U.S. Drone Strike Kills a Top Pakistani Militant

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — An American drone strike killed a top Pakistani militant commander in a northwestern tribal region, security officials said on Thursday. The death of the commander, Maulvi Nazir, was seen as a serious blow to Taliban fighters who attack United States and allied forces in neighboring Afghanistan.

S.K Khan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Maulvi Nazir in South Waziristan in 2007.

The drone strike took place on Wednesday night and targeted Mr. Nazir’s vehicle in the Angoor Adda area in South Waziristan. Five other people were also killed, including one of his key aides, officials said.

“He has been killed. It is confirmed,” said a senior Pakistani intelligence officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “The vehicle he was traveling in was hit.”

Mr. Nazir was traveling from Birmal to Wana, the main town in South Waziristan, when his vehicle was struck by the drone.

In a separate drone strike in North Waziristan on Thursday morning, at least four people were killed when a vehicle was targeted. The identities of those killed were not immediately known.

Mr. Nazir, believed to be in his 30s, was based in the western part of the South Waziristan tribal region. He led the Ahmadzai Wazir tribe, and his loyalists regularly joined attacks on American forces across the porous border with Afghanistan. Unlike other Taliban factions, Mr. Nazir’s fighters did not attack Pakistani military or government targets, instead focusing on the war inside Afghanistan. He was believed to have signed a peace pact with the Pakistani military.

Mr. Nazir was allied with Hafiz Gul Bahadur, a leading warlord in North Waziristan. The nonconfrontational posture of the two commanders toward the Pakistani military often led to them being labeled here as “good Taliban.”

Asad Munir, a former Pakistan Army brigadier and the intelligence chief in Peshawar, said the killing of Mr. Nazir could lead to a spurt in violence.

“A dangerous scenario for Pakistani military would be joining of hands of Hafiz Gul Bahadur and Maulvi Nazir supporters with Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan.”

Mr. Munir said the area controlled by Mr. Nazir’s forces had been “relatively peaceful” but his death increased the chances of attacks on military targets. Mr. Nazir had survived two earlier drone strikes. In November, he survived a suicide attack, which was blamed on Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or T.T.P., the Pakistani Taliban who conduct attacks inside Pakistan. After the suicide attack, he expelled rival Mehsud tribesmen from territory controlled by his fighters.

Mr. Nazir also opposed the presence of Uzbek fighters inside Pakistan and, with the help of the Pakistani military, pushed Uzbeks out of his region several years ago.

Some analysts said that militants like Mr. Nazir could be troublesome for the Pakistani military once the withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan begins in 2014.

“Maulvi Nazir would probably have posed a problem for the Pakistan Army if and when a political settlement is reached in Afghanistan in 2014. But in the interim, the killing of Nazir and his deputies likely hurts the Pakistan Army’s efforts against the T.T.P. in South Waziristan,” said Arif Rafiq, an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute, based in Washington.

“Nazir would probably have wanted to hold on to his local jihadist fiefdom, making him a long-term threat for the Pakistani state,” said Mr. Rafiq.

The suspicion that the Pakistani military gave a nod to Mr. Nazir’s killing could result in attacks on Pakistani troops in some areas in South Waziristan, analysts said.

Pakistani officials publicly denounce American drone strikes but have privately acknowledged the effectiveness of the campaign.

Ismail Khan reported from Peshawar, Pakistan.

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Fake John le Carré Twitter Account Fakes J.K. Rowling’s Fake Twitter Death

We’ve seen “Cormac McCarthy” Tweet apocalyptic non sequiturs. “Philip Roth” promised us a bite-sized short story. Now a fake Twitter account for British spy novelist John le Carré is spreading bizarre death rumors about J.K. Rowling. After a few days of Tweeting harmless missives, the week-old handle @JLecarre dropped this would-be bombshell on its nearly 2,500 followers Wednesday morning: 

A terrible news. My publisher phones me announcing that J.K. Rowling dies by accident. Few minutes ago. No words!

