L.A. County Sheriff's Department intends to fire seven deputies

Seven Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies have been notified that the department intends to fire them for belonging to a secret law enforcement clique that allegedly celebrated shootings and branded its members with matching tattoos, officials said.

The Times reported last year about the existence of the clique, dubbed the Jump Out Boys, and the discovery of a pamphlet that described the group's creed, which required aggressive policing and awarded tattoo modifications for police shootings.

The seven worked on an elite gang-enforcement team that patrols neighborhoods where violence is high. The team makes a priority of taking guns off the street, officials said.

The Sheriff's Department has a long history of secret cliques with members of the groups having reached high-ranking positions within the agency. Sheriff officials have sought to crack down on the groups, fearing that they tarnished the department's reputation and encouraged unethical conduct.

In the case of the Jump Out Boys, sheriff's investigators did not uncover any criminal behavior. But, sources said, the group clashed with department policies and image.

Their tattoos, for instance, depicted an oversize skull with a wide, toothy grimace and glowing red eyes. A bandanna with the unit's acronym is wrapped around the skull. A bony hand clasps a revolver. Smoke would be tattooed over the gun's barrel for members who were involved in at least one shooting, officials said.

One member, who spoke to The Times and requested anonymity, said the group promoted only hard work and bravery. He dismissed concerns about the group's tattoo, noting that deputies throughout the department get matching tattoos. He said there was nothing sinister about their creed or conduct. The deputy, who was notified of the department's intent to terminate him, read The Times several passages from the pamphlet, which he said supported proactive policing.

"We are alpha dogs who think and act like the wolf, but never become the wolf," one passage stated, comparing criminals to wolves. Another passage stated, "We are not afraid to get our hands dirty without any disgrace, dishonor or hesitation... sometimes (members) need to do the things they don't want to in order to get where they want to be."

Department spokesman Steve Whitmore said starting the termination process shows that Sheriff Lee Baca "does not take any of this lightly and will move forward with the appropriate action."

Investigators were less concerned about the tattoos, and more focused on the suspected admiration they showed for officer-involved shootings, which are expected to be events of last resort. The deputy told The Times, however, that investigators reviewed their shootings and arrests and found nothing unlawful.

"We get called a gang within the badge? It's unfair," he said. "People want to say you have a tattoo. So do fraternities. Go to Yale. Are they a gang?.... Boy Scouts have patches and they have mission statements, and so do we."

"We do not glorify shootings," he continued. "What we do is commend and honor the shootings. I have to remember them because it can happen any time, any day. I don't want to forget them because I'm glad I'm alive."

If the firings are upheld, it would be one of the largest terminations over one incident in the department's history. In 2011, the department fired about half a dozen deputies who were also said to have formed a clique. Those deputies worked on the third floor of Men's Central Jail and allegedly threw gang-like three-finger hand signs. They were fired after they fought two fellow deputies at an employee Christmas party and allegedly punched a female deputy in the face.

As part of the widening federal investigation of the Sheriff's Department, a criminal grand jury recently subpoenaed the agency for materials relating to deputy cliques, specifically citing several of the groups including the "3000 boys" and the Jump Out Boys.

When the pamphlet revealing the existence of the Jump Out Boys was initially found, officials didn't know if the group was real. But eventually, one member came forward and named the others, according to an official who asked for anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

The seven deputies can fight the department's decision to fire them.

robert.faturechi@latimes.com

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Microsoft Teases Future Surface Pro Accessories With Extra Battery Power

Days before Surface Pro’s release date, Microsoft is already teasing the types of accessories we’ll see for the device.

In a Reddit AMA hosted on Wednesday, members of the Surface Team responded to user questions, and suggested that a Surface Pro cover that would double as an extra battery pack is in the works. Good thing, too, since we found that the Surface Pro could barely get around four hours of normal usage.

Naturally, that’s a major concern for people considering buying the computer — Reddit members brought it up on multiple occasions. Asked about the new connectors at the bottom of the Surface Pro on either side of the cover port, a Microsoft rep said, “At launch we talked about the ‘accessory spine’ and hinted at future peripherals that can click in and do more. Those connectors look like can carry more current than the pogo pins, don’t they?”

The cryptic answer was fleshed out in another response. A redditor specifically asked if Microsoft plans to make a thicker keyboard with an extra battery pack.

“That would require extending the design of the accessory spine to include some way to transfer higher current between the peripheral and the main battery. Which we did,” a Surface Team member replied.

Considering that Microsoft already has released two covers for Surface Pro and Surface RT, along with a Surface-branded Wedge Touch Mouse, it’s not hard to imagine the company expanding its Surface accessory lineup. It’s a natural next step as the company continues to focus on its hardware division, which has traditionally offered accessories like mice and keyboards.

