Major Banks Aid in Payday Loans Banned by States

Major banks have quickly become behind-the-scenes allies of Internet-based payday lenders that offer short-term loans with interest rates sometimes exceeding 500 percent.

With 15 states banning payday loans, a growing number of the lenders have set up online operations in more hospitable states or far-flung locales like Belize, Malta and the West Indies to more easily evade statewide caps on interest rates.

While the banks, which include giants like JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo, do not make the loans, they are a critical link for the lenders, enabling the lenders to withdraw payments automatically from borrowers’ bank accounts, even in states where the loans are banned entirely. In some cases, the banks allow lenders to tap checking accounts even after the customers have begged them to stop the withdrawals.

“Without the assistance of the banks in processing and sending electronic funds, these lenders simply couldn’t operate,” said Josh Zinner, co-director of the Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project, which works with community groups in New York.

The banking industry says it is simply serving customers who have authorized the lenders to withdraw money from their accounts. “The industry is not in a position to monitor customer accounts to see where their payments are going,” said Virginia O’Neill, senior counsel with the American Bankers Association.

But state and federal officials are taking aim at the banks’ role at a time when authorities are increasing their efforts to clamp down on payday lending and its practice of providing quick money to borrowers who need cash.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau are examining banks’ roles in the online loans, according to several people with direct knowledge of the matter. Benjamin M. Lawsky, who heads New York State’s Department of Financial Services, is investigating how banks enable the online lenders to skirt New York law and make loans to residents of the state, where interest rates are capped at 25 percent.

For the banks, it can be a lucrative partnership. At first blush, processing automatic withdrawals hardly seems like a source of profit. But many customers are already on shaky financial footing. The withdrawals often set off a cascade of fees from problems like overdrafts. Roughly 27 percent of payday loan borrowers say that the loans caused them to overdraw their accounts, according to a report released this month by the Pew Charitable Trusts. That fee income is coveted, given that financial regulations limiting fees on debit and credit cards have cost banks billions of dollars.

Some state and federal authorities say the banks’ role in enabling the lenders has frustrated government efforts to shield people from predatory loans — an issue that gained urgency after reckless mortgage lending helped precipitate the 2008 financial crisis.

Lawmakers, led by Senator Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon, introduced a bill in July aimed at reining in the lenders, in part, by forcing them to abide by the laws of the state where the borrower lives, rather than where the lender is. The legislation, pending in Congress, would also allow borrowers to cancel automatic withdrawals more easily. “Technology has taken a lot of these scams online, and it’s time to crack down,” Mr. Merkley said in a statement when the bill was introduced.

While the loans are simple to obtain — some online lenders promise approval in minutes with no credit check — they are tough to get rid of. Customers who want to repay their loan in full typically must contact the online lender at least three days before the next withdrawal. Otherwise, the lender automatically renews the loans at least monthly and withdraws only the interest owed. Under federal law, customers are allowed to stop authorized withdrawals from their account. Still, some borrowers say their banks do not heed requests to stop the loans.

Ivy Brodsky, 37, thought she had figured out a way to stop six payday lenders from taking money from her account when she visited her Chase branch in Brighton Beach in Brooklyn in March to close it. But Chase kept the account open and between April and May, the six Internet lenders tried to withdraw money from Ms. Brodsky’s account 55 times, according to bank records reviewed by The New York Times. Chase charged her $1,523 in fees — a combination of 44 insufficient fund fees, extended overdraft fees and service fees.

For Subrina Baptiste, 33, an educational assistant in Brooklyn, the overdraft fees levied by Chase cannibalized her child support income. She said she applied for a $400 loan from Loanshoponline.com and a $700 loan from Advancemetoday.com in 2011. The loans, with annual interest rates of 730 percent and 584 percent respectively, skirt New York law.

Ms. Baptiste said she asked Chase to revoke the automatic withdrawals in October 2011, but was told that she had to ask the lenders instead. In one month, her bank records show, the lenders tried to take money from her account at least six times. Chase charged her $812 in fees and deducted over $600 from her child-support payments to cover them.

“I don’t understand why my own bank just wouldn’t listen to me,” Ms. Baptiste said, adding that Chase ultimately closed her account last January, three months after she asked.

A spokeswoman for Bank of America said the bank always honored requests to stop automatic withdrawals. Wells Fargo declined to comment. Kristin Lemkau, a spokeswoman for Chase, said: “We are working with the customers to resolve these cases.” Online lenders say they work to abide by state laws.

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Genetically modified foods: Who has to tell?

