Another Pricey Watch Disappears in Russia

Andrey Konoval, via LiveJournal A recent photograph of a billboard greeting visitors to a zoo in the Russian city of Izhevsk, featuring the region's president and a leopard cub born in April.

Six months after the Russian Orthodox Church admitted that it had altered a photo on its Web site to remove what looked like an expensive watch worn by its leader, Patriarch Kirill, another fancy watch has disappeared from a portrait of a leading Russian - this time, the president of Udmurtia, a small ethnic republic in Russia's Volga district.

Andrey Konoval, via LiveJournal Until last week, a poster at a zoo in Russia showed what appeared to be an expensive watch on the wrist of a regional official.

Andrey Konoval, via LiveJournal A Russian blogger's photograph of a large sticker of a plain watch pasted on to a portrait of a l ocal official.

In both cases the watches appeared to be Breguet time pieces worth tens of thousands of dollars, which are so often found on the wrists of senior figures in Russia's ruling United Russia Party that one blogger has suggested the political grouping should be renamed “the Party of Breguets.” The main difference between the two cases is that while the patriarch's watch was deleted from a photo by digital sleight-of-hand, the pricey watch pictured on the wrist of Udmurtia's president, Alexander Volkov, was literally covered up, by pasting a very large sticker, bearing the image of much plainer watch, on to a billboard at a local zoo.

Catching public figures sporting luxury watches has become something of a hobby for Russian bloggers in Moscow, but it is rare in Izhevsk, the rundown capital of Udmurtia. On Monday, a local journalist and blogger, Andrey Konoval, documented the alterations to the large portrait of Mr. Volkov in a post on his b log, illustrated with before and after pictures and two brief video clips, showing the revised version of the billboard, and the blogger's unsuccessful attempt to peel the sticker off.

Video posted on YouTube on Monday by the Russian journalist and blogger Andrey Konoval, showing that a portrait of a regional official outside a zoo was altered by adding a large sticker of a plain watch to the poster.

Video posted on YouTube by Andrey Konoval, a Russian journalist and blogger, showing a large sticker added recently to the portrait of a regional official.

Although Mr. Volkov has held his post for 19 years, being president of a backwater populated by speakers of an obscure Finno-Ugric language means that he is not often in the limelight. Eight years ago, my colleague C.J. Chivers visited the presidential palace for a celebration of Udmurtia's most famous export, the Kalashnikov. A few months ago, Mr. Volkov found himself hosting a state reception for the Buranovskiye Babushki, a local pop group made up of six elderly women who managed to finish second at this year's Eurovision song contest, singing their hit, “Party For Everybody.”

In that context, when Mr. Volkov looked at his calendar for May 21 of this year and saw that he was scheduled to pose for photographs with a newborn leopard cub born at the local zoo six weeks earlier, he might well have looked forward to the occasion. Now however, there appears to be a concerted effort underway in Udmurtia to alter or delete the images taken that day.

That effort ap pears to have started about ten days ago, after a blogger who writes as pravdorub-rus reported that a photograph of Mr. Volkov holding the leopard that day, reproduced in a large poster greeting visitors to the Izhevsk zoo, showed him wearing what looks very like a Breguet Classique Grande Complication, worth about $120,000. As the official Russian news agency RIA Novosti noted, “the sum slightly exceeds Volkov's annual salary.”

A press secretary for Mr. Volkov, Viktor Chulkov, admitted on Monday that the designers of the poster had glued a new watch over the Bregeut, but said that neither watch was ever worn by the President in real life. “In my opinion, this is an attempt to make a scandal out of nothing,” Mr. Chulkov told a government newspaper, Rossiskaya Gazeta.

Instead, he added, the designers of the poster dreamed up both of the watches themselves. “The designers, who were handling the preparation of the poster, say that they wanted to embellish their work,” he said. “Why they embellished it like this,” he added, referring to the Bregeut, “and then they decided to stick something on top of that â€" we are trying to that figure out.”

Mr. Chulkov also said that he spends several hours a day with the president and has never seen either watch on his wrist.

After the disappearing watch was reported in Mr. Konoval's blog post, however, the Russian news site Rusnovosti.ru dug up and published four photographs that appeared to show the Bregeut on Mr. Volkov's wrist, including one very clear image from a local news site, IzhLife.ru, of the president clutching the baby leopard in almost the exact pose documented on the billboard.

