The Trade: A Revolving Door in Washington With Spin, but Less Visibility

Obsess all you’d like about President Obama’s nomination of Mary Jo White to head the Securities and Exchange Commission. Who heads the agency is vital, but important fights in Washington are happening in quiet rooms, away from the media gaze.

After a widely praised stint as a tough United States attorney, Ms. White spent the last decade serving so many large banks and investment houses that by the time she finishes recusing herself from regulatory matters, she may be down to overseeing First Wauwatosa Securities.

Ms. White maintains she can run the S.E.C. without fear or favor. But the focus shouldn’t be limited to whether she can be effective. For lobbyists, the real targets are regulators and staff members for lawmakers.

Ms. White, at least, will have to sit for Congressional testimony, answer occasional questions from the media and fill out disclosure forms. Staff members, however, work in untroubled anonymity for the most part. So, while everyone knows there’s a revolving door — so naïve to even bring it up! — few realize just how fluidly it spins.

Take what happened late last month as Washington geared up for more fights about the taxing, spending and the deficit. The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, decided to bolster his staff’s expertise on taxes.

So on Jan. 25, Mr. Reid’s office announced that he had appointed Cathy Koch as chief adviser to the majority leader for tax and economic policy. The news release lists Ms. Koch’s admirable and formidable experience in the public sector. “Prior to joining Senator Reid’s office,” the release says, “Koch served as tax chief at the Senate Finance Committee.”

It’s funny, though. The notice left something out. Because immediately before joining Mr. Reid’s office, Ms. Koch wasn’t in government. She was working for a large corporation.

Not just any corporation, but quite possibly the most influential company in America, and one that arguably stands to lose the most if there were any serious tax reform that closed corporate loopholes. Ms. Koch arrives at the senator’s office by way of General Electric.

Yes, General Electric, the company that paid almost no taxes in 2010. Just as the tax reform debate is heating up, Mr. Reid has put in place a person who is extraordinarily positioned to torpedo any tax reform that might draw a dollar out of G.E. — and, by extension, any big corporation.

Omitting her last job from the announcement must have merely been an oversight. By the way, no rules prevent Ms. Koch from meeting with G.E. or working on issues that would affect the company.

The senator’s office, which declined to make Ms. Koch available for an interview, says that she will support the majority leader in his efforts to close corporate tax loopholes. His office said in a statement that the senator considered her knowledge of the private sector to be an asset and that she complied with “all relevant Senate ethics rules and disclosures.”

In a statement, the senator’s spokesman said, “The impulse in some quarters to reflexively cast suspicion on private sector experience is part of what makes qualified individuals reluctant to enter public service.”

Over in bank regulatory land, meanwhile, January was playing out like a Beltway remake of “Freaky Friday.”

Julie Williams, chief counsel for the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and a major friend of the banks for years, had been recently shown the door by Thomas J. Curry, the new head of the regulator. Banking reform advocates took that to be an omen that a new era might be dawning at the agency, which has often been a handmaiden to large banks.

Ms. Williams, of course, landed on her feet. She’s now at the Promontory Financial Group, a classic Washington creature that is a private sector mirror image of a regulatory body. Promontory is the Shadow O.C.C. The firm was founded by a former head of the agency, Eugene A. Ludwig, and if you were to walk down the halls swinging a copy of the Volcker Rule, you would be sure to hit a former O.C.C. official. Promontory says only about 5 percent of its employees come from the O.C.C., but concedes that more than a quarter are former regulators.

Promontory, as the firm explains on its Web site, “excels at helping financial companies grapple with and resolve critical issues, particularly those with a regulatory dimension.” But it plays for the other team, too, by helping the O.C.C. put into effect regulatory reviews. The dreary normality of this is a Washington scandal in the Michael Kinsley sense: a perfectly legal one.

Promontory, which demurred on a request to talk with Ms. Williams, has a different view. The firm doesn’t lobby or help in litigation. It argues that after banks stop fighting regulators and lobbying against rules, then they come to Promontory to figure out how to fix their problems and comply.

“We are known in the industry as the tough-love doctors,” said Mr. Ludwig, the chief executive of Promontory. “I am deeply committed to financial stability, and the only way to have stability is to do the right thing in both the spirit and letter of the law.”

Hmm. Remember the Independent Foreclosure Review, the program that the O.C.C. and other federal bank regulators trumpeted as the largest effort to compensate victims of big banks’ foreclosure abuses? As my colleague at ProPublica, Paul Kiel, detailed last year, that review involved consultants like Promontory essentially letting banks decide who was victimized. How well did that work? So well that the regulators had to scuttle the program because it hadn’t given one red cent to homeowners but somehow, I don’t know how, managed to send more than $1.5 billion to consultants — including Promontory.

Promontory maintains that it complied with the conditions set out by the O.C.C. And the review was replaced by a settlement, which the regulators say will compensate victims — though the average payout is small beer.

Who, exactly, makes the rules at the O.C.C.? I mentioned “Freaky Friday.” That’s because at the agency, Ms. Williams is being replaced by Amy Friend. And where is Ms. Friend coming from? Wait for it … Promontory. In March, maybe they’ll do the switcheroo back.

The O.C.C. didn’t make Ms. Friend available but said that her “talent, integrity and commitment to public service are beyond reproach” and would be subject to the rule requiring her to recuse herself for a year on matters specifically relating to her former employer.

I spoke with people who said she was a smart and dedicated public servant, an expert on the Dodd-Frank Act who can help complete the scandalously long list of unfinished rules and expedite its adoption.

“Amy Friend is absolutely rowing in the right direction,” said a Senate staff member who worked on efforts to push for stronger financial regulation.

Let’s hope so.

But people also described Ms. Friend as pragmatic. In Washington, that’s the ultimate compliment. Sadly, that has come to mean someone who seeks compromise and never pushes for an overhaul when a quarter-measure will do.

Washington today resembles something like the end of “Animal Farm.” People move from one side of the table to the other and up and down the Acela corridor with ease. An outsider looking at a negotiating table would glance from lobbyist to staff member, from colleague to former colleague, from pig to man and from man to pig and find it impossible to say which is which.

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Well: No Consensus on Plantar Fasciitis

Phys Ed

Gretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness.

There are more charismatic-sounding sports injuries than plantar fasciitis, like tennis elbow, runner’s knee and turf toe. But there aren’t many that are more common. The condition, characterized by stabbing pain in the heel or arch, sidelines up to 10 percent of all runners, as well as countless soccer, baseball, football and basketball players, golfers, walkers and others from both the recreational and professional ranks. The Lakers star Kobe Bryant, the quarterback Eli Manning, the Olympic marathon runner Ryan Hall and the presidential candidate Mitt Romney all have been stricken.

