Wealth Matters: Protect Yourself from Investment Fraud This Madoff Day

From left, Marc S. Drier, Bernard L. Madoff and R. Allen Stanford. Their fraudulent schemes collapsed in late 2008 and early 2009.

THIS is the time of year when most people think of gifts and holiday gatherings. I couldn’t help thinking of frauds past.

Four years ago this week, Marc S. Dreier, a high-flying lawyer, was arrested and later charged with defrauding his clients of $700 million. A few days later, Bernard L. Madoff’s fraud was uncovered. Totaling an estimated $65 billion, Mr. Madoff’s fraud was in a class by itself. And then, a short time afterward, some of the brokers who had been selling fraudulent certificates of deposit for R. Allen Stanford began to turn on him; he was arrested in February 2009 and later convicted of a $7 billion fraud.

These schemes collapsed with the economy in 2008. But on their anniversaries, it may be a good time to ask whether you have done all you can to lower your risk of being caught up in a similar fraud. Call it Madoff Day (celebrated on Dec. 11, the day of his arrest).

Protecting yourself against fraud, or simply bad advice, is easier said than done. The most common advice is to make sure your money is held by an independent custodian or firm whose job is to keep your money safe. That wasn’t the case with either the Madoff or Stanford fraud. But that is only one small step.

So what else can investors do to protect themselves, not only from unscrupulous advisers but also from rushing into an investment that is clearly too good to be true?

Marc H. Simon, a lawyer who lost two years of bonuses, his job and months of unreimbursed expenses when Mr. Dreier’s law firm collapsed, said he has thought a lot about what he could have done differently.

Mr. Simon said that six or seven years before the fraud was uncovered, he knew of inconsistencies in the firm’s 401(k) plans. But the big red flag should have been that Mr. Dreier had sole control over every major decision at the law firm. Still, that had been Mr. Dreier’s pitch: work for him and don’t worry about the irksome details partners typically face.

“People like Drier and Madoff were highly intelligent individuals, they were very charismatic and they were giving people what they wanted,” Mr. Simon said. “It is harder to bring into question those who are providing you something you want.”

Randall A. Pulman, a lawyer in San Antonio who represents many victims of Mr. Stanford’s fraud, agreed that the will to believe was what ensnared people.

“For you and me, it’s too good to be true,” he said. “For the guy who has been working in the oil fields, how is he supposed to know?”

Of course, fraud and just plain bad advice are not limited to the poor or unsophisticated. Robert P. Rittereiser, the former chief financial officer of Merrill Lynch and former chief executive of E. F. Hutton, is working as the receiver for two funds suing J. Ezra Merkin, a former money manager who steered money to Mr. Madoff. Mr. Rittereiser did not think investors in Mr. Merkin’s funds knew that their money was simply being passed on to Mr. Madoff. But even if they did, they may not have seen anything to be concerned about.

“They were investing money and getting appropriate returns for the kind of fund it was,” Mr. Rittereiser said. “Most of them had a relationship of some kind and confidence with Merkin and the people he was dealing with.”

So how do you protect yourself? The first step would seem to be picking an honest adviser. The good news is that only about 7 percent of advisers have disciplinary records, said Nicholas W. Stuller, president and chief executive of AdviceIQ, a company that evaluates advisers. The bad news is that those violations appear only after someone has filed a complaint.

Mr. Stuller’s company, which has now approved some 2,400 advisers, rejects anyone with any type of infraction — from a securities fine to a misdemeanor for getting into a fight. He said this policy might keep some good advisers off the site, but his goal is to search the records of federal and state regulators to find advisers he knows are clean.

“There are advisers who have significant negative disciplinary history with one regulator but appear to be pristine with another regulator,” Mr. Stuller said. “There was a guy in Minnesota who was stealing insurance premiums. In his enforcement record, it says, ‘We’re going to alert Finra,’ but his Finra record is clean,” he said, referring to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. “That’s where the regulators don’t talk to each other.”

AdviceIQ’s main competitor, BrightScope, takes a different approach. It notes disciplinary actions taken against advisers but leaves it up to the consumer to go to regulators to determine what the violations were.