The Reddit AMA also covered issues like Surface Pro’s lack of storage space and whether the company plans to release a 3G or 4G Surface. The latter answer was a roundabout “no.” As for storage space, the Surface Team’s Marc DesCamp said, once again, that you can extend storage through the USB 3.0 port and microSDX card slot. He also mentioned that initial reports of available storage space (23GB for the 64GB model, and 83GB for the 128GB model) are conservative; you actually get around 6 to 7GB more than that.

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Psychiatric Hospitals Alter Rules on Patient Smoking

MANDEVILLE, La. — Annelle S., 64, who has paranoid schizophrenia, took an urgent drag on a cigarette at a supervised outdoor smoke break at Southeast Louisiana Hospital.

“It’s mandatory to smoke,” she explained. “It’s a mental institution, and we have to smoke by law.”

That was 18 months ago, and Annelle’s confusion was understandable. Until recently, Louisiana law required psychiatric hospitals to accommodate smokers — unlike rules banning smoking at most other health facilities. The law was changed last year, and by March 30, smoking is supposed to end at Louisiana’s two remaining state psychiatric hospitals.

After decades in which smoking by people with mental illness was supported and even encouraged — a legacy that experts say is causing patients to die prematurely from smoking-related illnesses — Louisiana’s move reflects a growing effort by federal, state and other health officials to reverse course.

But these efforts are hardly simple given the longstanding obstacles.

Hospitals often used cigarettes as incentives or rewards for taking medicine, following rules or attending therapy. Some programs still do. And smoking was endorsed by advocates for people with mental illness and family members, who sometimes sued to preserve smoking rights, considering cigarettes one of the few pleasures patients were allowed.

New data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that the nearly 46 million adults with mental illness have a smoking rate 70 percent higher than those without mental illness, and consume about a third of the cigarettes in the country, though they make up one-fifth of the adult population.

People with psychiatric disorders are often “smoking heavier, their puffs are longer and they’re smoking it down to the end of the cigarette,” said William Riley, chief of the Science of Research and Technology Branch at the National Cancer Institute. With some diagnoses, like schizophrenia, rates are especially high.

A report by the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors said data suggested that people with the most serious mental illnesses die on average 25 years earlier than the general population, with many from smoking-exacerbated conditions like heart or lung disease.

Now more treatment facilities are banning smoking, with some finding it easier than expected. Others still allow it, usually outside on their grounds during scheduled times. About a fifth of state hospitals are not smoke-free, a survey issued in 2012 by the State Mental Health Program Directors association found. Occasionally, hospitals that banned smoking have reinstated it to avoid losing patients.

Moreover, smoking is so deeply ingrained that smoke-free hospitals can only dent the problem; many patients are now hospitalized only for short stints and resume smoking later.

New research suggests scientific underpinnings for some of the affinity, said Dr. Nora D. Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Nicotine has antidepressant effects and, for people with schizophrenia, helps dampen extraneous thoughts and voices, she and other experts said.

Other chemicals in cigarette smoke set off a perilous cycle, causing some medications to be metabolized faster, making them less effective and allowing symptoms to return. Because patients feel sicker, they may seek even more comfort from nicotine. “You may think, ‘Well, I need to smoke more,’ ” said Dr. Steven Schroeder, a professor of health and health care at the University of California, San Francisco.

Then, as smoking increases, “blood levels of their medication go down, and they end up back in the hospital,” said Judith Prochaska, an associate professor of medicine at Stanford University’s Prevention Research Center.

Socially, smoking provides “cover rituals for patients having psychiatric symptoms,” said Dr. Rona Hu, medical director of the acute psychiatric inpatient unit at Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto, Calif. “You tamp the box, you kind of play with the lighter, you can exhale and look into the middle distance and not look like you’re hallucinating.”

Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, director of the C.D.C., said hospitals had historically resisted going smoke-free, fearing it would interfere with treatment. “In my very first job as an aide in a psychiatric hospital,” he said, “if patients behaved better they got additional cigarettes.”

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DealBook: R.B.S. to Pay $612 Million Over Rate Rigging

A campaign to root out financial fraud secured a victory on Wednesday, as authorities took aim at the Royal Bank of Scotland for its role in an interest rate manipulation scheme that has emboldened prosecutors and consumed the banking industry.

American and British authorities struck a combined $612 million settlement with the bank, the latest case to emerge from the global investigation into rate-rigging. The Justice Department dealt another blow to the bank, forcing its Japanese unit to plead guilty to criminal wrongdoing.

The penalty for the subsidiary, a hub of rate manipulation, underscores a recent shift in the way federal authorities punish financial wrongdoing. The R.B.S. case echoed an earlier action taken against a UBS subsidiary, which similarly pleaded guilty to felony wire fraud as part of a larger settlement. These cases represent the first units of a big bank to agree to criminal charges in more than a decade.

“I want financial institutions to know that this department will absolutely hold them to account,” Lanny Breuer, head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, said in an interview Wednesday.

