Egyptian Army Chief Warns of Collapse Amid Chaos

Tara Todras-Whitehill for The New York Times

An Egyptian protester throws a tear gas canister during clashes with riot police in Cairo on Tuesday.

CAIRO — As three Egyptian cities defied President Mohamed Morsi’s attempt to quell the anarchy spreading through their streets, the nation’s top general warned Tuesday that the state itself was in danger of collapse if the feuding civilian leaders could not agree on a solution to restore order.

Thousands of residents poured into the streets of the three cities, protesting a 9 p.m. curfew with another night of chants against Mr. Morsi and assaults on the police.

The president appeared powerless to stop them: he had already granted the police extralegal powers to enforce the curfew and then called out the army as well. His allies in the Muslim Brotherhood and their opposition also proved ineffectual in the face of the crisis, each retreating to their corners, pointing fingers of blame.

The general’s warning punctuated a rash of violent protests across the country that has dramatized the near-collapse of the government’s authority. With the city of Port Said proclaiming its nominal independence, protesters demanded the resignation of Mr. Morsi, Egypt’s first freely elected president, while people across the country appeared convinced that taking to the streets in protests was the only means to get redress for their grievances.

Just five months after Egypt’s president assumed power from the military, the cascading crisis revealed the depth of the distrust for the central government left by decades of autocracy, two years of convoluted transition and his own acknowledged missteps in facing the opposition. With cities in open rebellion and the police unable to tame crowds, the very fabric of society appears to be coming undone.

The chaos has also for the first time touched pillars of the long-term health of Egypt’s economy, already teetering after two years of turbulence since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak. While a heavy deployment of military troops along the Suez Canal — a vital source of revenue — appeared to insulate it from the strife in Port Said, Suez and Ismailia, the clashes near Tahrir Square in Cairo spilled over for the first time into an armed assault on the historic Semiramis InterContinental Hotel, sending tremors of fear through the vital tourism sector.

With the stakes rising and no solution in sight, Gen. Abdul Fattah el-Sisi, the defense minister, warned Egypt’s new Islamist leaders and their opponents that “their disagreement on running the affairs of the country may lead to the collapse of the state and threatens the future of the coming generations.”

“Political, economic, social and security challenges” require united action “by all parties” to avoid “dire consequences that affect the steadiness and stability of the homeland,” General Sisi said in an address to military cadets that was later relayed as public statement from his spokesman. And the acute polarization of the civilian politics, he suggested, had now becoming a concern of the military because “to affect the stability of the state institutions is a dangerous matter that harms Egyptian national security.”

Coming just months after the military relinquished the power it seized at the ouster of Mr. Mubarak, General Sisi’s rebuke to the civilian leaders inevitably raised the possibility that the generals might once again step into civilian politics. There was no indication of an imminent coup.

Analysts familiar with General Sisi’s thinking say that unlike his predecessors, he wants to avoid any political entanglements. But the Egyptian military has prided itself on its dual military and political role since Col. Gamal Abdel Nasser’s coup more six decades ago. And General Sisi insisted Tuesday it would remain “the solid mass and the backbone upon which rest the Egyptian state’s pillars.”

With the army now caught between the president’s instructions to restore order and the citizens’ refusal to comply, he said, the “armed forces are facing a serious dilemma” as they seek to end the violence without “confronting citizens and their right to protest.”

The attack on the Semiramis Hotel, between the American Embassy and the Nile in one of the most heavily guarded neighborhoods of the city, showed how much security had deteriorated. And it testified to the difficult task that the civilian government faces in trying to rebuild public security and trust.

Kareem Fahim and Mayy El Sheikh contributed reporting from Cairo.

Kareem Fahim and Mayy El Sheikh contributed reporting from Cairo.

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Investors Shrug Off a Weak Earnings Report From Amazon

A glorious future beats a glorious past.

Investors decimated Apple last week when it appeared that the world’s mightiest profit machine might be slowing down just a tad. But they cheered on Tuesday when Amazon said its fourth-quarter sales and earnings fell short of expectations. Oh, and expect a miserable first quarter, too.

Shares in Amazon immediately jumped nearly 10 percent in after-hours trading, about the same amount that Apple fell after releasing its news.

What caught the eye of investors was that operating margins as a percent of consolidated sales rose to 3.2 percent, from 2.7 percent a year ago.

“The carrot for Amazon investors is improvements to margin over time,” said Gene Munster, an analyst with Piper Jaffray. Apple, on the other hand, would need to build a cheaper iPhone to keep growing as fast as it has been, which would slice into its margins.

For more than a decade, Amazon has teetered between minimal profits and no profits. In 2012, it said Tuesday, it lost money. But Wall Street has always been more about promises than results, and Amazon is always on the verge of converting its overwhelming online presence into buckets of cash.

“As long as the dream is there, the stock is going to go up,” Mr. Munster said.

The short-term news Tuesday was not good. Earnings per share fell to 21 cents from 38 cents in the fourth quarter of 2011. Although fourth-quarter revenue went up 22 percent to $21.27 billion, both revenue and earnings did not meet expectations. Analysts had predicted revenue of $22.2 billion and earnings of 27 cents a share.

Forget about all that. What mattered was the improvement in margin.

