 2012. It was €1.4 billion, not €1.4.

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Bulgari shows off Liz Taylor's gems

It isn't easy sometimes to be an ordinary person in Los Angeles, so near to and yet so far from the city's glamorous events.

You hear about the grand Oscar parties, but you will never be invited. The award ceremony may be taking place minutes from where you live, but you watch it at home, on TV, in your sweat pants — and you might as well be in Dubuque.

Rodeo Drive too can make you feel like a scrap on the cutting room floor. As you stroll the wide and immaculate sidewalks of Beverly Hills' iconic shopping street, you pass by boutiques you'd feel self-conscious walking into. In the windows are baubles and trinkets you could never in three lifetimes afford.

Which is why it is rather nice to be invited to make a private appointment at the house of Bulgari, the fine Italian jeweler that opened its doors in 1884.

Elizabeth Taylor loved Bulgari jewels. Richard Burton, whose torrid affair with her began during the filming of "Cleopatra" in Rome, accompanied her often to the flagship shop on the Via Condotti. He liked to joke that the name Bulgari was all the Italian she knew.

So it is fitting that starting Oscar week, the jeweler is celebrating the Oscar-winning star with an exhibit of eight of her most treasured Bulgari pieces.

They are heavy on diamonds and emeralds — of rare size, gleam and value.

And Bulgari knows their value well.

After Taylor's death, it reacquired some of the gems at a Christie's auction. One piece, an emerald-and-diamond brooch that also can be worn as a pendant, sold for $6,578,500 — breaking records both for sales price of an emerald and for emerald price per carat ($280,000).

That brooch, whose centerpiece is an octagonal step-cut emerald weighing 23.44 carats, was Burton's engagement present to Taylor. He followed it upon their marriage (his second, her fifth) with a matching necklace whose 16 Colombian emeralds weigh in at 60.5 carats. Bulgari bought the necklace back too, for $6,130,500.

They are in the exhibit, along with Burton's engagement ring to Taylor and a delicate brooch — given to her by husband No. 4, Eddie Fisher — whose emerald and diamond flowers were set en tremblant so that they gently fluttered as Taylor moved.

The jewels are not for sale.

On Tuesday night, actress Julianne Moore wore the Burton necklace, with pendant attached, at a gala for Bulgari's top clients. At the dinner hour, guests were escorted along a lavender-colored carpet to a nearby rooftop that had been transformed into a Roman terrace.

Those honored guests, of course, got private viewings of Taylor's jewels.

But so did Amanda Perry, a healer from West Hollywood who arrived the next morning for one of the first appointments available to the public.

Someone had emailed news of the collection to the 35-year-old Taylor fan. She walked in off the street Tuesday, when the exhibit was open only to press — and Sabina Pelli, Bulgari's glamorous executive vice president, fresh from Rome, was taking sips of San Pellegrino brought to her on a silver tray between back-to-back interviews that started at 5 a.m.

The camera crews were long gone when Perry came back Wednesday. She had the exhibit, and handsome sales associate Timothy Morzenti of Milan, entirely to herself.

In a black suit, still wearing on his left hand the black glove he dons to handle fine jewels, Morzenti whisked Perry off via a private elevator to the exhibit on the second floor. The jewels stood in vitrines mounted high off the ground. Behind them were photos and a slide show of Taylor, bejeweled.

"Which piece would you like to see first?" Morzenti asked her as a security guard stood by. "I personally love the emerald ring."

Then he proceeded at leisure to explain Bulgari-signature sugar-loaf cuts and trombino ring settings, while tossing in occasional Taylor stories.

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Why All the Oscar-Nominated Animated Shorts Were Pulled From the Web

After Disney’s Paperman received an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Short last month, the company released it in full on YouTube, an internet-savvy move that garnered widespread attention for the film and inspired the rest of the nominees (save Fresh Guacamole, which had been online since last March) to follow suit. Don’t go looking for them now, though. All five of the officially released videos have been taken offline after a letter sent to the nominees by the chief executive of Shorts International, which complained that continued streaming would cause “significant, if not irreparable damage” to their current theatrical release.

The February 14 letter from Shorts International chief executive Carter Pilcher, which leaked online at Deadline, noted that the distributor was “receiving a very significant, adverse reaction from the independent theaters that are playing the films” as a result of their online availability.

“Unlike Webbies or Ani’s, the Academy Award is designed to award excellence in the making of motion pictures that receive a cinematic release, not an online release,” Pilcher wrote, going on to argue that “this release of the films on the Internet threatens to destroy 8 years of audience growth and the notion that these film gems are indeed movies — no feature length film would consider a free online release as a marketing tool!”

