Advertising: Self Magazine Widens Its Focus for a Younger Audience

WHAT’S the point of having Michelle Obama’s triceps if you can’t show them off in a smart sleeveless sheath?

That seems to be the thinking behind a remake of Self magazine, the Condé Nast publication best known for teaching women how to crunch their abs, tone their thighs and eat the right foods.

Self is broadening its tight focus on exercise and wellness to become a more general lifestyle magazine infused with more beauty and fashion, an effort that will include editorial changes, a new look for the cover and logo and licensing agreements.

“We think there’s a shift in how women think of their bodies and beauty,” said Laura McEwen, the vice president and publisher of Self. “Being fit and fashionable are really one.”

According to Ms. McEwen, the magazine’s typical reader is in her mid-30s with a median household income of $75,000 a year; the rebranded magazine is meant to appeal to the generation of women 18 to 30 who are obsessed with social media. “The magazine is being edited for the women who think in 140 characters,” she said, referring to the character limit of a Twitter post.

That editorial shift can be most felt in the chatty headlines created for subsections in the magazine and its bolder, fashion-focused images. One section, “It’s a Thing,” highlights new trends (in March, the color will be lemon yellow). Others include “You Look Awesome in That,” featuring fashion coverage, and “Just Shoot Me Now,” which doles out advice to readers in embarrassing situations.

Self finds itself between two of its biggest competitors in women’s fitness magazines.

The magazine, which has a total print circulation of 1.5 million readers, had a slight increase in advertising dollars, but not ad pages, last year. Advertisers spent $163.2 million on ads in the magazine in 2012, a 1.8 percent increase from 2011, when they spent $160.2 million.

Total ad pages declined 2.3 percent to 905.4 in 2012 from 926 in 2011, according to data from the Publishers Information Bureau. Online, the magazine has 6.9 million unique visitors a month, executives said, with a fifth of that traffic coming from the social media content sharing site Pinterest.

Shape magazine, which is owned by American Media, claims a similarly strong print circulation of 1.63 million readers, but has had a tough time sustaining advertising dollars. The fitness and lifestyle magazine suffered an 18.4 percent decrease in advertising revenue from 2011, when advertisers spent $206.8 million, to 2012, when they spent $168.8 million on the magazine. The total number of ad pages in the magazine decreased 22.7 percent from 2011 to 2012.

Women’s Health, which is owned by Meredith, showed a 12.3 percent increase in paid advertising from 2011 to 2012, and a 6.8 percent increase in ad pages for the same period. In 2011 the magazine reported a circulation of 1.6 million.

Self magazine, its Web site and its mobile site will be divided into three main sections that focus on body, looks and lifestyle. The new look, which will make its debut this week, includes a larger font for the title and a clean white background. The changes will be consistent across all platforms.

Readers will also be able to download a new mobile application, called Self Plus. When users hover their phones over pages tagged with icons promoting the app, they can watch videos and skim through photo galleries and other content.

Millennial women, said Lucy Schulte Danziger, the editor in chief of Self, have “this sense that you want to be really healthy, but you also want to go drink martinis with your friends.” (To that end, the March issue will include a calorie-counting game on matching cocktails with bar food without blowing your diet.) “It’s trying to have fun. It should be fun; this is not rocket science,” she said.

Self’s last makeover was in 2010, when it overhauled its design, updated its logo and tweaked section headlines.

Beyond the latest editorial changes is a range of marketing efforts to get the word out. Print and digital ads will run in Condé Nast magazines like Allure, Glamour and Lucky and on taxi tops in New York City. Digital ads will also run on DailyCandy.com and Refinery29.com.

The March issue of Self, featuring the dancer Julianne Hough on the cover, will be available in print on Feb 19. Ms. Hough is the lead actress in the new film “Safe Haven.” Self will also be the co-host at a premiere party for the film on Monday in New York City.

The brand has also licensed its name to a new line of fitness gear including yoga mats and kettlebells and is considering extending that to healthy food products. Self is also capitalizing on its annual event, “Self Workout in the Park,” by announcing a college-themed contest, “Self Workout on the Quad,” where college students who participate most heavily with the Facebook “Workout in the Park” social game can win an event at their school.

Sponsors for the event include Garnier, Reebok, Calvin Klein, LaRoche-Posay, LeSportsac, Luna Bar and Club Med. Ads promoting the contest will be shown on HerCampus.com.

“This is clearly a strategy not only to reach young women readers where they’re at right now, but also to be more attractive to advertisers,” said Laura Portwood-Stacer, a visiting assistant professor of media, culture and communication at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development at New York University. “It seems to tap into this trend of fitness lifestyle consumption that you see a lot now.”

One new advertiser is LeSportsac, which in addition to sponsoring the workout events, will advertise in the April issue of Self.