Some of the world’s largest financial institutions remain caught in the cross hairs of the rate manipulation case, an investigation that could drag on for years. Authorities suspect that more than a dozen banks falsified reports to influence benchmarks like the London Interbank Offered Rate, or Libor, which underpins the costs for trillions of dollars in financial products like mortgages and credit cards.

A person involved in the investigation indicated that the first banks to settle were among the worst actors in the rate case. But they also received a “discount” for their eager cooperation, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

That approach raises the prospect that remaining banks could face high-priced settlements.

Deutsche Bank, which set aside an undisclosed amount to cover potential penalties and suspended five employees tied to the case, is expected to settle with authorities in late 2013, several people briefed on the matter said. But the timetable could shift. The bank is not in formal settlement talks and is not prepared to resolve the case, the people said.

While foreign banks have borne the brunt of the scrutiny, an American institution could be among the next to settle. Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase are under investigation by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the American regulator leading the case, though actions are not imminent.

The R.B.S. action concluded a first phase of rate-rigging investigations for authorities, who are now planning to take a brief hiatus from filing cases. The next case is not expected until spring at the earliest, two of the people briefed on the matter said.

Some bank executives, fearful that fallout from the case will stain their firms, are pushing for a broad deal encompassing multiple institutions. But authorities are balking at a “global settlement,” people involved in the case say, arguing that investigations are proceeding at different stages and involve widely varying fact patterns.

As regulators continue to pursue actions, prosecutors are planning charges against traders involved in the scheme. The first charges came last year when the Justice Department filed actions against two former UBS traders.

“Our investigation is far from finished,” Mr. Breuer said.

The rate-rigging case has centered on how much banks charge each other for loans. Such figures form the basis of Libor and other rates. But banks corrupted the process. Government complaints filed over the last year outlined a scheme in which banks reported false rates to lift trading profits.

Authorities announced the first Libor case in June, extracting a $450 million settlement with the British bank Barclays. In December, UBS agreed to a record $1.5 billion settlement with authorities. The Justice Department also secured the guilty plea from one of the bank’s subsidiaries.

Royal Bank of Scotland, based in Edinburgh, had aimed to avert the guilty plea for its Japanese subsidiary, people involved in the case said. But the Justice Department’s criminal division declined to back down, and the bank had little leverage to push back. It decided not to formally appeal its case to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., another person said.

With fines coming from multiple authorities, the $612 million case amounted to the second-largest penalty levied in the multiyear investigation into rate manipulation. “The settlement with R.B.S. is much more than a slap on the wrist,” argued Bart Chilton, a member of the trading commission who is critical of soft fines on big banks.

The settlement represents the latest setback for Royal Bank of Scotland, which has struggled to shake the legacy of the 2008 financial crisis. The British firm, which is majority-owned by the government after a bailout, already has put aside $2.7 billion to compensate customers who were inappropriately sold loan insurance in recent years.

Since the financial crisis, the bank has shaken up its management team and refocused its operations, as part of an effort to repair its bruised image. On Wednesday, it announced plans to claw back bonuses to help pay for the latest settlement.

At a news conference in London on Wednesday, Stephen Hester, the bank’s chief executive, admitted that the rate-rigging episode significantly strained the bank. “It is one of the most difficult moments over the entire period,” he said.

As authorities stitched together the R.B.S. case, they seized on a series of colorful e-mails that highlighted an effort to influence the rate-setting process, a plot that spanned multiple currencies and countries from 2006 to 2010. One Royal Bank of Scotland trader mused in a 2007 message how the process was becoming a “cartel,” adding “its just amazing how libor fixing can make you that much money.”

The wrongdoing spread broadly, authorities say, noting that Royal Bank of Scotland “aided and abetted” UBS and other firms. A senior official at the Justice Department’s antitrust unit, Scott D. Hammond, contends that the bank “secretly rigged” interest rates.

A UBS trader, the department said, once asked a co-worker to “have a word with” another bank about Libor submissions. The UBS trader, Thomas Hayes, who was recently charged by the Justice Department with fraud, indicated that he had already approached R.B.S. for help.

The government complaints also portray a permissive culture that allowed rate-rigging to persist for four years. David Meister, the enforcement director of the trading commission, declared that “the environment was ripe for manipulation at R.B.S.”

The bank’s own records captured the scheme in striking detail, revealing how traders pressured other employees to submit certain rates. Submitters and traders sat in earshot of each other in London, forming what authorities termed a “cozy ring.” The bank eventually separated the employees, who then moved to make additional requests via instant messages.

To persuade employees who submitted Libor rates, some traders promised affection. Others offered steak and sushi. One trader resorted to begging, invoking a plea of “pretty please.” Another trader, after pressuring a colleague to submit a certain rate, offered a reward of sorts: “I would come over there and make love to you.”