— John le Carré (@JLecarre) January 2, 2013

OK, there are at least three dead-giveaways that this is a fake account. One: If J.K. Rowling had died, does anyone credibly think John le Carré would be the one breaking the news? Rowling and le Carré don’t even share a publisher—he’s with Penguin and she’s printed by Little, Brown and Company—making this story even more implausible. Two: As noted by le Carré’s literary agent Jonny Geller, the “L” in the author’s name shouldn’t be capitalized, as it is in the handle of this hoax account. Three: Phrases like “a terrible news” and “my publisher phones me” sound more like snippets from an ESL workbook than lines from an author praised for his chilly, controlled prose style. This could again be the work of Italian media troll Tommaso De Benedetti, who copped to creating a fake Philip Roth account recently. “Twitter works well for deaths,” he told The Guardian‘s Tom Kington, describing his M.O. for spreading misinformation about the deaths of public figures like Fidel Castro and Pedro Almodóvar. 

RELATED: Pippa’s Sales Figures Are Nothing to ‘Celebrate’; Salman Rushdie and John le Carré Call Truce

Too bad John le Carrè isn’t actually on Twitter, though. Imagine the flame wars he would get into with longtime adversary Salman Rushdie—who most certainly is on Twitter, and loves using it to throw literate shade. And too bad this isn’t the handiwork of someone with more imagination—someone like the unpublished Scottish novelist behind @cormaccmccarthy. Outed right here on The Atlantic Wire, Michael Crossan at least had the chops to fool Margaret Atwood and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey with dead-on spoofs of McCarthy’s writing: 

RELATED: Salman Rushdie’s Video Speech Gets Spiked; The World’s Priciest Books

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Depardieu, in tax fight, gets Russian citizenship

MOSCOW (AP) — Gerard Depardieu, the French actor who has waged a battle against a proposed super-tax on millionaires in his native country, has been granted Russian citizenship.

A brief announcement on the Kremlin website on Thursday revealed that President Vladimir Putin signed the citizenship grant following an application from the actor.

The former Oscar nominee and star of the movie "Green Card" has been vocal in his opposition to French President Francois Hollande's plans to raise the tax on earned income above €1 million ($1.33 million) to 75 percent from the current high of 41 percent. Russia has a flat 13-percent tax rate.

"I have never killed anyone, I don't think I've been unworthy, I've paid €145 million in taxes over 45 years," Depardieu wrote in an open letter in mid-December to Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, who had called the actor "pathetic."

"I will neither complain nor brag, but I refuse to be called 'pathetic,'" the 64-year-old actor wrote in his response.

A representative for the former Oscar nominee declined to say whether he had accepted the Russian offer, and refused all comment. Thursday was a holiday in Russia and officials from the Federal Tax Service and Federal Migration Service could not be reached for comment on whether the decision would require Depardieu to have a residence in Russia.

Depardieu said in his letter to Ayrault that he would surrender his passport and French social security card. In October, the mayor of a small Belgian border town announced that Depardieu had bought a house and set up legal residence there, a move that was slammed by the newly-elected Socialist government.

Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, the French government spokeswoman, didn't comment directly on Depardieu's tax fight, but drew a clear distinction between people who have personal or professional reasons to live abroad, and "French citizens who proclaim loudly and clearly that they they're exiling themselves for fiscal reasons."

She said Putin's offer "is an exclusive prerogative of the Russian chief of state."

Depardieu has had increasingly high-profile ties with Russia. Last October he visited the capital of Chechnya, Grozny, to celebrate the birthday of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov. And in 2011, he was in Russia's Arkhangelsk region to play the lead role in the film "Rasputin."

"You have to understand that Depardieu is a star in Russia," Vladimir Fedorovski, a Russian writer living in France, told the network Europe 1 on Thursday. "There are crowds around Depardieu. He's a symbol of France. He's a huge ambassador of French culture."

Though France's highest court struck down the two-year tax on Dec. 29, the government has promised to resubmit the law in a slightly different form soon. On Wednesday it estimated that the court decision to overturn the tax would cost it €210 million in 2013.

In an interview published Sunday, Depardieu told the Sunday Parisien that the court decision made no difference.

France's debt burden is around 90 percent of national income — not far off levels that have caused problems elsewhere in the 17-country eurozone.

Depardieu has made more than 150 films, among them the 1991 comedy "Green Card" about a man who enters into a marriage of convenience in order to get U.S. residency. Most famously, Depardieu was nominated for an Academy Award for his role as Cyrano de Bergerac in the 1990 film by the same name.