“Seeing where the consumer is going today is very much lifestyle,” said Paula Spadaccini, the marketing director for LeSportsac. “They don’t just aspire to wear Christian Louboutin and be very fashionable. They also aspire to be fit and cook healthy recipes.”

Walter Coyle, the president of Pedone, an independent advertising agency, said that some of his clients like Burt’s Bees, the beauty product line, and Essie, the nail polish brand, will continue to advertise in Self, and that other clients including Clarins and Lacoste were considering it. “Whenever a formidable magazine like Self reimagines its position in the marketplace, it’s something everyone is going to look at,” he said.

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Israeli Says Syria Twisted Comments by Rebel Supporter

BEIRUT, Lebanon — A public relations controversy erupted Saturday after a leading Israeli newspaper published comments from a brief interview with the leader of Syria’s main exile opposition group.

The news media outlets of the Syrian government, and its ally Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group, reported that the opposition leader had declared that Israel had “nothing to fear” from a rebel-led Syrian government. Moreover, the reports said, the opposition was working with other countries to keep Syria’s chemical weapons away from Hezbollah, which he called a “son of the devil.”

But the opposition leader, Sheik Ahmad Moaz al-Khatib, never said any of that, according to the article in the Israeli newspaper, Yediot Aharonot, and its author, a prominent Israeli defense expert, Ronen Bergman.

Sheik Khatib was quoted in the article reiterating the opposition’s promise to keep Syria’s chemical arsenal out of “the hands of unauthorized elements,” and it was the international community, he said, not Israel, that had “nothing to fear.”

When Sheik Khatib realized that Mr. Bergman was an Israeli — after glancing at his business card — he abruptly ended the conversation, Mr. Bergman said in a Skype interview, repeating what he had written.

The original article was published only in Hebrew — and only in print — so it was the Arabic and English versions put out by the Syrian government and Hezbollah that raced around the Internet on Saturday, provoking outrage from government supporters and opponents at Sheik Khatib, who posted a message on his Facebook page denying that he had given the interview.

Yet the episode appeared to have been more than a simple misunderstanding. Syria’s conflict is not only a shooting war but also a propaganda war. Pro-government media apparently could not resist the chance to bolster their contention that the rebellion had been promoted by Israel and the West to punish Syria and its president, President Bashar al-Assad, for taking uncompromising positions against Israel.

“Unfortunately, the original text was less exciting,” Mr. Bergman said. “I would be happy if he would say something like, ‘Yes, we will make peace with Israel’ — then I would get the front page.” As it was, the article elicited little reaction in Israel.

But misrepresentation of the article suggested that it hit a nerve on one issue. An unnamed opposition member, not Sheik Khatib, called Hezbollah “sons of the devil,” according to Mr. Bergman, and said the rebel coalition was working with other countries to ensure that “not one piece of military equipment, not chemical weapons and not any other item, will pass into their hands.”

Syria is Hezbollah’s main conduit for arms, and Hezbollah has backed Mr. Assad’s bloody crackdown at great cost to its popularity in the wider Arab world.

Although Mr. Bergman said the opposition member was offering his own opinion and not presenting official policy, his comments bolstered the widely held view that a rebel-led government might halt the shipment of Iranian arms through Syria to Hezbollah. Hezbollah, a Shiite group and political party, is also concerned about the rise within the rebel movement of extremist Sunni jihadists who view Shiites as apostates.

The misleading reports appeared to be an attempt to further divide the opposition. Sheik Khatib found himself fending off critics from within the anti-Assad movement who objected to his even speaking with an Israeli reporter, though by all accounts he did not initially realize that Mr. Bergman was an Israeli.

It was the second time in a month that Sheik Khatib found himself on the defensive. He recently proposed talks with members of Mr. Assad’s government, but had not built political support for the proposal.

On Friday, Syria’s information minister, Omran al-Zoubi, gave the first official response to the proposal, saying that the government would negotiate with any opposition members who agreed to lay down their arms.

On Saturday, Mr. Assad named new cabinet ministers for oil, finance, social affairs, labor, housing, public works and agriculture, as Syria faces growing economic problems and shortages of electricity, fuel and bread.

Anne Barnard reported from Beirut, and Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem. Hania Mourtada contributed reporting from Beirut.

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Wisconsin beats No. 3 Michigan 65-62 in OT

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — When Ben Brust tied the game at the end of regulation with a shot just from just inside midcourt, his teammate Mike Bruesewitz looked over at Wisconsin coach Bo Ryan and saw something unusual.

His coach had both his arms in the air.

"You know when he shows some emotion, you've done something pretty special," Bruesewitz said.

Brust hit a tiebreaking 3-pointer with less than 40 seconds left in overtime as Wisconsin beat No. 3 Michigan 65-62 on Saturday.

"It was awesome, something I'll remember forever, and I'm sure a lot of people will," Brust said of the game, which ended with students storming the court and Bruesewitz taking the public address announcer's microphone to thank the crowd as students celebrated around him.