Izhlife.ru, via GoodNewsAnimal.ru A photograph published in May by a local news Web site in the Russian republic of Udmurtia showed Alexander Volkov, the regional president, cuddling a leopard cub at a zoo.

It proved impossible to track down the original report that photograph illustrated, since IzhLife.ru's entire Web site seems to have been taken down, although new reports were published on Tuesday on both the IzhLife Facebook page and the IzhLife YouTube channel, describing developments in the regional parliament and auditions for the Miss Russia pageant in Izhevsk.

If the IzhLife Web site was taken down as part of an effort to scrub the images of Mr. Volkov's watch from the Internet, the revisionist historians behind the scheme appear to have been foiled by the editors of GoodNewsAnimal.ru, a Russian Web site dedicated to scouring the Web for images of cute animals. Captivated by the photograph of the baby leopard, that Web site documented the president's visit to the zoo in great detail, copying the IzhLife photo and even adding video of the fateful photo-op, proving that the image on the poster was not a figment of the designer's imagination.

Follow Andrew Roth on Twitter @ARothmsk.

Robert Mackey also remixes the news on Twitter @robertmackey.

Creating Big Data\'s Talent Mart

Companies without enough data scientists, meet lots of analysts willing to take your work.

EMC's Greenplum division, which makes data analytics software, is joining forces with Kaggle, a company that finds and deploys people good at statistical inference, to produce a kind of Big Data engineer marketplace.

Customers of a Greenplum product called Chorus will be able to search and examine the profiles of thousands of people worldwide who have participated in Kaggle's online statistical competitions. The companies can then hire these master statisticians by the hour to solve their data problems.

Kaggle contests cover things as diverse as finding dark matter in the universe and predicting bond prices. In addition to solving specific problems, they identify the people who are good at the problem solving. Kaggle then runs private data competitions for big companies, hiring its best contestants as contractors. It collects a fee for that.

So far, Kaggle ha s registered 55,000 contestants, any of whom can register to be hired for projects by Greenplum customers. The project with Greenplum was announced on Tuesday, so it is still unclear how many people will want to participate.

“It's a way to get them into companies and solving problems,” said Anthony Goldbloom, the chief executive of Kaggle. “It should also be good for our business. Right now we attract people who are in the competitions for love. If this generates more money, it will attract more people.”

Kaggle's private contests tend to be large-scale projects. Mr. Goldbloom expects the Greenplum customers to have simpler needs. Insurers, for example, are frequently looking for ways to improve their premiums system. Kaggle will charge $300 to $500 an hour for the service (the final price has not yet been set) and will collect a commission.

Scott Yara, a co-founder of Greenplum and now its senior vice president of products, said his company already has a dedicated staff of 25 data scientists but has more work than it can handle. “We'll never fill the gap,” he said. “Even the biggest companies in the world are just starting out on this.”

Greenplum's and Kaggle's effort may be one way that the market copes with a perceived shortage of data scientists. Last year, McKinsey Global Institute said that the United States needs perhaps 190,000 skilled data analysts and 1.5 million more data-literate managers to cope with all the information companies are collecting.

Other methods include offering marketplaces of algorithms and better user interfaces to automate some of the statistical process. Both of these efforts are under way, both at established companies and at start-ups.

Still, Mr. Yara said, there will be an acute need for talent. “In 1975, if you said we'll need millions of people writing software, it would have made no sense,” he said. On the other hand, it happened.

Live Updates From Apple\'s Product Event

Apple unveiled a smaller iPad, a new iMac and other revamped products on Tuesday at an event at the California Theater in San Jose, Calif. I'm filing updates from the event, and my colleagues Brian X. Chen and Nick Bilton in San Jose, and Nick Wingfield in New York, are pitching in with commentary. (Safari users on Macs and iPhones can watch Apple's video feed.)

Daily Report: Tech Giants Scramble to Meet the Challenges of a Mobile World

The ground is shifting beneath technology titans like Intel, Google and Microsoft because of a major force: the rise of mobile devices, Claire Cain Miller and Somini Sengupta report in The New York Times on Tuesday.