Amazon has had plenty of opportunities to raise its margins in the past, but has instead routinely chosen to reward customers with subsidized shipping and higher discounts. In a conference call with analysts on Tuesday, Tom Szkutak, Amazon’s chief financial officer, repeated this mantra.

“Putting customers first is the only reliable way to create lasting value for shareholders,” he said.

Investors took some time to buy into this idea. “Wall Street gets in a kerfuffle when we lower product prices and invest heavily in the future,” Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive, acknowledged in 2005, at a point when the stock had tumbled 40 percent in less than a year. “So don’t buy our stock — instead buy our products and enjoy our investments.”

That was bad advice. The stock is up almost 700 percent since then, hitting a record this month.

Shares in Amazon fell nearly $16 in regular trading Tuesday, to $260.35. After-hours, shares went up more than $22.

Jason Moser, an analyst with the Motley Fool, who owns shares in the retailer, said that “many investors, myself included, will more than likely watch this story play out for as long as it takes.”

Mr. Moser added in an e-mail message that the market was “betting a lot on what Amazon hasn’t done yet and betting on the fact that it will do it based on what it’s doing now.” He added, “Kind of a ‘build it and they will come’ sort of thing.”

Some analysts are still skeptical.

“It’s much easier to sell goods at cost the way Amazon does than sell goods at a 40 percent margin like Apple,” said Colin Gillis of BGC Partners. “Once you’ve trained your customers to buy at cost, it’s difficult to train them away from it.”

Still, Mr. Gillis said: “Who’s going to undercut Amazon? They’re only making half a cent on every dollar. Who can run a business at less profit?”

Amazon continues to expand. Last year, the retailer announced it was building a million-square-foot warehouse in Patterson, Calif., about 85 miles southeast of San Francisco. Last week, it announced another million-square-foot warehouse barely 30 miles north of Patterson, in Tracy. It obviously has designs on fast (if not quite same-day) shipping to the seven million generally affluent, Internet-using residents of the Bay Area.

“We’ll continue to expand our footprint over time and become even closer and closer to customers,” Mr. Szkutak said on the conference call.

Many of those shoppers will be buying material that originated not with Amazon but with more than two million third-party sellers. The volume of items sold by these firms during the 2012 holidays was up 40 percent from 2011. Some of these sellers merely used Amazon to digitally display their goods, while others also used the retailer to ship it.

Amazon said earlier this month that third-party sellers sold enough Santa hats during the holiday for Santa to wear a new hat every day for the next 127 years, and enough guitar picks to give one to every attendee of Woodstock — about a half-million. Analysts expect third-party sales to outpace Amazon deals over the next few years.

Recently several states, including California, successfully made deals with Amazon to collect sales tax. That had the effect of raising prices on many Amazon items by more than 5 percent. Land-based retailers, which had agitated for years for such a move, thought the tax might finally level the playing field.

Their hopes might be misplaced. Any drop in online sales from the collecting of sales tax tends to be temporary, said Scot Wingo, chief executive of ChannelAdvisor, which helps retailers sell online, including on Amazon.

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To Open Eyes, W-2s List Cost of Health Plans

WASHINGTON — As workers open their W-2 forms this month, many will see a new box with information on the total cost of employer-sponsored health insurance coverage. To some, it will be a surprise, perhaps even a shock.

Workers often have little idea how much they and their employers are paying for coverage. In many cases, economists say, workers give up cash compensation to get and keep health benefits.

The disclosures, required by the 2010 health care law, are meant to make workers more cost-conscious. Health benefits are still tax-free. But labor unions and employer groups say it could be easier to tax them in the future, now that employers must report their value to the government.

The new information appears in Box 12 of the standard W-2 form, with a two-letter code, DD. The box shows the “cost of employer-sponsored health coverage.” And that amount is not taxable, the Internal Revenue Service says on the back of the form.

Jay J. Makled, a union steward for the United Automobile Workers at the Ford plant in Dearborn, Mich., described his reaction after seeing that his health coverage cost nearly $16,000 last year: “It’s quite expensive. I was surprised to see how much the company was paying for that benefit.”

Hourly employees represented by the union there said they generally did not pay any of the premium.

The number on the W-2 form is supposed to reflect the part of the cost paid by the employer and the part paid by the employee.

Prof. Nicole Huberfeld, an expert on health law at the University of Kentucky, who received her W-2 form on Monday, said, “Most people who get health insurance from their employers have no idea how much it costs.”

“People are often shocked when they see the cost, $12,000 to $16,000 a year,” Ms. Huberfeld said. “Many Americans believe this is something they get free. But employers pay lower wages because they provide insurance.”

In 2012, according to an annual survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance averaged $5,615 a year for single coverage and $15,745 for family coverage. Over five years, the costs have increased 25 percent for individual coverage and 30 percent for family coverage.

“Health coverage is a big piece of people’s income and a large part of the social welfare budget,” said C. Eugene Steuerle, a tax economist at the Urban Institute. “But the benefits are not taxable, and most of the spending is hidden, so we don’t consider the trade-offs. If we want to get control of health care costs, people have to be aware of them.”