Consumers who believe they have a right to know whether their food contains genetically modified ingredients are pressing lawmakers, regulators and voters to require labels on altered foods. But even if they succeed, experts say there's no guarantee that labels identifying genetically engineered foods would ever appear on packages.

"People are usually surprised to learn that there is no legal right to know," said Michael Rodemeyer, an expert on biotechnology policy at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

A variety of rules and regulations control the words that appear on food packages. Such rules must be balanced against companies' constitutionally protected right of commercial speech, experts said.

"It's an unsettled area in the law," said Hank Greely, director of the Stanford Center for Law and the Biosciences in Palo Alto. "If I were a betting man, I think the odds are good that the Supreme Court would ... strike down a GMO labeling requirement."

Consumers do have the right to know some things about foods, and it's the job of the Food and Drug Administration to enforce the various rules. Labels must carry an accurate name for the food, as well as its weight and manufacturer, a list of ingredients and, since 1990, that panel of calories and breakdown of basic nutrients that some people pore over and others blithely ignore.

And labels cannot be false or misleading. Consumers have a right to know that a product contains the nutrients they'd reasonably expect to find in a food with that name: An orange lacking vitamin C (should anyone desire to create such a thing) would have to be labeled as such.

They also have the right to know when a food contains something new that makes it materially different, such as an allergen or unexpected nutrient. Soybean varieties that are genetically engineered to contain high amounts of the monounsaturated fat oleic acid must bear labels that make that property clear, said FDA spokesperson Morgan Liscinsky.

But there is no requirement that food producers use those labels to say how they raised those oleic acid levels, according to the FDA. They could have done it through conventional breeding or by irradiating plant tissue to create mutations or by fusing cells together in a dish — or with genetic engineering.

When Flavr Savr tomatoes became the first genetically modified plants sold in supermarkets in 1994, they had stickers that informed shoppers that they were "made from genetically engineered seeds." Calgene Inc., the company that produced the tomatoes, even provided brochures and a toll-free number that consumers could call to learn more about the product, said Belinda Martineau, a geneticist at UC Davis who worked at Calgene in the 1990s.

But those labels were there only because Calgene decided to put them there. The FDA had scrutinized the process by which the company engineered the DNA in the tomatoes and decided that the technology itself didn't amount to a material change. Regulators concluded that Flavr Savr had the appearance, nutrients, flavor and texture of a tomato (although not, as it turned out, an especially tasty one).

"It was still a tomato," said Fred Degnan, a food lawyer with the firm King & Spalding in Washington, D.C., who has worked on biotechnology and labeling issues at the FDA. "They couldn't require it to be labeled in a way that implied it was different from a regular tomato."

Courts have ruled that forcing companies to label GM products violates their 1st Amendment right of free speech. In a 1996 case, a federal appeals court blocked a Vermont law that required dairy producers to label milk from cows that had been treated with a growth hormone made by genetically engineered bacteria. The hormone helped cows produce more milk, but the milk itself was the same as milk from untreated cows, the FDA determined. Because the law required labels to contain information that wasn't "material" to the product, it was unconstitutional, the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a 2-1 decision.

Labels can be required only if they alert consumers to a change that affects a food's composition or nutrition, its physical properties (such as shelf life), or the qualities that influence the sensory experience of smelling, tasting and eating it, the FDA says.

It is not a definition that sits well with all.

Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of the Washington-based advocacy group Center for Food Safety, said that approach reflects "19th century science." His group has petitioned the FDA to update its rules so that any product created via genetic engineering would be considered altered enough to require a label.

Such a change would also give companies more leeway to label their products as free of genetically modified ingredients: Today they can do so only if the label doesn't imply that there's something wrong with GM foods or that GMO-free foods are superior (although many companies skirt the rules).

"We need to know we have an agency using 21st century regulations to deal with 21st century technology," Kimbrell said.

The FDA's stance on labeling genetically modified foods differs starkly from that of European regulators, who require foods with genetically engineered ingredients to bear labels. Most scientists believe that the FDA's approach is rational — but perhaps it's too rational if the goal is to encourage public acceptance of the technology, said Jennifer Kuzma, a science policy expert at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota.

"This is something that people want to see on labels," Kuzma said. "My view is that consumers deserve a choice when it comes to something that is important to them, even though there may not be a scientific basis for doing it."

Rodemeyer, the expert on biotechnology policy, says he thinks food producers made a tactical mistake by deciding not to label their genetically modified products voluntarily.

"When you don't label, you're always raising suspicion you're trying to hide something," he said.