The Kremlin statement gave no information on why Putin made the citizenship grant, but the Russian president expressed sympathy with the actor in December, days after Depardieu reportedly said he was considering Russian citizenship.

"As we say, artists are easily offended and therefore I understand the feelings of Mr. Depardieu," Putin said.

Although France and Russia disagree sharply about how to resolve the civil war in Syria, the two countries have strong commercial relations. In 2011, Russia signed a contract worth more than €1 billion ($1.33 billion) Friday to buy two French warships — the largest military deal between a NATO country and Moscow.

Depardieu is well known in Russia, where he appears in an ad for Sovietsky Bank's credit card and is prominently featured on the bank's home page.

Depardieu is not the only high-profile Frenchman to object to the super-tax. Bernard Arnault — chief of the luxury goods and fashion giant LVMH and worth an estimated $41 billion — has also said he would leave for Belgium.

France's Civil Code says one must have another nationality in order to give up French citizenship because it is forbidden to be stateless. Thursday's decision by the Kremlin appears to fulfill that requirement.

____

Hinnant contributed from Paris. Silvie Corbet also contributed from Paris.

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Hillary Clinton Is Discharged From Hospital After Blood Clot

Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose globe-trotting tour as secretary of state was abruptly halted last month by a series of health problems, was discharged from a New York hospital on Wednesday evening after several days of treatment for a blood clot in a vein in her head.

The news of her release was the first welcome sign in a troubling month that grounded Mrs. Clinton — preventing her from answering questions in Congress about the State Department’s handling of the lethal attack on an American mission in Libya or being present when President Obama announced Senator John Kerry as his choice for her successor when she steps down as secretary of state.

“Her medical team advised her that she is making good progress on all fronts, and they are confident she will make a full recovery,” Philippe Reines, a senior adviser to Mrs. Clinton, said in a statement.

Mrs. Clinton, 65, was admitted to NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia hospital on Sunday after a scan discovered the blood clot. The scan was part of her follow-up care for a concussion she sustained more than two weeks earlier, when she fainted and fell, striking her head. According to the State Department, the fainting was caused by dehydration, brought on by a stomach virus. The concussion was diagnosed on Dec. 13, though the fall had occurred earlier that week.

The clot was potentially serious, blocking a vein that drains blood from the brain. Untreated, such blockages can lead to brain hemorrhages or strokes. Treatment consists mainly of blood thinners to keep the clot from enlarging and to prevent more clots from forming, and plenty of fluids to prevent dehydration, which is a major risk factor for blood clots.

Photographed leaving the hospital, Mrs. Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, and their daughter, Chelsea, appeared elated. In a Twitter post on Wednesday, Chelsea Clinton said, “Grateful my Mom discharged from the hospital & is heading home. Even more grateful her medical team confident she’ll make a full recovery.”

Dr. David J. Langer, a brain surgeon and associate professor at Hofstra North Shore-LIJ School of Medicine, said that Mrs. Clinton would need close monitoring in the next days, weeks and months to make sure her doses of blood thinners are correct and that the clot is not growing. Dr. Langer is not involved in her care.

Mrs. Clinton’s illness cuts short what would have been a victory lap for her at the State Department. With only a few weeks before the end of President Obama’s first term — the time frame she set for her own departure — she will be able to do little more than say goodbye to her troops.

But she will, at least theoretically, be able to testify before the Senate and House about the attack on the American mission in Benghazi, Libya, which killed four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. She was not able to appear at a hearing in December because of her illness. Republicans, who have sharply criticized the Obama administration’s handling of the attack and its aftermath, had demanded that she appear to explain the department’s role, though in recent days they have modulated their request.

Mrs. Clinton’s blood clot formed in a large vein along the side of her head, behind her right ear, between the brain and the skull. The vein, called the right transverse sinus, has a matching vessel on the left side. These veins drain blood from the brain; blockages can cause strokes or brain hemorrhages. But if only one transverse sinus is blocked, the vein on other side can usually handle the extra flow.

In one sense, Mrs. Clinton was lucky: a clot higher in this drainage system, in a vessel with no partner to take the overflow, would have been far more dangerous, according to Dr. Geoffrey T. Manley, the vice chairman of neurological surgery at the University of California, San Francisco. He is not involved in her care.