That is the goal of the disclosure requirement, which was proposed by a bipartisan group of senators: two Republicans, Charles E. Grassley of Iowa and Michael B. Enzi of Wyoming, and two Democrats, Max Baucus of Montana and Ron Wyden of Oregon.

Congress acted after Peter R. Orszag, then the director of the Congressional Budget Office, told lawmakers: “The economic evidence is overwhelming, the theory is overwhelming, that when your firm pays for your health insurance, you actually pay through reduced take-home pay. The firm is not giving that to you for free.”

The tax-free treatment of employer-provided health benefits is the largest tax break in the tax code, costing the government roughly $180 billion a year in lost revenue, or 80 percent more than the home mortgage interest deduction, according to the administration.

Katie W. Mahoney, the executive director of health policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said, “It’s useful for employees to know the value of coverage their employers provide.” But she said some employers worried that reporting the benefit on the W-2 form could lead to taxing the benefit.

“That’s not the intent of the current requirement,” Ms. Mahoney said. “But once the information is collected by the government, it’s very easy for another administration to have a different intent.”

An employee of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. whose health coverage was listed as costing more than $20,000 said: “That knocks my socks off. When I saw the number, my eyes popped out. I appreciate my employer all the more.”

The employee said he had been told not to discuss the cost publicly because the union did not want to suggest that some employees had “Cadillac coverage.”

An employer that fails to comply with the reporting requirement could be subject to penalties of $200 per W-2 form, up to a maximum of $3 million, tax lawyers said.

Employers are exempt from the reporting obligation if they are required to file fewer than 250 W-2 forms, the I.R.S. said. That could change, but the agency said employers would be given at least six months’ notice.

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To Open Eyes, W-2s List Cost of Health Plans

WASHINGTON — As workers open their W-2 forms this month, many will see a new box with information on the total cost of employer-sponsored health insurance coverage. To some, it will be a surprise, perhaps even a shock.

Workers often have little idea how much they and their employers are paying for coverage. In many cases, economists say, workers give up cash compensation to get and keep health benefits.

The disclosures, required by the 2010 health care law, are meant to make workers more cost-conscious. Health benefits are still tax-free. But labor unions and employer groups say it could be easier to tax them in the future, now that employers must report their value to the government.

The new information appears in Box 12 of the standard W-2 form, with a two-letter code, DD. The box shows the “cost of employer-sponsored health coverage.” And that amount is not taxable, the Internal Revenue Service says on the back of the form.

Jay J. Makled, a union steward for the United Automobile Workers at the Ford plant in Dearborn, Mich., described his reaction after seeing that his health coverage cost nearly $16,000 last year: “It’s quite expensive. I was surprised to see how much the company was paying for that benefit.”

Hourly employees represented by the union there said they generally did not pay any of the premium.

The number on the W-2 form is supposed to reflect the part of the cost paid by the employer and the part paid by the employee.

Prof. Nicole Huberfeld, an expert on health law at the University of Kentucky, who received her W-2 form on Monday, said, “Most people who get health insurance from their employers have no idea how much it costs.”

“People are often shocked when they see the cost, $12,000 to $16,000 a year,” Ms. Huberfeld said. “Many Americans believe this is something they get free. But employers pay lower wages because they provide insurance.”

In 2012, according to an annual survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance averaged $5,615 a year for single coverage and $15,745 for family coverage. Over five years, the costs have increased 25 percent for individual coverage and 30 percent for family coverage.

“Health coverage is a big piece of people’s income and a large part of the social welfare budget,” said C. Eugene Steuerle, a tax economist at the Urban Institute. “But the benefits are not taxable, and most of the spending is hidden, so we don’t consider the trade-offs. If we want to get control of health care costs, people have to be aware of them.”

That is the goal of the disclosure requirement, which was proposed by a bipartisan group of senators: two Republicans, Charles E. Grassley of Iowa and Michael B. Enzi of Wyoming, and two Democrats, Max Baucus of Montana and Ron Wyden of Oregon.

Congress acted after Peter R. Orszag, then the director of the Congressional Budget Office, told lawmakers: “The economic evidence is overwhelming, the theory is overwhelming, that when your firm pays for your health insurance, you actually pay through reduced take-home pay. The firm is not giving that to you for free.”

The tax-free treatment of employer-provided health benefits is the largest tax break in the tax code, costing the government roughly $180 billion a year in lost revenue, or 80 percent more than the home mortgage interest deduction, according to the administration.

Katie W. Mahoney, the executive director of health policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said, “It’s useful for employees to know the value of coverage their employers provide.” But she said some employers worried that reporting the benefit on the W-2 form could lead to taxing the benefit.

“That’s not the intent of the current requirement,” Ms. Mahoney said. “But once the information is collected by the government, it’s very easy for another administration to have a different intent.”

An employee of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. whose health coverage was listed as costing more than $20,000 said: “That knocks my socks off. When I saw the number, my eyes popped out. I appreciate my employer all the more.”

The employee said he had been told not to discuss the cost publicly because the union did not want to suggest that some employees had “Cadillac coverage.”

An employer that fails to comply with the reporting requirement could be subject to penalties of $200 per W-2 form, up to a maximum of $3 million, tax lawyers said.