But while plantar fasciitis is democratic in its epidemiology, its underlying cause remains surprisingly enigmatic. In fact, the mysteries of plantar fasciitis underscore how little is understood, medically, about overuse sports injuries in general and why, as a result, they remain so insidiously difficult to treat.

Experts do agree that plantar fasciitis is, essentially, an irritation of the plantar fascia, a long, skinny rope of tissue that runs along the bottom of the foot, attaching the heel bone to the toes and forming your foot’s arch. When that tissue becomes irritated, you develop pain deep within the heel. The pain is usually most pronounced first thing in the morning, since the fascia tightens while you sleep.

But scientific agreement about the condition and its causes ends about there.

For many years, “most of us who treat plantar fasciitis believed that it involved chronic inflammation” of the fascia, said Dr. Terrence M. Philbin, a board-certified orthopedic surgeon at the Orthopedic Foot and Ankle Center in Westerville, Ohio, who specializes in plantar fasciitis.

It was thought that by running or otherwise repetitively pounding their heels against the ground, people strained the plantar fascia, and the body responded with a complex cascade of inflammatory biochemical processes that resulted in extra blood and fluids flowing to the injury site, as well as enhanced pain sensitivity.

But instead of lasting only a few days and then fading, as acute inflammation usually does, the process can become chronic and create its own problems, causing tissue damage and continuing pain.

This progression is also what experts believed was happening when people developed chronic Achilles tendon pain, tennis elbow or other lingering, overuse injuries.

But when scientists actually biopsied fascia tissue from people with chronic plantar fasciitis, “they did not find much if any inflammation,” Dr. Philbin said. There were virtually none of the cellular markers that characterize that condition.

“Plantar fasciitis does not involve inflammatory cells,” said Dr. Karim Khan, a professor of family practice medicine at the University of British Columbia and editor of The British Journal of Sports Medicine, who has written extensively about overuse sports injuries.

Instead, plantar fasciitis more likely is caused by degeneration or weakening of the tissue. This process probably begins with small tears that occur during activity and that, in normal circumstances, the body simply repairs, strengthening the tissue as it does. That is the point of exercise training.

But sometimes, for unknown reasons, this ongoing tissue damage overwhelms the body’s capacity to respond. The small tears don’t heal. They accumulate. The tissue begins subtly to degenerate, even to shred. It hurts.

By and large, most sports medicine experts now believe that this is how we develop other overuse injuries, like tennis elbow or Achilles tendinopathy, which used to be called tendinitis. The suffix “itis” means inflammation. But since the injury isn’t thought to involve chronic inflammation, its name has changed.

This has not yet happened with plantar fasciitis, and may not, given what a mouthful fasciopathy would be.

The evolving medical opinions about plantar fasciitis matter, beyond nomenclature, though, because treatments depend on causes. At the moment, many physicians rely on injections of cortisone, a steroid that is both a pain reliever and anti-inflammatory, to treat plantar fasciitis. And cortisone shots do reduce the soreness. In a study published last year in BMJ, patients who received cortisone injections reported less heel pain after four months than those whose shots had contained a placebo saline solution.

But whether those benefits will last is unknown, especially if plantar fasciitis is, indeed, degenerative. In studies with people suffering from tennis elbow, another injury that is now considered degenerative, cortisone shots actually slowed tissue healing.

We need similar studies in people with plantar fasciitis, Dr. Khan said. “They have not been done.”

Thankfully, most people who develop plantar fasciitis will recover within a few months without injections or other invasive treatments, Dr. Philbin said, if they simply back off their running mileage somewhat or otherwise rest the foot and stretch the affected tissues. Stretching the plantar fascia, as well as the Achilles tendon, which also attaches to the heel bone, and the hamstring muscles seems to result in less strain on the fascia during activity, meaning less ongoing trauma and, eventually, time for the body to catch up with repairs.

To ensure that you are stretching correctly, Dr. Philbin suggests consulting a physical therapist, after, of course, visiting a sports medicine doctor for a diagnosis. Not all heel or arch pain is plantar fasciitis. And comfort yourself if you do have the condition with the knowledge that Kobe Bryant, Eli Manning and Ryan Hall have all returned to competition and Mr. Romney still runs.

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Pistorius Denies Murdering Girlfriend

Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters

Oscar Pistorius wept at a hearing on Tuesday seeking bail.

PRETORIA, South Africa — Early on Feb. 14, Oscar Pistorius says, he heard a strange noise coming from inside his bathroom, climbed out of bed, grabbed his 9-millimeter pistol, hobbled on his stumps to the door and fired four shots.

“I fail to understand how I could be charged with murder, let alone premeditated,” Mr. Pistorius said in an affidavit read Tuesday to a packed courtroom by his defense lawyer, Barry Roux. “I had no intention to kill my girlfriend.”

Prosecutors painted a far different picture, one of a calculated killer, a world-renowned athlete who had the presence of mind and calm to strap on his prosthetic legs, walk 20 feet to the bathroom door and open fire as his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, cowered inside, behind a locked door.

“The applicant shot and killed an unarmed, innocent women,” Gerrie Nel, the chief prosecutor, said in court on Tuesday. That, Mr. Nel argued, amounted to premeditated murder, a charge that could send Mr. Pistorius to prison for life.

In court, Mr. Pistorius, a Paralympic track star who competed against able-bodied athletes at the London Olympics despite having lost both his lower legs as an infant, wept uncontrollably as Mr. Roux gave the runner’s account of the fateful early morning. At one point, Magistrate Desmond Nair called a recess to allow Mr. Pistorius, who was sobbing loudly, his face contorted, to regain his composure.

“My compassion as a human being does not allow me to just sit here,” Magistrate Nair said.

As the defense and prosecution laid out their competing versions of the shooting, some details were beyond dispute.

Mr. Pistorius and Ms. Steenkamp were alone in the house, having spent the evening there. Around 3 a.m., Mr. Pistorius shot Ms. Steenkamp through the bathroom door, fatally wounding her. He broke down the door and carried her down the stairs, where she died in the foyer of his upscale home in a highly secured compound.

The young woman, a model, was cremated Tuesday on the other side of the country in her hometown, Port Elizabeth. Her family and friends mourned her and called for the authorities to deal harshly with Mr. Pistorius.

“There’s a space missing inside all the people that she knew that can’t be filled again,” her brother, Adam Steenkamp, told reporters after the memorial service.

In court, Mr. Pistorius is seeking bail on the charge of premeditated murder, but he faces an uphill battle. Magistrate Nair ruled Tuesday that the case would be treated as the most serious kind of offense, which means bail will be granted only if the defense can prove extraordinary circumstances requiring it.

The court proceedings, though they concerned only whether Mr. Pistorius would receive bail, offered the first real glimpse into what unfolded at his home on the day of the shooting.

