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* * * * * TUESDAY, JUNE 3, 2014 ~ VOL. CCLXIII NO. 128 WSJ.com HHHH $2 .00
DJIA 16743.63 À 26.46 0.2% NASDAQ 4237.20 g 0.1% NIKKEI 14935.92 À 2.1% STOXX600 345.08 À 0.2% 10-YR. TREAS. g 21/32 , yield 2.532% OIL $102.47 g $0.24 GOLD $1,243.70 g $1.90 EURO $1.3597 YEN 102.38
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TODAY IN PERSONAL JOURNAL
Work Stress vs. Home StressPLUS You Call That an Ironman?
CONTENTSBusiness Tech..............B5CFO Journal..................B4Corporate News.....B2-3Global Finance.............C3Health & Wellness D1-4Heard on Street..........C8
In the Markets.............C4Leisure & Arts.............D5Opinion.....................A11-13Sports................................D6U.S. News...................A2-5Weather Watch..........B6World News.............A6-9
s Copyright 2014 Dow Jones & Company.All Rights Reserved
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What’sNews
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World-WidenA number of VA hospitalsshow significantly higher ratesof mortality and lethal infec-tions than the agency’s top fa-cilities, an analysis found. A1nMedicare data show anincrease in the average pricehospitals charge to treatcommon conditions. A3n The EPA caps on carbonemissions would force sweep-ing changes in the electric sys-tem but not deliver as big ablow to coal as some feared. A4nChina is cracking down ondissent ahead of this week’s25th anniversary of the Tianan-men Square protests.A1, A8n Kiev and Moscow camecloser to a truce in a pricefeud that threatened to cutoff Ukraine’s gas supply. A6n The prisoner exchangewith the Taliban that freed aU.S. soldier has sparked apolarizing debate. A2nU.S. and foreign authoritiesbroke up a network of hi-jacked computers used totap into bank accounts. B5nAbbas swore in a new Pal-estinian government endorsedby both the PLO and Hamasamid Israeli opposition. A9n Assad’s regime is pressingSyrians to vote in today’spresidential election despitefears of rebel attacks. A9n The Supreme Court re-jected an effort to expand achemical-weapons treaty’sreach to domestic crimes. A5
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A dozen firms acknowl-edged that they or their
suppliers may have used con-flict minerals, but many oth-ers haven’t determined if theirproducts are in the clear. B1n The Justice Departmentis asking three book publish-ers about any recent pricingtalks, two years after a majorantitrust settlement. B1n Stocks were whipsawed byfactory-data revisions, but theDow ended the day up 26.46points at a record 16743.63. C1nU.S. manufacturing acceler-ated inMay, the fourth straightmonth of improvement. A2nHumana is alleging thatMedtronic conspired with doc-tors to promote unapproveduses of a bone-growth drug. B1nPilgrim’s Pride raised its of-fer for Hillshire bymore than$1 billion to over $6.7 billion. B3nU.S. Steel said it would tem-porarily idle plants in Texasand Pennsylvania, blaming il-legally-priced imports. B3n The recent plunge in techand health shares has stungbuyers who paid steep pricesin follow-on offerings. C1n Apple did little to quell theclamor for new gadgets at itsdevelopers’ conference, unveilingsoftware and app upgrades. B6nGoldman and Credit Suissedisclosed details about howtheir “dark pools” operate. C2n Japan’s Daiichi is lookingto buy Protective Life of Ala-bama for about $5 billion. C3
Business&Finance
In eight years as a federal magistrate judge inTexas, Brian Owsley approved scores of govern-ment requests for electronic surveillance in con-nection with criminal investigations—then sealedthem at the government’s request. The secrecynagged at him.
So before he left the bench last year, the judgedecided to unseal more than 100 of his own or-ders, along with the government’s legal justifica-tion for the surveillance. The investigations, hesays, involved ordinary crimes such as bank rob-bery and drug trafficking, not “state secrets.” Mosthad long since ended.