When authorities began scrutinizing the bank, the traders adopted a more covert approach. In 2010, a Libor submitter rebuffed an instant message request to influence rates. But then the submitter called the trader to explain “we’re not allowed to have those conversations” over instant message.

The employees laughed, according to a transcript of the call, and the submitter reassured the trader that he would fulfill the request: “Leave it with me, and uh, it won’t be a problem.”

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Child porn suspect indicted by federal grand jury

A North Hills woman whom authorities allege plied a young girl with crack cocaine and photographed her having sex with an older man was indicted Tuesday on federal charges of producing child pornography and sex trafficking.

Letha Montemayor Tucker was named Tuesday in a four-count indictment returned by a federal grand jury. If convicted of all the charges, Tucker would face a mandatory minimum federal sentence of 10 years and could get up to life in prison, authorities said.

The charges come a month after authorities sought the public's help in the investigation by releasing photographs of a man and woman depicted in a set of widely circulated child pornography photos.

Tips started pouring in immediately after the photos were released, investigators said.

Tucker, who goes by the name Butterfly, was located about 10 hours after the release of the photos and taken into custody, said Claude Arnold, special agent in charge for Homeland Security Investigations in Los Angeles, a division of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The alleged victim, who was about 12 when the photos were taken, was found within a week of the case going public, Arnold said. She is an adult now and is cooperating with authorities, he said.

In addition to photographing the girl having sex with the man, authorities said, Tucker also committed sex acts with the alleged victim.

The photos were part of a child pornography collection known as the "Jen Series."

The 40-plus photos were first discovered by investigators in the Chicago area in 2007. Investigators said images in the series have been reported about 300 times and have been found on computers across the country.

The victim "didn't even know these images were out there," Arnold said.

"The horror of child pornography is it's for life, the victimization," Arnold said. "Once the photos are there in cyberspace, they're there forever."

The girl, identified in court records only by the initials J.M.M., lived in the same Los Angeles County residential hotel as Tucker, who worked as a prostitute, authorities said.

Around 2000 or 2001, the girl stopped attending school regularly and spent more and more time in Tucker's room, smoking crack cocaine Tucker provided, according to the indictment.

The girl was present when Tucker engaged in prostitution with clients and was usually high when this happened, authorities allege. Tucker instructed the child to take off her clothes in front of the clients, prosecutors alleged in court papers.

The faces of Tucker and the girl are "clearly visible" in the photos, according to the indictment. Tucker had an eyebrow piercing and a tattoo of a sleeping cat behind her shoulder, which made her easier to identify, authorities said.

The face of the man, however, is blacked out in the photographs. Authorities are still trying to identify the man, Arnold said.

"Obviously, we want him also to answer for his crimes," Arnold said.

Arnold said the alleged victim is "going to be dealing with this for a long time."

Now that she has been identified, she will receive a victim notification every time one of the images turns up in an investigation, he said.

Tucker is being held without bond and is scheduled to be arraigned in federal court on Feb. 13. Her attorney could not be reached for comment.

hailey.branson@latimes.com

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Don't Call It a Tablet

The Surface Pro looks like a tablet, but it’s not a mobile device. It’s a portable device.

Sure, put the Surface Pro next to the Surface RT and it’s hard to spot many differences. One’s a little thicker, but their shapes are otherwise identical. Both have the same matte-black, magnesium-based casing. They both can be used with snap-in keyboards and they’re both propped up into typing position by built-in kickstands.

It’s a full-blown computer, but one that folds up into a tablet-sized package.

While the differences are blurry on the outside, if you use them both for a little while, the dissimilarities become distinct. The Surface RT is thoroughly a tablet, and it exists to directly challenge the iPad. It closely matches Apple’s larger slate in size, weight, performance and price. The Surface Pro, however — which goes on sale Feb. 9 for a starting price of $900 — is something more ambitious than a tablet. It’s a full-blown computer, but one that folds up into a tablet-sized package.

It’s also more expensive than a tablet — and comes with many hidden costs — but is far more capable since it runs full Windows 8 Pro. And though it isn’t perfect, the Surface Pro is certainly very compelling.

Ever since Windows 8 launched in October of last year, Microsoft’s hardware partners have been experimenting with ways of incorporating the OS’s touchscreen capabilities into their computer designs. The result, so far, has been a flood of tablet/PC Frankenbeasts with keyboards that twist, slide, fold, or otherwise play peek-a-boo beneath the touchscreen. The success of these devices varies, but most are flimsy and awkward. They want to be tablets, but they don’t want to leave the laptop behind, and they end up stuck somewhere in the middle.

The Surface Pro is more well-constructed and thoughtfully designed than any of them. It’s the best of the hybrids. The quality of the hardware, the performance, and the simplicity of the design make it a success.