“We want the consumer to go to the source data, because there is a lot of liability in publishing that,” said Mike Alfred, co-founder and chief executive of BrightScope. “Many of these folks are good advisers, and they’ll take care of you. But what if they had one crazy client who put all his money in Internet stocks in 2000 and then sued?”

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3 Walmart Suppliers Made Goods in Bangladesh Factory

Khurshed Rinku/Associated Press

Burials on Nov. 27 for some of the 112 victims of the garment factory fire in Bangladesh.

Documents found at the Tazreen apparel factory in Bangladesh, where 112 workers died in a fire nearly two weeks ago, indicate that three American garment companies were using the factory during the past year to supply goods to Walmart and its Sam’s Club subsidiary.

The documents — photographed by a Bangladeshi labor organizer after the fire and made available to The New York Times — include an internal production report from mid-September showing that 5 of the factory’s 14 production lines were devoted to making apparel for Walmart.

In a related matter, two officials who attended a meeting held in Bangladesh in 2011 to discuss factory safety in the garment industry said on Wednesday that the Walmart official there played the lead role in blocking an effort to have global retailers pay more for apparel to help Bangladesh factories improve their electrical and fire safety.

Ineke Zeldenrust, international coordinator for the Clean Clothes Campaign, an anti-sweatshop group based in Amsterdam, said Walmart was the company that “most strongly advocated this position.”

The meeting was held in April 2011 in Dhaka, the country’s capital, and brought together global retailers, Bangladeshi factory owners, government officials and nongovernment organizations after several apparel factory fires in Bangladesh had killed dozens of workers the previous winter.

According to the minutes of the meeting, which were made available to The Times, Sridevi Kalavakolanu, a Walmart director of ethical sourcing, along with an official from another major apparel retailer, noted that the proposed improvements in electrical and fire safety would involve as many as 4,500 factories and would be “in most cases” a “very extensive and costly modification.”

“It is not financially feasible for the brands to make such investments,” the minutes said.

Kevin Gardner, a Walmart spokesman, said the company official’s remarks in Bangladesh were “out of context.”

“Walmart has been advocating for improved fire safety with the Bangladeshi government, with industry groups and with suppliers,” he said, adding that the company has helped develop and establish programs to increase fire prevention.

Ms. Zeldenrust said, “Everyone recognized that fire safety was a serious problem and it was a high time to act on it, and Walmart’s position had a very negative impact.” She added, “It gives manufacturers the excuse they’re looking for to say, ‘We’re not to blame.’ ”

Scott Nova, the executive director of the Worker Rights Consortium, a factory monitoring group based in Washington, was also at the meeting. He said that upgrading the factories’ safety would cost a small fraction of what Walmart and other retailers pay for the clothing they import from Bangladesh each year.

Bloomberg News first reported details of the Dhaka meeting on Wednesday.

Walmart has indirectly acknowledged that the factory, Tazreen Fashions, outside Dhaka, was producing some of its apparel, saying in a statement that a supplier had “subcontracted work to this factory without authorization and in direct violation of our policies.” In that statement, issued two days after the Nov. 24 fire, Walmart said, “We have terminated the relationship with that supplier.” Walmart has declined to name the supplier.

After Walmart was shown some of the documents from the factory on Wednesday, Mr. Gardner replied in an e-mail. “As we’ve said, the Tazreen factory was de-authorized months ago,” he wrote. “We don’t comment on specific supplier relationships.”

The photographed documents from the factory indicate that three suppliers — the International Direct Group, Success Apparel and Topson Downs — used the factory to make shirts, shorts and pajamas for Walmart. One document, written in July, provides product descriptions from Success Apparel for Walmart’s Faded Glory house-brand shorts. A photo taken inside the factory after the fire showed a pair of Faded Glory shorts.

The documents indicate that Success Apparel often worked through Simco, a Bangladeshi garment maker.

Mr. Nova of the Worker Rights Consortium said the documents raised questions about Walmart’s statements after the fire.

“It was not a single rogue supplier as Walmart has claimed — there were several different U.S. suppliers working for Walmart in that factory,” Mr. Nova said. “It stretches credulity to think that Walmart, famous for its tight control over its global supply chain, didn’t know about this.”

Mr. Nova works closely with the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity and made the factory documents available.