A senior judge halted the effort with a one-para-
graph order that offered no explanation for the deci-sion and that itself was sealed. Mr. Owsley’s ordersremain buried in folders in a federal courthouseoverlooking Corpus Christi Bay. “It’s like somethingout of Kafka,” says Mr. Owsley, recently a visiting lawprofessor at Texas Tech University.
Across the U.S., thousands of similar law-enforce-ment requests for electronic monitoring are likewiselocked away from public view, even after the investi-gations that spawned them have ended. In mostcases, they stay sealed indefinitely—unlike nearly allother aspects of American judicial proceedings.Courts long have presumed that search warrants, forexample, eventually should be made public.
Several judges and former prosecutors say mostPleaseturntopageA10
BY JENNIFER VALENTINO-DEVRIES
‘PERMANENT INJUNCTION’
Sealed Court Files ObscureRise in Electronic Surveillance
In a Plot Twist, Antwerp Puts 5,000Secondhand Graves on the Market
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In Belgium, Buyers Agree to HonorMemorials Until Death Do Them Part
ANTWERP, Belgium—JacquesBuermans, 66 years old, hopes hestill has a long life ahead. Yet hehas already found his fi-nal resting place: some-one else’s grave.
The antique sepul-chers and headstones ofthe Schoonselhof ceme-tery here were gleamingin the spring sunshinerecently as the Antwerp-born retiree made hisweekly visit to his im-peccably maintained fu-ture tomb, formerlyhome to the corpses ofthe Belgian-British fam-ily Dumont-Duggan.
“It is a stunningmon-ument, full of symbol-ism,” saysMr. Buermans, a self-de-scribed graveyard enthusiast. Thecompass and the square representAdolf Dumont’s Freemason mem-bership, the whitemarblemourner
was addedwhen his wife died, andon top of the memorial stands abronze bust of Mr. Dumont.
In 1997, Antwerp wanted to de-stroy Mr. Dumont’s grave, which
dates back to the late1920s, after the conces-sion that allowed hisfamily to use the plothad expired. Mr. Buer-mans intervened to savethe monument and lob-bied the city to go downthe secondhand route.When it did, he was oneof the first to dive in.
In Belgium, and otherparts of Europe, ceme-tery land is often prop-erty of a city, whichgrants “concessions” topeople to use it. But theright to use the plot
isn’t eternal: many concessions ex-pire 25 years after burial. Familiescan renew them—and many do.But if they don’t, memorials can
PleaseturntopageA10
BY MATTHIAS VERBERGT
Antwerp tomb
Cost of Emissions Cuts Debated
Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration The Wall Street Journal
Top 10 power plants by carbon dioxide emissions in 2013
Emissions, in millionsof metric tons
New federal limits on greenhouse-gas emissions by power plants acrossthe U.S. could cost utilities as much as $8.8 billion a year, but criticssaid the proposed rule could cost the economy $50 billion a year. A4
The Phoenix facility at theheart of the crisis at the Depart-ment of Veterans Affairs is amonga number of VA hospitals thatshow significantly higher rates ofmortality and dangerous infec-tions than the agency’s top-tierhospitals, internal records show.
The criticism that precipitatedlast week’s resignation of VA Sec-retary Eric Shinseki has focusedlargely on excessive wait times forappointments across the VA’s 150-hospital medical system.
But a detailed tabulation ofoutcomes at a dozen VA hospi-tals made available to The WallStreet Journal illustrates adeeper challenge: vastly dispa-rate treatment results and whatsome VA doctors contend is theslippage of quality in recentyears at some VA facilities.
Some of the discrepancies arestark, especially for an agencyknown for offering high-qualitycare in 50 states.
The rate of potentially lethalbloodstream infections fromcentral-intravenous lines wasmore than 11 times as highamong patients at the Phoenixfacility than it was at top VAhospitals, data from the yearended March 31, 2014, show.
