Chen Guang-who? Chinese official claims ignorance of blind activist

BEIJING (Reuters) – Despite causing a huge diplomatic incident between the world’s two largest economies earlier this year, the Chinese official in charge of the hometown of blind legal activist Chen Guangcheng said on Friday that he has no idea who he was.

Chen, one of China’s most prominent human rights advocates, slipped away from under the noses of guards and eyes and ears of surveillance equipment around his village home near Linyi in eastern Shandong province in late April.

He then sought refuge at the U.S. embassy in Beijing for six days, embarrassing China and creating an awkward backdrop for U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit which happened to fall at the same time.

But asked on the sidelines of a party congress in Beijing about Chen, Linyi’s Communist Party boss Zhang Shaojun deadpanned.

“I’ve never heard (of him),” Zhang told Reuters, before hurrying away into a closed-door meeting.

In May, Chen told Reuters that an unnamed central government official had promised to investigate accusations that local officials engineered his jailing on false charges and subsequent 19 months of extra-judicial house arrest and abuse.

But Zhang, a portly man with thinning hair, said he knew of no such investigation.

“I’ve never heard of this matter,” he said.

Robbed of his sight as a child, the rural-born Chen taught himself law and drew international attention in 2005 after accusing officials of enforcing late-term abortions and sterilizations.

Following intense negotiations between Chinese and U.S. officials, Chen left the embassy and was allowed to apply for a visa to study abroad. He is currently a visiting fellow at the New York University School of Law.

(Reporting by Gabriel Wildau; Editing by Ben Blanchard)

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The New Old Age Blog: More Time to Enroll in Medicare If You Live in Storm Areas

Medicare beneficiaries battered by Hurricane Sandy have one fewer problem to worry about: Federal officials have extended the Dec. 7 deadline to enroll in a private medical or drug plan for next year for those still coping with storm damage.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services “understands that many Medicare beneficiaries have been affected by this disaster and wants to ensure that all beneficiaries are able to compare their options and make enrollment choices for 2013,” Arrah Tabe-Bedward, acting director for the Medicare Enrollment and Appeals Group, wrote in a Nov. 7 letter to health insurance companies and state health insurance assistance programs.

Beneficiaries hit by the storm can still enroll after the Dec. 7 midnight deadline if they call Medicare’s 24-hour information line: 1-800-MEDICARE (1-800-633-4227). Representatives will be able to review available plans and complete the enrollment process over the phone.

“We are committed to giving people with Medicare the information and the time they need to make important decisions about their coverage,” a Medicare spokeswoman, Isabella Leung, said in an e-mail message. Medicare officials have not set a new deadline but have encouraged beneficiaries to make their decisions soon if possible.

People currently in a plan will be automatically re-enrolled for next year in the same plan.

The extra time also applies to any beneficiaries who normally get help from family members or others to sort through dozens of plans, but who have been unable to do so this year because they live in areas affected by the storm. Neither beneficiaries nor those who provide them assistance will be required to prove that they experienced storm damage.

“This is a really important recognition by CMS to accommodate Medicare enrollees affected by Hurricane Sandy,” said Leslie Fried, director for policy and programs at the National Council on Aging, an advocacy group in Washington.

After the hurricane, the Obama administration declared Connecticut, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island “major disaster areas,” according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. In addition, FEMA issued emergency declarations for parts of Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia.

More than four million older people in those states are enrolled in drugs-only plans, and more than 2.8 million have Medicare Advantage policies, which includes medical and drug coverage.

Susan Jaffe is a writer for Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan health policy research and communication organization not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

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L.A. housing authority rife with fiscal mismanagement, audit finds

Los Angeles' housing authority, which runs on about $1 billion a year in taxpayer funds, is plagued by bad financial management that causes "questionable practices and poor decisions," according to an audit released Thursday by City Controller Wendy Greuel.

Greuel launched the audit last year amid an outcry over hefty taxpayer-funded restaurant tabs for agency officials and a $1-million-plus payout for the authority's fired executive director. The agency is responsible for sheltering about 75,000 of the city's neediest households.

A previous audit found instances of questionable spending by some agency officials, including double and triple billing for some travel and meal expenses. This audit, which looked at the agency's fiscal operations, did not uncover wrongdoing. But it did find that despite the authority's hefty budget and history of scandal going back decades, agency officials have done little to make sure money is properly managed.

