Consumers Cut Spending in October

WASHINGTON — Americans cut back on spending last month and saw no growth in their income, the Commerce Department said Friday, reflecting disruptions from Hurricane Sandy that could hold back economic growth in the final months of the year.

Consumer spending dropped 0.2 percent in October, the government said. That was down from an increase of 0.8 percent in September and was the weakest showing since May.

Income was flat in the month, following a 0.4 percent rise in September.

The government said work interruptions caused by the late October storm reduced wages and salaries by about $18 billion at an annual rate. Hurricane Sandy affected 24 states, with the most severe damage in New York and New Jersey.

Consumers may also be worried about automatic tax increases and spending cuts that will take effect in January if lawmakers and the Obama administration fail to strike a deal before then.

The depressed spending figures suggest economic growth are likely to be weak in the October-December quarter. Consumer spending drives nearly 70 percent of economic activity in the United States.

Discounting the effects of the storm, income growth would have risen a still-weak 0.1 percent. After-tax income adjusted for inflation fell 0.1 percent, while spending adjusted for inflation dropped 0.3 percent.

The saving rate edged up slightly, to 3.4 percent of after-tax income in October, compared with 3.3 percent in September.

The government reported Thursday that the overall economy grew at an annual rate of 2.7 percent in the July-September quarter, an improvement from the 2 percent rate of growth initially estimated. However, economists believe the acceleration in activity will be short-lived.

Many of them predict growth is slowing in the current October-December quarter to less than 2 percent, a rate that is too weak to make a significant dent in unemployment. But they expect growth to rebound in the New Year when the rebuilding phase begins in the Northeast.

In October, spending at retail businesses fell 0.3 percent, the first drop after three months of gains. Auto sales dropped 1.5 percent, the biggest decline in a year.

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Hacking Report Criticizes Murdoch Newspaper and British Press Standards

LONDON — The leader of a major inquiry into the standards of British newspapers triggered by the phone hacking scandal offered an excoriating critique of the press as a whole on Thursday, saying it displayed “significant and reckless disregard for accuracy,” and urged the press to form an independent regulator to be underpinned by law.

Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Lord Justice Sir Brian Leveson on Thursday with his inquiry on press standards.

The report singled out Rupert Murdoch’s defunct tabloid The News of the World for sharp criticism.

“Too many stories in too many newspapers were the subject of complaints from too many people with too little in the way of titles taking responsibility, or considering the consequences for the individuals involved,” the head of the inquiry, Lord Justice Sir Brian Leveson, said in a 46-page summary of the findings in his long-awaited, 1,987-page report published in four volumes.

“The ball moves back into the politicians’ court,” Sir Brian said, referring to what form new and tighter regulations should take. “They must now decide who guards the guardians.”

The report was published after some 337 witnesses testified in person in 9 months of hearings that sought to unravel the close ties between politicians, the press and the police, reaching into what were depicted as an opaque web of links and cross-links within the British elite as well as a catalog of murky and sometimes unlawful practices within the newspaper industry.

“This inquiry has been the most concentrated look at the press this country has ever seen,” Sir Brian said after the report was made public.

But in a first reaction, Prime Minister David Cameron resisted the report’s recommendation that a new form of press regulation should be underpinned by laws, telling lawmakers that they “should be wary” of “crossing the Rubicon” by enacting legislation with the potential to limit free speech and free expression.

Mr. Cameron’s remarks drew immediate criticism from the leader of the Labour opposition, Ed Miliband, who said Sir Brian’s proposals should be accepted in their entirety.

Mr. Cameron ordered the Leveson Inquiry in July, 2011, as the phone hacking scandal at The News of the World blossomed into broad public revulsion with reports that the newspaper had ordered the interception of voice mail messages left on the cellphone of Milly Dowler, a British teenager who was abducted in 2002 and later found murdered. Sir Brian said there had been a “failure of management and compliance” at the 168-year-old News of the World, which Mr. Murdoch closed in July, 2011, accusing it of a “general lack of respect for individual privacy and dignity.”

“It was said that The News of the World had lost its way in relation to phone hacking,” the summary said. “Its casual attitude to privacy and the lip service it paid to consent demonstrated a far more general loss of direction.”