The fact that Mrs. Clinton had a blood clot in the past — in her leg, in 1998 — suggests that she may have a tendency to form clots, and may need blood-thinners long-term or even for the rest of her life, Dr. Manley said.

One major risk to people who take blood thinners is that the drugs increase bleeding, so blows to the head from falls or other accidents — like the fall that caused Mrs. Clinton’s concussion — become more dangerous, and more likely to cause a brain hemorrhage. Even so, the medication should not interfere with Mrs. Clinton’s career, Dr. Manley said.

“There are lots of people running around on anticoagulants today,” he said. “I don’t see any way it would have any long-term consequences.”

He also said there was no reason to think that this type of clot would recur; he said he had treated many patients for the same condition and had never seen one come back with it again.

Dr. Langer said the vein blocked by the clot might or might not reopen. Sometimes, he said, the clot persists and the body covers it with tissue that closes or narrows the blood vessel. As long as the vein on the other side of the head is open, there is no problem for the patient.

One thing that is unclear, and that may never be known for sure, is what caused Mrs. Clinton’s blood clot. Around the second week in December, she reportedly contracted a stomach virus that caused vomiting and dehydration, passed out, fell and struck her head. A concussion was diagnosed several days after the fall, on Dec. 13, and the public was told Sunday that she had a blood clot, though its location was not revealed until the next day.

She had several risk factors for clots, including dehydration and her previous history of a clot. In addition, women are more prone than men to this type of clot, particularly when dehydrated. The fall may also have been a factor, though it is not clear whether her head injury was serious enough to have caused a blood clot. The type of clot she had is far more likely to be associated with a skull fracture than with a concussion, several experts said.

Did overwork — frequent overseas trips, perpetual jet lag, high-pressure meetings — make her ill? Mrs. Clinton has kept up a punishing schedule since she declared her candidacy for president in 2007. Having logged more than 950,000 miles and visited 112 countries, she is one of the most-traveled secretaries of state in history. She has put on weight and in recent times appeared fatigued. But the same could be said of plenty of people who do not develop clots in their heads.

“You cannot tell me that her hard work resulted in this,” Dr. Langer said. “I can’t imagine that you could make that judgment.”

In theory, Dr. Manley said, exhaustion can weaken the immune system temporarily, and lower a person’s resistance to infections like the stomach virus that apparently started Mrs. Clinton’s problems. But in his opinion, the most important contributing factor to her blood clot was probably the head injury from her fall.

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Biogen Gives Up on Drug for Lou Gehrig’s Disease

A closely watched experimental drug to treat Lou Gehrig’s disease failed to work in a late-stage clinical trial, the drug’s developer, Biogen Idec, said Thursday. The company said it would discontinue further work on the drug.

Biogen said that the drug was not effective in either slowing the loss of muscular function or prolonging the lives of people with the disease, formally known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or A.L.S.

There were also no signs that the drug, dexpramipexole, worked in any subgroup of patients, Biogen said.

“As a physician who has treated people with A.L.S., I hoped with all my heart for a different outcome,'’ Dr. Douglas Kerr, director of neurodegeneration clinical research at Biogen, said in a statement.

A.L.S., which attacks the nerves that control muscles, causes gradual paralysis and typically results in death within a few years of diagnosis. There are about 30,000 Americans with the disease.

There is only one drug approved to treat it, Rilutek, made by Sanofi, which doctors say has only modest effectiveness. Many other drugs have failed in clinical trials, in part because scientists do not understand the cause of A.L.S. and therefore do not know how to treat it.

While expectations had not been that high that dexpramipexole would succeed in its phase 3 trial, they were higher than for many previous A.L.S. drugs, given what some doctors viewed as strong results in a smaller, phase 2 trial.

“I’m more excited about this compound than any compound I’ve ever tested in A.L.S.,'’ Dr. Robert Miller, director of A.L.S. research at the California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco, said in April on a call with investors hosted by Deutsche Bank. Patients getting the highest dose had an almost a 50 percent slower decline in muscular function than those receiving a placebo.

Biogen had licensed dexpramipexole from Knopp Biosciences, a privately held company in Pittsburgh. Biogen’s trial included 943 patients in 11 countries. The main measurement of success was a composite that took into account both deaths from the disease and the decline of functionality. Patients in the trial were allowed to take Rilutek.