Noting that releasing the shorts online helps attracts “buzz,” Pilcher suggested that such things are unnecessary when it comes to winning the award itself: “The fact that all the films were put online is perplexing as Academy voters have other and better means of viewing the films, including through the Academy-provided DVDs of all the Live Action and Animated short film nominees sent to all voting members.”

Instead, he “humbly” requested that the movies be removed from the internet by February 19 at the latest. As of writing, all of the movies have indeed been removed from YouTube, and no theaters have pulled the big-screen showings of the five nominees, which are still playing across the U.S. (Shorts International did not respond to a request for comment for this story.)

It’s unclear what to make of this development; on the one hand, it’s hard to fault the animators or their studios for bowing to the potential threat this posed to whatever small profit their shorts could receive from a theater run. Sure, Paperman and Maggie Simpson may be the work of multi-national corporations, but Adam & Dog, Fresh Guacamole and Head Over Heels were all independent productions unlikely to get a higher-profile release in theaters. On the other hand, the idea that free online promotional release was barred by commercial concerns is somewhat hard to stomach.

There are, obviously, ways of addressing this problem in the future: Move up the limited theatrical release so that there is a period when the shorts are only available in theaters before an online release, or perhaps include additional content in the theatrical release that isn’t available online. That wouldn’t deprive the majority of viewers the chance to actually see the shorts ahead of the awards ceremony. It’s simply a shame that it couldn’t have been worked out ahead of time.

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Living With Cancer: Arrivals and Departures

After being nursed and handed over, the baby’s wails rise to a tremolo, but I am determined to give my exhausted daughter and son-in-law a respite on this wintry evening. Commiserating with the little guy’s discomfort — gas, indigestion, colic, ontological insecurity — I swaddle, burp, bink, then cradle him in my arms. I begin walking around the house, swinging and swaying while cooing in soothing cadences: “Yes, darling boy, another one bites the dust, another one bites the dust.”

I kid you not! How could such grim phrases spring from my lips into the newborn’s ears? Where did they come from?

I blame his mother and her best friend. They sang along as this song was played repeatedly at the skating rink to which I took them every other Saturday in their tweens. Why would an infatuated grandma croon a mordant lullaby, even if the adorable one happily can’t understand a single word? He’s still whimpering, twisting away from me, and understandably so.

Previously that day, I had called a woman in my cancer support group. I believe that she is dying. I do not know her very well. She has attended only two or three of our get-togethers where she described herself as a widow and a Christian.

On the phone, I did not want to violate the sanctity of her end time, but I did want her to know that she need not be alone, that I and other members of our group can “be there” for her. Her dying seems a rehearsal of my own. We have the same disease.

“How are you doing, Kim?” I asked.

“I’m tired. I sleep all the time,” she sighed, “and I can’t keep anything down.”

“Can you drink … water?” I asked.

“A little, but I tried a smoothie and it wouldn’t set right,” she said.

“I hope you are not in pain.”

“Oh no, but I’m sleeping all the time. And I can’t keep anything down.”

“Would you like a visit? Is there something I can do or bring?” I asked.

“Oh, I don’t think so, no thanks.”

“Well,” I paused before saying goodbye, “be well.”

Be well? I didn’t even add something like, “Be as well as you can be.” I was tongue-tied. This was the failure that troubles me tonight.

Why couldn’t I say that we will miss her, that I am sorry she is dying, that she has coped so well for so long, and that I hope she will now find peace? I could inform an infant in my arms of our inexorable mortality, but I could not speak or even intimate the “D” word to someone on her deathbed.

Although I have tried to communicate to my family how I feel about end-of-life care, can we always know what we will want? Perhaps at the end of my life I will not welcome visitors, either. For departing may require as much concentration as arriving. As I look down at the vulnerable bundle I am holding, I marvel that each and every one of us has managed to come in and will also have to manage to go out. The baby nestles, pursing his mouth around the pacifier. He gazes intently at my face with a sly gaze that drifts toward a lamp, turning speculative before lids lower in tremulous increments.

Slowing my jiggling to his faint sucking, I think that the philosopher Jacques Derrida’s meditation on death pertains to birth as well. Each of these events “names the very irreplaceability of absolute singularity.” Just as “no one can die in my place or in the place of the other,” no one can be born in this particular infant’s place. He embodies his irreplaceable and absolute singularity.