Speaking after the report was published, Sir Brian said that while the British press held a “privileged and powerful place in our society,” its “responsibilities have simply been ignored.”

“A free press in a democracy holds power to account. But, with a few honorable exceptions, the U.K. press has not performed that vital role in the case of its own power.”

“The press needs to establish a new regulatory body which is truly independent of industry leaders and of government and politicians,” he said. “Guaranteed independence, long-term stability and genuine benefits for the industry cannot be realized without legislation,” he said, adding: “This is not and cannot reasonably or fairly be characterized as statutory regulation of the press.”

In the body of the exhaustive report, reprising at length the testimony of many of the witnesses who spoke at the hearings, the document discusses press culture and ethics; explores the press’s attitude toward the subjects of its stories; and discusses the cozy relationship between the press and the police, and the press and politicians.

John F. Burns, Sandy Lark Turner and Sandy Macaskill contributed reporting.

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Tagliabue holds Saints bounties hearing in DC

WASHINGTON (AP) — Former NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue and lawyers for the league and the players' union have arrived for a hearing in the Saints bounties case.

Tagliabue is overseeing the latest round of player appeals in Washington.

Former Saints assistant Mike Cerullo, a key witness in the NFL's investigation, is scheduled to speak Thursday. Former New Orleans defensive coordinator Gregg Williams is to participate in Friday's session.

Two Saints players who were suspended, linebacker Jonathan Vilma and defensive end Will Smith, had said they plan to attend when Williams is there.

Vilma's lawyer attended Thursday's hearing at an office building.

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Medicare Is Faulted in Electronic Medical Records Conversion

The conversion to electronic medical records — a critical piece of the Obama administration’s plan for health care reform — is “vulnerable” to fraud and abuse because of the failure of Medicare officials to develop appropriate safeguards, according to a sharply critical report to be issued Thursday by federal investigators.

Mike Spencer/Wilmington Star-News, via Associated Press

Celeste Stephens, a nurse, leads a session on electronic records at New Hanover Regional Medical Center in Wilmington, N.C.

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services

Marilyn Tavenner, acting administrator for Medicare.

The use of electronic medical records has been central to the aim of overhauling health care in America. Advocates contend that electronic records systems will improve patient care and lower costs through better coordination of medical services, and the Obama administration is spending billions of dollars to encourage doctors and hospitals to switch to electronic records to track patient care.

But the report says Medicare, which is charged with managing the incentive program that encourages the adoption of electronic records, has failed to put in place adequate safeguards to ensure that information being provided by hospitals and doctors about their electronic records systems is accurate. To qualify for the incentive payments, doctors and hospitals must demonstrate that the systems lead to better patient care, meeting a so-called meaningful use standard by, for example, checking for harmful drug interactions.

Medicare “faces obstacles” in overseeing the electronic records incentive program “that leave the program vulnerable to paying incentives to professionals and hospitals that do not fully meet the meaningful use requirements,” the investigators concluded. The report was prepared by the Office of Inspector General for the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees Medicare.

The investigators contrasted the looser management of the incentive program with the agency’s pledge to more closely monitor Medicare payments of medical claims. Medicare officials have indicated that the agency intends to move away from a “pay and chase” model, in which it tried to get back any money it has paid in error, to one in which it focuses on trying to avoid making unjustified payments in the first place.

Late Wednesday, a Medicare spokesman said in a statement: “Protecting taxpayer dollars is our top priority and we have implemented aggressive procedures to hold providers accountable. Making a false claim is a serious offense with serious consequences and we believe the overwhelming majority of doctors and hospitals take seriously their responsibility to honestly report their performance.”

The government’s investment in electronic records was authorized under the broader stimulus package passed in 2009. Medicare expects to spend nearly $7 billion over five years as a way of inducing doctors and hospitals to adopt and use electronic records. So far, the report said, the agency has paid 74, 317 health professionals and 1,333 hospitals. By attesting that they meet the criteria established under the program, a doctor can receive as much as $44,000 for adopting electronic records, while a hospital could be paid as much as $2 million in the first year of its adoption. The inspector general’s report follows earlier concerns among regulators and others over whether doctors and hospitals are using electronic records inappropriately to charge more for services, as reported by The New York Times last September, and is likely to fuel the debate over the government’s efforts to promote electronic records. Critics say the push for electronic records may be resulting in higher Medicare spending with little in the way of improvement in patients’ health. Thursday’s report did not address patient care.