Investigators also found apparel made for Sears and Disney inside the factory after the fire. Both companies said suppliers had given orders to the factory without their knowledge and authorization.

Mr. Gardner said accredited outside auditors had periodically inspected the factory on Walmart’s behalf. A May 2011 audit gave the factory an “orange” rating, meaning that there were “higher-risk violations” and that it would be re-audited within six months. If a factory gets three orange ratings over two years, it loses Walmart’s approval.

A follow-up audit in August 2011 for Walmart gave Tazreen an improved “yellow” rating, meaning “medium-risk violations.”

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Roethlisberger to start against Chargers

PITTSBURGH (AP) — Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger will start on Sunday against the San Diego Chargers.

Roethlisberger missed the last three weeks with a sprained right shoulder and dislocated rib but practiced for the second straight day on Thursday without incident. Roethlisberger said he felt "good" but declined to go into details. Offensive coordinator Todd Haley said he believes Roethlisberger can make all the necessary throws.

The Steelers (7-5) went 1-2 in Roethlisberger's absence, including a 23-20 victory over Baltimore last week behind backup Charlie Batch. Tight end Heath Miller said he hasn't noticed any drop off in velocity from Roethlisberger, who took "90 percent" of the snaps with the first team on Thursday.

Pittsburgh is tied with Cincinnati for the AFC's final wild card spot.

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Online: http://pro32.ap.org/poll and http://twitter.com/AP_NFL

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Well: Running in Reverse

This column appears in the Dec. 9 issue of The New York Times Magazine.

Backward running, also known as reverse or retro running, is not as celebrated as barefoot running and will never be mistaken for the natural way to run. But a small body of science suggests that backward running enables people to avoid or recover from common injuries, burn extra calories, sharpen balance and, not least, mix up their daily routine.

The technique is simple enough. Most of us have done it, at least in a modified, abbreviated form, and probably recently, perhaps hopping back from a curb as a bus went by or pushing away from the oven with a roasting pan in both hands. But training with backward running is different. Biomechanically, it is forward motion’s doppelgänger. In a study published last year, biomechanics researchers at the University of Milan in Italy had a group of runners stride forward and backward at a steady pace along a track equipped with force sensors and cameras.

They found that, as expected, the runners struck the ground near the back of their feet when going forward and rolled onto the front of their feet for takeoff. When they went backward though, they landed near the front of their feet and took off from the heels. They tended to lean slightly forward even when running backward. As a result, their muscles fired differently. In forward running, the muscles and tendons were pulled taut during landing and responded by coiling, a process that creates elastic energy (think rubber bands) that is then released during toe-off. When running backward, muscles and tendons were coiled during landing and stretched at takeoff. The backward runners’ legs didn’t benefit from stored elastic energy. In fact, the researchers found, running backward required nearly 30 percent more energy than running forward at the same speed. But backward running also produced far less hard pounding.

What all of this means, says Giovanni Cavagna, a professor at the University of Milan who led the study, is that reverse running can potentially “improve forward running by allowing greater and safer training.”

It is a particularly attractive option for runners with bad knees. A 2012 study found that backward running causes far less impact to the front of the knees. It also burns more calories at a given pace. In a recent study, active female college students who replaced their exercise with jogging backward for 15 to 45 minutes three times a week for six weeks lost almost 2.5 percent of their body fat.

And it aids in balance training — backward slow walking is sometimes used as a therapy for people with Parkinson’s and is potentially useful for older people, whose balance has grown shaky.

But it has drawbacks, Cavagna says — chiefly that you can’t see where you’re going. “It should be done on a track,” he says, “or by a couple of runners, side by side,” one facing forward.

It should be implemented slowly too, because its unfamiliar motion can cause muscle fatigue. Intersperse a few minutes periodically during your regular routine, Cavagna says. Increase the time you spend backward as it feels comfortable.

The good news for serious runners is that backward does not necessarily mean slow. The best recorded backward five-kilometer race time is 19:31, faster than most of us can hit the finish line with our best foot forward.

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Obama’s Tax Plan Would Spare Many Affluent Families

President Obama’s insistence that marginal tax rates rise for families making more than $250,000 has convinced millions of affluent Americans that they are likely to be writing larger checks to the government next year.

But many of those families have no reason to fret.