But let me be clear: The Surface Pro is not a tablet. Many people have confusedly asked me if the Surface Pro is even a good tablet. The answer is a clear and resounding, “No.” It’s heavy and thick. It doesn’t invite you to curl up with it on the couch. It’s tough to read with it in bed, and it works much better propped up on a desk than it does resting on a knee or in a lap.

And while it’s portable, it isn’t an amazing laptop, either. Microsoft’s Touch and Type covers don’t come bundled with Surface Pro — you have to pay an extra $120 or $130, respectively, if you want to avoid touchscreen typing (and trust me, you will want to avoid touchscreen typing). And with either keyboard attached, the thing is so top-heavy, it’s physically challenging to use on your lap.

So why bother? Because the Surface Pro is a Windows 8 PC through and through. It comes with an Intel Core i5 processor, and it can run all of your legacy desktop applications. You can surf using your favorite browser, you can type and save and share using the full versions of Office and all your other regular work applications. You can freely download software from the web without depending on the (still anemic) Windows Store.

Microsoft has also given the Surface Pro a killer screen. The 10.6-inch, 1980×1080 pixel resolution display is a visible step up from the Surface RT. With the same 16:9 aspect ratio, it’s great for watching movies. It feels a little silly to use it in portrait mode because it’s so tall, but text is much crisper on the higher-res display, so browsing the web and reading text is more pleasurable. It’s not quite on par with the iPad’s Retina display, but I could barely see a difference between the two. Ten-point touch gestures are supported, as well as the standard swipe gestures.

The touchpads found on both keyboard covers don’t support the standard swipe gestures. They’re accurate enough for pointing, but if you try to swipe in from the right for Charms, or from the left to switch applications, they won’t respond. You’ll need to reach up and use the screen, or buy an extra mouse or trackpad like Logitech’s Rechargeable Trackpad ($80, another additional cost).

The Surface Pro does come with a great pressure-sensitive pen that magnetically attaches to the power connector. The pen really shined in handwriting-driven apps like One Note, or the painting app, Fresh Paint. And the top of the pen acts as an eraser, which is neat.

Performance is generally excellent across all Windows 8 apps I tested. However, one thing that stuck out is a general problem with screen rotations. When switching between portrait and landscape modes, it takes about a second for the Surface Pro to register the rotations. I found this lag to be disconcerting. Also, some apps displayed rotation quirks. The worst offender was Chrome. The desktop version worked flawlessly, but when I used the version made for the tile-based Windows 8 interface, the app repeatedly refused to resize properly when I flipped between landscape and portrait modes. Likewise, whenever I put Chrome in Snap View mode — a Windows 8 trick that lets you run two applications side-by-side in a split-screen arrangement — the Chrome window got smaller and would not readjust back to full-screen size when I exited Snap View.

Otherwise, I was happy with Windows 8 Pro on the Surface. All the apps I used during my tests were super-responsive. Scrolling was smooth, and there were no input latency problems to speak of.

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Question Mark: Women’s Eggs Diminish With Age

Baby girls enter the world with enough of them to populate perhaps 40 small cities. A dozen or so years later, the first will make a debut of its own. And in the months and years to come, others will appear regularly, sometimes greeted with relief, other times with disappointment, perhaps most often with a touch of annoyance.

Abdullah Pope/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Not women's eggs, obviously.

Now, for women in the baby boom generation, they may be coming more sporadically, or not at all, signaling unmistakably that one time of life is over, and another begun. But what happened to all those eggs?

When girls are born, they have about two million eggs in their ovaries, nestled in fluid-filled cavities called follicles. That may sound like a lot, but consider that months earlier, when they were still in utero, they may have had as many as six or seven million eggs. Those eggs are still immature, and the proper name for them, by the way, is oocytes (rhymes with: nothing).

The first eggs to bite the dust were those in the fetus, which waste away. And by the time a girl reaches puberty, most of her remaining eggs have also deteriorated and been reabsorbed. If that sounds ominously like something from a “Star Trek” episode about the Borg, imagine if all those eggs had to take the customary path out of the body.

Even with the Great Egg Disappearance, girls enter puberty with many more than they will use, 300,000 or more. Each month, the body produces a hormone, FSH, which stimulates the follicles to prepare an egg for maturation and release.

With eggs backed up like bowling balls on a busy Saturday night at the lanes, the ovaries can afford to be a little wasteful, and as many as several dozen follicles are called into action. Then a single mature egg — usually, anyway — gets the tap on the shoulder and begins its travels to the uterus.

As for the maturing eggs that didn’t make the grade, there is no second chance. But they do not go out on their own. “Each month you probably lose a thousand or so,” said Dr. James T. Breeden, president of the American Congress of Obstetrics and Gynecology. “There’s just a natural death of them.”

For all the eggs a woman begins with, in the end only about 400 will go through ovulation. While men produce sperm throughout their lives, over time the number of eggs declines, and they disappear with increasing frequency the decade or so before menopause. Those that remain may decline in quality. “When you have a thousand or less within the ovaries, you’re thought to have undergone menopause,” said Dr. Mitchell Rosen, the director of the Fertility Preservation Center at the University of California, San Francisco.