Even those within the industry say the speed with which systems are being developed and adopted by hospitals and doctors has led to a lack of clarity over how the records should be used and concerns about their overall accuracy.

“We’ve gone from the horse and buggy to the Model T, and we don’t know the rules of the road. Now we’ve had a big car pileup,” said Lynne Thomas Gordon, the chief executive of the American Health Information Management Association, a trade group in Chicago. The association, which contends more study is needed to determine whether hospitals and doctors actually are abusing electronic records to increase their payments, says it supports more clarity.

Although there is little disagreement over the potential benefits of electronic records in reducing duplicative tests and avoiding medical errors, critics increasingly argue that the federal government has not devoted enough time or resources to making certain the money it is investing is being well spent.

House Republicans echoed these concerns in early October in a letter to Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of health and human services. Citing the Times article, they called for suspending the incentive program until concerns about standardization had been resolved. “The top House policy makers on health care are concerned that H.H.S. is squandering taxpayer dollars by asking little of providers in return for incentive payments,” said a statement issued at the same time by the Republicans, who are likely to seize on the latest inspector general report as further evidence of lax oversight. Republicans have said they will continue to monitor the program.

In her letter in response, which has not been made public, Ms. Sebelius dismissed the idea of suspending the incentive program, arguing that it “would be profoundly unfair to the hospitals and eligible professionals that have invested billions of dollars and devoted countless hours of work to purchase and install systems and educate staff.” She said Medicare was trying to determine whether electronic records had been used in any fraudulent billing but she insisted that the current efforts to certify the systems and address the concerns raised by the Republicans and others were adequate.

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Media Decoder Blog: CNN Makes It Official: Zucker to Be New President

11:36 a.m. | Updated CNN made official Thursday morning its decision to install Jeff Zucker, the former chief executive of NBC, as the new president of CNN Worldwide.

The announcement culminated a monthslong search to find a replacement for Jim Walton, who had led CNN to record profits even as ratings for its American network, CNN/U.S., hit record lows. The network announced in July that Mr. Walton would step down at the end of the year.

What’s Next?

Many Paths for CNN

Jeff Zucker no doubt is getting much advice on how to revitalize the network: maybe add more celebrities or double-down on news or documentaries.

Mr. Zucker will be expected to revive the American network to competitive standing against its rivals, Fox News and MSNBC, even as it maintains its position as a nonpartisan news network opposing those speaking from the right (Fox) and left (MSNBC). CNN said that Mr. Zucker would start his new assignment in January.

He will arrive at CNN carrying the baggage of the collapse of NBC’s own broadcast network, which descended from dominance in prime time to last-place status under Mr. Zucker, even as the company’s cable networks, including MSNBC, thrived under him.

But Mr. Zucker also brings a reputation for leadership in news, which he forged in two tenures leading NBC’s “Today” show to dominance in morning ratings and profits.

Time Warner’s chief executive, Jeffrey L. Bewkes, and his deputy, Phil Kent, the head of Turner Broadcasting, were known to have sought candidates with the right combination of management skills, programming expertise and journalistic credibility to oversee CNN’s many channels and Web sites. There was a short list, and Mr. Zucker was on it from the beginning.

Walter Isaacson, who ran CNN from 2001 to 2003, preceding Mr. Walton, said Mr. Zucker was a smart choice because “CNN has great journalists, but what it has needed is an imaginative programmer who knows how to build good shows.”

Phil Griffin, the president of MSNBC, said that if anyone could “bring CNN back,” Mr. Zucker could. On Thursday he sounded excited about the competition to come. Referring to Roger Ailes, the Fox News chairman, Mr. Griffin said: “Ailes on one side, Zucker on the other: Game on.”