Employers are exempt from the reporting obligation if they are required to file fewer than 250 W-2 forms, the I.R.S. said. That could change, but the agency said employers would be given at least six months’ notice.

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European Cloud Over Ford

DETROIT — Last year, Ford Motor broke ranks with other auto companies when it announced major cuts in its troubled European operations, including the closing of three factories, to address a sharp downturn in sales on the continent and an oversupply of vehicles.

On Tuesday, Ford, the second-biggest American automaker, behind General Motors, startled the industry again by predicting that Europe, a critical market, would get worse before it begins improving later this year.

Ford said European auto sales, including commercial vehicles, could fall as low as 13 million this year, and its own annual losses in the region could reach $2 billion. Europe is Ford’s second-largest market, after North America.

“The industry did 14 million last year, and that was the worst in 20 years,” Bob Shanks, Ford’s chief financial officer, said in an interview. “But the industry is continuing to decline, and we think 13 million is the trough.”

The dire predictions for Europe overshadowed what were otherwise positive fourth-quarter results, which Ford reported on Tuesday.

The company reported a 54 percent gain in adjusted fourth-quarter profit as strong earnings in North America compensated for heavy losses in Europe. Ford said it earned $1.6 billion in the fourth quarter of 2012 compared to $1.03 billion a year earlier, excluding the impact of tax-valuation allowances in 2011. Those allowances inflated last year’s fourth-quarter net income to $13.6 billion.

For the full year, Ford said it earned $5.67 billion, a 5 percent drop from $5.97 billion in 2011, not including the tax-valuation changes, which increased the 2011 earnings to $20.2 billion.

The auto market in Western Europe remains abysmal, but some analysts agree with Ford’s assessment that sales may be close to their low point and could start to recover late this year as the euro zone crisis subsides.

Analysts at Goldman Sachs forecast that European auto sales would fall an additional 2.2 percent in 2013, to 12.9 million vehicles. But they will rise 3.9 percent in 2014, Goldman predicted, as car buyers start to feel more secure about their economic prospects.

In the meantime, though, companies like General Motors’ Opel unit and PSA Peugeot Citröen are trying to make broad reductions in jobs and production capacity.

The recovery, if it comes, could be too late for many workers and even some of the manufacturers.

The companies that have suffered the most are those that depend on the mass market and on southern Europe, including Fiat, Peugeot and Renault. Steady declines in sales since 2007 have left two-thirds of European auto plants operating at a loss, Goldman Sachs analysts estimated.

North American sales have been a bright spot for the world’s automakers, and Ford is no exception. Ford’s overall revenue in the fourth quarter was $36.5 billion, a 5 percent increase from $34.6 billion in the same period a year earlier. For all of 2012, revenue was $134.3 billion, 1 percent less than $136.3 billion in 2011.

Healthy sales of new vehicles in North America resulted in good profit margins, particularly in the United States, where the overall industry grew 13 percent last year.

Ford said it had $1.87 billion in pretax earnings in North America during the quarter, a 110 percent increase from $889 million in the fourth quarter of 2011. For all of 2012, Ford had pretax profit of $8.34 billion in North America, compared to $6.19 billion in 2011.

But the company’s European operations continued to struggle as overall demand plunged, particularly in southern Europe.Ford reported a $732 million pretax loss in Europe for the fourth quarter, compared with a $190 million loss in the same period in 2011.

For all of 2012, Ford said it had a pretax loss of $1.75 billion in the region. By comparison, the company reported a loss of $27 million in Europe for all of 2011.

Investors, apparently shaken by the scale of the losses and Ford’s dismal forecast for 2013, sent the automaker’s shares down nearly 5 percent to $13.14 in Tuesday’s trading.

Jack Ewing contributed reporting from Frankfurt.

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Protests Grow on Fifth Day of Unrest in Egypt

Tara Todras-Whitehill for The New York Times

Egyptians in Port Said mourned on Monday for people killed in clashes with the police a day earlier.

PORT SAID, Egypt — The police fired indiscriminately into the streets outside their besieged station, a group of protesters arrived with a crate of gasoline bombs, and others cheered a masked man on a motorcycle who arrived with a Kalashnikov.

The growing chaos along the vital canal zone showed little sign of abating on Monday as President Mohamed Morsi called out the army to try to regain control of three cities along the Suez Canal whose growing lawlessness is testing the integrity of the Egyptian state.

In Port Said, street battles reached a bloody new peak with a death toll over three days of at least 45, with at least five more protesters killed by bullet wounds, hospital officials said.

Such violence has flared across Egypt with increasing frequency since President Hosni Mubarak was forced out by the revolution two years ago.

President Morsi had already declared a monthlong state of emergency here and in the other canal towns of Suez and Ismailia, applying a Mubarak-era law that virtually eliminates due process protections against abuse by the police. Angry crowds burned tires and hurled rocks at the police. And the police, with little training and less credibility, hunkered down behind barrages of tear gas, birdshot and occasional bullets.

The sense that the state was unraveling may have been strongest here in Port Said, where demonstrators have proclaimed their city an independent nation. But in recent days the unrest has risen in towns across the country and in Cairo as well. In the capital on Monday, a mob of protesters managed to steal an armored police vehicle, drive it to Tahrir Square and make it a bonfire.