The Wolverines became the third top three team to lose this week as No. 1 Indiana lost to Illinois and No. 2 Florida was beaten by Arkansas. This should be the sixth straight week with a different No. 1 in The Associated Press' Top 25.

Brust's shot at the end of regulation was a dramatic turn of events for Wisconsin (17-7, 8-3 Big Ten) and a soul crusher for Michigan (21-3, 8-3).

Just moments earlier, Tim Hardaway Jr. hit a contested 3-pointer to put the Wolverines up 60-57 with less than 3 seconds left in regulation.

Following a timeout, Bruesewitz passed up his first option in the inbounds play and hit Brust in stride. The guard took one dribble across halfcourt and launched the shot, which hit nothing but net.

Ryan said the play was drawn up to see how Michigan defended the first cutter, Brust read the defense and reacted.

"The best thing was Mike's pass on the dime on the run, didn't have to reach back for it, able to catch it all in one motion," Ryan said.

Michigan still had fouls to give before the shot, and coach John Beilein said the order coming out of the timeout was to foul. He also put Caris LeVert on Brust to bolster the defense.

"We were definitely fouling, wanted to keep everyone in front of us and (Brust) turned the corner on (LeVert) just enough that he couldn't foul him," Beilein said. "I thought we had them once they couldn't get their initial guy.

"With Caris' quickness, we thought he could get there, but he didn't."

For all the fireworks in the final 3 seconds, the teams only managed seven points in overtime, including Brust's winning 3-pointer.

Following Brust's shot, Hardaway couldn't connect on his drive to the hoop on the next Michigan possession, and Glenn Robinson III fouled Jared Berggren on the rebound.

The Wolverines went to a full-court press with two more fouls to give. But the Badgers broke the press, and Michigan had to foul twice more to finally put Ryan Evans on the free throw line.

Evans, who shoots less than 43 percent from the line, missed the front end of a 1-and-1, and Burke couldn't connect in a rushed final possession for the Wolverines.

It was another grinding win for the Badgers keyed by their defense. Michigan came in as one of the top scoring teams in the country at almost 78 points per game. But Wisconsin held Michigan to less than 40 percent shooting from the field, including 5 of 18 from beyond the 3-point line.

Michigan was 1 for 7 from the field in overtime, and the offensive futility was highlighted by one sequence in which Mitch McGary stole the ball outside the 3-point line and drove the other way only to miss the layup with Berggren defending the rim.

Beilein said the Wolverines missed out on 14 points thanks to missed layups.

"I'm not talking about when they're really contesting," Beilein said. "I'm talking about we had the ball, the basket and us, and it didn't go in."

Brust scored 14 points for the Badgers, while Berggren added 13 and eight rebounds. Sam Dekker scored 12 points, while Evans finished with 11 points and nine rebounds.

Burke scored 19 points to lead Michigan, but needed 21 shots to do it. Hardaway added 18, and McGary had 12 points and eight rebounds.

It was the second straight game for both teams to go past regulation after the Badgers beat Iowa 74-70 in double overtime on Wednesday and Michigan downed Ohio State 76-74 in overtime on Tuesday.

Several Wisconsin players said consecutive overtime games exemplified their will to win even as critics contend they're not talented enough, not fast enough and, as Bruesewitz said he's seen on Twitter, not good-looking enough.

"We have a group of guys in that locker room that believe and is going to fight until the end until you tell us we can't play any more basketball," Berggren said. "We just find a way to get it done."

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In Nigeria, Polio Vaccine Workers Are Killed by Gunmen

At least nine polio immunization workers were shot to death in northern Nigeria on Friday by gunmen who attacked two clinics, officials said.

The killings, with eerie echoes of attacks that killed nine female polio workers in Pakistan in December, represented another serious setback for the global effort to eradicate polio.

Most of the victims were women and were shot in the back of the head, local reports said.

A four-day vaccination drive had just ended in Kano State, where the killings took place, and the vaccinators were in a “mop-up” phase, looking for children who had been missed, said Sarah Crowe, a spokeswoman for the United Nations Children’s Fund, one of the agencies running the eradication campaign.

Dr. Mohammad Ali Pate, Nigeria’s minister of state for health, said in a telephone interview that it was not entirely clear whether the gunmen were specifically targeting polio workers or just attacking the health centers where vaccinators happened to be gathering early in the morning. “Health workers are soft targets,” he said.

No one immediately took responsibility, but suspicion fell on Boko Haram, a militant Islamist group that has attacked police stations, government offices and even a religious leader’s convoy.

Polio, which once paralyzed millions of children, is now down to fewer than 1,000 known cases around the world, and is endemic in only three countries: Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Since September — when a new polio operations center was opened in the capital and Nigeria’s president, Goodluck Jonathan, appointed a special adviser for polio — the country had been improving, said Dr. Bruce Aylward, chief of polio eradication for the World Health Organization. There have been no new cases since Dec. 3.