This year Mr. Zucker joined with his longtime friend Katie Couric to produce “Katie,” the syndicated talk show that started in September. There was no immediate word about who would take over the talk show. But Ms. Couric said in a statement on Thursday: “I’m very excited that Jeff has such a wonderful opportunity at CNN and equally excited for CNN. I’m also grateful that Jeff has been so instrumental in getting our show off to such a strong start and look forward to working with the fantastic staff we’ve assembled and building on the strong foundation we’ve created.”

At CNN Mr. Zucker will report to Mr. Kent, who said in a statement: “Jeff’s experience as a news executive is unmatched for its breadth and success. He built and sustained the No. 1 brand in morning news, and under his watch NBC’s signature news programming set a standard for quality and professionalism. As a programmer, a brand-builder and a leader, he will bring energy and new thinking to CNN. I couldn’t be happier to welcome him or more excited about what he’ll accomplish here.”

Mr. Zucker said in a news release that he was excited to return to work as a journalist, specifically “to daily news gathering and compelling storytelling in a place that values those above all else.”

Notably, Mr. Zucker will be based at CNN’s bureau in New York. Mr. Walton was based in Atlanta, where CNN has been headquartered since its inception in 1980. The change may signal a shift in power within the 4,000-employee organization.

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Bombings Are Said to Kill Dozens Near Syria’s Capital

Francisco Leong/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Rebels celebrated on top of a downed Syrian jet in Daret Azzeh, 20 miles west of Aleppo, on Wednesday.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Syrian state media said on Wednesday that 34 people and possibly many more had died in twin car bombings in a suburb populated by minorities only a few miles from the center of Damascus, the capital, as the civil war swirls from north to south claiming ever higher casualties. One estimate by the government’s opponents put the death toll at 47.

There were also reports from witnesses in Turkey and antigovernment activists in Syria that for the second successive day insurgents had shot down a government aircraft in the north of the country, offering further evidence that the rebels are seeking a major shift by challenging the government’s dominance of the skies. It was not immediately clear how the aircraft, apparently a plane, had been brought down.

Video posted on the Internet by rebels showed wreckage with fires still burning around it. The aircraft appeared to show a tail assembly clearly visible jutting out of the debris. Such videos are difficult to verify, particularly in light of the restrictions facing reporters in Syria. However, the episode on Wednesday seemed to be confirmed by other witnesses.

“We watched a Syrian plane being shot down as it was flying low to drop bombs,” said Ugur Cuneydioglu, who said he observed the incident from a Turkish border village in southern Hatay Province. “It slowly went down in flames before it hit the ground. It was quite a scene,” Mr. Cuneydioglu said.

Video posted by insurgents on the Internet showed a man in aviator coveralls being carried away. It was not clear if the man was alive but the video said he had been treated in a makeshift hospital. A voice off-camera says, “This is the pilot who was shelling residents’ houses.”

The aircraft was said to have been brought down while it was attacking the town of Daret Azzeh, 20 miles west of Aleppo and close to the Turkish border. The town was the scene of a mass killing last June, when the government and the rebels blamed each other for the deaths and mutilation of 25 people. The video posted online said the plane had been brought down by “the free men of Daret Azzeh soldiers of God brigade.”

On Tuesday, Syrian rebels said they shot down a military helicopter with a surface-to-air missile outside Aleppo and they uploaded video that appeared to confirm that rebels have put their growing stock of heat-seeking missiles to effective use.

In recent months, rebels have used mainly machine guns to shoot down several Syrian Air Force helicopters and fixed-wing attack jets. In Tuesday’s case, the thick smoke trailing the projectile, combined with the elevation of the aircraft, strongly suggested that the helicopter was hit by a missile.

Rebels hailed the event as the culmination of their long pursuit of effective antiaircraft weapons, though it was not clear if the downing on Tuesday was an isolated tactical success or heralded a new phase in the war that would present a meaningful challenge to the Syrian government’s air supremacy. In Damascus, the official SANA news agency said the explosions in Jaramana outside the city at around 7 a.m. were the work of “terrorists,” the word used by the authorities to denote rebel forces seeking the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad. Photographs on the SANA Web site showed wreckage and flames in what looked like a narrow alleyway with cars covered in chunks of debris from damaged buildings. The agency said the bombings were in the main square of Jaramana, which news reports said is largely populated by members of the Christian and Druse minorities. Residents said the neighborhood was home to many families who have fled other parts of Syria because of the conflict and to some Palestinian families. The blasts caused “huge material damage to the residential buildings and shops,” SANA said.