Since most processed foods contain oil, sugar, syrups, emulsifiers, flour, cornmeal and protein that are derived from GM crops, virtually every product sold in the last 15 years would have carried a label. By now, those labels would have lost all meaning, Rodemeyer said: "If they would have all held their noses and jumped together, this wouldn't be an issue."

science@latimes.com

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Asteroid Impact Craters on Earth as Seen From Space

Asteroid impact craters are among the most interesting geological structures on any planet. Many other planets and moons in our solar system, including our own moon, are pock-marked with loads of craters. But because Earth has a protective atmosphere and is geologically active — with plate tectonics and volcanic eruptions, mostly relatively young oceanic crust, and harsh weathering from wind and water — impact structures don’t last long and can be tough to come by.

But on a few old pieces of continent, especially in arid deserts, the marks of asteroids have been preserved. One well-known example is our own Barringer crater, also known as Meteor Crater, in Arizona. The images here show some of the biggest, oldest and most interesting impact craters on the planet.

Aorounga crater, pictured above and below, is one of the best preserved impact craters on Earth, thanks in part to its location in the Sahara Desert in Chad. The 10 mile-wide crater is probably around 350 million years old. The stripes are alternating rock ridges and sand layers, known as yardangs, caused by persistent unidirectional wind. The image above was taken by astronauts in the International Space Station in July. The radar image below, taken from the space shuttle in 1994, reveals that Aorounga may be one of two or three craters.

Images: NASA

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Warner’s “Jack the Giant Slayer” may see soft U.S., Canada debut

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Warner Brothers‘ “Jack the Giant Slayer,” the first big-budget, special effects-filled action movie of 2013, could be headed for less than huge sales at U.S. and Canadian box offices when it opens on March 1.

Industry tracking suggests the 3D movie based on the “Jack and the Beanstalk” fairy tale will debut with $ 27 million to $ 32 million in the domestic market during its first three days, according to sources who have seen the pre-release surveys.

The projections had climbed slightly from earlier in the week and could change closer to next Friday’s opening after marketing heats up and press coverage intensifies.

“Jack the Giant Slayer” cost an estimated $ 189 million to make.

Two of last year’s films with bigger budgets flopped, Walt Disney Co’s $ 250 million Mars epic “John Carter” and the $ 209 million action movie “Battleship” from Comcast Corp’s Universal Pictures, forcing the companies to acknowledge financial losses.

Distributor Warner Brothers, part of Time Warner Inc, believes “Jack the Giant Slayer” will attract a broad family audience and hopes for a North American (U.S. and Canadian) debut above $ 30 million, said Dan Fellman, president of theatrical distribution for the studio. He said he expects the studio will make a profit on the movie.

Warner Brothers surveys showed “tremendous support” for the movie among people age 15 and younger, and the film received positive reactions from theater owners, Fellman said, noting that family audiences haven’t had a big-event film since December’s “The Hobbit.”

The first weekend in March also has proved a winner for family films, Fellman said. A year ago, animated hit “The Lorax” opened with a strong $ 70 million.

In addition, “the international side of the market will be huge,” Fellman said.

A $ 30 million domestic opening for “Jack the Giant Slayer” would be “soft” for a big-budget film, said Janney Montgomery Scott analyst Tony Wible, who compiles a database to project film performance. Warner Brothers could still make back the movie’s budget, not including marketing costs, if the film opens domestically with at least $ 25 million, he said Wible.

Last year, Disney was forced to take a $ 200 million write-down for “John Carter.” And the chief financial officer of Comcast, Michael J. Angelakis, acknowledged in a call with analysts that “Battleship” was “primarily” responsible for Universal‘s $ 83 million second-quarter loss.

“Jack the Giant Slayer” was produced by Warner Brothers and Legendary Entertainment, which partnered with Warner on hits including “The Dark Knight” trilogy and “The Hangover” series.

Warner Brothers last year delayed the release of “Jack the Giant Slayer,” moving it from last summer to March 1.

The film stars Nicholas Hoult as a young farmer who ventures into the land of the giants to rescue a kidnapped princess.

The movie’s trailer suggests the studio is aiming for “Lord of the Rings” fans, said Phil Contrino, editor of Boxoffice.com, a website that tracks film comments on Facebook and Twitter.

So far, “it’s just not connecting with fantasy fans,” said Contrino, who estimates the film will take in about $ 23 million in the United States and Canada during its first three days.

The movie still has time to build more buzz and could enjoy a domestic sales boost if families turn out in force, Contrino said. Plus, “I can really see a movie like that clicking overseas,” he said.

International ticket sales can run at least twice as high as U.S. and Canadian grosses for big action movies.