It’s true that women make far more eggs than they end up using, but men should not pass judgment. “They produce millions of sperm, millions,” Dr. Rosen said. “The whole process is not the most efficient in the world.”

Questions about aging? E-mail boomerwhy@nytimes.com

Booming: Living Through the Middle Ages offers news and commentary about baby boomers, anchored by Michael Winerip. You can follow Booming via RSS here or visit nytimes.com/booming. You can reach us by e-mail at booming@nytimes.com.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 5, 2013

An earlier version of this article incorrectly described estrogen levels at the time of ovulation. They rise, rather than fall.

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DealBook: E-Mails Show Alarm at S.&P. as Mortgage Crisis Exploded

10:17 p.m. | Updated

The executive at Standard & Poor’s was clear: “This market is a wildly spinning top which is going to end badly.”

That sober assessment of certain mortgage-related investments, delivered to colleagues in a confidential memo in December 2006, is now part of a trove of internal e-mails and documents that have come to light in a federal suit against S.& P., the nation’s largest credit ratings agency.

The correspondence, made public in court documents late Monday, provide a glimpse at the inner workings of an institution that the Justice Department says fraudulently inflated credit ratings, with dire consequences for the entire economy. In a series of e-mails, tensions appeared to be escalating inside the firm’s headquarters in Lower Manhattan as it publicly professed that its ratings were valid, even as the home loans bundled into mortgage-backed securities, or M.B.S., were failing at accelerating rates.

One comes from an S.& P. analyst in March 2007 borrowing from the Talking Heads song “Burning Down the House,” creating new lyrics: “Subprime is boi-ling o-ver. Bringing down the house.” S.& P. said prosecutors cherry-picked e-mails and that it would vigorously defend itself from “these unwarranted claims.”

In another 2007 e-mail, an analyst responds to a question about his new job: “Job’s going great. Aside from the fact that the M.B.S. world is crashing, investors and the media hate us and we’re all running around to save face … no complaints.”

Together, the documents show a portrait of some executives pushing to water down the firm’s rating models in the hope of preserving market share and profits, while others expressed deep concerns about the poor performance of the securities and what they saw as a lowering of standards.

The United States attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., joined by attorneys general from 16 states, unveiled the case on Tuesday in Washington, accusing S.& P. and its parent, the McGraw-Hill Companies, of intentionally propping up ratings of shaky mortgage investments and setting them up for a crash when the financial crisis struck.

The government is seeking $5 billion in penalties to cover losses to investors like state pension funds and federally insured banks and credit unions. The amount would be more than five times what S.& P. made in 2011.

“The action we announce today marks an important step forward in the administration’s ongoing effort to investigate — and punish — the conduct that is believed to have continued to the worst economic crisis in recent history,” Mr. Holder said.

The government, by bringing the civil fraud charges under a 1989 law created after the savings and loan crisis, faces a lower burden of proof when the victims are federally insured banks. But prosecutors could still face a high bar in convincing a jury by a preponderance of evidence that S.& P. knew that its ratings were faulty and that it intended to deceive investors.

“If the facts prove out, it certainly seems like Standard & Poor’s intentionally cooked its models in order to make the ratings higher than they otherwise thought they should be, in violation of the firm’s own policies and standards,” said Neil Barofsky, a former federal prosecutor who served as the special inspector general for the United States Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program from 2008 to 2011.

“What we don’t know yet is, what’s the other stuff that could be out there?” he added, noting that the vast body of internal documents might also contain exculpatory material for S.& P.

The ratings agency said in a statement: “Claims that we deliberately kept ratings high when we knew they should be lower are simply not true.”

The company said that it had always been committed to “providing independent opinions on creditworthiness based on available information,” and that its actions reflected its best judgments about the investments at the heart of the suit — about 40 collateralized debt obligations, or C.D.O.’s, an exotic type of security made up of bundles of residential mortgage-backed securities, which in turn were composed of individual home loans. Those securities were packaged by banks, rated by S.& P. and sold to investors in 2007.

“Unfortunately,” the company’s statement said, “S.& P., like everyone else, did not predict the speed and severity of the coming crisis and how credit quality would ultimately be affected.”

Remarks that S.& P. employees made in internal memos and electronic communications show that as early as spring 2004, certain executives wanted to change the firm’s rating methodology, but only after polling “an appropriate number of issuers and investment bankers” as to the “rating implications.”

The idea of asking bankers what they thought about a change in the firm’s methods shocked some S.& P. analysts and executives, including one who fired back, “What does ‘rating implication’ have to do with the search for truth? Are you implying that we might actually reject or stifle ‘superior analytics’ for market considerations?”