In his affidavit, Mr. Pistorius said that he and Ms. Steenkamp had decided to stay in for the night. He canceled plans with his friends for a night on the town in Johannesburg, while she opted against movies with one of her friends. They had a quiet evening, he said. She did yoga. He watched television. About 10 p.m., they went to sleep.

In the early morning hours, he said, he woke up to move a fan from the balcony and to close the sliding doors in the bedroom.

“I heard a noise in the bathroom and realized that someone was in the bathroom,” he said. “I felt a sense of terror rushing over me.”

He had already said in the affidavit that he feared South Africa’s rampant violent crime, and later added that he was worried because there were no bars on the window to the bathroom. Construction workers had left ladders in his garden, he said.

“I believed someone had entered my house,” he said in the affidavit. “I grabbed my 9-millimeter pistol from underneath my bed. On my way to the bathroom I screamed words to the effect for him/them to get out of my house and for Reeva to phone the police. It was pitch dark in the bedroom, and I thought Reeva was in bed.”

Walking on his stumps, he heard the sound of movement inside the toilet, a small room within the bathroom.

Alan Cowell contributed reporting from London.

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Pistorius: Lover caught in tragedy or killer?

PRETORIA, South Africa (AP) — Oscar Pistorius portrayed himself as a lover caught in tragedy, wielding a pistol and frightened as he stood only on his stumps, then killed his girlfriend after mistaking her for an intruder on Valentine's Day.

Prosecutors, however, said the double-amputee Olympian committed premeditated murder, planning the slaying, then firing at Reeva Steenkamp as she cowered behind his locked bathroom door with no hope of escape.

"She couldn't go anywhere," Prosecutor Gerrie Nel told a packed courtroom Tuesday. "It must have been horrific."

Weeping uncontrollably, Pistorius listened as his words were read out in court by his attorney during the opening of a two-day bail hearing, his first public account of the events surrounding the shooting death of Steenkamp, a 29-year-old model and reality TV star who had spoken out against violence against women.

"I fail to understand how I could be charged with murder, let alone premeditated murder, as I had no intention to kill my girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp," Pistorius said in the sworn affidavit. "I deny the aforesaid allegation in the strongest terms."

It was the first time that the prosecution and Pistorius provided details of their radically divergent accounts of the killing, which has shocked South Africans and fans worldwide, who idolized the 26-year-old track star known as the Blade Runner for overcoming his disability to compete in last summer's London Olympics.

Nel said Pistorius committed premeditated murder when he rose from his bed after a fight with Steenkamp, pulled on his prosthetic legs and walked about 20 feet from his bedroom to the locked toilet door and pumped it with four bullets, three of which hit the model.

That contradicted the runner's statement, read aloud by defense attorney Barry Roux, who described how the couple spent a quiet night together in the athlete's upscale home in a gated community in the capital of Pretoria, then went to sleep around 10 p.m.

Sometime before dawn, Pistorius said he awoke, and walking only on his stumps, pulled a fan in from an open balcony and closed it. That's when he said he heard a noise and became alarmed because the bathroom window, which had no security bars, was open and workers had left ladders nearby.

"It filled me with horror and fear," Pistorius said in the statement.

"I am acutely aware of violent crime being committed by intruders entering homes," he said. "I have received death threats before. I have also been a victim of violence and of burglaries before. For that reason I kept my firearm, a 9 mm Parabellum, underneath my bed when I went to bed at night."

Too frightened to turn on a light, Pistorius said, he pulled out his pistol and headed for the bathroom, believing Steenkamp was still asleep "in the pitch dark" of the bedroom.

"As I did not have my prosthetic legs on and felt extremely vulnerable, I knew I had to protect Reeva and myself," he said, adding that he shouted to Steenkamp to call the police as he fired at the closed toilet door.

It was then, Pistorius said, that he realized Steenkamp was not in bed.

He said he pulled on his prosthetic legs and tried to kick down the toilet door before finally giving up and bashing it in with a cricket bat. Inside, he said he found Steenkamp, slumped over but still alive. He said he lifted her bloodied body and carried her downstairs to seek medical help.

But it was too late. "She died in my arms," Pistorius said.

"We were deeply in love and I could not be happier," the athlete said. "I know she felt the same way. She had given me a present for Valentine's Day but asked me only to open it the next day."

Pistorius broke down in sobs repeatedly as his account was read, prompting Chief Magistrate Desmond Nair to call a recess at one point.

"Maintain your composure," the magistrate said. "You need to apply your mind here."

"Yes, my lordship," Pistorius replied, his voice quivering.

Nair adjourned the case until Wednesday without ruling on whether Pistorius would be granted bail. However, he said the gravity of the charge — which carries a mandatory life sentence — meant the athlete's lawyers must offer "exceptional" reasons for bail to be granted, making his release unlikely.

Roux, the defense attorney, said there was no evidence to substantiate a murder charge. "We submit it is not even murder. There is no concession this is a murder," he said.

The prosecutor disagreed.

"It is our respectful argument that 'pre-planning' or premeditation do not require months of planning," Nel said. "If ... I ready myself and walk a distance with the intention to kill someone, it is premeditated."

Hundreds of miles from the Magistrate's Court, a memorial service was held for Steenkamp in the south coast city of Port Elizabeth. Six pallbearers carried her coffin, draped with a white cloth and covered in white flowers, into the church for the private service and cremation.

Relatives recalled how the model with a law degree had campaigned against domestic violence and had planned to don black for a "Black Friday" protest in honor of a 17-year-old girl who was recently gang-raped and mutilated.

What "she stood for, and the abuse against women, unfortunately it's gone right around, and I think the Lord knows that statement is more powerful now," said her uncle, Mike Steenkamp.

South Africa has some of the world's worst rates of violence against women and the highest rate in the world of women killed by an intimate partner, according to a study by the Medical Research Council, which said at least three women are killed by a partner every day in the country of 50 million.

Since the shooting, several of Pistorius' sponsors have dropped him. On Tuesday, Clarins Group, which owns Thierry Mugler Perfumes, said it would withdraw all advertising featuring the Olympian. A cologne line with the company, called A(asterisk)Men, bears his image.

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Associated Press writer Michelle Faul in Johannesburg and AP photographer Schalk van Zuydam in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, contributed to this report.

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Jon Gambrell can be reached at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP. Gerald Imray can be reached at www.twitter.com/geraldimrayAP.

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Honda to Offer Customers a Home Solar System Option

Automakers have long resorted to incentives like zero-percent financing, rewards points and rebates to inspire customer loyalty. Now Honda is offering a different deal: inexpensive home solar power systems for customers.