(Reporting By Lisa Richwine in Los Angeles; Editing by Ronald Grover and Leslie Adler)

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Many States Say Cuts Would Burden Fragile Recovery

States are increasingly alarmed that they could become collateral damage in Washington’s latest fiscal battle, fearing that the impasse could saddle them with across-the-board spending cuts that threaten to slow their fragile recoveries or thrust them back into recession.

Some states, like Maryland and Virginia, are vulnerable because their economies are heavily dependent on federal workers, federal contracts and military spending, which will face steep reductions if Congress allows the automatic cuts, known as sequestration, to begin next Friday. Others, including Illinois and South Dakota, are at risk because of their reliance on the types of federal grants that are scheduled to be cut. And many states simply fear that a heavy dose of federal austerity could weaken their economies, costing them jobs and much-needed tax revenue.

So as state officials begin to draw up their budgets for next year, some say that the biggest risk they see is not the weak housing market or the troubled European economy but the federal government. While the threat of big federal cuts to states has become something of a semiannual occurrence in recent years, state officials said in interviews that they fear that this time the federal government might not be crying wolf — and their hopes are dimming that a deal will be struck in Washington in time to avert the cuts.

The impact would be widespread as the cuts ripple across the nation over the next year.

Texas expects to see its education aid slashed hundreds of millions of dollars, which could force local school districts to fire teachers, if the cuts are not averted. Michigan officials say they are in no position to replace the lost federal dollars with state dollars, but worry about cuts to federal programs like the one that helps people heat their homes. Maryland is bracing not only for a blow to its economy, which depends on federal workers and contractors and the many private businesses that support them, but also for cuts in federal aid for schools, Head Start programs, a nutrition program for pregnant women, mothers and children, and job training programs, among others.

Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia, a Republican, warned in a letter to President Obama on Monday that the automatic spending cuts would have a “potentially devastating impact” and could force Virginia and other states into a recession, noting that the planned cuts to military spending would be especially damaging to areas like Hampton Roads that have a big Navy presence. And he noted that the whole idea of the proposed cuts was that they were supposed to be so unpalatable that they would force officials in Washington to come up with a compromise.

“As we all know, the defense, and other, cuts in the sequester were designed to be a hammer, not a real policy,” Mr. McDonnell wrote. “Unfortunately, inaction by you and Congress now leaves states and localities to adjust to the looming threat of this haphazard idea.”

The looming cuts come just as many states feel they are turning the corner after the prolonged slump caused by the recession. Gov. Martin O’Malley of Maryland, a Democrat, said he was moving to increase the state’s cash reserves and rainy day funds as a hedge against federal cuts.

“I’d rather be spending those dollars on things that improve our business climate, that accelerate our recovery, that get more people back to work, or on needed infrastructure — transportation, roads, bridges and the like,” he said, adding that Maryland has eliminated 5,600 positions in recent years and that its government was smaller, on a per capita basis, than it had been in four decades. “But I can’t do that. I can’t responsibly do that as long as I have this hara-kiri Congress threatening to drive a long knife through our recovery.”

Federal spending on salaries, wages and procurement makes up close to 20 percent of the economies of Maryland and Virginia, according to an analysis by the Pew Center on the States.

But states are in a delicate position. While they fear the impact of the automatic cuts, they also fear that any deal to avert them might be even worse for their bottom lines. That is because many of the planned cuts would go to military spending and not just domestic programs, and some of the most important federal programs for states, including Medicaid and federal highway funds, would be exempt from the cuts.

States will see a reduction of $5.8 billion this year in the federal grant programs subject to the automatic cuts, according to an analysis by Federal Funds Information for States, a group created by the National Governors Association and the National Conference of State Legislatures that tracks the impact of federal actions on states. California, New York and Texas stand to lose the most money from the automatic cuts, and Puerto Rico, which is already facing serious fiscal distress, is threatened with the loss of more than $126 million in federal grant money, the analysis found.

Even with the automatic cuts, the analysis found, states are still expected to get more federal aid over all this year than they did last year, because of growth in some of the biggest programs that are exempt from the cuts, including Medicaid.

But the cuts still pose a real risk to states, officials said. State budget officials from around the country held a conference call last week to discuss the threatened cuts. “In almost every case the folks at the state level, the budget offices, are pretty much telling the agencies and departments that they’re not going to backfill — they’re not going to make up for the budget cuts,” said Scott D. Pattison, the executive director of the National Association of State Budget Officers, which arranged the call. “They don’t have enough state funds to make up for federal cuts.”

The cuts would not hit all states equally, the Pew Center on the States found. While the federal grants subject to the cuts make up more than 10 percent of South Dakota’s revenue, it found, they make up less than 5 percent of Delaware’s revenue.