Financial oversight was so lax, the audit found, that the agency's board of commissioners did not receive any financial statements or budget status reports during much of 2011 or the early part of 2012, except for one oral report last spring and one annual financial report that was presented nine months after the year had ended. A proposed budget presented to the board for 2012 was not balanced and contained contradictory statements.

"All of this suggests an agency that is out of control," said Greuel, a candidate for mayor. "The city cannot afford to continue spending its housing dollars irresponsibly."

One tenant advocate, Larry Gross, executive director of the L.A. Coalition for Economic Survival, said the lack of financial information given to the board and public was baffling.

"Whoever was on that board was clearly asleep at the wheel," he said. Many of the board members have been replaced in recent years.

Housing authority officials said they agreed with many of the audit's conclusions and will use the findings to guide reforms. Under recently hired Chief Executive Doug Guthrie, officials said they have already instituted a number of new practices, including financial training for all board members, stepped up financial reporting to the board and public, and the arrival of a new chief financial officer with expanded powers.

"We asked for this audit, we paid for the audit and we worked closely with the city controller's office" as the audit was underway, Guthrie said. "There's a lot of good stuff in the audit that helps us."

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa released a statement expressing support for Guthrie, who was hired last spring after the previous executive director, Rudolf Montiel, was fired and then paid $1.2 million to settle allegations that he was let go in retaliation for reporting improper spending by board members. Montiel had earlier drawn the ire of city leaders when his agency tried to evict nine tenants who protested the agency's policies outside his home.

"The housing authority has worked diligently to win back the trust of the people," Villaraigosa said.

But some City Council members expressed anger at the latest audit findings.

"There's a lot of problems over there, and obviously, the problems haven't gone away," said Councilman Dennis Zine, a candidate for controller. "Maybe it's time for the grand jury to investigate."

Zine also said he would like the City Council to have more authority over the agency. Under a hybrid governing structure, the mayor appoints the authority's seven board members, but the council lacks the ability to review spending decisions, a power it has over many other city departments.

The audit also found that the agency's list of assets contained at least $100 million worth of property that had been disposed of or no longer had much value, such as refrigerators and stoves that had been purchased in the 1970s. No inventory of its fixed assets had been performed in at least seven years.

In addition, the agency did not always follow its own rules when it came to awarding contracts to vendors, in one case allowing someone to sit on a bid selection panel after he had declared a conflict of interest.

jessica.garrison@latimes.com

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Mr. Bond's Carbon-Fiber Tuxedo

James Bond is nothing if not consistent — shot, drowned, pushed out of an airplane with no parachute, he always comes back. And he’s always wearing an impeccable tux. That’s what makes an icon. And that rule to consistently deliver the goods — and to look good doing it — is one followed not only by Mr. Bond, but also by one of his favorite automakers.

Aston Martin has remained consistent for most of its 99-year history, producing sharply designed, poshly appointed and distinctly British sports cars for the luxury market. The company has stuck to the formula with its new range-topping Vanquish.

But consistency can be a double-edged sword. Just as you can throw out a Bond film title and your average Joe may struggle to tell you which actor portrayed 007 in that particular flick, show anyone (aside from Aston enthusiasts) a contemporary Aston Martin and they won’t be able to tell you whether it’s a Vantage, Virage, or DBS. That holds true for the new Vanquish — it’s essentially the same tuxedo with some new bits underneath.

Because Aston does bespoke like Chevy does floor mats, there will likely be a completely naked carbon fiber Vanquish available.

It is a damn good-looking thing though, building subtly on the shape of the Vanquish that debuted in 2001. While similarly sized, the new Vanquish looks leaner, its lines sharper and more tapered amidships. It also borrows cues from Aston’s recent One-77 supercar (out of production after just 77 were built) including the tighter waistline, elongated side strakes, and LED light blade rear clusters. There are hints of carbon fiber, too, visible on the front splitter, side skirts, door mirrors and rear diffuser.

Every body panel on the new Vanquish is constructed from carbon fiber, a choice Aston made because of its high strength-to-weight ratio and reduction in mass (though Ferrari would disagree). Fewer individual body panels are required and the panel gap on the C-pillar joint is no longer present. A new rear Aero Duct (fancy spoiler) is fashioned via an innovative method of laying-up carbon fiber.