After two years of torturous transition, Egyptians have watched with growing anxiety as the erosion of the public trust in the government and a persistent security vacuum have fostered a new temptation to resort to violence to resolve disputes, said Michael Hanna, a researcher at the New York-based Century Foundation who is now in Cairo. “There is a clear political crisis that has eroded the moral authority of the state,” he said.

And the spectacular evaporation of the government’s authority here in Port Said has put that crisis on vivid display, most conspicuously in the rejection of Mr. Morsi’s declarations of the curfew and state of emergency.

As in Suez and Ismailia, tens of thousands residents of Port Said poured into the streets in defiance just as a 9 p.m. curfew was set to begin. Bursts of gunfire echoed through the city for the next hours, and between 9 and 11 p.m. hospital officials raised the death count to seven from two.

When two armored personnel carriers approached a funeral Monday morning for some of the seven protesters killed the day before, a stone-throwing mob of thousands quickly chased them away. And within a few hours the demonstrators had resumed their siege of a nearby police station, burning tires to create a smoke screen to hide behind amid tear gas and gunfire.

Many in the city said they saw no alternative but to continue to stay in the streets. They complained that the hated security police remained unchanged and unaccountable even after Mr. Mubarak had been ousted. They saw no recourse in the justice system, which is also unchanged; they dismissed the courts as politicized, especially after the acquittals of all those accused of killing protesters during the revolution. Then came the death sentences handed down Saturday to 21 Port Said soccer fans for their role in a deadly brawl. The death sentences set off the current unrest here.

Nor, they said, did they trust the political process that brought to power Mr. Morsi and his Islamist allies in the Muslim Brotherhood. He had vowed to usher in the rule of law as “a president for all Egyptians.” But in November he used a presidential decree to temporarily stifle potential legal objections so that his Islamist allies could rushed out a new Constitution. His authoritarian move kicked off a sharp uptick in street violence leading to this weekend’s Port Said clashes.

“Injustice beyond imagination,” one man outside the morning funeral said of Mr. Morsi’s emergency decree, before he was drowned out a crowd of others echoing the sentiment.

“He declared a curfew, and we declare civil disobedience,” another man said.

“This doesn’t apply to Port Said because we don’t recognize him as our president,” said a third. “He is the president of the Muslim Brotherhood only.”

Kareem Fahim contributed reporting from Cairo.

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Yahoo Earnings Handily Beat Forecasts

SAN FRANCISCO — Marissa Mayer, just by being Marissa Mayer, has done more to move Yahoo forward in her first six months as chief executive than any of her five predecessors did over as many years.

An accomplished engineer and executive, Ms. Mayer joined Yahoo from Google as a Silicon Valley celebrity. Since then, just her presence at the company’s Sunnyvale, Calif., headquarters seems to have jolted Yahoo back to life. On Monday, Yahoo reported a good quarter, increasing revenue for the first time in four years and beating Wall Street expectations by 30 percent.

That pushed Yahoo’s stock to $20.91 in after-hours trading — a four-year high (but still well below the $31 Microsoft offered the company back in 2008).

Ms. Mayer attributed growth to a renewed focus on “people and products” in a call with analysts on Monday.

She has added new Yahoo fans by revamping Yahoo’s e-mail service and redesigning Flickr, the firm’s photo-sharing app, which sent the number of photo uploads rising 25 percent. Ms. Mayer said those improvements were a hint of more under way.

“We are off to a very good start,” Ms. Mayer told analysts. “We are making the world’s habits more inspiring and entertaining.”

She has also introduced several morale boosters since joining the company — including free cafeteria food and new iPhones and Android-powered phones — to staff members who were more accustomed to cost cutting and layoffs. In a further sign that the company was no longer considered a sinking ship, she lured another Silicon Valley tech star, Max Levchin, a PayPal co-founder, to Yahoo’s board last month.

But those were just the office things. Analysts were more impressed with improvements to the company’s search business. Yahoo outsourced it to Microsoft in 2009 and it has languished ever since, propped up only because of a revenue-guarantee clause in its contract with Microsoft that is set to expire in March. Yahoo’s search revenue rose 4 percent in the fourth quarter, to $482 million, compared with $465 million for the period a year earlier.

Over all, Yahoo reported net income in the fourth quarter of $272.3 million, or 23 cents a share, compared with $295.6 million, or 24 cents a share, in the period a year earlier.

The company said revenue was up 1.6 percent, to $1.35 billion.

The improvement to its search business was offset by continued declines in Yahoo’s display ad revenue. The company said it made $591 million in display ad sales last quarter, a 3 percent decline from the $612 million in the quarter a year ago.

Yahoo, once the biggest seller of display ads in the United States, went from a leading 15.5 percent share of all digital ad revenues in the United States in 2009, to an 8.4 percent share last year, even as total digital ad spending grew, according to eMarketer. Meanwhile, its competitor, Google, increased its share to 41 percent.

“More personalized content and increased product innovation will be key to getting us back to the path for display revenue growth,” Ms. Mayer said on the call.

The fourth-quarter results impressed analysts, but many remained skeptical.

“Marissa will have to protect Yahoo’s legacy business while positioning the company for future growth,” Colin Gillis, an Internet analyst at BGC Partners, said in an interview Monday. “That is not easy.”