Perhaps we should gestate during endings, as we do during beginnings. Like hatchings, the dispatchings caused by cancer give people like Kim and me a final trimester, more or less, in which we can labor to forgive and be forgiven, to speak and hear vows of devotion from our intimates, to visit or not be visited by acquaintances.

Maybe we need a doula for dying, I reflect as melodious words surface, telling me what I have to do with the life left to be lived: “To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.”

“Oh little baby,” I then whisper: “Though I cannot tell who you will become and where I will be — you, dear heart, deliver me.”

---

Susan Gubar is a distinguished emerita professor of English at Indiana University and the author of “Memoir of a Debulked Woman,” which explores her experience with ovarian cancer.

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Citi Changes Terms of Executive Bonuses

Citigroup responded to anger about the size of its executive pay packages on Thursday by changing the way it calculates the bonuses given to top executives.

Starting with last year’s compensation, a portion of the bonuses paid out to Citi’s executives will now be linked to the company’s performance relative to that of other big banks.

Citi has been a prominent symbol in the debate over the scale of executive compensation on Wall Street. The changes announced Thursday come less than a year after Citigroup shareholders voted against a $15 million pay package for Vikram S. Pandit, then the bank’s chief executive.

After that vote, Citi’s chairman, Michael O’Neill, took the reins of a five-member group last April assigned to review executive pay. “When our shareholders spoke last year about Citi’s compensation structure, we listened,” Mr. O’Neill said in a regulatory filing.

The change in the compensation structure was prompted by a desire to “more strongly connects compensation with performance,” Mr. O’Neill said in the filing.

Nell Minow, a shareholder advocate at GMI Ratings, said that “it’s a huge step forward from terrible, which is what it was.”

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Interstate 5 reopens through the Grapevine

From Times Staff

February 20, 2013, 9:44 a.m.

The California Highway Patrol has reopened a stretch of Interstate 5 through the Grapevine that was closed earlier today because of ice.

The highway was opened to vehicles with escorts at about 9:15 a.m., said CHP Officer Ed Jacobs. The freeway was closed between Castaic and Grapevine Road about 6:35 a.m., Jacobs said.

Comments are filtered for language and registration is required. The Times makes no guarantee of comments' factual accuracy. Readers may report inappropriate comments by clicking the Report Abuse link next to a comment. Here are the full legal terms you agree to by using this comment form.

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Liveblog: Sony's Big PlayStation Reveal

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We’re through the first hour of presentations. How much longer?

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They’re talking up the detail of the cars. The “suede and carpet have a fiber direction map, causing them to reflect light differently when they’ve been brushed or touched.”

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“Next generation no longer just means more powerful hardware.” That’s clear. Driveclub is about teaming up with friends and battling other clubs “all around the world.” It’s about challenges, not just races.

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A racing game from “Evolution Studios.” It’s called Driveclub.

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I… this… really? We’re watching a long demo of a first-person shooter that looks like a PS3 game and seems like it plays like every other videogame of the last 5 years?

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This looks like every videogame ever.

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Co-founder of Guerrilla Games (Killzone devs) here to show us an early look at a new game… oh, he’s talking about the Helghast. So, Killzone.

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Michael Denny, from Sony WW Studios, takes the stage. One would hope this means games.

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Lots of developers talking about how they, too, are on board with the things Sony is doing with PS4. Would really like to hear some game announcements soon! I think we all get the philosophical framework by now…

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First bad news. No backward compatibility on PS4. David Perry says Sony’s “goal” is to enable you to play old games via Gaikai, but that this stuff will be rolled out in phases and will only happen some day in the future, maybe.

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Remote Play has been built into the architecture of PS4, Perry says. PS Vita is the “ultimate companion device” for PS4 — you can play your PS4 games on Vita’s screen.

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Spectating has become very popular, Perry says. Yes. Sony asked itself how it could improve the experience. You can push the Share button to broadcast your game in real time to your friends. Your friends can “look over your shoulder virtually.”

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“With Gaikai in PlayStation Store, you’ll be able to instantly experience anything you want.” - David Perry. Seems like they’re using streaming for demos rather than full games? At least for now?

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David Perry is here to talk about Gaikai, the Sony-owned streaming service, on PS4. So basically the first two people telling us about PS4 are the guys who made awesome Sega Genesis games.

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Social features: Most importantly, you can stream your own gameplay automagically with PS4. That looks really great.

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Cerny says the hardware supports “suspending and resuming” of play sessions: game will save your progress at the exact spot you left off when you power it off. That’s cool. Can download updates in the background with the main power off. You can start playing a digital game while it’s still downloading.