Because Aston does bespoke like Chevy does floor mats, there will likely be a completely naked carbon-fiber Vanquish available. (Aston already has a “cutaway” Vanquish display model in exposed carbon.)

Beneath the carbon cloak sits an evolution of Aston’s decade-old VH platform. Aston insists VH — “vertical horizontal” — is a methodology rather than an architecture, so we’ll just call it the re-engineered DBS chassis. The lightweight bonded aluminum structure incorporates a tub with carbon-fiber components. Compared to the outgoing DBS, according to Aston, the weight is down, 75 percent of the parts are new, and rigidity is up 25 percent.

The engine is a considerably re-engineered 6.0-liter V12 (Bond requires 12 cylinders). The block has been revised, there are new heads with dual variable valve timing, an uprated fuel pump, enlarged throttle bodies and an improved “big wing” intake manifold, to cite a few changes. Peak power is 565 hp at 6,750 rpm, and peak torque is 457 pound-feet at 5,500 rpm. With a curb weight around 3,834 pounds, Aston reports the Vanquish can attain 60 mph in 4.0 seconds on the way to a 183 mph top speed.

It feels that fast, especially on the narrow “B” roads (about 1.5 lanes) of the English midlands where I drove it. These are some of the most gritty, undulating, curvy roads in the U.K., and Aston develops its cars on them. The Vanquish’s three-mode (Normal, Sport, Track) suspension handles them with aplomb, combining admirable compliance with excellent body control. The stiff chassis provides the foundation for front and rear double wishbones with coil springs and adjustable shocks. Cocktails all ’round for the Adaptive Damping System engineers who’ve done a bang-up job.

The steering is similarly well-sorted, giving little up to that of the new Porsche 911 I got into following the Vanquish launch. Aston’s rear-mid mounted, six-speed Touchtronic 2 automatic/sequential manual gearbox does the business well and more smoothly than competitors’ double-clutch transmissions. That said, it was flummoxed twice whilst puttering through quaint English villages.

The Vanquish isn’t really a track car, but it’s quite capable of outrunning the bad guys. Your fairer driving companions will approve of the fine-scented cockpit materials like Bridge of Weir Luxmil leather and Alcantara, all hand-stitched. Even the headliner looks tailored.

If there’s one area where the Vanquish falls flat, it’s in ergonomics and infotainment. Familiar elements from the glass key/starter module to the gear-selection buttons remain, though the center stack is a bit different. The speedometer and tach dials are attractive but difficult to read, hence a new digital speedo display. Suspension mode and cruise control buttons on the steering wheel look like afterthoughts. Aston trumpets the center information screen’s haptic feedback, but it’s still too small and saddled by lackluster navigation and menu logic.

The standard Bang & Olufsen sound system wasn’t quite tuned up on the early production cars I drove. Aston says final adjustments on the audio system is ongoing. Tire noise on the funky roads was an unexpected issue. Space wasn’t, though, the Vanquish enjoying more occupant space than the DBS. Back seats are optional, but most suitable for those bound and gagged. Rear and rear three-quarter visibility isn’t great, but the exhaust note is.

The Vanquish breaks little new styling ground — but then, Daniel Craig could probably throw on Sean Connery’s old tuxedo and look just right. That’s a good thing. Class doesn’t go out of style, and neither will the Vanquish. Carbon fiber? That’s another question.

WIRED Sexy shape. Highly composed driving dynamics and near 600 horsepower. Hand-finished interior smells like Ralph Lauren’s saddle cabinet.

TIRED Occasional hitches in the auto-trans at low speed. Standard paddle-shifters should be longer. The optional squared-off steering wheel feels awkward when cruising. As nice as the shape is, there’s just something too familiar about it.

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Mark Wahlberg to star in next ‘Transformers’ movie

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Mark Wahlberg, roll out.

“Transformers” director Michael Bay says the 41-year-old actor will star in the franchise’s fourth film.

Bay called Wahlberg the “perfect guy to re-invigorate the franchise and carry on the Transformers‘ legacy” in a post on his blog Thursday. He previously squashed rumors that Wahlberg was joining the film franchise about warring robots.

Bay worked with Wahlberg on his upcoming film, “Pain and Gain.”