A close look at the president’s plan shows that a large majority of families making up to $300,000 – as well as hundreds of thousands of families with even larger incomes – would not pay taxes at a higher marginal rate.

Because the complexity of the tax code makes it difficult to draw clean lines, they are the beneficiaries of choices the administration has made to ensure that families earning less than $250,000 do not pay higher rates.

Some of those affluent households still would pay higher taxes next year under other parts of the president’s tax plan and increases imposed by the Affordable Care Act, but not under the centerpiece, the part most frequently promote by the president and most bitterly opposed by Congressional Republicans.

John Boudreau, the president of a Connecticut construction firm who expects to make about $300,000 this year, said that was a welcome surprise. He voted for Mr. Obama and said he was ready to pay taxes at a higher rate. But he’d rather not.

“I’m willing to, but if it works that I’m not, so be it,” he said. “I will not be a person that’s going to stick an extra check in my tax bill as my donation to my country.”

Unless the White House and Congress are able to reach an agreement, federal taxes are scheduled to rise sharply next year for a large majority of Americans. Tax cuts first passed in 2001 and 2003 under President George W. Bush are scheduled to expire. So are cuts passed during Mr. Obama’s first term.

The president’s plan would prevent most of the scheduled increase for those below an income threshold Mr. Obama generally describes as $250,000. The Senate has passed similar legislation. But Democrats remain at loggerheads with House Republicans, who want to prevent scheduled increases for the most affluent households, too. And the parties disagree about how to prune federal spending.

The number that now divides the parties was introduced by Mr. Obama in 2007, in the early days of the presidential campaign, when he promised to extend the Bush tax cuts for families that made less than that amount.

“I can make a firm pledge,” Mr. Obama said in September 2008. " Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.”

When policy makers talk about income, however, they don’t mean the amount of money a family earns; they mean the portion subject to taxes. The government does not tax contributions to retirement plans, interest payments on mortgages or charitable donations, among other things. As a result, two families with the same incomes will most likely have different taxable incomes.

To guarantee that tax rates do not increase for any family making less than $250,000, the Obama administration proposed in 2009 to raise marginal rates on taxable income above roughly $230,000 – because the minimum amount of income a family is entitled to shelter from taxation is roughly $20,000.

But the average amount families in that income range are entitled to shelter from taxation is much larger, closer to $60,000. In other words, families with taxable income of $230,000 on average earned about $290,000 in 2009.

“They wanted to be able to say that ‘Absolutely nobody making less than $250,000 could possibly pay higher taxes under our plan,'” said Bob McIntyre, the director of Citizens for Tax Justice, a liberal advocacy group “So they had to assume the most ridiculous assumptions, that even if you’re a childless couple with no itemized deductions making $250,001, your taxes still won’t go up. They figured that if this couple existed and their taxes went up, somebody would find them and jump on ‘em.”

Furthermore, to remain consistent with the president’s original promise, the administration has adjusted the original numbers for inflation. When Mr. Obama says $250,000, the White House says he means “in 2009 dollars.” It is now proposing to raise marginal rates on families with taxable incomes above $246,000 – meaning, on average, families earning more than about $305,000.

While the president has said that he wants to raise tax rates for the top 2 percent, only about 1 percent of taxpayers will face higher marginal rates, according to an analysis by the Tax Policy Center, a widely respected research group.

The restoration of the other provisions temporarily suspended by the Bush tax cuts, including limits on deductions and higher taxes on investment income, still would raise taxes for only about 32 percent of families with income between $250,000 and $300,000, according to an analysis by Citizens for Tax Justice. About 77 percent of families with income between $300,000 and $350,000 would face an increase.

Neera Tanden, domestic policy director for Mr. Obama’s 2008 general election campaign, said the president might not have succeeded in rallying popular support for any tax increase if he had not made the $250,000 promise.

But Ms. Tanden, now president of the left-leaning Center for American Progress, said the administration should reconsider that commitment.

She co-authored a deficit-reduction plan released earlier this week recommending modest tax increases on households making as little as $100,000.

“We think it’s reasonable to ask a couple more dollars from people who make $150,000,” she said.

Some of the beneficiaries see good reasons why their taxes should not rise.