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Showing a trailer of a new game from Japan Studio, featuring a little robot called Knack. Looks like fun, looks like a PS3 game.

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Shows a couple of tech demos from Unreal Engine and Havok. Cerny says he’s also working on a game, and shows a trailer.

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The Dual Shock 4 will work in tandem with a “stereo camera” that scans the room in 3-D. So the Kinect. Not sure if it’s bundled with the hardware or not.

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AHAHAHAHAHAHA. SONY KINECT.

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The controller is called the Dual Shock 4. Wow. Everything is named the same with one more number.

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The architecture is “like a PC in many ways.” X86 CPU, allowing Sony to “tap into three decades of programming expertise.” An “enhanced PC GPU.” 8 GB of high speed unified RAM. This was the #1 developer request, Cerny says. Hard drive in every box, no size given.

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Sony is spending a LOT of time laying the rhetorical groundwork here, lots of talking about the philosophy behind PlayStation 4. Note: Very interesting that the lead architect of the hardware is not Japanese, no?

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House intro’s Mark Cerny, a game industry veteran who is the Lead System Architect of the PlayStation 4.

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“Over the next couple of hours…” Uh, how long is this going to be, Andrew?

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Oh man, it’s called PlayStation 4.

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House just talking about things Sony has done so far on every facet of PlayStation, from Plus to Mobile etc.

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Andrew House of Sony is the first to take the stage. “Today marks a moment of truth and a bold step forward for Sony as a company.”

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It’s beginning with an inspiration video. “PlayStation Wants to Win the War Against Reality.” Sony and reality have definitely been at odds for a while now.

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Holy crap, did a Sony event just start on time?! Maybe they are really changing things.

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I want to believe that The Last Guardian’s MIA status is related to the fact that it shifted platforms to PS4.

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Watch this space for Wired’s live blog of Sony’s big announcement, starting at 6 p.m. Eastern. If it’s not PlayStation 4, New York City had better get the riot cops ready.

At 6 p.m. Eastern time in New York City, Sony will unveil the future of the PlayStation brand, widely expected to be its latest home console.

“Can the PS3 Save Sony?” asked a Wired story in 2006, as Sony launched its last home console. As it turned out, the answer was “not really” — PlayStation 3 came in third in the hardware race, bled money for years and led to the ignominious departure of “father of the PlayStation” Ken Kutaragi. Now Sony as a whole is in crisis mode, having lost money for the past three years. CEO Howard Stringer stepped down a year ago to be replaced by Kazuo Hirai, the executive who led Sony and PlayStation during its decade of industry dominance. Hirai, as one might imagine, believes that gaming is one of the key products that Sony can leverage to turn the ship around.

Follow our live blog feed of the announcements, which will be livestreamed in the embedded video above when the show starts. Later, Wired contributor Stu Horvath will weigh in with any hands-on gameplay impressions and interviews with Sony executives that are offered at the event.

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Well: Effects of Bullying Last Into Adulthood, Study Finds

Victims of bullying at school, and bullies themselves, are more likely to experience psychiatric problems in childhood, studies have shown. Now researchers have found that elevated risk of psychiatric trouble extends into adulthood, sometimes even a decade after the intimidation has ended.

The new study, published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry on Wednesday, is the most comprehensive effort to date to establish the long-term consequences of childhood bullying, experts said.

“It documents the elevated risk across a wide range of mental health outcomes and over a long period of time,” said Catherine Bradshaw, an expert on bullying and a deputy director of the Center for the Prevention of Youth Violence at Johns Hopkins University, which was not involved in the study.

“The experience of bullying in childhood can have profound effects on mental health in adulthood, particularly among youths involved in bullying as both a perpetuator and a victim,” she added.

The study followed 1,420 subjects from Western North Carolina who were assessed four to six times between the ages of 9 and 16. Researchers asked both the children and their primary caregivers if they had been bullied or had bullied others in the three months before each assessment. Participants were divided into four groups: bullies, victims, bullies who also were victims, and children who were not exposed to bullying at all.

Participants were assessed again in young adulthood — at 19, 21 and between 24 and 26 — using structured diagnostic interviews.

Researchers found that victims of bullying in childhood were 4.3 times more likely to have an anxiety disorder as adults, compared to those with no history of bullying or being bullied.