“Transformers 4″ is scheduled to be released by Paramount Pictures on June 27, 2014.

Bay has said the next film will take a new direction in the series. The first three movies starred Shia LaBeouf and featured Peter Cullen as the voice of Autobot general Optimus Prime.

The third “Transformers” film, “Dark of the Moon,” was the second highest-grossing film of 2011.

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Living With Cancer: It’s About Time

It’s time to renew my driver’s license! I never thought I would live to see the day. Back in 2008, when pressed to disclose my life expectancy, my oncologist estimated three to five years. Figuring that I was an average patient, I split the difference and believed I had four years left. Yet here I am, about to celebrate my fourth “cancerversary” with a trip to the dreary and backlogged bureau of motor vehicles, elated by the conviction that even if I expire within the next year or so, my license won’t.

This sort of wacky calculation reflects the oddity of cancer temporality. Every facet of cancer and its treatments transforms time, from its smallest to its larger increments. Of course, waiting takes the most time in the smallest units. Its ticktock can be interminable, especially when you are anxiously waiting for test results or fasting for a dreaded operation or when you are going through preparations for a procedure requiring that you drink vials of what looks like Kool-Aid every half-hour for two hours. Any period spent in the hospital requires killing time. Time, in fact, sometimes seems to stop, to stand still. The afternoon after an operation, as one fitfully wakes and sleeps, sleeps and wakes, can feel like an eternity. I surface with effort, muttering, “It can’t still be Thursday,” only to be told, “Yes, it’s still Thursday.”

While you’re waiting, fear or pain elongates minutes and hours and days. Chemotherapy divides into intervals the weeks and months that begin with its slow drip-drip. Just when I determine that I have no time to waste and must relish the change of the seasons, the timetable of chemo-time nudges them aside.

Each of my cycles of chemotherapy included six sessions, given every three weeks. I might not have known whether it was spring or fall, but I always knew that there were, say, two down and four to go. And then I began counting not the sessions but the cycles, though I could not remember the start-and-finish of all three cycles, for the past blurred. I had to draft a sort of chemo-history. Now that I am in a clinical trial, the nurse in charge provides me with a monthly schedule on which all the blood draws, pill dispensations and scans are recorded so I can track the present and the near future. Its rhythms trump those of the Gregorian and lunar calendars.

The zones of remissions and recurrences — registered for many people in years, for me, unfortunately, in months — can also be hard to gauge. Do I date remission at the last chemotherapy session, recurrence at the start of the next chemotherapy cycle? Or do I go by blood tests or scans? I am just as uncertain about the exact date of my cancerversary. Is it the day on which I heard the diagnosis, or the day of the initial operation? I wonder, should either of these time bombs be celebrated?

The limits of time stir me to enumerate constantly. I am always counting on my fingers: remissions and recurrences, the months used up, the months left, the relatives and friends I cherish. I count my steps down to the mailbox, my steps dragging the garbage can back to the garage, the number of my husband’s underpants in the laundry, the hours until the next pill, the number of days in which I must change or flush surgical implants, the weeks until I see my oncologist, the people on whom I count.

If my oncologist is right, and all of her other predictions have been spot on, I am approaching the last year of my life: final time. In the immortal words of Dr. Seuss, “How did it get so late so soon?” Without much of a future, surely time will again change. A lot can happen in a year — think of the helpless infant becoming a walking, talking toddler in 9 or 10 months. Time moves more slowly for small children, since a year of a 2-year-old’s life is 50 percent of that life. A terminal diagnosis may also slow down time. The next year might be 100 percent of what’s left of my existence.

Sometimes the time left seems too long; too many catastrophes could injure those I love. Sometimes it seems too short; there are so many suspenseful stories unfolding around me, and I want to see how they will turn out. Those for whom time’s chariot is indeed winged often attest to a heightened appreciation of their fast-fading prospects. And then there is always the dream of borrowed time, that numinous period beyond the predicted end, like a stay of execution, which must be fraught with its own blessings and curses.

But during apocalyptic times, when natural forces obliterate the precious places of my origins, even the dream of borrowed time can sink under the rising waters, as I brood on the widespread suffering and struggling of others.

In the meantime, I discover that it is now possible to bypass the motor vehicle bureau by renewing a driver’s license online. Voilà, it will appear in the mail — sporting the photograph on the license issued six years ago, before my diagnosis. On the license, at least, the passage has been reversed. It’s about time.