Through a partnership with SolarCity, a residential and commercial installer, Honda and Acura will offer their customers home solar systems at little or no upfront cost, the companies said on Tuesday. The automaker will also offer its dealers preferential terms to lease or buy systems from SolarCity on a case-by-case basis, executives said.

The deal, in which Honda will provide financing for $65 million worth of installations, will help the automaker promote its environmental aims and earn a modest return, executives said. It could also open the door for more corporate investment in solar leasing companies, which has largely been limited to a small cluster of banks to provide capital for their projects.

And SolarCity, one of the few clean-tech start-ups to find a market for an initial public offering of its stock last year, will potentially gain access to tens of millions of new customers through Honda’s vast lists of current and previous owners.

“When we partner with financial institutions, they aren’t promoting us to their customers, they’re essentially just providing us with capital,” said Lyndon R. Rive, SolarCity’s chief executive. But with Honda, he said, the company is gaining, “access to a broader customer base, and a customer base that is conscious of the environment.”

Whether the marriage will prove successful remains to be seen. “I don’t think that by finding Honda buyers you’ve homed in on the perfect solar customer, but there’s enough overlapping between the demographics that you’re better off than the general population,” said Shayle Kann, vice president at GTM Research, adding that car buyers were more likely to own their homes and have the income and credit history to qualify for solar leasing. While the American solar industry in general has been struggling in the face of declining government subsidies, overcapacity in production and a glut of inexpensive Chinese panels, interest and investment in solar leasing, or third-party ownership, has continued to grow. According to a recent report from GTM Research, a renewable energy consulting firm that is a unit of Greentech Media, third-party ownership accounts for more than 70 percent of all residential installations in developed markets like Arizona, California and Colorado and has generated at least $3.4 billion in private investment since 2008.

SolarCity and a rival, Sunrun, were among pioneers of the approach, but players like Clean Power Finance and Vivint, a home security company owned by the Blackstone Group, are also gaining momentum.

In a typical arrangement, a company provides a system at little or no cost in exchange for a long-term contract in which the customer pays a fixed fee for the electricity generated, set at less than the customer would pay for power from the local utility. The solar price often rises over the life of the agreement, which can last 20 years.

Honda approached SolarCity more than a year ago when it was looking for a partner to provide solar installation services for its hybrid and electric vehicle customers, said Ryan Harty, American Honda’s assistant manager for environmental business development. The company then decided to expand to all its customers — a group it is defining “very, very broadly,” Mr. Harty said, to include not just car owners but also those who have explored its Web sites. The offer will be available in 14 states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas and Washington, and the District of Columbia.

The two companies say they hope the joint venture leads to projects that integrate solar power and electric vehicle recharging for its customers.

The program will give Honda and Acura customers an extra $400 discount on top of SolarCity’s normal promotions, which they can use to sweeten the terms of the solar contract, like eliminating the escalation of the monthly payment. Honda projects the fund can finance as many as 3,000 systems on homes and 20 for its dealers. If the program catches on, Honda plans to expand it. Executives said they saw more immediate promise in cutting carbon emissions through solar power than the electric vehicles it would sell.

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National Briefing | South: Abortion Curbs Clear Senate in Arkansas

The State Senate voted 25 to 7 on Monday to ban most abortions 20 weeks into a pregnancy. The measure goes back to the House to consider an amendment that added exceptions for rape and incest. The legislation is based on the belief that fetuses can feel pain 20 weeks into a pregnancy, and is similar to bans in several other states. Opponents say it would require mothers to deliver babies with fatal conditions. Gov. Mike Beebe has said he has constitutional concerns about the proposal but has not said whether he will veto it.

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China’s Army Is Seen as Tied to Hacking Against U.S.

This 12-story building on the outskirts of Shanghai is the headquarters of Unit 61398 of the People’s Liberation Army. China’s defense ministry has denied that it is responsible for initiating digital attacks.

On the outskirts of Shanghai, in a run-down neighborhood dominated by a 12-story white office tower, sits a People’s Liberation Army base for China’s growing corps of cyberwarriors.

The building off Datong Road, surrounded by restaurants, massage parlors and a wine importer, is the headquarters of P.L.A. Unit 61398. A growing body of digital forensic evidence — confirmed by American intelligence officials who say they have tapped into the activity of the army unit for years — leaves little doubt that an overwhelming percentage of the attacks on American corporations, organizations and government agencies originate in and around the white tower.

An unusually detailed 60-page study, to be released Tuesday by Mandiant, an American computer security firm, tracks for the first time individual members of the most sophisticated of the Chinese hacking groups — known to many of its victims in the United States as “Comment Crew” or “Shanghai Group” — to the doorstep of the military unit’s headquarters. The firm was not able to place the hackers inside the 12-story building, but makes a case there is no other plausible explanation for why so many attacks come out of one comparatively small area.

“Either they are coming from inside Unit 61398,” said Kevin Mandia, the founder and chief executive of Mandiant, in an interview last week, “or the people who run the most-controlled, most-monitored Internet networks in the world are clueless about thousands of people generating attacks from this one neighborhood.”

Other security firms that have tracked “Comment Crew” say they also believe the group is state-sponsored, and a recent classified National Intelligence Estimate, issued as a consensus document for all 16 of the United States intelligence agencies, makes a strong case that many of these hacking groups are either run by army officers or are contractors working for commands like Unit 61398, according to officials with knowledge of its classified content.

Mandiant provided an advance copy of its report to The New York Times, saying it hoped to “bring visibility to the issues addressed in the report.” Times reporters then tested the conclusions with other experts, both inside and outside government, who have examined links between the hacking groups and the army (Mandiant was hired by The New York Times Company to investigate a sophisticated Chinese-origin attack on its news operations, but concluded it was not the work of Comment Crew, but another Chinese group. The firm is not currently working for the Times Company but it is in discussions about a business relationship.)

While Comment Crew has drained terabytes of data from companies like Coca-Cola, increasingly its focus is on companies involved in the critical infrastructure of the United States — its electrical power grid, gas lines and waterworks. According to the security researchers, one target was a company with remote access to more than 60 percent of oil and gas pipelines in North America. The unit was also among those that attacked the computer security firm RSA, whose computer codes protect confidential corporate and government databases.

Contacted Monday, officials at the Chinese embassy in Washington again insisted that their government does not engage in computer hacking, and that such activity is illegal. They describe China itself as a victim of computer hacking, and point out, accurately, that there are many hacking groups inside the United States. But in recent years the Chinese attacks have grown significantly, security researchers say. Mandiant has detected more than 140 Comment Crew intrusions since 2006. American intelligence agencies and private security firms that track many of the 20 or so other Chinese groups every day say those groups appear to be contractors with links to the unit.