The photographs on the Web site showed shattered windows at the Abou Samra coffee house and gurneys laden with injured people clogging what seemed to be a hospital corridor.

SANA said two bombings in other neighborhoods caused minor damage. Activists reported that there were four explosions and said they were all “huge.”

Footage broadcast on Syria’s private Addounia channel and state television showed damage scarring gray six-story apartment houses above tangles of wrecked cars as ambulances arrived to transport the wounded and rescuers spraying rubble with fire hoses. The camera panned over bloodstained sidewalks.

The blasts seemed initially at least to shift the focus of the fighting from the north, where insurgents have claimed string of tactical breakthroughs in recent days, to areas ringing Damascus.

In the north in recent days, the insurgents also claimed to have seized air bases and a hydroelectric dam, apparently seeking both to expand their communications lines and to counter the government’s supremacy in the air.

The death toll from Wednesday’s bombings was not immediately confirmed. An activist group, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, initially said that 29 people had died but revised the figure later to 47, of whom 38 had been identified. Of the 120 injured, the rebel group said, 23 people were in serious condition, meaning that the tally could climb higher.

The explosions reflected the dramatic shift since Syria’s uprising began in March 2011 as a peaceful protest centered on the southern town of Dara’a. It has since spread across the land in a full-blown civil war pitting government forces against a rebel army of Army defectors, disaffected civilians and what the authorities say are foreign jihadists.

Hala Droubi reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Alan Cowell from Paris. Sebnem Arsu contributed reporting from Istanbul, and Hania Mourtada from Beirut, Lebanon.

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ACC presidents vote to add Louisville as member

The Atlantic Coast Conference has announced its presidents and chancellors have unanimously voted to add Louisville as the replacement for Maryland.

In a statement Wednesday, league Commissioner John Swofford said the addition of Louisville along with Notre Dame, Pittsburgh and Syracuse in the past 15 months has made the league stronger.

"With its aggressive approach to excellence in every respect, the University of Louisville will enhance our league's culture and commitment to the cornerstones we were founded on 60 years ago," Swofford said.

Maryland announced last week it would join the Big Ten in 2014.

A person familiar with the situation told The Associated Press that ACC leaders also considered Connecticut and Cincinnati over the past week before the vote to add Louisville during a conference call Wednesday morning. The person spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because the ACC hasn't released details of the expansion discussions.

Louisville athletic director Tom Jurich said school officials "sincerely appreciate this opportunity" and that the move will "open so many more doors for us both athletically ... and academically for our university."

"When it became apparent to us that we needed to make a move, the ACC is the perfect fit for us and we are so elated to be joining this prestigious conference," Jurich said in a statement.

It's unclear exactly when Louisville will join the ACC. The Cardinals will be the seventh Big East school to leave for the ACC in the past decade.

Politicians around Kentucky also cheered the move.

Louisville mayor Greg Fischer issued a statement calling the ACC's decision "a fantastic development for the university, the city and the state." U.S. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said in a statement the move was a credit to Jurich's leadership of the athletic department.

The Big East has a 27-month notification period for any member that wants to leave. The Big East has shown a willingness to negotiate, as it did with Pittsburgh and Syracuse, who paid $7.5 million each to get out early when the exit fee was $5 million.

The Big East has since increased that fee to $10 million.

This latest rapid-fire round of realignment was set off last week by the Big Ten's additions of Maryland and Rutgers, which will join that conference in 2014.

On Tuesday, the Big East added Tulane for all sports and East Carolina for football only, also beginning in 2014.

Adding Louisville will bring the ACC to an even 14 full members, with Pittsburgh and Syracuse beginning conference play in 2013.