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Susan Gubar is a distinguished emerita professor of English at Indiana University and the author of “Memoir of a Debulked Woman,” which explores her experience with ovarian cancer.

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Heavy Lending Creates a Surge in Chinese Economy

BEIJING — The Chinese economy grew faster than expected last month even as inflation slowed, official statistics showed on Friday, as the government continued heavy lending through its state-owned banks to rekindle growth.

The latest data, including industrial production, retail sales, fixed-asset investment and electricity generation, were stronger than most economists had anticipated. They presented a consistent picture of an economy that is starting to show real growth again after a very weak spring and summer.

“It has become increasingly clear that the Chinese economy is now moving in a better direction,” Zhou Xiaochuan, the governor of the People’s Bank of China, the central bank, said at a news conference Thursday, before the October figures were publicly released.

Bank economists increasingly agree. “October’s growth data delivered pleasant upside surprises across the board, providing fresh evidence that the economy has indeed bottomed out thanks to the filtering through of Beijing’s policy easing,” Sun Junwei, a China economist at HSBC, wrote in a research report Friday afternoon.

To be sure, the economic statistics released by the government Friday showed a return to the fairly strong economic expansion that prevailed through much of last year and early this year, and not a return to the torrid, double-digit growth that China has enjoyed for much of the last decade.

Australia & New Zealand Banking said in a research note that the latest figures were consistent with 8 percent economic growth in the last quarter of this year and even faster expansion in the first quarter of next year.

Growth had weakened to 7.4 percent in the third quarter and 7.6 percent in the second quarter, according to official statistics. Many economists have been suspicious that even the figures from earlier this year might have been overstated, given the weakness in categories like electricity generation, which grew barely at all in the second quarter and only slowly in the third quarter.

By contrast, the economic expansion this autumn appears more broadly based. Business executives have begun to describe recovering exports and domestic sales, and cranes have begun moving again on the skylines of big cities like Guangzhou and Beijing.

Steel mills and concrete factories are busier. Power generation increased 6.4 percent last month from the same period a year ago, its strongest gain since March, although still well below the double-digit annual gains in previous years.

But the renewed growth has been fueled by rapidly mounting debt, as state-owned banks and the central bank have funneled hundreds of billions of dollars in additional lending to state-owned enterprises and government agencies to finance further investment projects.

Stock markets in China, Hong Kong, Australia and South Korea were all down about half a percent in late afternoon trading, or about half the loss Thursday on Wall Street, as good news from China seemed to partially offset global worries about the so-called fiscal cliff in the United States and economic troubles in Europe.

The Chinese National Bureau of Statistics said Friday that industrial production had risen 9.6 percent in October from the same month a year earlier, compared with 9.2 percent in September and 8.9 percent in August. Retail sales were up 14.5 percent in October from a year earlier, compared with 14.2 percent in September, even though slower inflation at the consumer level was acting as a brake on the increase in retail sales.

Fixed-asset investment was up 20.7 percent for the first 10 months of this year, after having been up 20.5 percent for the first nine months of this year. China releases only year-to-date figures for fixed-asset investment, partly because of the difficulty in tracking when money is actually spent on big construction projects.

Consumer prices were up only 1.7 percent in October from a year ago, compared with an increase of 1.9 percent in September. Western economists had expected inflation in China to stay steady in October instead of slowing.

Producer prices were down 2.8 percent in October from a year ago, a slightly faster pace than the 2.7 percent decrease that economists had expected but not as fast a decline as in September, when they were down 3.6 percent.

China has begun a once-a-decade leadership transition at its Party Congress, which began in Beijing on Thursday and will last through the middle of the coming week.

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Stocks edge higher after post-election sell-off

On the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. (Justin Lane / November 8, 2012)

By Andrew Tangel

November 8, 2012, 7:17 a.m.

Stocks edged higher in early trading Thursday after a sharp sell-off in the wake of President Obama's reelection.

The Dow Jones industrial average added 28 points, or 0.2%, to 12,961 shortly after the opening bell. The Dow dropped more than 300 points Wednesday.

The broader Standard & Poor's 500 index gained 3 points, or 0.2%, to 1,398. The Nasdaq was up 9 points, or 0.3%, to 2,946.