In May 2004, an analyst warned that S.&. P. had just lost to its competitor Moody’s Investors Service the chance to rate a very large deal by being too hard-nosed about the amount of collateral that would be required to get a good rating. More collateral would mean less profit for Mizuho, the bank putting that deal together.

“We must address this now,” she said — otherwise the firm would lose more deals.

The complaint describes a debate in 2004 and 2005 about whether S.& P. should change its model for rating C.D.O.’s and what effect the proposed changes might have on its business. The change was scheduled for July 2005, but before it could happen, an analyst sent an e-mail saying that according to the investment bank Bear Stearns, the older model “had been the ‘best’ ” at rating weaker pools of mortgages, compared with Moody’s and Fitch.

As the housing market deteriorated in early 2007, the gallows humor in the e-mails intensified. Banks that had created mortgage-backed securities were unloading them quickly, to avoid being stuck with any duds.

“That means the market will crash,” one analyst told another in an instant message. “Deals will rush in before they take further loss.”

“Yes,” said the analyst’s colleague. “We should not push criteria,” continued the first, “but we give in anyway. Ahahhahaha.”

About a month later, another S.& P. employee wrote in another instant message, reproduced in the complaint: “We rate every deal. It could be structured by cows and we would rate it.”

In its statement Tuesday, S.& P. said that the cow e-mail “had nothing to do with R.M.B.S. or C.D.O. ratings or any S.& P. model, and the analyst had her concerns addressed with the issuer before S.& P. issued any rating.”

S.& P. said that there was a robust internal debate about how a rapidly deteriorating housing market might affect the C.D.O.’s, “and we applied the collective judgment of our committee-based system in good faith,” adding, “The e-mail excerpts cherry-picked by D.O.J. have been taken out of context, are contradicted by other evidence, and do not reflect our culture, integrity or how we do business.”

It was unclear whether the Justice Department was looking at the other two major ratings agencies, Moody’s and Fitch. Tony West, the acting associate attorney general, said he would not discuss actions against other ratings agencies.

Settlement talks between S.& P. and the Justice Department broke down in the last two weeks after prosecutors sought a penalty in excess of $1 billion and insisted that the company admit wrongdoing, several people with knowledge of the talks said. S.& P. had proposed a settlement of about $100 million, while the government pressed for an admission of guilt to at least one count of fraud, said the people.

McGraw-Hill shares fell nearly 11 percent on Tuesday. Moody’s shares fell about 9 percent, to $45.09.

Andrew Ross Sorkin, Michael J. de la Merced and Floyd Norris contributed reporting.

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Scientists identify remains as those of King Richard III

LONDON -- More than 500 years after his death in battle, scientists announced Monday that they had definitively identified a skeleton unearthed in central England last summer as that of Richard III, the medieval king portrayed by William Shakespeare as a homicidal tyrant who killed his two young nephews in order to ascend the throne.

DNA from the bones, found beneath the ruins of an old church, matches that of a living descendant of the monarch's sister, researchers said.

"Rarely have the conclusions of academic research been so eagerly awaited," Richard Buckley, the lead archaeologist on the excavation, told a phalanx of reporters Monday morning. "Beyond reasonable doubt, the individual exhumed ... is indeed Richard III, the last Plantagenet king of England."

PHOTOS: Remains of King Richard III

The dramatic announcement capped a brief hunt for Richard's remains, the progress of which has been closely charted by international media and whose success has been barely short of miraculous.

Working from old maps of Leicester, about 100 miles northwest of London, archaeologists from the local university had less than a month to dig in a small municipal parking lot -- one of the few spaces not built over in the crowded city center. The team stumbled on the ruins of the medieval priory where records say Richard was buried, then found the bones a few days later last September.

"It was an extraordinary discovery that stunned all of us," Buckley said.

The nearly intact skeleton bore obvious traces of trauma to the skull and of scoliosis, a curvature of the spine that matched contemporary descriptions of Richard's appearance. The feet were missing, almost certainly the result of later disturbance, and the hands were crossed at the wrist, which suggests that they may have been tied.

Scientists at the University of Leicester, which pioneered the practice of DNA fingerprinting, were able to extract samples from the bones and compare them to a man descended from Richard III's sister Anne. The match through the maternal line was virtually perfect.

"The DNA evidence points to these being the remains of Richard III," said Turi King, the project’s geneticist.

Richard reigned from 1483 to 1485, and occupies a unique place in England's long line of colorful rulers. He was the last English king to be killed in combat, at the Battle of Bosworth Field, by his successor, Henry VII. His death ended the Plantagenet dynasty and ushered in the long era of the Tudors, including Henry VIII and Elizabeth I.

Jo Appleby, an osteologist at the university, said the skeleton belonged to an adult male in his late 20s to late 30s; Richard III was 32 when he died. The man would have stood 5-foot-8 at full height, but the curved spine would have made him appear shorter.