Two months ago, the ACC announced the addition of Notre Dame for all the conference's sports but football, with the fiercely independent Fighting Irish committing to play five ACC football opponents each season. Most of Notre Dame's non-football sports have competed in the Big East since 1995.

Louisville's addition will add some extra juice to what's already one of the nation's premier conferences for men's basketball.

Louisville, currently ranked No. 5, brings a tradition-rich program to the ACC that has won two national championships and reached its ninth Final Four last season. In addition, Rick Pitino will give the league another marquee coaching name alongside Duke's Mike Krzyzewski, North Carolina's Roy Williams and soon Jim Boeheim of Syracuse.

The school's football program is a win away from earning a BCS berth. Charlie Strong's Cardinals travel to Rutgers on Thursday night for a game in which they could clinch the Big East's BCS bid.

The ACC's decision to add Louisville is a blow for Connecticut, which had been looking for a landing spot since Pittsburgh and Syracuse announced their Big East exits. UConn President Susan Herbst had indicated that an invitation to join that ACC is something the school would welcome.

___

AP Sports Writer Joedy McCreary in Raleigh, N.C., contributed to this report.

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Nurses Sue Douglas Kennedy for $200,000

Yana Paskova for The New York Times

Two nurses have accused Douglas Kennedy, a son of Robert F. Kennedy, of assault and battery, negligence and causing them emotional and physical distress after an episode involving his newborn son.

Two nurses in Westchester County have filed a $200,000 lawsuit against Douglas Kennedy, a son of Robert F. Kennedy, accusing him of assault and battery, negligence and causing them emotional and physical distress after an episode involving his newborn son.

The Journal News of Westchester reported that the lawsuit was filed on Tuesday, a week after a court in Mount Kisco, N.Y., acquitted Mr. Kennedy of child-endangerment and harassment charges.

The charges stemmed from Mr. Kennedy’s attempt in January to take his newborn son from a maternity ward.

The two nurses said Mr. Kennedy hurt them as they tried to prevent him from leaving with the newborn. Mr. Kennedy said he was just taking the baby outside for some fresh air.

In a statement, Mr. Kennedy vowed to fight the lawsuit and said it was an attempt to extort money from his family.

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Ex-NASA Scientist’s Data Fears Come True

In 2007, Robert M. Nelson, an astronomer, and 27 other scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory sued NASA arguing that the space agency’s background checks of employees of government contractors were unnecessarily invasive and violated their privacy rights.

Privacy advocates chimed in as well, contending that the space agency would not be able to protect the confidential details it was collecting.

The scientists took their case all the way to the Supreme Court only to lose last year.

This month, Dr. Nelson opened a letter from NASA telling him of a significant data breach that could potentially expose him to identity theft.

The very thing he and advocates worried about had occurred. A laptop used by an employee at NASA’s headquarters in Washington had been stolen from a car parked on the street on Halloween, the space agency said.

Although the laptop itself was password protected, unencrypted files on the laptop contained personal information on about 10,000 NASA employees — including details like their names, birth dates, Social Security numbers and in some cases, details related to background checks into employees’ personal lives.

Millions of Americans have received similar data breach notices from employers, government agencies, medical centers, banks and retailers. NASA in particular has been subject to “numerous cyberattacks” and computer thefts in recent years, according to a report from the Government Accountability Office, an agency that conducts research for Congress.

Even so, Dr. Nelson, who recently retired from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a research facility operated by the California Institute of Technology under a contract with NASA, stands out as a glaring example of security lapses involving personal data, privacy advocates say.

“To the extent that Robert Nelson looks like millions of other people working for firms employed by the federal government, this would seem to be a real problem,” said Marc Rotenberg, the executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, an advocacy group which filed a friend-of-the-court brief for Dr. Nelson in the Supreme Court case.

In a 2009 report titled “NASA Needs to Remedy Vulnerabilities in Key Networks,” the Government Accountability Office noted that the agency had reported 1,120 security incidents in fiscal 2007 and 2008 alone.

It also singled out an incident in 2009 in which a NASA center reported the theft of a laptop containing about 3,000 unencrypted files about arms traffic regulations and wind tunnel tests for a supersonic jet.