Investors digested better-than-expected economic data Thursday that show declines in weekly jobless claims and the U.S. trade deficit.

In Europe, the European Central Bank kept interest rates unchanged. Spain, one of the most deeply indebted countries in the Eurozone, reportedly held a successful bond auction.

Worries out of Europe helped fuel a broad sell-off Wednesday in the first trading session since election day. Investors hammered stocks, particularly those in sectors that could face lower government spending (defense) or increased regulation (banking) in Obama's second term.

Chief among investors' concerns now is the so-called fiscal cliff, the automatic spending cuts and tax increases looming at the end of the year that, if left in place, could push the U.S. back into recession.

Wall Street fears continued gridlock in Washington with Obama in the White House and a strong Republican majority in control of the House.

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In Bounties They Trust, But Does Paying for Security Bugs Make a Safer Web?

The night before the end of Google’s Pwnium contest at the CanSecWest security conference this year in Vancouver, a tall teen dressed in khaki shorts, tube socks and sneakers was hunkered down on a hallway bench at the Sheraton hotel hacking away at his laptop.

With a $60,000 cash prize on the line, the teen, who goes by the hacker handle “Pinkie Pie,” was working hard to get his exploit for the Chrome browser stabilized before the close of the competition.

The only other contestant, a Russian university student named Sergey Glazunov, had already made off with one $60,000 prize for a zero-day exploit that attacked 10 different bugs.

Finally, with just hours to go before the end of the three-day competition, Pinkie Pie achieved his goal and dropped his exploit, a beauty of a hack that ripped through six zero-day vulnerabilities in Chrome and slipped out of the browser’s security sandbox.

Google called both hacks “works of art,” and within 24 hours of receiving each submission, had patched all of the bugs that they exploited. Within days, the company had also added new defensive measures to Chrome to ward off future similar attacks.

Google’s Pwnium contest is a new addition to its year-round bug bounty programs, launched in 2010, that are aimed at encouraging independent security researchers to find and report security vulnerabilities in Google’s Chrome browser and web properties, and to get paid for doing so.

Vendor bounty programs like Google’s have been around since 2004, when the Mozilla Foundation launched the first modern pay-for-bugs plan for its Firefox browser.* In addition to Google and Mozilla, Facebook and PayPal have also launched bug bounty programs, and even the crafts site Etsy got into the game recently with a program that pays not only for new bugs, but also retroactively for previously reported bugs, to thank researchers who contributed to the site’s security before the bounty program began.

The Mozilla Foundation has paid out more than $750,000 since launching its bounty program; Google has paid out more than $1.2 million.

But some of the biggest vendors, who might be expected to have bounty programs, don’t. Microsoft, Adobe and Apple are just three software makers who have been criticized for not paying independent researchers for bugs they have found, even though the companies benefit greatly from the free work done by those who uncover and disclose security vulnerabilities.

Microsoft says its new BlueHat security program, which pays $50,000 and $250,000 to security pros who can devise defensive measures for specific kinds of attacks, is better than paying for bugs.

“I don’t think that filing and rewarding point issues is a long-term strategy to protect customers,” Microsoft security chief Mike Reavey said recently.

All of which begs the question: Eight years down the line, have bug bounty programs made browsers and web services more secure? And is there any way to really test that proposition?

*Netscape actually launched the first bounty program in 1995, but the idea never really caught on beyond Netscape at the time.

There’s no scientific method for determining if software is more secure than it used to be. And there’s no way to know how much a bounty program has improved the security of a particular software program, as opposed to other measures undertaken by software makers. Security isn’t just about patching bugs; it’s also about adding defensive measures — such as browser sandboxes — to mitigate entire classes of bugs. The combination of these two make software more secure.

But everyone interviewed for this story says the anecdotal evidence strongly supports the conclusion that bounty programs have indeed improved the security of software. And more than this, the programs have yielded other security benefits that go far beyond the individual bugs they’ve helped fix.

In the most obvious sense, bounty programs make software more secure simply by the fact that they reduce the number of security holes hackers can attack.

“There’s a finite number of bugs in these products, so every time you can knock out a bunch of them, you’re in a better place,” says top security researcher Charlie Miller, who’s responsible for finding a number of high-profile vulnerabilities in Apple’s iPhone and other products.