These companies are all scrambling to reinvent their business models now that the old model - a stationary customer sitting at a stationary desk - no longer applies. Although they once disrupted traditional businesses, from selling books and music to booking hotels, now they themselves are being upended by the widespread adoption of smartphones and tablets.

“Companies are having to retool their thinking, saying, ‘What is it that our customers are doing through the mobile channel that is quite distinct from what we are delivering them through our traditional Web channel?' ” Charles S. Golvin, an analyst who studies mobility at the technology research firm Forrester, told The Times.

He added, “It's hilarious to talk about traditional We b business like it's been going on for centuries, but it's last century.”

The industry giants remain highly profitable drivers of the economy. Yet the world's shift to mobile computing is taking a toll, including disappointing earnings reports last week from Google, Microsoft and Intel, in large measure related to mobile revenues. Investors are in suspense over Facebook's earnings on Tuesday for much the same reason.

Demand is plummeting for Intel chips inside computers, which are much more profitable than those inside smartphones. At Microsoft, sales of the software that runs PCs and the technology that comes with them are sharply declining as people spend money on phones and tablets instead. And at Google, the price that advertisers pay when people click on ads has fallen for a year. This is because, while mobile ads are exploding, they cost less than Internet ads.

Meanwhile, since its public debut, Facebook has lost half its value on Wall Street and is under pressure to gin up mobile revenues, now that six of 10 Facebook users log in on their phones.

But making money in the new game of mobile will depend on how deftly companies can track their users from their desktop computers to the phones in their palms - and ultimately to the stores, cinemas and pizzerias where they spend their money. It will also depend on how consumers and government regulators will react to having every move monitored.

Video of Lebanese Military Taking to Beirut\'s Streets

The Lebanese mlitary fanned out across Beirut to try and quell sectarian violence.

As my colleagues Neil MacFarquhar and David D. Kirkpatrick report, members of the Lebanese military took positions in Beirut on Monday aimed at removing gunmen from the street and breaking down roadblocks set up by civilians following a car bomb on Friday that killed a top security official and seven others.

In an unusual statement, military officials also asked politicians to help calm tensions between supporters of the Syrian president, Bashar Assad, and his opponents. Despite denials, the Syrian government has been widely blamed for the blast that killed the security official, Brig. Gen. Wissam al-Hassan, who was viewed by Syrian opposition activists as a supporter of the armed effort to o ust President Assad.

“Tension in some areas is increasing to unprecedented levels,” read part of a statement issued by Lebanon's armed forces. “We are appealing to all leaders from all political factions to be aware about expressing their positions and trying to incite popular opinion.”

The military's statement followed overnight clashes that left at least six people dead. And, over the weekend, an angry mob attempted to storm the Beirut offices of Prime Minister Najib Mikati, prompting the military to say that it would use force, if needed, if people targeted institutions or officials.

“The last few hours have proven without a doubt that the country is going through a decisive and critical time and the level of tension in some regions is rising to unprecedented levels,” the statement said.

Among the 80 people injured in the blast on Friday was a 10-year-old girl, Jennifer Shedid, who was returning home from s chool when the bomb exploded. In an Associated Press photograph that went around the world, the child was seen, badly wounded with bloodied sneakers, as her father carried her from the wreckage. Her injuries required more than 300 stitches, according to a report by Bassem Mroue for The Associated Press. But her father reports that she will be all right.

Beirut blast victim Jennifer Shedid in good health, father says http://t.co/w5lckRn8

- Lebanese (@lebanesepress) 22 Oct 12

Pussy Riot Protesters Sent to Prison Camps

As Miriam Elder reports for The Guardian, the protest group Pussy Riot announced on its Twitter feed Monday that two jailed members of the all-female collective, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, and Maria Alyokhina, 24 - both mothers of young children - have been sent to penal colonies to serve their sentences.

The women were sentenced to two years in jail for bursting into Moscow's main cathedral in February and performing a song calling on the Virgin Mary to rid Russia of Vladimir Putin. A third member of the group was released after an appeal hearing this month.

A lawyer for the two women confirmed the news to Agence France-Presse, saying, “Nadya Tolokonnikova has been sent to Mordovia, and Maria Alyokhina to Perm.” The group's brief statement described Perm and Mordovia as “the harshest camps of all the possible choices.”