Many state officials find themselves frustrated year after year by the uncertainty of what they can expect from Washington, which provides states with roughly a third of their revenues. There were threats of cuts when Congress balked at raising the debt limit in 2011, when a so-called super-committee tried and failed to reach a budget deal, and late last year when the nation faced the “fiscal cliff.”

John E. Nixon, the director of Michigan’s budget office, said that all the uncertainty made the state’s planning more difficult. “If it’s going to happen,” he said, “at some point we need to rip off the Band-Aid.”

Fernanda Santos contributed reporting.

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Gunfire and deadly crash rattle the Las Vegas Strip

LAS VEGAS — A spectacular predawn crash on the Strip — triggered when bullets fired from a black Range Rover peppered a Maserati — hit this resort city right between the eyes. In the end, three people were dead and a major intersection under lockdown during a three-state manhunt for the shooters, leaving even casino veterans used to the extraordinary scratching their heads.

The mayhem was sparked, witnesses told police, by a quarrel early Thursday at a hotel valet stand.

The two vehicles left the Aria resort hotel and were heading north on Las Vegas Boulevard at 4:20 a.m., an hour when the casino marquees shine brightly but the gambling thoroughfare is largely empty. At Harmon Avenue, occupants inside the Range Rover opened fire on the Maserati, police said.

The silver-gray sports car, which was struck several times, sped into the intersection at Flamingo Road, ramming a Yellow cab. The taxi exploded, killing the driver and a passenger. Four other vehicles in the intersection were also involved in the crash and explosion, but officers offered no details.

"Omg Omg Omg that car just blew up!" one witness tweeted shortly after the crash, posting a photo of the wreckage. "God Bless their Souls! Omg!"

The driver of the Maserati died later at a hospital, police said. A passenger in the vehicle received minor injuries and was being interviewed by investigators. At least three others were also injured.

Police in Nevada, California, Arizona and Utah were on alert for the distinctive black Range Rover SUV, described as having dark-tinted windows, black rims and out-of-state paper dealer plates.

"We are going to pursue these individuals and prosecute them," Clark County Sheriff Doug Gillespie said at an afternoon news conference. "This act was totally unacceptable. It's not just tragic but unnecessary — the level of violence we see here in Las Vegas and across America."

Authorities had not publicly identified the dead. But a Las Vegas television station late Thursday identified the taxi driver as Michael Boldon, 62, who the station said had recently moved here from Michigan to care for his 93-year-old mother.

The victim's son, who drives a limousine, told Fox News 5 that he last talked with his father after 3 a.m., and later called his cellphone shortly after the crash to warn him to avoid the Strip. But there was no answer.

The station also identified the driver of the Maserati as Ken Cherry, a rap artist from Oakland who also is known as "Kenny Clutch." The station quoted family members identifying Cherry as the driver. An Internet video of a Cherry song called "Stay Schemin" shows two men in a vehicle on the Strip.

Police had more questions than answers.

"It began with a dispute at a nearby hotel and spilled onto the streets," said Capt. Chris Jones of the Las Vegas Police Robbery and Homicide Division.

The morning's events threw the Strip into disarray all day. The gambling boulevard's busiest and best-known intersection was cordoned off by yellow police tape until nightfall, keeping traffic and curious pedestrians away from the carnage. Even skywalks were blocked off.

While slot machines beeped and card games continued inside casinos around the accident scene — including the Bellagio, Caesars Palace and Paris Las Vegas — hotel bell captains were fielding questions from tourists who had awakened to news of the crash and the Strip shutdown. The alleys and side streets between nearby hotels were clogged with pedestrians who inched along on narrow sidewalks, past delivery doors, many making their own paths between the landscaped bushes and palm trees.

Even casino industry workers were thrown into turmoil. Hotel maids and dealers who finished their midnight shifts after dawn were left without bus service home. "I'm stranded," said Tiruselam Kefyalew, 25, a maid. "What a day to leave my cellphone at home."

Limousine drivers who normally prowl the city's gambling core improvised detours. Some said the police blockade would cost them $500 or more in lost business and tips.

"Most people understand, but you have your complainers," said Jim DeSanto, a limo driver who waited for fares outside Bally's casino. "Those people will complain, even when everything is perfect."

Well after noon, guests peered out nearby hotel windows and others leaned into the street to glimpse the crime scene.

"Hey, honey, it must have happened right here," one man told his wife as they left Caesars around noon. The tourist, who would only say that he had arrived from Tampa, Fla., the previous evening, had looked out his hotel window at 4:30 to see a vehicle in flames.