With Ms. Mayer’s honeymoon with Wall Street expected to end soon, investors are eager to see whether she can deliver sustained growth. Yahoo, with 700 million monthly users, commands one of the largest audiences on the Web. But the company, an Internet pioneer, has been unable to attract advertisers and increase revenue.

As Ms. Mayer has acknowledged, Yahoo’s future growth may well depend on its mobile strategy. And without mobile hardware like a tablet computer, a browser or a social networking platform of its own, Yahoo has a long way to go.

The company continues to be outspent in research and development by Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon. It also continues to have a hard time convincing Silicon Valley’s engineering talent to join Yahoo instead of its competitors.

Ms. Mayer has said Yahoo’s mobile growth may come from acquisitions of mobile app companies. In six months, Ms. Mayer has acquired three start-ups — Stamped, OnTheAir and Snip.it — for undisclosed sums, more for the engineering talent than the products.

“The road will only get harder,” said Mr. Gillis. But compared to Ms. Mayer’s disgraced immediate predecessor, Scott Thompson, who left the company after four months over embellishments on his résumé, Mr. Gillis added, “at least she got a honeymoon.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 28, 2013

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misstated the percentage increase in Yahoo’s quarterly revenue. It was 1.6 percent, not 1.5 percent.

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Personal Health: Keeping Blood Pressure in Check

Since the start of the 21st century, Americans have made great progress in controlling high blood pressure, though it remains a leading cause of heart attacks, strokes, congestive heart failure and kidney disease.

Now 48 percent of the more than 76 million adults with hypertension have it under control, up from 29 percent in 2000.

But that means more than half, including many receiving treatment, have blood pressure that remains too high to be healthy. (A normal blood pressure is lower than 120 over 80.) With a plethora of drugs available to normalize blood pressure, why are so many people still at increased risk of disease, disability and premature death? Hypertension experts offer a few common, and correctable, reasons:

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Jane Brody speaks about hypertension.

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¶ About 20 percent of affected adults don’t know they have high blood pressure, perhaps because they never or rarely see a doctor who checks their pressure.

¶ Of the 80 percent who are aware of their condition, some don’t appreciate how serious it can be and fail to get treated, even when their doctors say they should.

¶ Some who have been treated develop bothersome side effects, causing them to abandon therapy or to use it haphazardly.

¶ Many others do little to change lifestyle factors, like obesity, lack of exercise and a high-salt diet, that can make hypertension harder to control.

Dr. Samuel J. Mann, a hypertension specialist and professor of clinical medicine at Weill-Cornell Medical College, adds another factor that may be the most important. Of the 71 percent of people with hypertension who are currently being treated, too many are taking the wrong drugs or the wrong dosages of the right ones.

Dr. Mann, author of “Hypertension and You: Old Drugs, New Drugs, and the Right Drugs for Your High Blood Pressure,” says that doctors should take into account the underlying causes of each patient’s blood pressure problem and the side effects that may prompt patients to abandon therapy. He has found that when treatment is tailored to the individual, nearly all cases of high blood pressure can be brought and kept under control with available drugs.

Plus, he said in an interview, it can be done with minimal, if any, side effects and at a reasonable cost.

“For most people, no new drugs need to be developed,” Dr. Mann said. “What we need, in terms of medication, is already out there. We just need to use it better.”

But many doctors who are generalists do not understand the “intricacies and nuances” of the dozens of available medications to determine which is appropriate to a certain patient.

“Prescribing the same medication to patient after patient just does not cut it,” Dr. Mann wrote in his book.

The trick to prescribing the best treatment for each patient is to first determine which of three mechanisms, or combination of mechanisms, is responsible for a patient’s hypertension, he said.

¶ Salt-sensitive hypertension, more common in older people and African-Americans, responds well to diuretics and calcium channel blockers.

¶ Hypertension driven by the kidney hormone renin responds best to ACE inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers, as well as direct renin inhibitors and beta-blockers.

¶ Neurogenic hypertension is a product of the sympathetic nervous system and is best treated with beta-blockers, alpha-blockers and drugs like clonidine.

According to Dr. Mann, neurogenic hypertension results from repressed emotions. He has found that many patients with it suffered trauma early in life or abuse. They seem calm and content on the surface but continually suppress their distress, he said.

One of Dr. Mann’s patients had had high blood pressure since her late 20s that remained well-controlled by the three drugs her family doctor prescribed. Then in her 40s, periodic checks showed it was often too high. When taking more of the prescribed medication did not result in lasting control, she sought Dr. Mann’s help.

After a thorough work-up, he said she had a textbook case of neurogenic hypertension, was taking too much medication and needed different drugs. Her condition soon became far better managed, with side effects she could easily tolerate, and she no longer feared she would die young of a heart attack or stroke.

But most patients should not have to consult a specialist. They can be well-treated by an internist or family physician who approaches the condition systematically, Dr. Mann said. Patients should be started on low doses of one or more drugs, including a diuretic; the dosage or number of drugs can be slowly increased as needed to achieve a normal pressure.

Specialists, he said, are most useful for treating the 10 percent to 15 percent of patients with so-called resistant hypertension that remains uncontrolled despite treatment with three drugs, including a diuretic, and for those whose treatment is effective but causing distressing side effects.