While the unit’s existence and operations are considered a Chinese state secret, Representative Mike Rogers of Michigan, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said in an interview that the Mandiant report was “completely consistent with the type of activity the Intelligence Committee has been seeing for some time.”

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Jerry Buss, Lakers' flamboyant owner, dies at 80

Jerry Buss built a glittering life at the intersection of sports and Hollywood.

After growing up in poverty in Wyoming, he earned success in academia, aerospace and real estate before discovering his favorite vocation when he bought the Los Angeles Lakers in 1979. While Buss wrote the checks and fostered partnerships with two generations of basketball greats, the Lakers won 10 NBA titles and became a glamorous global brand.

With a scientist's analytical skills, a playboy's flair, a businessman's money-making savvy and a die-hard hoops fan's heart, Buss fashioned the Lakers into a remarkable sports entity. They became a nightly happening, often defined by just one word coined by Buss: Showtime.

"His impact is felt worldwide," said Kobe Bryant, who has spent nearly half his life working for Buss.

Buss, who shepherded his NBA team from the Showtime dynasty of the 1980s to the current Bryant era while becoming one of the most important and successful owners in pro sports, died Monday. He was 80.

"Think about the impact that he's had on the game and the decisions he's made, and the brand of basketball he brought here with Showtime and the impact that had on the sport as a whole," Bryant said a few days ago. "Those vibrations were felt to a kid all the way in Italy who was 6 years old, before basketball was even global."

Under Buss' leadership, the star-studded, trophy-winning Lakers became Southern California's most beloved sports franchise and a signature cultural representation of Los Angeles. Buss acquired, nurtured and befriended a staggering array of talented players and basketball minds during his Hall of Fame tenure, from Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and James Worthy to Bryant, Shaquille O'Neal and Dwight Howard.

Few owners in sports history can approach Buss' accomplishments with the Lakers, who made the NBA Finals 16 times during his nearly 34 years in charge, winning 10 titles between 1980 and 2010. Whatever the Lakers did under Buss' watch, they did it big — with marquee players, eye-popping style and a relentless pursuit of success with little regard to its financial cost.

"His incredible commitment and desire to build a championship-caliber team that could sustain success over a long period of time has been unmatched," said Jerry West, Buss' longtime general manager and now a consultant with the Golden State Warriors. "With all of his achievements, Jerry was without a doubt one of the most humble men I've ever been around. His vision was second to none; he wanted an NBA franchise brand that represented the very best and went to every extreme to accomplish his goals."

Buss died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, said Bob Steiner, his assistant and longtime friend. Buss had been hospitalized for most of the past 18 months while undergoing cancer treatment, but the cause of death was kidney failure, Steiner said.

"When someone as celebrated and charismatic as Jerry Buss dies, we are reminded of two things," said Abdul-Jabbar, the leading scorer in NBA history. "First, just how much one person with vision and strength of will can accomplish. Second, how fragile each of us is, regardless of how powerful we were. Those two things combine to inspire us to reach for the stars, but also to remain with our feet firmly on the ground among our loved ones. ... The man may be gone, but he has made us all better people for knowing him."

With his condition worsening in recent months, several prominent former Lakers visited Buss to say goodbye. Even rivals such as Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and Clippers owner Donald Sterling hailed the passion and bonhomie of the former chemist and mathematician who lived his own Hollywood dream.

"He was a great man and an incredible friend," Johnson tweeted.

Buss always referred to the Lakers as his extended family, and his players rewarded his fanlike excitement with devotion, friendship and two hands full of championship rings. Working with front-office executives West, Bill Sharman and Mitch Kupchak, Buss spent lavishly to win his titles despite lacking a huge personal fortune, often running the NBA's highest payroll while also paying high-profile coaches Pat Riley and Phil Jackson.

"Jerry Buss was more than just an owner. He was one of the great innovators that any sport has ever encountered," Riley said. "He was a true visionary, and it was obvious with the Lakers in the 80's that 'Showtime' was more than just Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. It was really the vision of a man who saw something that connected with a community."

Ownership of the Lakers is now in a trust controlled by Buss' six children, who all have worked for the Lakers in various capacities for several years. With 1,786 victories, the Lakers easily are the NBA's winningest franchise since he bought the club, which is now run largely by Jim Buss and Jeanie Buss.

"We not only have lost our cherished father, but a beloved man of our community and a person respected by the world basketball community," the Buss family said in a statement issued by the Lakers.

"It was our father's often-stated desire and expectation that the Lakers remain in the Buss family. The Lakers have been our lives as well, and we will honor his wish and do everything in our power to continue his unparalleled legacy."

Johnson and fellow Hall of Famers Abdul-Jabbar and Worthy formed lifelong bonds with Buss during the Lakers' run to five titles in nine years in the 1980s, when the Lakers earned a reputation as basketball's most exciting team with their flamboyant Showtime repartee.

The buzz extended throughout the Forum, where Buss turned the Lakers' games into a must-see event. He used the Laker Girls, a brass band and promotions to keep Lakers fans interested during all four quarters. Courtside seats, priced at $15 when he bought the Lakers, became the hottest tickets in Hollywood — and they still are, with fixture Jack Nicholson and many other celebrities attending every home game.

"Anybody associated with the NBA since 1980 benefited greatly from Jerry Buss' impact on the game," Steiner said. "He had a different way of looking at things than I did, and people who had been raised in basketball."

Buss paid the Lakers' bills through both their wild success and his groundbreaking moves to raise revenue. He co-founded a basic-cable sports television network and sold the naming rights to the Forum at times when both now-standard strategies were unusual, further justifying his induction to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2010.

"The NBA has lost a visionary owner whose influence on our league is incalculable and will be felt for decades to come," NBA Commissioner David Stern said. "More importantly, we have lost a dear and valued friend."

Showtime couldn't last forever, but after a rough stretch in the 1990s, Buss rekindled the Lakers' mystique by paying top dollar to hire Jackson, who led O'Neal and Bryant to a three-peat from 2000-02. Bryant and Pau Gasol won two more titles under Jackson in 2009 and 2010.

The current Lakers (25-29) have struggled mightily despite adding Howard and Steve Nash in a couple of moves that were typical of Buss' big, brash style. Los Angeles could miss the playoffs this spring for just the third time since Buss bought the franchise.

"Today is a very sad day for all the Lakers and basketball," Gasol tweeted. "All my support and condolences to the Buss family. Rest in peace Dr. Buss."

Although Buss gained fame and another fortune with the Lakers, he also was a scholar, Renaissance man and bon vivant who epitomized California cool his entire public life.

Buss rarely appeared in public without at least one attractive, much younger woman on his arm — at Southern California football games, high-stakes poker tournaments, hundreds of boxing matches promoted by Buss at the Forum — and, of course, Lakers games from his private box at Staples Center, which was built under his watch. With his failing health, Buss hadn't attended a Lakers game in the past two seasons.