“I wouldn’t exactly say I’m disappointed,” said Ryan Ruby, 36, of Bothell, Wash., after learning that the president’s tax plan probably wouldn’t affect him even though he and his wife make between $250,000 and $300,000 a year. “I do think our tax rates should go up eventually, but right now I think the need for people to have disposable income to get the economy moving is probably more important than broadening the base.”

Most affluent households still will pay higher taxes next year for other reasons.

A two-year-old payroll tax break is scheduled to lapse at the end of this year. That would increase Social Security taxes by 2 percentage points on wage income below $113,700.

And the Affordable Care Act levies new taxes specifically targeting married couples earning more than $250,000 and singles earning more than $200,000 in adjusted gross income.

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25 top-rated Facebook games from 2012

Games can be both a welcome and an annoying diversion on Facebook, the world’s most popular online social network. This year, Facebook crossed a big milestone — reaching 1 billion active users. Game companies such as “FarmVille” creator Zynga Inc. and Rovio Entertainment Ltd. of “Angry Birds” fame seek to tap into that vast base of users to gain more players for their games.

This week, Facebook Inc. issued a list of the 25 top-rated games that launched on Facebook in 2012. The company says the rankings are based on user ratings and engagement with the games. It’s the same methodology that Facebook uses to rank apps in its App Center.

Some of the games are played on Facebook’s website, while others are only on Apple Inc.‘s iOS or Google Inc.‘s Android devices using Facebook’s app.

Here’s the list:

1. “SongPop” (by FreshPlanet, on Facebook.com, iOS and Android)

2. “Dragon City” (by Social Point, on Facebook.com)

3. “Bike Race” (by Top Free Games, on iOS)

4. “Subway Surfers” (by Kiloo, on iOS and Android)

5. “Angry Birds Friends (by Rovio, on Facebook.com)

6. “FarmVille 2″ (by Zynga, on Facebook.com)

7. “Scramble with Friends” (by Zynga, on iOS)

8. “Clash of Clans” (by Supercell, on iOS)

9. “Marvel: Avengers Alliance” (by Playdom, on Facebook.com)

10. “Draw Something” (by Zynga, on iOS and Android)

11. “Hay Day” (by Supercell, on iOS)

12. “Baseball Heroes” (by Syntasia, on Facebook.com)

13. “ChefVille” (by Zynga, on Facebook.com)

14. “CSR Racing” (by NaturalMotion Games, on iOS)

15. “Candy Crush Saga” (by King.com, on Facebook.com and iOS)

16. “Matching With Friends” (by Zynga, on Facebook.com)

17. “Legend Online” (by Oasis Games, on Facebook.com)

18. “Jurassic Park Builder” (by Ludia, on Facebook.com)

19. “Dungeon Rampage” (by Rebel Entertainment, on Facebook.com)

20. “Pockie Ninja II Social” (by NGames Ltd., on Facebook.com)

21. “Jetpack Joyride” (by Halfbrick, on Facebook.com)

22. “Social Empires” (by Social Point, on Facebook.com and iOS)

23. “Bil ve Fethet” (by Peak Games, on Facebook.com)

24. “Ruby Blast Adventures” (by Zynga, on Facebook.com and iOS)

25. “Pyramid Solitaire Saga” (by King.com, on Facebook.com)

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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3 Walmart Suppliers Made Goods in Bangladeshi Factory Where 112 Died in Fire

Ashraful Alam Tito/Associated Press

A Nov. 28 photo shows Walmart's Faded Glory label on a piece of clothing found after a fire at a garment factory in Bangladesh.

Documents found at the Tazreen apparel factory in Bangladesh, where 112 workers died in a fire nearly two weeks ago, indicate that three separate apparel companies were using the factory during the past year to supply goods to Walmart and its Sam’s Club subsidiary.

The documents — photographed by a Bangladeshi labor organizer after the fire and made available to The New York Times — include an internal production report from last September showing that five of the factory’s 14 production lines were being devoted to make apparel for Walmart.

Walmart has indirectly acknowledged that the Tazreen factory was producing some of its apparel, saying in a statement that a supplier had “subcontracted work to this factory without authorization and in direct violation of our policies.” In that statement, issued two days after the Nov. 24 fire, Walmart said “we have terminated the relationship with that supplier.” Walmart has declined to name the supplier.