While vaccinators have not previously been killed in the country, there is a long history of Nigerian Muslims shunning the vaccine.

Ten years ago, immunization was suspended for 11 months as local governors waited for local scientists to investigate rumors that it caused AIDS or was a Western plot to sterilize Muslim girls. That hiatus let cases spread across Africa. The Nigerian strain of the virus even reached Saudi Arabia when a Nigerian child living in hills outside Mecca was paralyzed.

Heidi Larson, an anthropologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who tracks vaccine issues, said the newest killings “are kind of mimicking what’s going on in Pakistan, and I feel it’s very much prompted by that.”

In a roundabout way, the C.I.A. has been blamed for the Pakistan killings. In its effort to track Osama bin Laden, the agency paid a Pakistani doctor to seek entry to Bin Laden’s compound on the pretext of vaccinating the children — presumably to get DNA samples as evidence that it was the right family. That enraged some Taliban factions in Pakistan, which outlawed vaccination in their areas and threatened vaccinators.

Nigerian police officials said the first shootings were of eight workers early in the morning at a clinic in the Tarauni neighborhood of Kano, the state capital; two or three died. A survivor said the two gunmen then set fire to a curtain, locked the doors and left.

“We summoned our courage and broke the door because we realized they wanted to burn us alive,” the survivor said from her bed at Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital.

About an hour later, six men on three-wheeled motorcycles stormed a clinic in the Haye neighborhood, a few miles away. They killed seven women waiting to collect vaccine.

Ten years ago, Dr. Larson said, she joined a door-to-door vaccination drive in northern Nigeria as a Unicef communications officer, “and even then we were trying to calm rumors that the C.I.A. was involved,” she said. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars had convinced poor Muslims in many countries that Americans hated them, and some believed the American-made vaccine was a plot by Western drug companies and intelligence agencies.

Since the vaccine ruse in Pakistan, she said, “Frankly, now, I can’t go to them and say, ‘The C.I.A. isn’t involved.’ ”

Dr. Pate said the attack would not stop the newly reinvigorated eradication drive, adding, “This isn’t going to deter us from getting everyone vaccinated to save the lives of our children.”

Aminu Abubakar contributed reported from Kano, Nigeria.

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Israeli Says Syria Twisted Comments by Rebel Supporter

BEIRUT, Lebanon — A public relations controversy erupted Saturday after a leading Israeli newspaper published comments from a brief interview with the leader of Syria’s main exile opposition group.

The news media outlets of the Syrian government, and its ally Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group, reported that the opposition leader had declared that Israel had “nothing to fear” from a rebel-led Syrian government. Moreover, the reports said, the opposition was working with other countries to keep Syria’s chemical weapons away from Hezbollah, which he called a “son of the devil.”

But the opposition leader, Sheik Ahmad Moaz al-Khatib, never said any of that, according to the article in the Israeli newspaper, Yediot Aharonot, and its author, a prominent Israeli defense expert, Ronen Bergman.

Sheik Khatib was quoted in the article reiterating the opposition’s promise to keep Syria’s chemical arsenal out of “the hands of unauthorized elements,” and it was the international community, he said, not Israel, that had “nothing to fear.”

When Sheik Khatib realized that Mr. Bergman was an Israeli — after glancing at his business card — he abruptly ended the conversation, Mr. Bergman said in a Skype interview, repeating what he had written.

The original article was published only in Hebrew — and only in print — so it was the Arabic and English versions put out by the Syrian government and Hezbollah that raced around the Internet on Saturday, provoking outrage from government supporters and opponents at Sheik Khatib, who posted a message on his Facebook page denying that he had given the interview.

Yet the episode appeared to have been more than a simple misunderstanding. Syria’s conflict is not only a shooting war but also a propaganda war. Pro-government media apparently could not resist the chance to bolster their contention that the rebellion had been promoted by Israel and the West to punish Syria and its president, President Bashar al-Assad, for taking uncompromising positions against Israel.

“Unfortunately, the original text was less exciting,” Mr. Bergman said. “I would be happy if he would say something like, ‘Yes, we will make peace with Israel’ — then I would get the front page.” As it was, the article elicited little reaction in Israel.

But misrepresentation of the article suggested that it hit a nerve on one issue. An unnamed opposition member, not Sheik Khatib, called Hezbollah “sons of the devil,” according to Mr. Bergman, and said the rebel coalition was working with other countries to ensure that “not one piece of military equipment, not chemical weapons and not any other item, will pass into their hands.”

Syria is Hezbollah’s main conduit for arms, and Hezbollah has backed Mr. Assad’s bloody crackdown at great cost to its popularity in the wider Arab world.

Although Mr. Bergman said the opposition member was offering his own opinion and not presenting official policy, his comments bolstered the widely held view that a rebel-led government might halt the shipment of Iranian arms through Syria to Hezbollah. Hezbollah, a Shiite group and political party, is also concerned about the rise within the rebel movement of extremist Sunni jihadists who view Shiites as apostates.