The skull was riddled with wounds strongly indicative of death in battle, including two blows from bladed weapons, either of which would have been fatal, Appleby said.

Richard III is one of England's most controversial monarchs, reviled by some as a bloodthirsty despot who stopped at nothing to gain power, but revered by others who insist that he has been unfairly maligned. His supporters note that the repugnant portrait of Richard in today's popular imagination is based almost entirely on accounts from the time of the usurping Tudors, especially Shakespeare's indelible characterization of him as a "deform'd, unfinish'd" man without scruples.

Fans say Richard III was an enlightened, capable ruler whose important social reforms included the presumption of innocence for defendants and the granting of bail, which remain pillars of the legal system in Britain and the U.S.

However, what happened to Richard's two nephews, who were his rivals for the throne and who were locked up in the Tower of London as young boys, never to be seen again, remains a mystery.

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Navy's Next-Gen Binoculars Will Recognize Your Face

Take a close look, because the next generation of military binoculars could be doing more than just letting sailors and soldiers see from far away. The Navy now wants binoculars that can scan and recognize your face from 650 feet away.

That’s according to a Jan. 16 contract announcement from the Navy’s Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command, which is seeking a “Wireless 3D Binocular Face Recognition System.” During a testing period of 15 months, the plan is to improve “stand-off identification of uncooperative subjects” during daylight, using binoculars equipped with scanners that can read your mug from “100 to 200 meters” away, or about 328 to 650 feet. After scanning your mug, the binoculars then transmit the data to a database over a wireless network, where the data is then analyzed to determine a person’s identity. The no-bid contract, for an unspecified amount of money, went to California biometrics firm StereoVision Imaging.

“High level, it’s a surveillance and identification system,” Greg Steinthal, StereoVision’s president, tells Danger Room. “It’s using the ubiquitous binocular for real-time identification. The data point here is that this is to be used to add objectivity to an operation that’s highly subjective. So this is not intended for kinetic action to go arrest or detain someone. It’s more a tool to put other eyes on him or her.”

It helps that the technology — at least in a more limited form — already exists. StereoVision has developed a face-recognizing binocular system called 3DMobileID, with a maximum distance of around 328 feet, or 100 meters. “You have an unfair advantage,” the company touts in one promotional video, showing images of a human face being scanned at a distance, before the background is stripped out for a blue screen and then matched up to a database.

Depending on how well the binoculars work — and there’s reason to be cautious — it could give the Navy the ability to take advanced facial recognition into a much more portable and long-distance version than many current systems. Facebook uses the technology to match faces when users upload new photos. Google has its own version as well for its its Picasa photo service, and Apple has been researching face recognition as a way to unlock smartphones. (There are apps for iOS that do this, too.)

But the ranges on most systems also tend to max out at a few feet. For the military, that can be dangerous. Close-range biometric scanners (iris scanners are currently used by soldiers in Afghanistan) can pose a danger to the operator, as a person walking up to have their features scanned from a few inches away could be preparing to detonate an explosive vest. And what if a person happens to be on the move, or is bobbing and weaving through a crowd? That can render the scanners ineffective. Once upon a time, many face scanners also depended on the relatively crude practice of scanning 2-D images of the human face, which are an imprecise method when there are varying lighting conditions.

But the key to solving many of these problems could be a simple upgrade: StereoVision’s system scans in 3-D. When the system first scans you, it creates a 3-D model of your face instead of a 2-D image. That allows the system to isolate your face from a crowd, sharpen the image — which boosts the range — and then compares the image to a database. A filter also adjusts for varying degrees of light by smoothing out light across the face into a uniform pattern.

Now for the flaws in the system. The binoculars are not intended to work at night, and have difficulty scanning faces in twilight. When the binoculars can’t draw an image, it gives off a an audible beep to the operator, which is helpful. Otherwise, the process takes “about five to 10 seconds,” says Steinthal.

It’s also less effective when a subject is on the move. “[It] depends on how fast the target is walking,” Steinthal says. “We’re at walking, one-and-half meters per second. Somebody running? We’re not going to be able to do that right now.”

The concept of binoculars that scan and identify is also — perhaps unnervingly — not limited to the military. For one, StereoVision’s binoculars were developed in part with a $409,226 contract from the National Institute of Justice, and face scanners are a popular research topic for the FBI more broadly.

The FBI is spending $1 billion on a program called Next Generation Identification based around developing face scanners and combining the technology with other biometrics like the iris, voice, and fingerprints. A static face recognition system has also been installed at Toucumen International Airport in Panama City that can scan travelers’ faces and match them to criminal databases maintained by the FBI and Interpol. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and the San Diego Police Department have also tested out the binoculars, according to Steinthal, and are intended there for gang enforcement units and even to track “celebrity stalkers” in the L.A. area. Maybe if the FBI wants its special agents to also have some pretty far-out binoculars too, it should take a peek.

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