Bullies who were also victims were particularly troubled: they were 14.5 times more likely to develop panic disorder as adults, compared to those who did not experience bullying, and 4.8 times more likely to experience depression. Men who were both bullies and victims were 18.5 times more likely to have had suicidal thoughts in adulthood, compared to the participants who had not been bullied or perpetuators. Their female counterparts were 26.7 times more likely to have developed agoraphobia, compared to children not exposed to bullying.

Bullies who were not victims of bullying were 4.1 times more likely to have antisocial personality disorder as adults than those never exposed to bullying in their youth.

The effects persisted even after the researchers accounted for pre-existing psychiatric problems or other factors that might have contributed to psychiatric disorders, like physical or sexual abuse, poverty and family instability.

“We were actually able to say being a victim of bullying is having an effect a decade later, above and beyond other psychiatric problems in childhood and other adversities,” said William E. Copeland, lead author of the study and an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University Medical Center.

Bullying is not a harmless rite of passage, but inflicts lasting psychiatric damage on a par with certain family dysfunctions, Dr. Copeland said. “The pattern we are seeing is similar to patterns we see when a child is abused or maltreated or treated very harshly within the family setting,” he said.

One limitation of the study is that bullying was not analyzed for frequency, and the researchers’ assessment did not distinguish between interpersonal and overt bullying. It only addressed bullying at school, not in other settings.

Most of what experts know about the effects of bullying comes from observational studies, not studies of children followed over time.

Previous research from Finland, based on questionnaires completed on a single occasion or on military registries, used a sample of 2,540 boys to see if being a bully or a victim at 8 predicted a psychiatric disorder 10 to 15 years later. The researchers found frequent bully-victims were at particular risk of adverse long-term outcomes, specifically anxiety and antisocial personality disorders. Victims were at greater risk for anxiety disorders, while bullies were at increased risk for antisocial personality disorder.

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DealBook: Anheuser- Busch InBev and Justice Dept. Ask for Halt in Antitrust Case

Anheuser-Busch InBev and the Justice Department said Wednesday that they were in talks to resolve antitrust concerns over the beer maker’s planned deal with Grupo Modelo, the maker of Corona beer and other brands.

The parties said they had jointly requested a temporary stay of an antitrust suit filed by the Justice Department while they work through the options.

Last year, Anheuser-Busch InBev had offered $20.1 billion to buy the rest of with Grupo Modelo that it did not already own, but the Justice Department filed suit on Jan. 31 seeking to block the deal on antitrust grounds. United States authorities had said the original Grupo Modelo merger proposal would increase Anheuser-Busch InBev’s control of the American beer market, enabling it to raise prices while reducing choice for local consumers.

Grupo Modelo is the third-largest beer company in the United States. Anheuser-Busch InBev is the largest, ahead of MillerCoors.

In response, Anheuser-Busch InBev last week offered broad concessions, saying it would sell the rights to Corona and other Grupo Modelo brands in the United States to Constellation Brands, one of the world’s largest wine companies, for $2.9 billion. The new agreement would also include the sale of a brewery close to the United States-Mexico border that is owned by Grupo Modelo, as well as the perpetual licensing rights to Grupo Modelo’s brands in the United States.

The Grupo Modelo deal is a vital merger for Anheuser-Busch InBev, which has been seeking greater access to emerging markets.

Despite robust competition from microbrewers and other brands, analysts say that the craft beer market makes up just 6 percent of beer sales.

The biggest in the market, Anheuser — brewer of Budweiser and Stella Artois — has raised its prices with regularity every year, with MillerCoors following suit, the Justice Department said.

In a statement on Wednesday, the companies involved in the talks and the Justice Department jointly requested a delay until March 19. Anheuser-Busch InBev and Modelo reiterated that the “revised transaction resolves the concerns raised” by the Justice Department’s antitrust suit.

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O.C. shootings: Plumber was chased, gunned down, co-worker says

A man suspected in a series of shootings across Orange County that left four people dead and at least two others wounded on Tuesday apparently approached one of his victims after a vehicle he carjacked ran out of gas, authorities said.

Santa Ana police Cpl. Anthony Bertagna said the suspect stole the vehicle from a gas station near Red Hill Avenue and the 5 Freeway in Tustin, but apparently picked one that had not been filled. When the vehicle ran out of gas at about 5:15 a.m., the man stopped near the 55 Freeway and McFadden Avenue and approached a BMW.

“He got out of the vehicle, confronts our victim who is in his BMW," Bertagna said. "He orders him out of the vehicle, walks him to the curb and executes our victim."

PHOTOS: Shootings at multiple locations in O.C.