The misleading reports appeared to be an attempt to further divide the opposition. Sheik Khatib found himself fending off critics from within the anti-Assad movement who objected to his even speaking with an Israeli reporter, though by all accounts he did not initially realize that Mr. Bergman was an Israeli.

It was the second time in a month that Sheik Khatib found himself on the defensive. He recently proposed talks with members of Mr. Assad’s government, but had not built political support for the proposal.

On Friday, Syria’s information minister, Omran al-Zoubi, gave the first official response to the proposal, saying that the government would negotiate with any opposition members who agreed to lay down their arms.

On Saturday, Mr. Assad named new cabinet ministers for oil, finance, social affairs, labor, housing, public works and agriculture, as Syria faces growing economic problems and shortages of electricity, fuel and bread.

Anne Barnard reported from Beirut, and Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem. Hania Mourtada contributed reporting from Beirut.

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An Exhibition on Turkey’s Past Resonates

ISTANBUL — Two galleries in this city’s old European quarter recently opened exhibitions that showcase the political violence that convulsed the country in the 1970s. The echoes for contemporary Turkey were unmistakable.

On one wall are rows of old newspapers that chronicled through blaring headlines and grainy photographs the bloody street fighting and chaotic demonstrations that culminated in a military coup in 1980.

“Socialist revolution can only be achieved in Turkey through armed victory,” is how one newspaper of the time described the aims of a radical left-wing group that promised to use “revolutionary terror” and “urban chaos” to realize Marxist rule.

That bloody past burst violently into the present with last week’s suicide bombing of the American Embassy in the Turkish capital of Ankara. Initially assumed by many to be the work of Islamic extremists, the attack was quickly traced by the authorities to a man who sneaked into the country by boat from a Greek island in the Aegean Sea and was linked to a homegrown left-wing extremist group whose roots lie in the tumult of the ’70s.

As such, the bombing — even though it struck an American target and was motivated in part by American policy in the Middle East — revealed more about modern Turkey, its violent past and potential for instability than it did about the United States’ war on terror.

“This was no Benghazi,” wrote Ross Wilson, a former American ambassador to Turkey, in an online column for the Atlantic Council, referring to last year’s attack by Islamic extremists on a diplomatic outpost in Libya that resulted in the death of the American ambassador and three others.

For Turkey, the attack was an unpleasant reminder that despite a decade of reforms under the current ruling party, which is rooted in political Islam and headed by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey has yet to fully emerge from its dark past. Coming at a time when Turkey, with its prosperous economy and political stability, is trying to present itself as a model for countries convulsed by the Arab Spring revolutions, the attack served for many Turks as a reminder of the work left to put their own house in order.

“I think what people have forgotten, because of what happened here in the last 10 years, was how violent Turkish politics used to be,” said Gerald Knaus, of the European Stability Initiative, a policy research organization based in Istanbul. “In the last 10 years Turkey tried to emerge from this period of political violence and confront the skeletons in its closet. But we’ve forgotten how many skeletons there were.”

The attack also underscored how Turkey’s rulers sometimes use those skeletons to justify a growing crackdown on dissent, particularly with a campaign against the news media that has Turkey as the world’s leading jailer of journalists — more even than China or Iran.

“If the activist who blew himself up today had possessed a press card, they would have called him a journalist,” Mr. Erdogan said in comments broadcast on Turkish television shortly after the bombing last week that were immediately condemned by the advocacy group Reporters Without Borders.

Before the attack, Turkish security forces rounded up nearly 100 people accused of ties to the outlawed Revolutionary People’s Liberation Front, the organization the perpetrator belonged to, among them journalists, lawyers, even members of a rock band. The arrests were condemned by human rights groups as another example of Turkey’s broad use of antiterrorism laws to crack down on domestic opponents, particularly journalists and human rights lawyers, with no links to violent activities.

“Turkey’s overbroad antiterrorism laws have been used against an ever-widening circle of people charged for nonviolent political activities and the legitimate exercise of freedom of expression, association and assembly,” Human Rights Watch wrote in a report condemning many of the arrests.

Efkan Bolac, a member of the Contemporary Lawyers Association, was detained in that roundup but was released for lack of evidence.

“A lawyer doesn’t become a rapist if he represents one, or a drug dealer if he represents one,” Mr. Bolac said. “They claim we are members of a terror group, but how is that possible when we spend our entire time at courthouses?”

This week the American ambassador to Turkey, Francis J. Ricciardone Jr., said the F.B.I. was investigating the attack and suggested that the Justice Department might prosecute the group that carried out the bombing.

Yet the attack seemed out of another time and carried a whiff of cold-war-era intrigue, when links between the C.I.A. and Turkey were central to efforts by the United States to counter Soviet influence in the region. It also upended the conventional narrative about modern terrorism. “You’d think 10 years after the war on terror things would be clearer rather than more obfuscated,” said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University.