After Walmart was shown some of the documents from the factory on Wednesday, Kevin Gardner, a spokesman for the company, replied in an e-mail. “As we’ve said, the Tazreen factory was deauthorized months ago,” Mr. Gardner wrote. “We don’t comment on specific supplier relationships.”

The documents from the factory indicate that three different apparel suppliers — International Direct Group, Success Apparel and Topson Downs — were using the factory on Walmart’s behalf to make shirts, shorts and pajamas.

A document from October 2011 shows an order placed by the International Direct Group to produce Khaki & Co. brand shorts for Sam’s Club. A circled addendum on the order form indicates the shorts were shipped Feb. 5. The “roll-tab” shorts are currently available on the Sam’s Club Web site and have the same model number as the order placed at the factory 14 months ago.

Another document found at the factory, from July, provides product descriptions from Success Apparel for Walmart’s Faded Glory house-brand shorts. A photograph taken inside the factory after the fire showed a pair of Faded Glory shorts.

The documents indicate that Success Apparel often worked through Simco, a Bangladeshi garment maker.

Scott Nova, executive director of the Worker Rights Consortium, a monitoring group based in Washington that is financed by American universities, said the documents raised questions about Walmart’s statements after the fire.

“It was not a single rogue supplier as Walmart has claimed — there were several different U.S. suppliers working for Walmart in that factory,” Mr. Nova said. “It stretches credulity to think that Walmart, famous for its tight control over its global supply chain, didn’t know about this.”

Mr. Nova works closely with the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity and made the factory documents available.

Investigators also found apparel made for Sears and Disney inside the factory after the fire. Both companies said suppliers had given orders to the factory without their knowledge and authorization.

Mr. Gardner, of Walmart, said accredited outside auditors had periodically inspected the factory on Walmart’s behalf. A May 2011 audit for Walmart gave the Tazreen factory an “orange” rating, meaning that there were “higher-risk violations” and that the factory would be re-audited within six months. If a factory receives three orange ratings over two years, it loses Walmart’s approval.

A follow-up August 2011 audit for Walmart gave Tazreen an improved “yellow” rating, meaning that there were “medium-risk violations” and that the factory would be re-audited within one year.

Mr. Gardner declined to say what, if any, inspections were carried out after August 2011.

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Chiefs players head to Belcher memorial service

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Members of the Kansas City Chiefs dressed in suits and ties after practice Wednesday and boarded a series of buses to attend a memorial service for Jovan Belcher, their teammate who was involved in a murder-suicide over the weekend.

The team moved up its practice schedule so that players could attend the 2 p.m. service at Landmark International Deliverance and Worship Center, a short drive from the team's practice facility.

Belcher shot his girlfriend, Kasandra Perkins, at their home Saturday morning before driving to Arrowhead Stadium and turning the gun on himself. Chiefs coach Romeo Crennel, general manager Scott Pioli and defensive assistant Gary Gibbs witnessed Belcher commit suicide not far from where the buses were staged.

Veteran offensive lineman Ryan Lilja said he hoped the memorial would provide some closure for the Chiefs, who will try to win their second straight game Sunday at Cleveland.

"You got to try to deal with it however you deal with it, and grieve the best way for the individual," he said, "and I think this is the best way for us as a team to get closure and move on and focus on football."

Lilja said some players have taken advantage of counseling services that have been provided by the Chiefs and the NFL and that there's been a change in the atmosphere around the building.

"There definitely is more, 'How you doing? How you feeling? How you coping?'" Lilja said. "There's definitely more of that, and people leaning on each other, and be an ear when they need it. Guys are going to deal with this on an individual basis."

The memorial service was not open to the public. Pastor Sylvarena Funderburke, who serves at Repairers of the Breach Christian Center in Kansas City, said she was at the service to sing "I Won't Complain," a song the Belcher family requested.

"It is an honor. We don't always understand why things happen," she said before the service. "That's when you have to rely on your faith and just trust god to give you strength to make it through tough times."

Karen Young, who belongs to the Landmark church and serves as an usher, said Belcher and Perkins went to the church "practically every week" until the baby was born but hadn't been seen much since then.