Dr. Jeffrey D. Rothstein, director of the Brain Science Institute at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said the results were disappointing but not surprising.

“We really, really need a new drug,'’ Dr. Rothstein, who was not involved in the phase 3 trial, said by e-mail. He said he thought the phase 2 results for dexpramipexole had been only “marginal,'’ so he was not surprised the latest trial did not succeed.

The reaction on Wall Street was somewhat muted because of the modest expectations for the trial to succeed. Biogen’s shares were down about 4 percent.

“We (and most of the Street) had characterized this trial as a high risk trial,'’ Mark Schoenebaum, an analyst at ISI Group, wrote in a research note Thursday.

Other companies are also developing drugs to treat A.L.S. Neuraltus Pharmaceuticals, a privately held company in Palo Alto, Calif., is preparing to enter the final stage of clinical trials for NP001.

The company announced in late October that its phase 2 trial, which involving 136 patients, failed to show a statistically significant benefit compared to a placebo. But the company said that 27 percent of patients getting the high dose of NP001 had no progression of their disease for six months, two and a half times as many as in the placebo group.

Cytokinetics, of South San Francisco, Calif., is in mid-stage testing of a compound, tirasemtiv, which might make muscles respond more forcefully to nerve signals.

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Dozens Dead in Attack on Gas Station Near Damascus

AMMAN (Reuters) - At least 30 civilians were killed on Wednesday when Syrian warplanes bombed a petrol station in a rebellious suburb on the eastern edge of Damascus, two opposition campaigners on the scene said.

"I counted at least 30 bodies. They were either burnt or dismembered," said Abu Saeed, an activist who arrived at the area in the Muleiha suburb of Damascus an hour after the raid occurred at 1:00 PM (1100 GMT).

Another activist, Abu Fouad, said warplanes had bombarded the area as a consignment of fuel arrived and crowds packed the station.

Video footage taken by activists, which could not be independently verified, showed a body of a man a helmet on a motorcycle amid flames that had engulfed the site, apparently hit while in a line of vehicles waiting for petrol. A man was also shown carrying a dismembered body.

Muleiha is one of a series of Sunni Muslim suburbs ringing the capital that have been at the forefront of the 21 month revolt against the rule of President Bashar al-Assad, who belongs to the Shi'ite-derived Alawite minority sect.

Government forces control the center of Damascus and have been pounding the suburbs from the air.

(Reporting by Khaled Yacoub Oweis, Amman newsroom; Editing by Peter Graff)

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Your Snapchats aren’t safe: How to secretly save videos from Snapchat or Facebook’s ‘Poke’

Argue though its executives might, Snapchat is good for two things: sending photos and videos of yourself making stupid faces, and sending photos and videos of yourself naked. The latter, of course, is the more compelling function since that is exactly what the app was designed for. When users send pictures or videos, the recipient can only view them for a set amount of time before they “self-destruct.” Yes, a recipient can take a screenshot but the sender is automatically alerted when that occurs — then, as the saying goes, fool me once… As it turns out, however, Snapchat users (and users of “Poke,” Facebook’s (FB) Snapchat ripoff) can easily save photos and full-length videos received through the service without the sender ever knowing.

[More from BGR: Five tech resolutions for 2013]

As recently relayed by BuzzFeed’s Katie Notopoulos, saving photos and videos from Snapchat or Poke is as easy as connecting a phone to a computer and opening a file browser. The file browser is free and the “trick” requires no jailbreak or any other kind of hack.

[More from BGR: Can Samsung survive without Android?]

Start by leaving the photos and videos you receive in Snapchat or Poke unopened; as soon as a file is viewed, the countdown to its deletion begins.

Then simply connect to a computer and open a free iPhone file explorer like i-FunBox. Open the “User Applications” folder, navigate to the “Snapchat” entry and voilà, all of the photos and videos you have received and not yet opened are available to be copied to your computer’s hard drive.

Then go back and view them normally in the app and the sender will be none the wiser.

The file path is a bit different for Facebook’s Poke app but the end result is the same.

This article was originally published by BGR

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Playboy Hugh Hefner marries his 'runaway bride'

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Hugh Hefner's celebrating the new year as a married man once again.