In his column in The Hurriyet Daily News, Nihat Ali Ozcan, a security specialist at the Economic Policy Research Foundation in Ankara, likened the attack to a “cold-war-style proxy war” that he speculated was the work of Syria, given the historical links between the group and Syrian intelligence. His observation was reminiscent of the paranoia of a bygone era. At one of the art galleries here, newspapers chronicled the 1977 May Day celebration in Istanbul, when leftist groups gathered for a demonstration that turned bloody.

“This attack is a provocation that links all the way to the C.I.A.,” one headline shrieked.

Sebnem Arsu contributed reporting.

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Super Bowl blackout was caused by electrical relay

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The company that supplied electricity to the Super Bowl says the blackout that halted the big game was caused by a device it installed specially to prevent a power failure.

But the utility stopped short of taking all the blame and said Friday that it was looking into whether the electrical relay at fault had a design flaw or a manufacturing defect.

The relay had been installed as part of a project begun in 2011 to upgrade the electrical system serving the Superdome in anticipation of the championship game. The equipment was supposed to guard against problems in the cable that links the power grid with lines that go into the stadium.

"The purpose of it was to provide a newer, more advanced type of protection for the Superdome," Dennis Dawsey, an executive with Entergy Corp., told members of the City Council. Entergy is the parent company of Entergy New Orleans, the city's main electric utility.

Entergy officials said the relay functioned with no problems during January's Sugar Bowl and other earlier events. It has been removed and will be replaced.

All systems at the Superdome are now working, and the stadium was to host a major Mardi Gras event Saturday night, said Doug Thornton, an executive with SMG, the company that manages the stadium for the state.

The relay was installed in a building near the stadium known as "the vault," which receives a line directly from a nearby Entergy substation. Once the line reaches the vault, it splits into two cables that go into the Superdome.

Sunday's power failure cut lights to about half of the stadium, halting play between the Baltimore Ravens and San Francisco 49ers and interrupting the nation's most-watched sporting event for 34 minutes.

Not long after the announcement, the manufacturer of the relay, Chicago-based S&C Electric Co., released a statement saying that the blackout occurred because system operators had put the relay's so-called trip setting too low to allow the device to handle the incoming electric load.

The equipment was owned and installed by Entergy New Orleans.

"If higher settings had been applied, the equipment would not have disconnected the power," said Michael J.S. Edmonds, vice president of strategic solutions for S&C.

In a follow-up statement, Entergy said that tests conducted by S&C and Entergy on the two relays at the Superdome showed that one worked as expected, the other did not.

Entergy spokesman Mike Burns said both relays had the same trip setting.

Entergy's announcement came shortly before company officials went before a committee of the City Council, which is the regulatory body for the company.

During the committee hearing, council member Susan Guidry asked Entergy executives whether they were "fairly certain" that the relay was faulty.

"That is correct," Dawsey said.

However, when asked if the outage was caused by the design or a defect in a part of the equipment, Entergy New Orleans CEO Charles Rice said that had not been determined.

"The equipment did not function properly," Rice said. "At this particular time, based upon our analysis, we cannot say definitively that there was a defect in design. What we do know is that the equipment for some unknown reason, at this particular time, did not react the way that it should have."

Asked if Entergy and SMG still plan to hire a third-party investigator to get to the bottom of the cause, Rice said that possibility remains open.

"We'll work closely with SMG, and if there is a need for a third-party investigation, we will do that," Rice said, adding that Entergy was also working with the relay manufacturer.

Shabab Mehraeen, an assistant professor of electrical engineering at Louisiana State University, said relays are common electrical fixtures in businesses and massive facilities such as the Superdome.

"They are designed to keep a problem they sense from becoming something bigger, like a fire or catastrophic event," he said.

The devices vary in size. Mehraeen, who was not familiar with the relay at the Superdome, said he "wouldn't be surprised if it was bigger than a truck."

The reasons the devices fail are the subject of much academic research into the interaction of relays with the complex electrical systems they regulate.

"It's not unusual for them to have problems," Mehraeen said. "They can be unpredictable, despite national testing standards recommended by manufacturers."

Entergy and SMG had both upgraded lines and equipment in the months leading up to the Super Bowl. Rice said the new gear, with the faulty relay, was installed as part of a $4.2 million upgrade by Entergy that included a new power line dedicated solely to the stadium.

In a separate project, SMG replaced lines coming into the stadium after managers expressed concerns the Superdome might be vulnerable to a power failure like the one that struck Candlestick Park during an NFL game in 2011.

Thornton stressed Friday that the dome was drawing only about two-thirds of its power capacity Super Bowl night. He said typical NFL games in late August or September can draw a little more.

Friday's announcement appeared to absolve Superdome officials of any missteps in the blackout.