But one of the biggest indications that bounty programs have improved security is the decreasing number of bug reports that come in, according to Google.

“It’s a hard measurement to take, but we’re seeing a fairly sustained drop-off in the number of incoming reports we’re receiving for the Chromium program,” says Chris Evans, information security engineer at Google who leads the company’s Chromium vulnerability rewards program as well as its new Pwnium contest, launched this year.

Google has its own internal fuzzing program to uncover security vulnerabilities, and the rate at which that team is finding bugs has dropped, too, Evans says. Google recently asked some of its best outside bug hunters why bug reports had declined and was told it was just “harder to find” vulnerabilities these days. Harder-to-find bugs for researchers also means harder-to-find bugs for hackers.

Bounty programs also improve security by encouraging researchers to disclose bugs responsibly — that is, passing the information to vendors first, so that they can release a patch to customers before the information is publicly disclosed. And they help mend the fractious relationship that has long existed between researchers and vendors.

In 2009, Miller and fellow security researchers Alex Sotirov and Dino Dai Zovi launched a “No More Free Bugs” campaign to protest freeloading vendors who weren’t willing to pay for the valuable service bug hunters provided and to call attention to the fact that researchers often got punished by vendors for trying to do a good deed.

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Rihanna a rock star on Victoria’s Secret catwalk

NEW YORK (AP) — Rihanna rocked lingerie at Wednesday night’s Victoria’s Secret fashion show in New York, providing the highlight of the live-music soundtrack and holding her own on the catwalk with some of the world’s top models.

And those models even had props, including Adriana Lima‘s ringmaster wand, Doutzen Kroes‘ body cage and several pairs of the oversized wings that the retailer has made its signature. It would be a close contest who got the biggest wings: Toni Garrn’s giant poppy pair or Miranda Kerr’s swan-style feathered pouf. Only Lily Aldridge could boast star-spangled wings that shot out silver sparkles.

Alessandra Ambrosio’s orchid-petal wings might have lacked a little grandeur, but she made up for it with a $ 2.5 million jeweled “floral fantasy bra.”

Still, wearing a sheer pink mini that gave glimpses of her bra, Rihanna sang “Fresh Out the Runway” at the end of the corset-and-garter parade and she was the one to grab the audience’s biggest applause.

The fashion show has become a pre-holiday season tradition for the retailer. CBS will turn it into a one-hour special, which also had performances from Justin Bieber and Bruno Mars, to be shown on Dec. 4.

Lima said she loved opening the show in the ringmaster costume. “The atmosphere of the Victoria’s Secret fashion show is electric,” she said. “It’s so much fun to be able to interact with the audience! What other show will you see Rihanna, Justin Beiber and Bruno Mars on the runway with angels?”

This year’s event had a slight twist. It started with an announcer noting that Victoria’s Secret and CBS had each made a donation to relief efforts for Superstorm Sandy, and a thank you to the National Guard members who are based out of the Lexington Avenue Armory that has for years been home to the show.

Mostly, though, models are encouraged to smile, ham it up and show off the extra time at the gym that most admit to in the weeks beforehand. “It’s highly televised, and you take that into consideration,” said model Joan Smalls ahead of the show. “This is kind of not the same as other runways. You have to prepare your body: No. 1 is the wings are heavy, and No. 2 is you have to be comfortable with your body because the camera will pick up on it if you’re not comfortable and confident.”

There’s an emphasis on glitz, skin and dramatic production here, not wearable undergarment trends for typical Victoria’s Secret shoppers. It was divided into six sections: Circus, complete with acrobats, contortionists and a sword eater; Dangerous Liaisons; Pink Is Us; Silver Screen Angels; Angels in Bloom; and Calendar Girls, which allowed Bruno Mars to serenade a model for each month of the year.

For his first song, “Beauty and the Beat,” Bieber, wearing low-slung white pants and a white leather studded vest, sat alone with his guitarist in the mellowest part of the show. For “As Long As You Love Me,” however, he brought in backup dancers and interacted with the models while moving around a giant makeshift pinball machine.

“It’s like a dream come true,” said Bieber on the pink carpet before the show. “I would rather be here than anywhere in the world.”

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AP reporter John Carucci contributed to this report.

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Samantha Critchell tweets fashion at http://www.twitter.com/AP_Fashion

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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