Belcher's locker remained full of his equipment and personal belongings Wednesday as players quickly showered and dressed in suits. Some of them said they avoided looking at it intentionally, while others had no problem with the locker remaining as it was as a memorial to their teammate.

Defensive back Travis Daniels said he understood the complexity in memorializing a man who committed murder and remembering someone the team knew and loved.

"Any time you look at a situation, there's going to be multiple views, how someone feels you should go about it," he said. "Just like when we're on the field, some people think we should have made this tackle or that catch, and other people might think it was too hard. I don't have a problems seeing Javon's locker over there."

Daniels said that Wednesday's memorial service could "reopen wounds," but he also said it might provide some closure. He said it was important for the team to support the families of everyone involved — the murder-suicide left a 3-month-old girl, Zoey, any without any parents.

"We're definitely thankful we have the opportunity to see them one last time before they go home and everything," Daniels said. "We definitely want to go and pay respects to him and his family."

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AP reporter Heather Hollingsworth in Kansas City, Mo., contributed to this story.

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Study Raises Questions on Coating of Aspirin

While aspirin may prevent heart attacks and strokes, a commonly used coating to protect the stomach may obscure the benefits, leading doctors to prescribe more expensive prescription drugs, according to a study published Tuesday in the journal Circulation.

The conclusion about coated aspirin was only one finding in the study, whose main goal was to test the hotly disputed idea that aspirin does not help prevent heart attacks or stroke in some people.

For more than a decade, cardiologists and drug researchers have posited that anywhere from 5 to 40 percent of the population is “aspirin resistant,” as the debated condition is known. But some prominent doctors say that the prevalence of the condition has been exaggerated by companies and drug makers with a commercial interest in proving that aspirin — a relatively inexpensive, over-the-counter drug whose heart benefits have been known since the 1950s — does not always work.

The authors of the new study, from the University of Pennsylvania, claim that they did not find a single case of true aspirin resistance in any of the 400 healthy people who were examined. Instead, they claim, the coating on aspirin interfered with the way that the drug entered the body, making it appear in tests that the drug was not working.

The study was partly financed by Bayer, the world’s largest manufacturer of brand-name aspirin, much of which is coated.

Aside from whether coating aspirin conceals its effects in some people, there is little evidence that it protects the stomach better than uncoated aspirin, said Dr. Garret FitzGerald, chairman of pharmacology at the University of Pennsylvania and one of the study’s authors.

“These studies question the value of coated, low-dose aspirin,” he said in a statement accompanying the article. “This product adds cost to treatment, without any clear benefit. Indeed, it may lead to the false diagnosis of aspirin resistance and the failure to provide patients with an effective therapy.”

In a statement, Bayer took issue with some of the study’s conclusions and methods and said previous studies of coated aspirin, also called enteric-coated aspirin, have been shown to stop blood platelets from sticking together — which can help prevent heart attacks and stroke — at levels comparable to uncoated aspirin. Bayer also noted that the price difference between its coated and uncoated aspirin was negligible, although Dr. FitzGerald argued there was no reason patients should use anything other than uncoated generic aspirin, which is cheaper.

“When used as directed,” the company said, “both enteric and nonenteric coated aspirin provides meaningful benefits, is safe and effective and is infrequently associated with clinically significant side effects.”

Although researchers had long observed that, as is true with most drugs, aspirin’s effects varied among patients, the existence of “aspirin resistance” gained currency in the 1990s and early 2000s. One often-cited study, published in 2003, found that about 5 percent of cardiovascular patients were aspirin-resistant and that that group was more than three times as likely as those not aspirin-resistant to suffer a major event like a heart attack.

But some said the popularity of aspirin resistance got a boost in part because of the development of urine and blood tests to measure it and the arrival on the market of drugs like Plavix, a more expensive prescription drug sold by Bristol-Myers Squibb that also thins the blood.

In the most recent study, the patients who initially tested positive for aspirin resistance later tested negative for it and by the end of the study, Dr. FitzGerald said, none of the patients showed true resistance. “Nobody had a stable pattern of resistance that was specific to coated aspirin,” he said. If resistance to aspirin exists, he said, “I think that the incidence is vanishingly small.”