After a rough-and-tumble childhood that included stints as a ditch-digger and a bellhop in the frigid Wyoming winters, Buss earned a Ph.D. in chemistry from USC at age 24, and had careers in aerospace and real estate development before getting into sports. With money from his real-estate ventures and a good bit of creative accounting, Buss bought the then-struggling Lakers, the NHL's Los Angeles Kings and both clubs' arena — the Forum — from Jack Kent Cooke in a $67.5 million deal that was the largest sports transaction in history at the time.

Last month, Forbes estimated the Lakers were worth $1 billion, second most in the NBA.

Buss also helped change televised sports by co-founding the Prime Ticket network in 1985, and he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2006 for his work in television. Breaking the contemporary model of subscription services for televised sports, Buss' Prime Ticket put beloved broadcaster Chick Hearn and the Lakers' home games on basic cable.

Buss also sold the naming rights to the Forum in 1988 to Great Western Savings & Loan — another deal that was ahead of its time.

Born in Salt Lake City, Gerald Hatten Buss was raised in poverty in Wyoming before improving his life through education. He also grew to love basketball, describing himself as an "overly competitive but underly endowed player."

After graduating from the University of Wyoming, Buss attended USC for graduate school because he loved its sports teams. He also became a chemistry professor and worked in the missile division of defense contractor McDonnell Douglas before carving out a path to wealth and sports prominence.

His real-estate portfolio grew out of a $1,000 investment in a West Los Angeles apartment building with partner Frank Mariani, an aerospace engineer and co-worker.

Heavily leveraging his fortune and various real-estate holdings during two years of negotiations, Buss purchased Cooke's entire Los Angeles sports empire along with a 13,000-acre ranch in Kern County. Buss immediately worked to transform the Lakers — who had won just one NBA title since moving west from Minneapolis in 1960 — into a star-powered endeavor befitting Hollywood.

"One of the first things I tried to do when I bought the team was to make it an identification for this city, like Motown in Detroit," he told the Los Angeles Times in 2008. "I try to keep that identification alive. I'm a real Angeleno. I want us to be part of the community."

With showmanship, fearless spending and a little drafting luck, Buss quickly succeeded: Johnson, Abdul-Jabbar and coach Paul Westhead led the Lakers to the 1980 title. Johnson's ball-handling wizardry and Abdul-Jabbar's smooth inside game made for an attractive style of play, and the Lakers came to define West Coast sophistication.

Riley, the former broadcaster who fit the L.A. image perfectly with his slick-backed hair and good looks, was surprisingly promoted by Buss early in the 1981-82 season. He became one of the best coaches in NBA history, leading the Lakers to four straight NBA finals and four titles, with Worthy, Michael Cooper, Byron Scott and A.C. Green playing major roles.

"I was privileged to be part of that for 10 years and even more grateful for the friendship that has lasted all these many years," Riley said. "I have always come to realize that if it weren't for Dr. Buss, I wouldn't be where I am today."

Overall, the Lakers made the Finals nine times in Buss' first 12 seasons while rekindling the NBA's best rivalry with the Boston Celtics, and Buss basked in the worldwide celebrity he received from his team's achievements. His partying became the stuff of Los Angeles legends, with even his players struggling to keep up with Buss' lifestyle.

Johnson's HIV diagnosis and retirement in 1991 staggered Buss and the Lakers, the owner recalled in 2011. The Lakers went through seven coaches and made just one conference finals appearance in an eight-year stretch of the 1990s despite the 1996 arrivals of O'Neal, who signed with Los Angeles as a free agent, and Bryant, the 17-year-old high schooler acquired in a draft-week trade.

Shaq and Kobe didn't reach their potential until Buss persuaded Jackson, the Chicago Bulls' six-time NBA champion coach, to take over the Lakers in 1999. Los Angeles immediately won the next three NBA titles in brand-new Staples Center, AEG's state-of-the-art downtown arena built with the Lakers as the primary tenant.

After the Lakers traded O'Neal in 2004, they hovered in mediocrity again until acquiring Gasol in a heist of a trade with Memphis in early 2008. Los Angeles made the next three NBA Finals, winning two more titles.

Through the Lakers' frequent successes and occasional struggles, Buss never stopped living his Hollywood dream. He was an avid poker player and a fixture on the Los Angeles club scene well into his 70s, when a late-night drunk-driving arrest in 2007 — with a 23-year-old woman in the passenger seat of his Mercedes-Benz — prompted him to cut down on his partying.

Buss owned the NHL's Kings from 1979-87, and the WNBA's Los Angeles Sparks won two league titles under Buss' ownership. He also owned Los Angeles franchises in World Team Tennis and the Major Indoor Soccer League.

Buss' children have pledged to continue his commitment to the Lakers' distinctive success, although their efforts haven't been rewarded in the past three years while Jerry Buss ceded many decision-making responsibilities to Jim Buss, the Lakers' executive vice president of player personnel and the second-oldest child. While daughter Jeanie runs the franchise's business side, Jim Buss now has the final say on basketball decisions.

Jerry Buss still served two terms as president of the NBA's Board of Governors and was actively involved in the 2011 lockout negotiations, developing blood clots in his legs attributed to his extensive travel during that time.

"I am blessed with a wonderful family who have helped me and guided me every step of the way," Buss said in 2010 at his Hall of Fame induction ceremony. "This support is the best anybody could ever have."

Buss is survived by his six children: sons Johnny, Jim, Joey and Jesse, and daughters Jeanie Buss and Janie Drexel. He had eight grandchildren.

Arrangements are pending for a funeral and memorial service, likely at Staples Center or a nearby theatre in downtown Los Angeles.

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Associated Press writers Beth Harris and Andrew Dalton contributed to this report.

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DealBook Column: A Reputation, Once Sullied, Acquires a New Shine

How do you describe Steven L. Rattner?

Up until three years ago, he was typically referred to in these pages as a former journalist turned successful financier — the vice chairman of the investment bank Lazard and then a co-founder of the Quadrangle Group, the private equity firm.

With much fanfare, he then became the White House auto czar assigned to fix General Motors and Chrysler, after years of trying to become part of the Washington firmament like so many on Wall Street who have wanted to make the leap.

He was the ultimate consigliere to power. Then, it all fell apart.

He was accused of using “pay to play” practices while raising money from a New York state pension fund when he was still at Quadrangle. In 2010 he paid more than $16 million to Andrew M. Cuomo, who was then New York’s attorney general, and the Securities and Exchange Commission to settle the civil cases without admitting or denying wrongdoing.

He was “banned from appearing in any capacity before any public pension fund within the State of New York for five years” and for “associating with any investment adviser or broker dealer” for two years, according to the suits. As the case proceeded, he stepped down from his position in the Obama administration.