На выходных Надя была спецрейсом этапирована в МорР´Ð¾Ð²Ð¸ÑŽ, а Маша â€" в Пермский край. Это самые жестокие лагеря из всех возможных вариантов.

- группа Pussy Riot (@pussy_riot) 22 Oct 12

As Marina Lapenkova of AFP explained:

The Perm region, where temperatures can fall as low as minus 50 degrees Celsius in winter, housed Stalin-era labour camps, one of which has been turned into a museum about the history of political repression.

Mordovia is a region dotted with lakes that is chiefly known for its prison camps dating back to the Stalin era.

Years after the Soviet gulag, conditions in Russia's penal colonies remain notoriously harsh, as my colleague Andrew Kramer reported two years ago.

Ms. Elder notes in her report that both women “had petitioned to serve their sentences in Moscow, arguing that they wanted to be close to their children. Alyo khina has a five-year-old son named Filipp, while Tolokonnikova has a four-year-old daughter named Gera.”

Ms. Tolokonnikova's young daughter traveled to the United States last month along with her father, the activist Pyotr Verzilov, to lobby Congress to pass legislation that would impose sanctions on Russian officials involved in human rights abuses. The four-year-old's experience in Washington, where she and her father were feted by rights groups, and sat next to Aung San Sui Kyi at one event, was featured recently in the independent Russian documentary series, “Srok,” or “The Term,” which charts the opposition movement in episodes posted on YouTube.

An episode of a Russian documentary, “Srok,” or The Term,” charting Russia's opposition movement, focused on the experi ence of the young daughter of a jailed member of the protest group Pussy Riot.

Alya Kirillova, the producer of the observational documentary, who also shot the video of the young girl's trip to Washington, told The Lede in an instant-message interview this month that she and her colleagues are following the various strands of Russia's opposition movement to try to understand the potential leaders better. “We neither chronicle protest rallies nor make news reports. We record the thoughts and emotions of those leaders. We want to understand where they lead us. What they call us up for,” Ms. Kirillova wrote.

Robert Mackey also remixes the news on Twitter @robertmackey.

U.S. Customs Workers to Switch to iPhones From BlackBerrys

Even after the popularity of BlackBerrys among consumers went into a tailspin, it was widely assumed that their security features would keep law enforcement agencies loyal to the brand.

But the decision by the Department of Homeland Security to switch 17,676 employees at its Immigration and Customs Enforcement branch to iPhones from BlackBerrys suggests even that assumption no longer holds true for Research in Motion, the maker of BlackBerry.

The $2.1 million iPhone contract was awarded in late September and revealed last week in a government document explaining why it was not opened to competitive tenders.

After eight years of using BlackBerrys, the agency concluded that the once-leading smartphones were too far behind the times to meet its needs.

The agency said it had “evolving mobile law enforcement business requirements that require the use of more capable and dynamic mobile technology.”

RIM's decline has also prompted concerns at th e agency that the company, like its competitor Nokia, may not survive. Products from those two companies, the document said, “help to define the smartphone market.”

But it added: “Both companies failed to innovate and consumers have rejected them. The net effect is that both firms have been relegated to laggards in the consumer market which has made them too risky for adoption as a ‘go-to' choice for enterprise use.”

The report's analysis praised RIM, along with Apple, for controlling both the hardware and software sides of their phones, ranking both equal in terms of security. But it gave Apple extra points for consistency.

“A hallmark of Apple's technology and business strategy is the strict adherence to product uniformity,” the report said.

The report noted that ICE is not the only federal agency with law enforcement duties to find that the iPhone now best meets its needs. It indicated that the Federal Air Marshall Service, the Coast Guard and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives have all made the switch.

In a statement, Paul Lucier, the vice president of government solutions at RIM, did not directly address the decision by ICE. But he said: “We have one million government customers in North America alone who depend on BlackBerry, and more than 400,000 government customers worldwide upgraded their devices in the past year.”

On Monday, RIM separately released a study it had commissioned indicating that the British government would initially increase its smartphone costs by 39 percent if it allowed employees to use a variety of phones rather than just BlackBerrys. The paper, which was written by the firm Strategic Analytics, concluded that a BlackBerry-only workplace would costs 14 percent less to operate.

The report also argued that limiting employees to BlackBerrys would still provide superior security compared to allowing a variety of different phones to connect with the government's computer systems.