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Zendesk Security Breach Affects Twitter, Tumblr and Pinterest

Customer service software provider Zendesk announced a security breach that allowed attackers into its system, where they could access data from three customers this week. Wired learned those three clients were Twitter, Pinterest and Tumblr.

The San Francisco-based company announced the breach in a blog post published early Thursday night. Tumblr notified affected users in an email at approximately 6:35 p.m. PST; Twitter and Pinterest are expected to do so shortly. Zendesk declined to comment beyond its blog post, titled, appropriately, “We’ve been hacked.” The post reads in part:

We’ve become aware that a hacker accessed our system this week. As soon as we learned of the attack, we patched the vulnerability and closed the access that the hacker had. Our ongoing investigation indicates that the hacker had access to the support information that three of our customers store on our system. We believe that the hacker downloaded email addresses of users who contacted those three customers for support, as well as support email subject lines. We notified our affected customers immediately and are working with them to assist in their response.

Zendesk allows companies to outsource many of their customer service functions to it via software tools. It has more than 25,000 clients, according to its website.

Zendesk noted that a hacker downloaded e-mail addresses of users who contacted those three customers for support, along with the e-mail subject lines. Wired’s source claims some customers also may have had their phone numbers revealed, but no passwords, password hashes, or even encrypted passwords were revealed. Neither Twitter, Pinterest nor Tumblr are aware of any user accounts that were compromised by the attack.

The e-mail sent by Tumblr states:

Important information regarding your security and privacy

For the last 2.5 years, we’ve used a popular service called Zendesk to store, organize, and answer emails to Tumblr Support. We’ve learned that a security breach at Zendesk has affected Tumblr and two other companies. We are sending this notification to all email addresses that we believe may have been affected by this breach.

This has potentially exposed records of subject lines and, in some cases, email addresses of messages sent to Tumblr Support. While much of this information is innocuous, please take some time today to consider the following:
The subject lines of your emails to Tumblr Support may have included the address of your blog which could potentially allow your blog to be unwillingly associated with your email address.
Any other information included in the subject lines of emails you’ve sent to Tumblr Support may be exposed. We recommend you review any correspondence you’ve addressed to support@tumblr.com, abuse@tumblr.com, dmca@tumblr.com,legal@tumblr.com, enquiries@tumblr.com, or lawenforcement@tumblr.com.
Tumblr will never ask you for your password by email. Emails are easy to fake, and you should be suspicious of unexpected emails you receive.
Your safety is our highest priority. We’re working with law enforcement and Zendesk to better understand this attack. Please monitor your email and Tumblr accounts for suspicious behavior, and notify us immediately if you have any concerns.

The e-mail Pinterest is sending its users reads:

An important notice about security on Pinterest

We recently learned that the vendor we use to answer support requests
and other emails (Zendesk) experienced a security breach.

We’re sending you this email because we received or answered a message from you using Zendesk. Unfortunately your name, email address and subject line of your message were improperly accessed during their security breach. To help keep your account secure, please:

Don’t share your password. We will never send you an email asking for your password. If you get an email like this, please let us know right away.
Beware of suspicious emails. If you get any emails that look like they’re from Pinterest but don’t feel right, please let us know—especially if they include details about your support request.
Use a strong Pinterest password. Hackers can sometimes guess very short passwords with no letters or symbols. If your password is weak, you can create a new one.

We’re really sorry this happened, and we’ll keep working with law enforcement and our vendors to ensure your information is protected.

Twitter’s message to its affected users notes:

Twitter – along with a number of other companies – uses a customer support portal called Zendesk. Zendesk recently blogged about a significant security breach. In order to ensure those who may be impacted by this breach are notified as quickly as possible, we are sending this notification to all email addresses, including this one, that we believe could have been involved.

Zendesk’s breach did not result in the exposure of information such as Twitter account passwords. It may, however, have included contact information you provided when submitting a support request such as an email, phone number, or Twitter username. Further information about the breach can be found in their blog post.

We do not believe you need to take any action at this time but wanted to ensure that you were notified of this incident.

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Chicago bluesman Magic Slim dead at 75

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Guitarist Magic Slim, a mainstay of the Chicago blues scene who followed in the footsteps of such greats as Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, died on Thursday at age 75, his manager said.

Slim, the son of Mississippi sharecroppers, gave up the piano and turned to guitar after losing his right pinky finger in a cotton gin accident at age 13. He died at a Philadelphia hospital where he had been under treatment for various ailments, manager Marty Salzman said.

A heavy smoker who suffered from emphysema and heart problems, Slim was forced by illness to cut short a tour with his band, the Teardrops, in late January, Salzman said.