“NASA had not installed full-disk encryption on its laptops at all three centers,” the report said. “As a result, sensitive data transmitted through the unclassified network or stored on laptop computers were at an increased risk of being compromised.” Other federal agencies have had similar problems. In 2006, for example, the Department of Veteran’s Affairs reported the theft of an employee laptop and hard drive that contained personal details on about 26.5 million veterans. Last year, the G.A.O. cited the Internal Revenue Service for weaknesses in data control that could “jeopardize the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of financial and sensitive taxpayer information.”

Also last year, the Securities and Exchange Commission warned its employees that their confidential financial information, like brokerage transactions, might have been compromised because an agency contractor had granted data access to a subcontractor without the S.E.C.’s authorization.

In a phone interview, Dr. Nelson, the astronomer, said he planned to hold a news conference on Wednesday morning in which he would ask members of Congress to investigate NASA’s data collection practices and the recent data breach.

Robert Jacobs, a NASA spokesman, said the agency’s data security policy already adequately protected employees and contractors because it required computers to be encrypted before employees took them off agency premises. “We are talking about a computer that should not have left the building in the first place,” Mr. Jacobs said. “The data would have been secure had the employee followed policy.”

The government argued in the case Dr. Nelson filed that a law called the Privacy Act, which governs data collection by federal agencies, provided the scientists with sufficient protection. The case reached the Supreme Court, which upheld government background checks for employees of contractors. The roots of Dr. Nelson’s case against NASA date back to 2004 when the Department of Homeland Security, under a directive signed by President George Bush, required federal agencies to adopt uniform identification credentials for all civil servants and contract employees. As part of the ID card standardization process, the department recommended agencies institute background checks.

Several years later, when NASA announced it intended to start doing background checks at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Dr. Nelson and other scientists there objected.

Those security checks could have included inquiries into medical treatment, counseling for drug use, or any “adverse” information about employees such as sexual activity, or participation in protests, said Dan Stormer, a lawyer representing Dr. Nelson.

But Dr. Nelson and other long-term employees of the lab challenged the legality of those checks, arguing that they violated their privacy rights. NASA, they said, had not established a legitimate need for such extensive investigations about low-risk employees like themselves who did not have security clearances or handle confidential information. Dr. Nelson, for example, specializes in solar system science — concerning, for example, Jupiter’s moon Io and Titan, a moon of Saturn — and publishes his work in scientific journals

“It was an invitation to an open-ended fishing expedition,” Dr. Nelson said of the background checks.

In friend of the court briefs for Dr. Nelson, privacy groups cited many data security problems at federal agencies, arguing that there was a risk that NASA was not equipped to protect the confidential details it was collecting about employees and contractors.

In 2008, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco temporarily halted the background checks, saying that the case had raised important questions about privacy rights. But last year, the Supreme Court upheld the background investigations of employees of government contractors.

Dr. Nelson said he retired from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory last June rather than submit to a background check. He now works as a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute of Tucson.

NASA has contracted with ID Experts, a data breach company, to help protect employees whose data was contained on the stolen laptop against identity theft. Mr. Jacobs, the NASA spokesman, said the agency has encrypted almost 80 percent of its laptops and plans to encrypt the rest by Dec. 21. He added that he too received a letter from NASA warning that his personal information might have been compromised by the laptop theft.

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Changing of the Guard: Chinese Communists, New Leaders Chosen, Prepare for Next Round

BEIJING — When American diplomats in China scanned the political landscape this year for officials on a fast track to the Communist Party’s top ranks, one name jumped out: Hu Chunhua.

So in June, the United States ambassador, Gary F. Locke, traveled to Inner Mongolia, the coal-rich region of grasslands and boom cities, where Mr. Hu is party chief. At a banquet in Hohhot, the regional capital, Mr. Hu proudly opened a bottle of local liquor, and Mr. Locke joined in a toast.

Mr. Hu’s rising star got brighter this month when he was named one of 15 new members on the party’s 25-seat Politburo. Political analysts say he could be on track to ascend to the Politburo’s elite Standing Committee at the next party congress, in 2017. That would put him in the running for the top party job — and the mantle of leader of China — when Xi Jinping, the new party chief, steps down after his expected two five-year terms.