The 86-year-old Playboy magazine founder exchanged vows with his "runaway bride," Crystal Harris, at a private Playboy Mansion ceremony on New Year's Eve. Harris, a 26-year-old "Playmate of the Month" in 2009, broke off a previous engagement to Hefner just before they were to be married in 2011.

Playboy said on Tuesday that the couple celebrated at a New Year's Eve party at the mansion with guests that included comic Jon Lovitz, Gene Simmons of KISS and baseball star Evan Longoria.

The bride wore a strapless gown in soft pink, Hefner a black tux. Hefner's been married twice before but lived the single life between 1959 and 1989.

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Well: Good and Bad, the Little Things Add Up in Fitness

Phys Ed

Gretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness.

The past year in fitness has been alternately inspiring, vexing and diverting, as my revisiting of all of the Phys Ed columns published in 2012 makes clear. Taken as a whole, the latest exercise-related science tells us that the right types and amounts of exercise will almost certainly lengthen your life, strengthen your brain, affect your waistline and even clear debris from inside your body’s cells. But too much exercise, other 2012 science intimates, might have undesirable effects on your heart, while popping painkillers, donning stilettos and sitting and reading this column likewise have their costs.

With New Year’s exercise resolutions still fresh and hopefully unbroken on this, day two of 2013, it now seems like the perfect time to review these and other lessons of the past year in fitness science.

First, since I am habitually both overscheduled and indolent, I was delighted to report, as I did in June, that the “sweet sport” for health benefits seems to come from jogging or moderately working out for only a brief period a few times a week.

Specifically, an encouraging 2012 study of 52,656 American adults found that those who ran 1 to 20 miles per week at an average pace of about 10 or 11 minutes per mile — my leisurely jogging speed, in fact — lived longer, on average, than sedentary adults. They also lived longer than the group (admittedly small) who ran more than 20 miles per week.

“These data certainly support the idea that more running is not needed to produce extra health and mortality benefits,” Dr. Carl J. Lavie, a cardiologist in New Orleans and co-author of the study told me. “If anything,” he said, “it appears that less running is associated with the best protection from mortality risk.”

Similarly, in a study from Denmark that I wrote about in September, a group of pudgy young men lost more weight after 13 weeks of exercising moderately for about 30 minutes several times a week than a separate group who worked out twice as much.

The men who exercised the most, the study authors discovered, also subsequently ate more than the moderate exercisers.

Even more striking, however, the vigorous exercisers subsequently sat around more each day than did the men who had exercised less, motion sensors worn by all of the volunteers showed.

“They were fatigued,” said Mads Rosenkilde, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Copenhagen and the study’s co-author.

Meanwhile, the men who had worked out for only about 30 minutes seemed to be energized by their new routines. They stood up, walked, stretched and even bounced in place more than they once had. “It looks like they were taking the stairs now, not the elevators, and just moving around more,” Mr. Rosenkilde said. “It was little things, but they add up.”

And that idea was, in fact, perhaps the most dominant exercise-science theme of 2012: that little things add up, with both positive and pernicious effects. Another of my favorite studies of 2012 found that a mere 10 minutes of physical activity increased life spans in adults by almost two years, even if the adults remained significantly overweight.

But the inverse of that finding proved to be equally true: not fitting periods of activity into a person’s daily life also affected life span. Perhaps the most chilling sentence that I wrote all year reported that, according to a large study of Western adults, “Every single hour of television watched after the age of 25 reduces the viewer’s life expectancy by 21.8 minutes.”

I am watching much less television these days.

But not all of the new fitness science I covered this year was quite so sobering or, to be honest, consequential. Some of the more practical studies simply validated common sense, including reports that to succeed in ball sports, keep your eye on the ball; during hot-weather exercise, pour cold water over your head; and, finally, on the day before a marathon, eat a lot.

But when I think about the science that has most affected how I plan my life, I return again and again to those studies showing that physical activity alters how long and how well we live. My days of heedless youth are behind me. So I won’t soon forget the study I wrote about in September detailing how moderate, frequent physical activity in midlife can delay the onset of illness and frailty in old age. Exercise won’t prevent you from aging, of course. Only death does that. But this study and others from this year underscore that staying active, even in moderate doses, dramatically improves how your aging body feels and responds.