Hypertension sometimes fails to respond to routine care, he noted, because it results from an underlying medical problem that needs to be addressed.

“Some patients are on a lot of blood pressure drugs — four or five — who probably don’t need so many, and if they do, the question is why,” Dr. Mann said.

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How to Measure Your Blood Pressure

Mistaken readings, which can occur in doctors’ offices as well as at home, can result in misdiagnosis of hypertension and improper treatment. Dr. Samuel J. Mann, of Weill Cornell Medical College, suggests these guidelines to reduce the risk of errors:

¶ Use an automatic monitor rather than a manual one, and check the accuracy of your home monitor at the doctor’s office.

¶ Use a monitor with an arm cuff, not a wrist or finger cuff, and use a large cuff if you have a large arm.

¶ Sit quietly for a few minutes, without talking, after putting on the cuff and before checking your pressure.

¶ Check your pressure in one arm only, and take three readings (not more) one or two minutes apart.

¶ Measure your blood pressure no more than twice a week unless you have severe hypertension or are changing medications.

¶ Check your pressure at random, ordinary times of the day, not just when you think it is high.

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Personal Health: Keeping Blood Pressure in Check

Since the start of the 21st century, Americans have made great progress in controlling high blood pressure, though it remains a leading cause of heart attacks, strokes, congestive heart failure and kidney disease.

Now 48 percent of the more than 76 million adults with hypertension have it under control, up from 29 percent in 2000.

But that means more than half, including many receiving treatment, have blood pressure that remains too high to be healthy. (A normal blood pressure is lower than 120 over 80.) With a plethora of drugs available to normalize blood pressure, why are so many people still at increased risk of disease, disability and premature death? Hypertension experts offer a few common, and correctable, reasons:

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Jane Brody speaks about hypertension.

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¶ About 20 percent of affected adults don’t know they have high blood pressure, perhaps because they never or rarely see a doctor who checks their pressure.

¶ Of the 80 percent who are aware of their condition, some don’t appreciate how serious it can be and fail to get treated, even when their doctors say they should.

¶ Some who have been treated develop bothersome side effects, causing them to abandon therapy or to use it haphazardly.

¶ Many others do little to change lifestyle factors, like obesity, lack of exercise and a high-salt diet, that can make hypertension harder to control.

Dr. Samuel J. Mann, a hypertension specialist and professor of clinical medicine at Weill-Cornell Medical College, adds another factor that may be the most important. Of the 71 percent of people with hypertension who are currently being treated, too many are taking the wrong drugs or the wrong dosages of the right ones.

Dr. Mann, author of “Hypertension and You: Old Drugs, New Drugs, and the Right Drugs for Your High Blood Pressure,” says that doctors should take into account the underlying causes of each patient’s blood pressure problem and the side effects that may prompt patients to abandon therapy. He has found that when treatment is tailored to the individual, nearly all cases of high blood pressure can be brought and kept under control with available drugs.

Plus, he said in an interview, it can be done with minimal, if any, side effects and at a reasonable cost.

“For most people, no new drugs need to be developed,” Dr. Mann said. “What we need, in terms of medication, is already out there. We just need to use it better.”

But many doctors who are generalists do not understand the “intricacies and nuances” of the dozens of available medications to determine which is appropriate to a certain patient.

“Prescribing the same medication to patient after patient just does not cut it,” Dr. Mann wrote in his book.

The trick to prescribing the best treatment for each patient is to first determine which of three mechanisms, or combination of mechanisms, is responsible for a patient’s hypertension, he said.

¶ Salt-sensitive hypertension, more common in older people and African-Americans, responds well to diuretics and calcium channel blockers.

¶ Hypertension driven by the kidney hormone renin responds best to ACE inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers, as well as direct renin inhibitors and beta-blockers.

¶ Neurogenic hypertension is a product of the sympathetic nervous system and is best treated with beta-blockers, alpha-blockers and drugs like clonidine.

According to Dr. Mann, neurogenic hypertension results from repressed emotions. He has found that many patients with it suffered trauma early in life or abuse. They seem calm and content on the surface but continually suppress their distress, he said.

One of Dr. Mann’s patients had had high blood pressure since her late 20s that remained well-controlled by the three drugs her family doctor prescribed. Then in her 40s, periodic checks showed it was often too high. When taking more of the prescribed medication did not result in lasting control, she sought Dr. Mann’s help.

After a thorough work-up, he said she had a textbook case of neurogenic hypertension, was taking too much medication and needed different drugs. Her condition soon became far better managed, with side effects she could easily tolerate, and she no longer feared she would die young of a heart attack or stroke.

But most patients should not have to consult a specialist. They can be well-treated by an internist or family physician who approaches the condition systematically, Dr. Mann said. Patients should be started on low doses of one or more drugs, including a diuretic; the dosage or number of drugs can be slowly increased as needed to achieve a normal pressure.

Specialists, he said, are most useful for treating the 10 percent to 15 percent of patients with so-called resistant hypertension that remains uncontrolled despite treatment with three drugs, including a diuretic, and for those whose treatment is effective but causing distressing side effects.