Those infections, called sep-sis, can quickly cause multipleorgan failure and kill an other-wise relatively healthy patientwithin days or even hours. The
data don’t show what percentageof patients died as a result.
Among patients admitted tothe hospital for acute care, thePhoenix VA Health Care Systemhad a 32% higher 30-day deathrate than did the top-performingVA hospitals, a finding flagged asstatistically significant by theagency’s medical analysts.
By contrast, Boston’s VA hos-pital, considered among the sys-tem’s best, had a central-IV-line,bloodstream-infection rate thatwas 63% below the average ofthe top-performing hospitals. Italso had a slightly better-than-average, 30-day mortality ratefor acute care.
Scott McRoberts, spokesmanfor the Phoenix VA Health CareSystem, said on Monday the da-tabase “is an internal measure-ment system to benchmark ourimprovement, and is not forpublic consumption.”
Variations in the quality ofhealth care exist outside the VAsystem as well, though it is diffi-cult to measure because rela-tively small numbers of hospitalgroups report a range of medicaloutcomes. But some experts inmedical-quality measurement saythe VA discrepancies stand out.
“Wide variations are a prob-lem at both the VA and privatehospitals. But I would expect tosee much smaller variations in anational, integrated delivery sys-tem like the VA,” said AshishJha, a professor at the Harvard
Pleaseturntothenextpage
BY THOMAS M. BURTONAND DAMIAN PALETTA
VAHospitalsVaryWidelyInPatientCareInternal Records Show Some FacilitiesHave Far Higher Death Rates Than PeersXUZHOU, China—After Chi-
nese police rounded up theleaders of the civic group heparticipated in, Zhang Kun saidhe would be proud to join themin jail. He soon got his wish.
In March, he was releasedafter two months in deten-tion—during which he says heendured lengthy interrogationsby police and physical mistreat-ment by other detainees. Onceout, he posted a note on a mes-saging app telling friends hewas stepping back from hisprevious activism. “I hope ev-eryone can understand,” hewrote.
“Everyone has their weakspot,” the slight, unassuming26-year-old now says, and thepolice “will find it eventually.”
A quarter-century after Chi-nese leaders sent the militaryto crush student protesters inBeijing’s Tiananmen Square,Mr. Zhang’s short career on thefront lines of activism showshow the events of 1989 informthe Chinese authorities’ iron-fisted approach to dissent.
The military assault on June 3and 4 that killed a still-unac-counted-for number of people—estimated to be in the hun-dreds—temporarily left Chinadiplomatically isolated, settingback economic reforms. It alsoconvinced Chinese leaders of alesson: Threats to CommunistParty rule must never be allowedto spiral into a repeat of the
PleaseturntopageA8
BY JOSH CHIN
In China,DissentersHauntedByHistory
A Reign in Spain Ends
STEPPING DOWN: Juan Carlos, seated below a portrait of a Bourbonancestor, abdicated in favor of his son, 46-year-old Prince Felipe, asscandal, regional separatism and economic discontent roil Spain. A7
Sports-betting legend William“Billy” Walters built a fortune byacquiring better informationthan others and using a complexsystem to turn it into profits.
“He is the most respectedsports bettor in the world,” saidRJ Bell, who runs a website sell-ing sports-betting picks. “One ofthe things that differentiateshim is the quality of the infor-mation that he’s betting.”
Now Mr. Walters has landedin the middle of a governmentinvestigation. Along with golfpro Phil Mickelson and investorCarl Icahn, both friends of his,Mr. Walters is the subject of aninsider-trading probe, as TheWall Street Journal first re-ported Friday. The Federal Bu-reau of Investigation and the Se-curities and ExchangeCommission are examining
PleaseturntopageA4
BY ALEXANDRA BERZON
Taste for RiskFueled CareerOf Bettor inTrading Probe
Journal ReportFive steps for fixing the401(k). Investing in Fundsspecial report. Section R
Widespread clampdown aheadof Tiananmen anniversary...... A8
Spanish Royal House/Reuters
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