Born Morris Holt in Torrence, Mississippi, Slim grew up on a farm and made his first trip to Chicago in 1955, starting off as the bass player for a friend and mentor known as Magic Sam, who lent the younger musician his nickname.

Slim cut his first record in 1966 and became a Chicago blues fixture in his own right, developing a guitar style that blended a distinct vibrato with a slide-guitar-like sound formed with his bare fingers against the strings.

Known for playing with picks on both the thumb and index finger of his right hand – a somewhat unusual technique, according to Salzman – the guitarist was recognized as much for his powerful, gruff vocals as his musicianship.

With more than 30 albums to his credit, Slim also was known for an encyclopedic mastery of the blues, Salzman said.

“There’s probably not another bluesman who had quite the repertoire that Slim had,” he said.

While Slim lived in recent years with his family in Nebraska, “Chicago was always like home to him,” his manager said.

(Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Peter Cooney)

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Governors Fall Away in G.O.P. Opposition to More Medicaid

Under pressure from the health care industry and consumer advocates, seven Republican governors are cautiously moving to expand Medicaid, giving an unexpected boost to President Obama’s plan to insure some 30 million more Americans.

The Supreme Court ruled last year that expanding Medicaid to include many more low-income people was an option under the new federal health care law, not a requirement, tossing the decision to the states and touching off battles in many capitols.

The federal government will pay the entire cost of covering newly eligible beneficiaries from 2014 to 2016, and 90 percent or more later. But many Republican governors and lawmakers immediately questioned whether that commitment would last, and whether increased spending on Medicaid makes sense, given the size of the federal budget deficit. Some flatly declared they would not consider it.

In Florida, where Gov. Rick Scott reversed his position and on Wednesday announced his support for expanding Medicaid, proponents say that doing so will not only save lives, but also create jobs and stimulate the economy. Similar arguments have swayed the Republican governors of Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota and Ohio, who in recent months have announced their intention to expand Medicaid.

The shift has delighted supporters of the law.

“I think this means the dominoes are falling,” said Ronald F. Pollack, the executive director of Families USA, a consumer group. “The message is, ‘Even though I may not have supported and even strongly opposed the Affordable Care Act, it would be harmful to the citizens of my state if I didn’t opt into taking these very substantial federal dollars to help people who truly need it.’ ”

 Nationwide, Medicaid covers 60 million people, most of them low-income or disabled. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that 17 million more people could be enrolled if all states took the expansion option. So far, 22 states have said they will expand the program, 17 have opted against it, and 11 have not yet decided, according to Avalere Health, a consulting firm.

Some Republican governors remain firmly opposed to the expansion of Medicaid. In her State of the State address, Gov. Nikki R. Haley said, “As long as I am governor, South Carolina will not implement the public policy disaster that is Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion.”

Gov. Rick Perry affirmed that “Texas will not expand Medicaid” and said he was proud that Texas did not follow other states “scrambling to grab every tax dollar they can.”

The change of heart for some Republican governors has come after vigorous lobbying by health industry players, particularly hospitals. Hospital associations around the country signed off on Medicaid cuts under the health care law on the assumption that their losses would be more than offset by new paying customers, including many insured by Medicaid.

Politics could also be a factor in states where Republican governors have decided to expand Medicaid. Mr. Obama won all of those states except Arizona and North Dakota in last year’s election, a fact that may have influenced several of the governors’ decisions. Some of the seven are also up for re-election next year.

Religious leaders have added a moral dimension to the campaign in some states. The Roman Catholic bishops of Salt Lake City and Little Rock, Ark., for example, have urged state officials to expand Medicaid.

The Obama administration has tried to win over skeptical state officials by offering new flexibility to manage Medicaid as they like. On the same day that he agreed to expand Medicaid in Florida, Mr. Scott got federal permission to move more Medicaid beneficiaries into private managed care plans.

Mr. Scott’s support for expanding Medicaid is particularly significant — Florida is the fourth most populous state — and surprising. A onetime hospital executive, he has been among the most strident critics of the health care law, and his opposition to it was a cornerstone of his 2010 campaign for governor.

The battle is not over, however. In Florida, as in many other states, expansion is subject to approval by the Legislature, whose Republican leaders have expressed misgivings. The legislative session begins next month, and advocates say they plan to press ahead with a lobbying campaign.

Leah Barber-Heinz, a spokeswoman for Florida Chain, a health advocacy group, said it was trying to inform lawmakers and the public about who would benefit from an expansion of Medicaid. More than one-fifth of Florida residents, roughly 4 million of 19 million people, lack health insurance.