Hypertension sometimes fails to respond to routine care, he noted, because it results from an underlying medical problem that needs to be addressed.

“Some patients are on a lot of blood pressure drugs — four or five — who probably don’t need so many, and if they do, the question is why,” Dr. Mann said.

---

How to Measure Your Blood Pressure

Mistaken readings, which can occur in doctors’ offices as well as at home, can result in misdiagnosis of hypertension and improper treatment. Dr. Samuel J. Mann, of Weill Cornell Medical College, suggests these guidelines to reduce the risk of errors:

¶ Use an automatic monitor rather than a manual one, and check the accuracy of your home monitor at the doctor’s office.

¶ Use a monitor with an arm cuff, not a wrist or finger cuff, and use a large cuff if you have a large arm.

¶ Sit quietly for a few minutes, without talking, after putting on the cuff and before checking your pressure.

¶ Check your pressure in one arm only, and take three readings (not more) one or two minutes apart.

¶ Measure your blood pressure no more than twice a week unless you have severe hypertension or are changing medications.

¶ Check your pressure at random, ordinary times of the day, not just when you think it is high.

Read More..

Media Decoder: Tsujihara to Succeed Meyer as Head of Warner Brothers

LOS ANGELES — Kevin Tsujihara will succeed Barry M. Meyer as chief executive of Warner Brothers, the studio announced on Monday, ending a disruptive and lingering competition for one of the biggest jobs in Hollywood. But, with two senior Warner executives publicly passed over, disorder at the studio could continue.

Home to Batman, Bugs Bunny, “Two and a Half Men” and TMZ.com, Warner is Hollywood’s largest movie and television studio. It has also been the industry’s most stable. Mr. Meyer, who is retiring, has led Warner since 1999; a single management team oversaw the studio for the previous 18 years.

A two-year succession contest, however, has brought escalating internal tension, a slowing of routine business and low morale, according to Warner employees and people who have had business dealings with the company. Jeffrey L. Bewkes, chief executive of Time Warner, moved on Monday to end that distraction by promoting Mr. Tsujihara, 48. Scheduled to take over on March 1, Mr. Tsujihara most recently ran Warner’s home entertainment unit, which includes video games and the online distribution of movies and television shows.

“Kevin’s experience is very balanced and has touched all parts of Warner,” Mr. Bewkes said in a telephone interview. “He also has the right temperament to be an effective unifier and leader.”

Mr. Tsujihara immediately faces the challenge of retaining the two executives he beat out for the job. They are Bruce Rosenblum, president of Warner Television, and Jeffrey Robinov, president of Warner’s movie division. Mr. Bewkes said he wanted to “keep everybody on the field,” adding that Mr. Rosenblum and Mr. Robinov both have “very big, full jobs.”

Even so, Mr. Rosenblum, who runs Warner’s most profitable division and had been seen by many in Hollywood as the leading candidate to succeed Mr. Meyer, did not hide his displeasure at losing. “Obviously, I’m disappointed; who wouldn’t be?” he said in a statement. He added that Warner “will be in good hands with Kevin.”

Mr. Robinov was more effusive about his new boss. “I am truly happy and proud of Kevin,” he said in a separate statement. “We are both good friends and colleagues, and I think he’s an excellent choice for the job.”

Will Mr. Rosenblum and Mr. Robinov ultimately leave? “We both hope they will stay and support Kevin,” Mr. Meyer, 69, said in a telephone interview. He added, however, “This is news to everybody, and I think they’re thinking it over.”

In some ways, Mr. Tsujihara’s ascendance can be seen as a clear statement of what Time Warner thinks its studio most needs to face the challenges ahead.

While he is respected in Hollywood’s creative community of producers, writers, directors and agents, Mr. Tsujihara does not come from the trenches. Instead, he has been grappling with the Web as a disrupter of distribution and business models. He has also been Warner’s point person on piracy.

Mr. Meyer said Mr. Tsujihara’s qualifications went well beyond that. Calling Mr. Tsujihara “deliberate and thoughtful,” he underscored his successor’s creative skill. In recent years, for instance, Mr. Tsujihara has played a role in deciding what movies Warner puts into production, even routinely reading scripts, Mr. Meyer said. Mr. Tsujihara was also the executive that Warner dispatched to New Zealand in 2010 to solve a labor dispute that threatened “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” and two sequels.

Speaking by telephone, Mr. Tsujihara said his immediate plans are “to do a lot of listening” and to work with his former rivals to “create the right transition and the right organizational structure moving forward.”

“I’m coming in at a great time, not a time when we have to make massive changes because we’re not successful,” he said.

Warner, which was founded in 1923, produces more than 50 television programs for various networks, including “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” “The Middle” and “The Mentalist.” Last year Warner movies took in about $4.3 billion at the global box office, with hits that included “The Dark Knight Rises” and “Magic Mike.”

Still, the studio faces significant competition in television production from 20th Century Fox and has struggled to bring its stable of DC Comics superheroes — Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, the Flash — to movie audiences as Disney’s Marvel Studios has introduced one superhero hit after another.

Mr. Tsujihara joined Warner in 1994 to help with its interest in the Six Flags theme parks. Before taking over home entertainment in 2005, he worked in the studio’s business development and strategy department.

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