Among the cocktail party circuit in Manhattan, Mr. Rattner was Topic A. And the schadenfreude was thick. Mr. Rattner, the narrative developed, had become Wall Street’s Icarus, flying too close to the sun. The New Republic headlined one article: “Rattner Hoisted on His Own Petard.” The question was asked: Would he ever eat lunch in this town again? And what about Washington?

Now, two years later, Mr. Rattner is lunching all over town. And, in truth, he may have never stopped.

As Mr. Rattner sat across from me in Midtown Manhattan two weeks ago, his re-emergence as power magnate was well under way. He is the overseer of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s fortune of billions of dollars — you could call Mr. Rattner a money manager but that doesn’t capture the scope of it. He has appeared as a pundit about the economy on television (MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” ABC’s “This Week” and “Fox News Sunday,” among others) and in newspapers (The Financial Times, Politico and The New York Times). And to take the story full circle, the Obama administration, which had eased Mr. Rattner out of his role, appears to have re-embraced him, even using him to campaign for the president last fall.

“It was the worst thing that ever happened in my professional life,” Mr. Rattner, who had taken off his trademark tortoise-rim glasses, said of the accusations and the settlement. “If you asked me, do I wish I had done some things differently about this whole situation, of course I wish I had done some things differently.” More on that in a moment, but he also has clearly worked unremittingly to move on. “Looking back, it was a bit like the half life of a radioactive isotope. Every few months the intensity of what happened seemed to go down by half,” Mr. Rattner added, as he sipped English Breakfast tea.

If there was a question about his current status — and whether the chattering classes had moved on — the guest list of his 60th birthday party this last summer, overlooking Rockefeller Center, may provide the answer: Mr. Bloomberg, Barry Diller, Jamie Dimon, Harvey Weinstein, Senator Charles E. Schumer, Ralph Lauren, Brian Roberts and Fred Wilpon, among others, were all in attendance.

When Vice President Biden held his holiday party in December, Mr. Rattner was there. And at the home of Hillary Clinton last month for her farewell party from the State Department, where Mr. Rattner’s wife, Maureen White, works, he was there, too. (His wife was the finance co-chairwoman of the Hillary Clinton for President campaign.)

In a city where powerful figures are dropped at the whiff of trouble — and rarely return to positions of significant influence despite efforts at comebacks — Mr. Rattner’s narrative of a meteoric rise to embarrassing scandal and back again is notable.

His re-emergence may also be a telling commentary about the way the nation’s elite flock to people with power — and those with powerful friends.

Some of his friends, many of whom declined to comment on the record, said they were willing to overlook his past transgressions because they felt he had paid for them, through the fines and the negative publicity. Others said that he had always been honest with them. Still, there are other friends who say they have distanced themselves from him but haven’t cut him off entirely for fear of alienating themselves from other people in his circle.

Mr. Diller, the chairman of IAC, counts himself among Mr. Rattner’s friends. “Whatever complications there were, I never thought he was culpable.” He added, “When you get anybody who is up there, then the takedown is going to have a pile-on effect. It is the nature of public life.”

That may be a truism. But at the time of the scandal, Mr. Cuomo used particularly pointed language: “Steve Rattner was willing to do whatever it took to get his hands on pension fund money including paying kickbacks, orchestrating a movie deal, and funneling campaign contributions.”

In the S.E.C.’s case, David Rosenfeld of the New York regional office said then that Mr. Rattner “delivered special favors and conducted sham transactions that corrupted the Retirement Fund’s investment process.”

Before we go any further, some disclosures are in order: It is well documented that Mr. Rattner is a longtime friend and confidant of the publisher of this newspaper, Arthur Sulzberger Jr. (Mr. Sulzberger was in attendance at Mr. Rattner’s birthday party, too.) Mr. Rattner was a reporter for The Times in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He also now writes a monthly Op-Ed column in The Times, arguably providing him with a powerful platform that increases his influence. I purposely haven’t discussed anything about Mr. Rattner with Mr. Sulzberger before writing this column. Now that that’s done, let’s continue.

Mr. Rattner’s re-emergence was not assured.

“There were some people inevitably who I thought were my friends who I found out were more fair weather and especially some in the political world,” he said. “I’m sure they said to themselves, let’s just keep a little space here and see what happens to Steve as opposed to let’s embrace Steve and say he’s my friend.”

One friend who never left was Mr. Bloomberg. When news of Mr. Cuomo’s case against him first broke, Mr. Rattner sent him an e-mail to give him a heads-up about the situation. Mr. Bloomberg’s reply? “The only thing wrong with you is your golf game.”

In an interview, Mr. Bloomberg said, “Steve is a good friend. You stick by your friends. And I don’t worry about what people say.” And despite all the chatter about Mr. Rattner, Mr. Bloomberg added, “I never heard anyone say they wouldn’t invite Steven Rattner to a party because of what was happening.”

The White House was less forgiving. While the Obama administration and Mr. Rattner portrayed his exit from Washington in July 2009 as a natural time to leave since his role helping G.M. through a government supported bankruptcy was finished, the president clearly made no effort to keep him, given the investigation hanging over him.

On the merits of the case that Mr. Rattner settled with Mr. Cuomo — which Mr. Rattner once described as “close to extortion” — he still has strong views. He and several other private equity firms, including the Carlyle Group, were accused of using Hank Morris, a political consultant, to help the firms obtain hundreds of millions of dollars to manage for the New York state pension fund.

Mr. Morris pleaded guilty to a felony count of violating the Martin Act for paying kickbacks and went to prison. Mr. Rattner was also accused of influencing a film distribution company that Quadrangle owned to secure a DVD distribution deal for a low-budget movie called “Chooch” that was produced by a pension fund official’s brother.

Mr. Rattner said: “I can’t imagine that any of the many firms that hired Hank Morris wouldn’t do that differently, given what he turned out to be. I appreciate clearly how important it is to avoid even the appearance of impropriety.”

Mr. Rattner and Mr. Cuomo chose to settle the case on what some lawyers described as benign terms given the penalty of a $26 million fine and a lifetime ban from the securities industry that Mr. Cuomo originally sought. Mr. Rattner settled for $10 million and a ban from working with New York State pension funds for five years, none of which has prevented him from continuing his role of managing Mr. Bloomberg’s money.

Unusually, Mr. Cuomo even agreed that Mr. Rattner’s settlement would include none of the usual language about admitting or denying wrongdoing, which allows Mr. Rattner to deny he ever broke the law. Mr. Rattner said he chose to settle the case, rather than fight what he said he expected to be a drawn-out court battle, because he wanted to move on with his life. He also paid $6.2 million to settle the S.E.C. case.