Dr. Eric Topol, one of the authors of the 2003 study, said he strongly disagreed with Dr. FitzGerald’s conclusions, noting that it looked only at healthy volunteers, “which is very different than studying people who actually have heart disease or other chronic illnesses who are taking various medications.” Those conditions or medications could affect the way aspirin works in the body, he said.

But Dr. Topol and Dr. FitzGerald did agree that there was little value in testing for whether someone was aspirin-resistant, in part because there was little evidence that knowing someone is resistant to aspirin will prevent a heart attack or stroke.

Representatives for Accumetrics, which sells a blood test, and Corgenix, which sells a urine test, maintained that there was value in determining how well aspirin worked in individual patients, and said more recent research on the issue has moved away from a stark determination of whether someone is resistant to aspirin. “This whole concept of drug resistance has moved past that term and moved into the level of response that someone has,” said Brian Bartolomeo, market development manager at Accumetrics.

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Report Bolsters Case for Large U.S. Natural Gas Exports

HOUSTON — In a victory for the oil and gas industry, a federal Energy Department study released Wednesday concluded that the national economic benefits of significant natural gas exports far outweighed the potential for higher consumer energy prices.

The Obama administration has been cautious on whether to embrace large exports of gas out of concern that consumers who rely on gas for heating and cooking could see their utility prices rise. Higher exports could raise costs to manufacturers that now benefit from a glut of cheap gas, some economists warn, although huge terminal projects would generate thousands of construction jobs and gas could be a lucrative export earner.

The new report, prepared by NERA Economic Consulting for the government, concluded that domestic gas prices would not rise sharply as a result of exports and that expanded export revenue would generally help most Americans.

Noting that gas exports could produce up to $47 billion in new economic activity in 2020, when many new terminals would be up and running, the report said, “welfare improvement is highest under the high export volume scenarios because U.S. consumers benefit from an increase in wealth transfer and export revenues.”

Only a decade ago, it appeared that the country’s domestic gas supplies were drying up, and that huge amounts of expensive gas in liquefied form would have to be imported from Trinidad, Africa and the Middle East. But over the last few years, a technological revolution has occurred in shale gas fields across the country, producing a glut that has driven the price of natural gas down by two-thirds since 2008.

The report, the second Energy Department study this year, is likely to be challenged by manufacturing and chemical companies like Dow Chemical warn that large-scale exports that raise domestic gas prices would hurt their ability to compete with foreign firms.

Yet oil and gas companies are eager for exports to bolster the lagging price of natural gas, and the report is likely to spur a competitive lobbying campaign for regulatory approval of export terminals. Executives in the oil and gas industry were enthusiastic about the report. “It’s great news,” said Rodney Waller, a senior vice president at Range Resources, a natural gas producer. “It’s encouraging to see that experts are joining the expectation that we are in a global marketplace and the United States has a huge opportunity to generate economic growth and at the same time reduce our energy costs.”

But several powerful members of Congress, including Senator Ron Wyden, the Oregon Democrat who is in line to be the next chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, have opposed large-scale exports.

In a recent letter to the energy secretary, Steven Chu, Senator Wyden noted the importance of the country’s newfound gas wealth to “improve the economic competitiveness of American manufacturers” and that “U.S. law has long held that imports and exports of energy must be considered differently than other commodities.”

The Sierra Club and other environmental groups have joined the opposition to exports in a bid to limit domestic production, which is increasingly dependent on hydraulic fracturing, a technique that blasts open shale rock with water, sand and chemicals to release gas and oil. Environmentalists say drinking water supplies can be put in jeopardy, a charge disputed by the oil industry.

The Center for Liquefied Natural Gas, a trade group whose members include ExxonMobil, Sempra Energy and Royal Dutch Shell, has argued that more gas exports will bolster domestic gas production and with it expand demand for oil field equipment and steel piping.

The Energy Department report noted that large exports of gas would produce “some shifts in output by industrial sectors” and “the electricity sector, energy-intensive sector and natural gas dependent goods and services producers will all be impacted by price increases.” Industries that are likely to be most impacted, economists say, would be producers of chemicals and fertilizers.

But the report said that natural gas exports could produce $10 billion to $30 billion of annual export revenue. The country now exports some gas by pipeline.

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