City officials had worried that the Super Bowl outage might harm New Orleans' chances of getting another NFL championship game.

But NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell downplayed that possibility, saying the league planned to keep New Orleans in its Super Bowl plans. Mayor Mitch Landrieu said the city intends to bid for the game again in 2018.

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Associated Press Writer Michael Kunzelman in New Orleans contributed to this report.

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Well: Think Like a Doctor: A Confused and Terrified Patient

The Challenge: Can you solve the mystery of a middle-aged man recovering from a serious illness who suddenly becomes frightened and confused?

Every month the Diagnosis column of The New York Times Magazine asks Well readers to sift through a difficult case and solve a diagnostic riddle. Below you will find a summary of a case involving a 55-year-old man well on his way to recovering from a series of illnesses when he suddenly becomes confused and paranoid. I will provide you with the main medical notes, labs and imaging results available to the doctor who made the diagnosis.

The first reader to figure out this case will get a signed copy of my book, “Every Patient Tells a Story,” along with the satisfaction of knowing you solved a case of Sherlockian complexity. Good luck.

The Presenting Problem:

A 55-year-old man who is recovering from a devastating injury in a rehabilitation facility suddenly becomes confused, frightened and paranoid.

The Patient’s Story:

The patient, who was recovering from a terrible injury and was too weak to walk, had been found on the floor of his room at the extended care facility, raving that there were people out to get him. He was taken to the emergency room at the Waterbury Hospital in Connecticut, where he was diagnosed with a urinary tract infection and admitted to the hospital for treatment. Doctors thought his delirium was caused by the infection, but after 24 hours, despite receiving the appropriate antibiotics, the patient remained disoriented and frightened.

A Sister’s Visit:

The man’s sister came to visit him on his second day in the hospital. As she walked into the room she was immediately struck by her brother’s distress.

“Get me out of here!” the man shouted from his hospital bed. “They are coming to get me. I gotta get out of here!”

His brown eyes darted from side to side as if searching for his would-be attackers. His arms and legs shook with fear. He looked terrified.

For the past few months, the man had been in and out of the hospital, but he had been getting better — at least he had been improving the last time his sister saw him, the week before. She hurried into the bustling hallway and found a nurse. “What the hell is going on with my brother?” she demanded.

A Long Series of Illnesses:

Three months earlier, the patient had been admitted to that same hospital with delirium tremens. After years of alcohol abuse, he had suddenly stopped drinking a couple of days before, and his body was wracked by the sudden loss of the chemical he had become addicted to. He’d spent an entire week in the hospital but finally recovered. He was sent home, but he didn’t stay there for long.

The following week, when his sister hadn’t heard from him for a couple of days, she forced her way into his home. There she found him, unconscious, in the basement, at the bottom of his staircase. He had fallen, and it looked as if he may have been there for two, possibly three, days. He was close to death. Indeed, in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, his heart had stopped. Rapid action by the E.M.T.’s brought his heart back to life, and he made it to the hospital.

There the extent of the damage became clear. The man’s kidneys had stopped working, and his body chemistry was completely out of whack. He had a severe concussion. And he’d had a heart attack.

He remained in the intensive care unit for nearly three weeks, and in the hospital another two weeks. Even after these weeks of care and recovery, the toll of his injury was terrible. His kidneys were not working, so he required dialysis three times a week. He had needed a machine to help him breathe for so long that he now had to get oxygen through a hole that had been cut into his throat. His arms and legs were so weak that he could not even lift them, and because he was unable even to swallow, he had to be fed through a tube that went directly into his stomach.

Finally, after five weeks in the hospital, he was well enough to be moved to a short-term rehabilitation hospital to complete the long road to recovery. But he was still far from healthy. The laughing, swaggering, Harley-riding man his sister had known until that terrible fall seemed a distant memory, though she saw that he was slowly getting better. He had even started to smile and make jokes. He was confident, he had told her, that with a lot of hard work he could get back to normal. So was she; she knew he was tough.

Back to the Hospital:

The patient had been at the rehab facility for just over two weeks when the staff noticed a sudden change in him. He had stopped smiling and was no longer making jokes. Instead, he talked about people that no one else could see. And he was worried that they wanted to harm him. When he remained confused for a second day, they sent him to the emergency room.

You can see the records from that E.R. visit here.

The man told the E.R. doctor that he knew he was having hallucinations. He thought they had started when he had begun taking a pill to help him sleep a couple of days earlier. It seemed a reasonable explanation, since the medication was known to cause delirium in some people. The hospital psychiatrist took him off that medication and sent him back to rehab that evening with a different sleeping pill.

Back to the Hospital, Again:

Two days later, the patient was back in the emergency room. He was still seeing things that weren’t there, but now he was quite confused as well. He knew his name but couldn’t remember what day or month it was, or even what year. And he had no idea where he was, or where he had just come from.