“There are so many misperceptions about the uninsured,” Ms. Barber-Heinz said. “So we’re trying to show faces of who would be impacted: people who have been hit by the recession, people who have been laid off, educated people, people who own homes.”

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Sign of a Comeback: U.S. Carmakers Are Hiring

Tony Dejak/Associated Press

Joseph R. Hinrichs, head of Ford's Americas region, with a two-liter EcoBoost engine at the Cleveland plant.

DETROIT — A few years ago, American automakers cut tens of thousands of jobs and shut dozens of factories simply to survive.

But since the recession ended and General Motors and Chrysler began to recover with the help of hefty government bailouts and bankruptcy filings, all three Detroit car companies including Ford Motor Company have achieved one of the unlikeliest comebacks among industries devastated during the financial crisis.

Now steadily rising auto sales and two-tier wage concessions from labor have spurred a wave of new manufacturing investments and hiring by the three Detroit automakers in the United States. The latest development occurred on Thursday, when Ford said it was adding 450 jobs and expanding what had been a beleaguered engine plant in Ohio to feed the growing demand for more fuel-efficient cars and S.U.V.’s in the American market.

Ford, the nation’s second-largest automaker after G.M., said it would spend $200 million to renovate its Cleveland engine plant to produce small, turbocharged engines used in its top-selling models. Ford plans to centralize production of its two-liter EcoBoost engine — used in popular models like the Fusion sedan and Explorer S.U.V. — at the Cleveland facility by the end of next year.

Its move to expand production in the United States is yet another tangible sign of recovery among the Detroit auto companies. Industrywide sales in the United States are expected to top 15 million vehicles this year after sinking beneath 11 million in 2009.

Last month, G.M. announced plans to invest $600 million in its assembly plant in Kansas City, Kan., one of the company’s oldest factories in the country. And Chrysler, the smallest of the Detroit car companies, is adding a third shift of workers to its Jeep plant in Detroit.

The biggest factor in the market’s revival has been the need by consumers to replace aging, gas-guzzling models. “Pent-up demand and widespread access to credit are keeping up the sales momentum,” said Jessica Caldwell, an analyst with the auto research site Edmunds.com.

And Joseph R. Hinrichs, the head of Ford’s Americas region, explained in an interview that the company’s Ohio revival plan was “all based on increased demand.”

“We’re putting the capacity here because that’s where we need it most,” he said.

Yet even though Ford is enjoying a resurgence in the United States, it is racing to reduce costs in its troubled European division. The workers in Spain who were building the small EcoBoost engines that have been shipped to America will be moved to an assembly plant that is taking on work from a plant to be closed in Belgium.

While Ford survived the industry’s financial crisis without government help, it still cut thousands of jobs and shuttered several factories to reduce costs and bring production more in line with shrinking sales.

But now, the burst of showroom business has prompted automakers to increase output at remaining plants. In Ford’s case, the company added about 8,000 salaried and hourly jobs last year, and has said it plans to hire about 2,200 white-collar workers in 2013. Ford is also moving some vehicle production from Mexico to a Michigan plant, where it will add 1,200 jobs.

The investment in Cleveland is indicative of how Ford and other carmakers have trimmed domestic labor costs and improved productivity since the recession. Just a few years ago, the company was forced to consolidate two engine plants into one in northern Ohio, and close a major component operation. “No question we have been through a lot in northern Ohio,” Mr. Hinrichs said. “But now our North American business is very competitive with the best in the world.”

Mr. Hinrichs said that a new local agreement with the United Automobile Workers union in Cleveland paved the way for the expansion. Currently the plant employs about 1,300 workers.

The Detroit companies are also benefiting from their ability to hire lower-paid, entry-level workers as part of their national contract with the U.A.W. Many of the 450 new workers at the Cleveland plant will start at $16 an hour, compared to about $28 for veteran union members, and some of the new engine plant workers could include employees from other Ohio plants.

“With our competitive labor agreements, we can bring business back to the U.S. from Spain and Mexico,” Mr. Hinrichs said.

Employment still falls far short of levels in the 1990s, when cheap gas and the popularity of S.U.V.’s led to big profits in Detroit.

The auto manufacturing sector employed 1.1 million people in the United States as recently as 1999, according to a recent study by the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich. About one-third of those jobs were in the final assembly of vehicles, and the balance in the production of auto parts.

Employment dropped as low as 560,000 in 2009. Since then, about 90,000 jobs have been added, the report said.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 21, 2013

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article gave a false impression of sales among the Detroit auto companies. Overall auto sales in the United States are expected to top 15 million this year, not sales among the Detroit automakers.

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