He clearly feels a sense of regret about some his actions, but declined to discuss the accusations in detail, citing the settlements.

A spokesman for Governor Cuomo declined to comment.

Mr. Rattner said he discovered a unique indicator to measure the impact of the scandal, which might just prove his theory that he should be compared with a radioactive isotope.

Right after the settlement, Mr. Rattner, who has long been active in political fund-raising for Democrats, said nobody would take his money. In fact, one politician, whom he declined to name, sent back a $500 donation from 2011. Several months later, he began to receive solicitations from politicians looking for his help in raising funds, he said. But does that say more about the state of Washington politics or Mr. Rattner?

Despite his past, the White House called him last fall and talked about his campaigning for the president in Ohio, where the auto bailout was an important issue. (Mr. Rattner published a book in September 2010 about his experience in trying to fix Detroit called “Overhaul: An Insider’s Account of the Obama Administration’s Emergency Rescue of the Auto Industry.”)

David Axelrod, who was President Obama’s senior strategist for his re-election campaign, said in an e-mail of Mr. Rattner, “Whatever happened in New York didn’t obviate the great service he rendered.” He added: “Steve did an extraordinary job for the administration and the country in helping to shape the auto plan, which was a clear success.”

So will Mr. Rattner ever have a chance to work in government again? For years, his name was always part of the parlor game of potential nominees for Treasury secretary.

He had a quick answer about returning to Washington: “Probably not.” He said now that he had worked in the capital and lived in the glare of the spotlight, he better appreciates the upside and downside. He said: “I had a great experience, but I also found out how thankless and frustrating it can be.”

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Well: Health Effects of Smoking for Women

The title of a recent report on smoking and health might well have paraphrased the popular ad campaign for Virginia Slims, introduced in 1968 by Philip Morris and aimed at young professional women: “You’ve come a long way, baby.”

Today that slogan should include: “…toward a shorter life.” Ten years shorter, in fact.

The new report is one of two rather shocking analyses of the hazards of smoking and the benefits of quitting published last month in The New England Journal of Medicine. The data show that “women who smoke like men die like men who smoke,” Dr. Steven A. Schroeder, a professor of health and health care at the University of California, San Francisco, wrote in an accompanying editorial.

That was not always the case. Half a century ago, the risk of death from lung cancer among men who smoked was five times higher than that among women smokers. But by the first decade of this century, that risk had equalized: for both men and women who smoked, the risk of death from lung cancer was 25 times greater than for nonsmokers, Dr. Michael J. Thun of the American Cancer Society and his colleagues reported.

Today, women who smoke are even more likely than men who smoke to die of lung cancer. According to a second study in the same journal, women smokers face a 17.8 times greater risk of dying of lung cancer than women who do not smoke; men who smoke are at 14.6 times greater risk to die of lung cancer than men who don’t. Women who smoke now face a risk of death from lung cancer that is 50 percent higher than the estimates reported in the 1980s, according to Dr. Prabhat Jha of the Center for Global Health Research in Toronto and his colleagues.

After controlling for age, body weight, education level and alcohol use, the new analysis found something else: men and women who continue to smoke die on average 10 years sooner than those who never smoked.

Dramatic progress has been made in reducing the prevalence of smoking, which has fallen from 42 percent of adults in 1965 (the year after the first surgeon general’s report on smoking and health) to 19 percent in 2010. Yet smoking still results in nearly 200,000 deaths a year among people 35 to 69 years old in the United States. A quarter of all deaths in this age group would not occur if smokers had the same risk of death as nonsmokers.

The risks are even greater among men 55 to 74 and women 60 to 74. More than two-thirds of all deaths among current smokers in these age groups are related to smoking. Over all, the death rate from all causes combined in these age groups “is now at least three times as high among current smokers as among those who have never smoked,” Dr. Thun’s team found.

While lung cancer is the most infamous hazard linked to smoking, the habit also raises the risk of death from heart disease, stroke, pulmonary disease and other cancers, including breast cancer.

Furthermore, changes in how cigarettes are manufactured may have increased the dangers of smoking. The use of perforated filters, tobacco blends that are less irritating, and paper that is more porous made it easier to inhale smoke and encouraged deeper inhalation to achieve satisfying blood levels of nicotine.

The result of deeper inhalation, Dr. Thun’s report suggests, has been an increased risk of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or C.O.P.D., and a shift in the kind of lung cancer linked to smoking. Among nonsmokers, the risk of death from C.O.P.D. has declined by 45 percent in men and has remained stable in women, but the death rate has more than doubled among smokers.

But there is good news, too: it’s never too late to reap the benefits of quitting. The younger you are when you stop smoking, the greater your chances of living a long and healthy life, according to the findings of Dr. Jha’s international team.

The team analyzed smoking and smoking-cessation histories of 113,752 women and 88,496 men 25 and older and linked them to causes of deaths in these groups through 2006.

Those who quit smoking by age 34 lived 10 years longer on average than those who continued to smoke, giving them a life expectancy comparable to people who never smoked. Smokers who quit between ages 35 and 44 lived nine years longer, and those who quit between 45 and 54 lived six years longer. Even quitting smoking between ages 55 and 64 resulted in a four-year gain in life expectancy.

The researchers emphasized, however, that the numbers do not mean it is safe to smoke until age 40 and then stop. Former smokers who quit by 40 still experienced a 20 percent greater risk of death than nonsmokers. About one in six former smokers who died before the age of 80 would not have died if he or she had never smoked, they reported.

Dr. Schroeder believes we can do a lot better to reduce the prevalence of smoking with the tools currently in hand if government agencies, medical insurers and the public cooperate.

Unlike the races, ribbons and fund-raisers for breast cancer, “there’s no public face for lung cancer, even though it kills more women than breast cancer does,” Dr. Schroeder said in an interview. Lung cancer is stigmatized as a disease people bring on themselves, even though many older victims were hooked on nicotine in the 1940s and 1950s, when little was known about the hazards of smoking and doctors appeared in ads assuring the public it was safe to smoke.

Raising taxes on cigarettes can help. The states with the highest prevalence of smoking have the lowest tax rates on cigarettes, Dr. Schroeder said. Also helpful would be prohibiting smoking in more public places like parks and beaches. Some states have criminalized smoking in cars when children are present.

More “countermarketing” of cigarettes is needed, he said, including antismoking public service ads on television and dramatic health warnings on cigarette packs, as is now done in Australia. But two American courts have ruled that the proposed label warnings infringed on the tobacco industry’s right to free speech.

Health insurers, both private and government, could broaden their coverage of stop-smoking aids and better publicize telephone quit lines, and doctors “should do more to stimulate quit attempts,” Dr. Schroeder said.

As Nicola Roxon, a former Australian health minister, put it, “We are killing people by not acting.”

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