Aging also inspired my favorite reader comment of 2012, which was posted in response to a research scientist’s name. “‘Dr. Head,’” the reader wrote. “That shall be the name of my all-senior-citizen metal band,” which, if its members gyrate and vigorously bound about like Mick Jagger on his recent tour, should ensure themselves decades in which to robustly perform.

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With a Mall Boom in Russia, Property Investors Go Shopping

MOSCOW — Shoppers who find that 250 stores aren’t enough can go ice skating, watch movies or even ride a carousel, all under a single roof.

While it sounds like the Mall of America, this mall is outside Moscow, not Minneapolis.

“I feel like I’m in Disneyland,” Vartyan E. Sarkisov, a shopper toting an Adidas bag, said recently while making the rounds of the Mega Belaya Dacha mall.

Instead of bread lines, Russia is known these days for malls. They are booming businesses, drawing investments from sovereign wealth funds and Wall Street banks, most recently Morgan Stanley, which paid $1.1 billion a year ago for a single mall in St. Petersburg.

One mall, called Vegas, rose out of a cucumber field on the edge of Moscow and became, its owners say, larger than the Mall of America if the American mall’s seven-acre amusement park is not counted in the calculation of floor space.

A few offramps away on the Moscow beltway, another mall scored a different kind of victory: the Mega Tyoply Stan shopping center drew 57 million visitors at its peak in 2007, well ahead of the 40 million annual visits reported by the Mall of America.

As American malls dodder into old age, gaptoothed with vacancies, Russia’s shopping centers are just now blossoming into their boom years, nourished by oil exports that are lifting wages.

“It’s 1982 all over again in Russia,” said Lee Timmins, the country representative of Hines, a Texas-based real estate group that is opening three outlet malls in Russia, referring to the heyday of the American mall experience. Russians, he said, love malls.

The mall boom illustrates an extraordinarily important theme in Russian economics these days. The growing crowds at malls, and the keen interest in Russian malls on the part of Wall Street banks, are signs that the emerging middle class that made up the street protests against Vladimir V. Putin in Moscow last winter is becoming a force in business as well as politics.

Investors, who with money at stake are a bellwether of the new trends, are not waiting for the next round of protests; they are already placing bets on the rise of a broad affluent class in Russia.

“Over the past 10 years, Russia has turned into a middle-class country,” Charles Slater, a retail analyst at Cushman & Wakefield, a commercial real estate consulting firm, said in an interview. “What better to do than go to an enclosed, warm environment with many things on offer, whether that be bowling, cinema or food courts, things the customers have not been used to in the past?”

Moscow now has 82 malls, including two of the largest in Europe, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers, a New York-based trade association. Both are owned by Ikea Shopping Centers Russia, the branch of the Swedish assemble-it-yourself furniture franchise that manages 14 malls here. In Russia, malls are still novel; the first Western-style suburban mall opened in 2000. They are now changing hands as developers sell to institutional investors, like Morgan Stanley, shedding light for the first time on their eye-popping values.

At the core of the attraction for investors is the rising disposable income of Russians, nudged along by policies favoring the middle class, lest their challenge to President Putin’s rule intensify.

Russia has a flat 13 percent income tax rate. Most Russians own their homes, a legacy of post-Soviet privatizations, and so pay no mortgage or rent. Health care is socialized.

Not surprisingly, then, Russians have become fanatical shoppers. Russians spend 60 percent of their pretax income on retail purchases, a category that includes food, according to Jones Lang LaSalle, a real estate consulting firm. The country in second place in Europe is Sweden, where retailing accounts for 40 percent of total private spending. Germans, by comparison, spend 28 percent of their salaries shopping, according to Jones Lang LaSalle.

Malls, where the secrets of Western capitalism were finally peeled open and laid bare, with fast food, clothes, ice rinks, electronics and appliances wherever the eye falls, have mesmerized shoppers here — much as they did in their early years in the United States, from the 1960s to the 1980s.

Olga N. Zaitsova, 55, who was in the Mega Belaya Dacha mall with her granddaughter Anastasia, said she came every weekend, drawn by the warm play area for toddlers. “It’s just not comfortable to be outside when it’s so cold,” she said.

When she shops, she said, “now we buy things we want, not things we need.”

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