Mr. Hu is the most prominent of a clutch of political stars known as China’s “sixth generation.” They were handpicked by party leaders and elders years ago to succeed Mr. Xi’s fifth generation (the first generation was that of Mao Zedong). Now, those politicians are being slotted into some of the most important posts across China.

Political insiders say Mr. Hu will probably be sent soon to Guangdong, a coastal province that is central to China’s export economy. His closest rival, Sun Zhengcai, whom Mr. Locke also met this year, was posted earlier this month to Chongqing, the booming southwest municipality of 31 million once run by Bo Xilai, the disgraced party aristocrat.

If Mr. Hu and Mr. Sun both make it onto the Standing Committee in 2017, they would be in position to vie for the top two party posts in 2022, which would confer on them the state titles of president or premier.

Even as prominent voices across China are calling for greater political openness and a more democratic selection process, the promotions suggest that party leaders want to institutionalize the path to power that elders laid out in back-room deals for Mr. Xi and the new second-ranking party member, Li Keqiang. The two were the only fifth-generation officials selected for the Standing Committee in 2007, putting them ahead of their peers.

Mr. Hu and Mr. Sun, both 49, are the youngest members of the Politburo, and their new postings would be aimed at giving them exposure to the economic engines of China’s main industrial centers before they ascended further.

“The fact that they’re in the Politburo makes them far more competitive than others,” said Cheng Li, a scholar of Chinese politics at the Brookings Institution. “They’ll be tested in their current positions, but the tests work in their favor unless something terrible happens.”

Mr. Hu and Mr. Sun grew up during the Cultural Revolution; they were in their formative teenage and young adult years during the dawn of Deng Xiaoping’s “reform and opening” era in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when China experimented with market-economy policies and gradually opened to the world. The two men are better educated than most older leaders: Mr. Hu has a degree in Chinese literature from Peking University; Mr. Sun received a doctorate from China Agricultural University. While earning that degree, Mr. Sun studied in Britain for a half-year.

By some accounts, they are on opposite sides of the two competing patronage networks that have dominated Chinese politics in the post-Deng era. In broad terms, the main power centers revolve around Hu Jintao, 69, who just stepped down as party chief and civilian head of the military, and Jiang Zemin, his predecessor. A third pole is expected to emerge, as Mr. Xi, 59, who became the new party chief with the strong support of Mr. Jiang, tries to consolidate his power and move allies into important posts.

This year, Mr. Jiang, 86, though retired, quietly exerted enormous influence during the leadership transition to ensure that five of his allies got on to the seven-member Standing Committee. A central question in the coming years is how long Mr. Jiang will stay in decent health; last year, he suffered a severe illness.

Five Standing Committee members are expected to retire in 2017 because of an age limit. That means negotiations for those seats are already starting in earnest. Hu Jintao is expected to push hard for the younger Mr. Hu, who is no relation but is known as “Little Hu,” to get on the committee in the next round. Mr. Sun, meanwhile, is said by Mr. Li and several other analysts to be a protégé of Jia Qinglin, who recently stepped down from the Standing Committee and is close to Mr. Jiang. But there is also talk that Wen Jiabao, who is scheduled to retire as premier in March, could be another patron of Mr. Sun.

As Mr. Xi builds his power base, he may have as much say as Mr. Hu and Mr. Jiang over committee seats and other senior posts. That could throw a wrench into the current maneuvering by elders to secure prime jobs for the younger Mr. Hu, Mr. Sun and other sixth-generation stars, like Zhou Qiang, the party chief of Hunan Province and another protégé of Hu Jintao.

“Whether or not they’ll be able to take power and rule China is still a question mark,” said an editor of a party publication, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of security concerns. “The question for these leaders isn’t whether or not they’re capable. The key is whether or not Xi likes them.”

He added: “If Xi likes someone, this person won’t have any problems. But if Xi doesn’t like him, then one crisis could end his prospects of a top job.”

Jonathan Ansfield contributed reporting. Patrick Zuo and Amy Qin contributed research.

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