When the medical team saw the patient after he had been admitted, he was unable to provide any useful medical history. His medical records outlined his earlier hospitalizations, and records from the nursing home filled in additional details. The patient had a history of high blood pressure, depression and alcoholism. He was on a long list of medications. And he had been confused for the past several days.

On examination, he had no fever, although a couple of hours earlier his temperature had been 100.0 degrees. His heart was racing, and his blood pressure was sky high. His arms and legs were weak and swollen. His legs were shaking, and his reflexes were very brisk. Indeed, when his ankle was flexed suddenly, it continued to jerk back and forth on its own three or four times before stopping, a phenomenon known as clonus.

His labs were unchanged from the previous visit except for his urine, which showed signs of a serious infection. A CT scan of the brain was unremarkable, as was a chest X-ray. He was started on an intravenous antibiotic to treat the infection. The thinking was that perhaps the infection was causing the patient’s confusion.

You can see the notes from that second hospital visit here.

His sister had come to visit him the next day, when he was as confused as he had ever been. He was now trembling all over and looked scared to death, terrified. He was certain he was being pursued.

That is when she confronted the nurse, demanding to know what was going on with her brother. The nurse didn’t know. No one did. His urinary tract infection was being treated with antibiotics, but he continued to have a rapid heart rate and elevated blood pressure, along with terrifying hallucinations.

Solving the Mystery:

Can you figure out why this man was so confused and tremulous? I have provided you with all the data available to the doctor who made the diagnosis. The case is not easy — that is why it is here. I’ll post the answer on Friday.

Friday Feb. 8 4:13 p.m. | Updated Thanks for all your responses. You can read about the winner at “Think Like a Doctor: A Confused and Terrified Patient Solved.”

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Rules and Regulations: Post your questions and diagnosis in the comments section below.. The correct answer will appear Friday on Well. The winner will be contacted. Reader comments may also appear in a coming issue of The New York Times Magazine.

Correction: The patient’s eyes were brown, not blue.

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Venezuela Devalues Currency Amid Shortages and Inflation

CARACAS — Venezuela announced Friday that it was devaluing its currency, a step that had long been deemed necessary but could push the spiking inflation even higher.

The devaluation, which lowered the currency’s value against the dollar by nearly 50 percent, was aimed at solidifying government finances and easing a tight market for dollars that has choked back imports and led to shortages of basic goods.

The move had been widely anticipated, but it had been unclear whether officials would make what could be a politically risky decision with President Hugo Chávez still out of the country after undergoing cancer surgery in Cuba on Dec. 11.

If Mr. Chávez were to die or were too ill to continue as president, a special election would have to be called, and many analysts thought that the government might try to postpone a devaluation until after that occurred.

“It is a sign of pragmatism that they carry out a devaluation even though we’re all aware there is some likelihood of a presidential election being held soon,” said Francisco Rodríguez, an economist with Bank of America Merrill Lynch. “This shows that they’re willing to correct basic economic distortions.”

The currency, the bolívar, will be set at 6.3 to the dollar. It had been set at 4.3.

Venezuela’s finance minister, Jorge Giordani, said that Mr. Chávez, who has not been seen or heard in public for more than eight weeks, had approved the measures.

“Here is the president’s signature if you want to recognize it or if you still have doubts,” Mr. Giordani said, holding up a document during a televised news conference.

The devaluation will help the government balance its books by giving it nearly 50 percent more bolívars for the dollars it earns selling oil on the world market. Venezuela’s economy is highly dependent on oil, with petroleum sales making up about 95 percent of total exports. The country is the fourth-largest foreign oil supplier to the United States.

Government spending soared last year during the campaign to re-elect Mr. Chávez, leading to a large deficit, even though, at more than $100 a barrel, the price of oil is very high.

Pressure to devalue had been building for months, as the black market exchange rate rose to more than four times the official rate. The imbalance was evident in the prices of many goods. A Big Mac at McDonald’s costs 70 bolívars, or $16.27, at the official pre-devaluation rate.

But the devaluation will also make imported goods more expensive, which will probably make inflation worse. Inflation for the 12 months ended on Jan. 31 was 22.2 percent, one of the highest rates in Latin America.

Surging inflation could cause political problems for the government. But the exchange rate had reduced the dollars available to importers, leading to shortages of goods like sugar, chicken and toilet paper. Many analysts believe that voters blame the government more for shortages than for inflation.

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World Briefing | Europe: Lasagna Products Test Positive for Horsemeat in Britain

British authorities say beef lasagna products recalled from British supermarkets by the frozen-food company Findus have tested positive for more than 60 percent horsemeat. The revelation comes after millions of burgers were taken off shop shelves this month as it emerged that beef products from three companies in Ireland and Britain contained horse DNA. The Food Standards Agency said Thursday that its tests on Findus’s beef lasagna were part of an investigation into mislabeled meat and that there was no evidence the results posed a food safety risk.

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