Bertagna said that aside from an initial homicide at a Ladera Ranch home, it appeared as though the victims were randomly selected.

The killings appeared to begin in Ladera Ranch, where Orange County deputies received a call from inside a Red Leaf Lane home at 4:45 a.m. about a shooting, Sheriff's Department spokesman Jim Amormino said. Responding deputies found a woman dead inside who had been shot multiple times.

Jason Glass, who lives across the street, said he was working in his garage when he heard what he now believes were three to five gunshots between 2 and 3 a.m.  About 4 a.m., Glass said, he "heard a bunch of ruckus" — no yelling, but lots of doors slamming — before a car sped away from the house.

"I just thought somebody was being really loud and obnoxious," Glass said.

The suspect, initially described as a man in his 20s, fled the area in an SUV and headed toward Tustin, where Amormino said "multiple incidents" occurred.

The first, authorities said, occurred near Red Hill Avenue and the 5 Freeway, where authorities received a report of a man with a gun about 5:10 a.m. The suspect attempted a carjacking, Tustin police Lt. Paul Garaven, opened fire and wounded a bystander.

About five minutes later, the suspect stopped the BMW near the 55 Freeway in Santa Ana, officials said.

Around that time, authorities also received reports about a man shooting at moving vehicles on the 55 Freeway. Officials believe the man fired either while driving or after he stopped and got out of his vehicle. At least three victims have reported minor injuries or damage to their cars, and investigators asked that others who believe they may have been fired upon to contact police.

Shortly after, another shooting and carjacking was reported on Edinger Avenue near the Micro Center computer store in Tustin, Garaven said. One person was killed and another was taken to a hospital.

Co-workers identified the men as plumbers who were working at the under-construction Fairfield Inn on Edinger Avenue.

Officers spotted the suspect in a stolen vehicle, followed him into the city of Orange and initiated a traffic stop near the intersection of East Katella Avenue and North Wanda Road, Garaven said.

The suspect then shot and killed himself, authorities said. A shotgun was recovered, but officials said other weapons might have been involved earlier. 

In Orange, financial planner Kenneth Caplin said he had a clear view of the gruesome drama that unfolded Tuesday on the street outside his office.

Although the street had been blocked, Caplin parked farther away and persuaded an officer to let him walk to his office. He arrived shortly before 7 a.m., about an hour after the shooting.

From a conference room window, Caplin saw the police investigators at work, a white work truck up on a curb, and the suspect lying dead on the ground, with blood streaked across the pavement.

"It's scary.... This just happened right here," Caplin said hours later, as a team in biohazard suits scrubbed away at the street in an afternoon drizzle. "It's ludicrous."

Caplin, 71, said he is a pistol instructor for the NRA. What happened Tuesday only affirmed for him the need to stay armed.

"He had no chance," he said of one of shooting victims. "The bad guys are armed; the good guys aren't. If I was in that position -- with a CCW [concealed weapon] -- that wouldn't have happened."

He added: "Innocent people -- like what happened today -- don't have a chance."

He said he was relieved the perpetrator ended it by taking his own life. "That's a bad guy," he said of the man he saw splayed on the street. "Doesn't bother me at all." 

Amormino said deputies were still trying to piece together a possible motive and the relationship between the suspect and victims, including the woman at the first incident in Ladera Ranch. Authorities said they had received no previous calls to the residence.

Glass, the neighbor, said a couple lived at the home with three children. The family was quiet, he said.

“No noise ever came out of that house,” he said. “No cops ever came to that house, nothing. This is really weird.”

In addition to the Sheriff's Department, the FBI, the CHP and the Santa Ana and Tustin police departments are assisting with the investigation.

Craig Heising, a project superintendent at the Tustin construction site, described the slain plumber as a "good guy" with a "good heart."

"He showed up every day, on time, ready to do his share of work. When I saw police pull the yellow tarp over him, I was just overwhelmed by the senseless of it," Heising said. "It's a classic case of being at the wrong place at the wrong time."

PHOTOS: Shootings at multiple locations in O.C.

Bertagna, the Santa Ana police official, was asked if he had seen anything like this before. “Last week," he replied.

Bertagna was referring to the series of shootings attributed to former Los Angeles police officer Christopher Dorner, who is suspected of killing four people and wounding three others before he died in a shootout with police near Big Bear.

"It's not something you see very often," Bertagna said.

—Kate Mather and Hailey Branson-Potts in Los Angeles, Anh Do and Mike Anton in Tustin, Nicole Santa Cruz in Ladera Ranch, Rick Rojas in Orange

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