Brown may forge alliance with GOP governors on health plan

SACRAMENTO — When Gov. Jerry Brown meets with the nation's other governors this weekend in Washington, D.C., he will find common ground with some unlikely counterparts on an unlikely issue: President Obama's healthcare plan.

Among the governors now moving nearly as aggressively as Brown to implement the federal healthcare law are conservatives who have long fought to unravel it. They are finding that they cannot afford to pass up Obama's offer of billions of dollars in federal aid to cover expansion of their Medicaid programs for the poor.

Arizona's Jan Brewer, New Mexico's Susana Martinez and Nevada's Brian Sandoval — all Republicans — have bucked the GOP trend on the Obama law by opting to accept the new federal money. In Florida, where 20% of residents do not have health insurance, Gov. Rick Scott announced Wednesday that he is joining the renegade group.

They, like Brown, are struggling with healthcare systems overtaxed by large numbers of uninsured residents. At the annual Washington conference, the governors will have an opportunity to strategize on how to hold the Obama administration to its promise to pay for the initial Medicaid expansion.

Though not on the formal conference agenda, aides say the subject is likely to come up at a meeting the governors have scheduled with the president Monday and in private meetings between governors and senior administration officials.

With Congress and the White House in the midst of a fresh fiscal showdown, governors are concerned about whether Obama can keep his commitment. Western states in particular, with their high rates of uninsured residents, fear that they could be left with a crushing bill to pay.

Ironically, although many Republicans have worked to undermine Obama's policy, states with GOP governors could see the largest influx of federal dollars as a result of it. Of the 11 states with the highest percentage of uninsured residents in the country, 10 are led by a Republican executive. The exception in the group is California.

"California is perhaps the bluest state in the nation," said Anthony Wright, executive director of Health Access, a consumer advocacy organization. "But when it comes to healthcare, its issues are like those of a red state."

Like California, the Southwestern states have growing Latino populations that stand to gain from the new healthcare law more than other groups. Currently, 27% of all Latinos in the United States are covered by Medicaid, compared with 11% of the general population, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Turning away public dollars that could help those residents could be politically risky for Republicans who have struggled to earn Latino support.

Although some Republican leaders have been behaving more like Democrats, Brown has been echoing Republican skepticism about Washington's financial commitment to helping states implement the new law.

"The federal government says they're going to pay 100% of the costs," Brown said in a December interview. But if that changes, and "they may only pay 70% or something else … that would be a huge threat to the [state's] general fund."

According to estimates from UC Berkeley, by 2019 California is expected to add about 1.4 million people to its Medicaid program, called Medi-Cal. As Brown said in his State of the State address last month: "The ultimate costs of expanding our healthcare system under the Affordable Care Act are unknown. Ignoring such known unknowns would be folly."

Like his GOP counterparts, Brown wants an escape hatch. He is pushing a reluctant Legislature, dominated by Democrats, for a bill that would cancel the healthcare expansion if Washington stopped paying at least 90% of the cost.

"Brown is somewhat unique among Democratic governors in calling for these triggers," said Judith Solomon, vice president for health policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal Washington, D.C, think tank.

Brewer vowed to voters in her State of the State address last month that Arizona's legislation would have such a clause. "Any expansion of our Medicaid program will include a circuit breaker that automatically rolls back enrollment if federal reimbursement rates decrease," she said.

That circuit breaker would be flipped if federal payments fell below 80% of the cost of the expansion. "I won't allow Obamacare to become a bait-and-switch," she said.

Other governors pushing for triggers, mostly Republicans, have yet to specify how they should be set.

Federal Medicaid costs are projected to jump from $265 billion to $572 billion over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That has state leaders especially worried as Washington's Democrats and Republicans alike call for spending cuts.

"When times get tough, we've seen the federal government unload more and more of the burden onto the states," said Matthew Benson, Brewer's communications director. Ensuring that states are not left holding the bag "is about good government, not partisanship."

anthony.york@latimes.com

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World Briefing | Africa: Nigeria: Security Service Says It Halted Group Watching Israeli and U.S. Targets

Nigeria’s State Security Service said Wednesday that it broke up what it characterized as a terrorist group, backed by “Iranian handlers,” that wanted to gather intelligence about locations frequented by Americans and Israelis. The service said it arrested three suspects, but one remained at large. A spokeswoman, Marilyn Ogar, who was reading from a statement, identified the head of the group as Abdullahi Mustaphah Berende, a leader of a local Shiite sect. “He personally took photographs of the Israeli culture center in Ikoyi, Lagos,” she said. The group also conducted surveillance on USAID and the United States Peace Corps, she said. Ms. Ogar did not take questions.

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Baby Girl on the Way for Big Brother's Britney Haynes

Mom & Babies
Celebrity Baby Blog

02/20/2013 at 08:45 PM ET

Britney Haynes is expecting a little houseguest of her own!

“Halfway there and it’s definitely a GIRL!! She arrives in July; couldn’t be happier,” the Big Brother star Tweeted Wednesday.

Along with her tweet, Haynes, 25, posted a photo of herself holding sonogram photos of her baby girl.

The outspoken player competed as a houseguest on season 12 of the CBS reality show where she placed fourth before returning as a “coach” and eventually a player during season 14, where she placed eighth.

During season 14, Haynes often discussed missing her husband — high school sweetheart Nathan ‘Ryan’ Godwin, whom she married in between seasons in March 2012 — and expressed her desire to become a mother to fellow coach and new mom Janelle Pierzina, who’s currently expecting her second child in August.

Courtesy Britney Haynes

– Patrick Gomez

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Scientists use 3-D printing to help grow an ear

WASHINGTON (AP) — Printing out body parts? Cornell University researchers showed it's possible by creating a replacement ear using a 3-D printer and injections of living cells.

The work reported Wednesday is a first step toward one day growing customized new ears for children born with malformed ones, or people who lose one to accident or disease.

It's part of the hot field of tissue regeneration, trying to regrow all kinds of body parts. Scientists hope using 3-D printing technology might offer a speedier method with more lifelike results.

If it pans out, "this enables us to rapidly customize implants for whoever needs them," said Cornell biomedical engineer Lawrence Bonassar, who co-authored the research published online in the journal PLoS One.

This first-step work crafted a human-shaped ear that grew with cartilage from a cow, easier to obtain than human cartilage, especially the uniquely flexible kind that makes up ears. Study co-author Dr. Jason Spector of Weill Cornell Medical Center is working on the next step — how to cultivate enough of a child's remaining ear cartilage in the lab to grow an entirely new ear that could be implanted in the right spot.

Wednesday's report is "a nice advancement," said Dr. Anthony Atala, director of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, who wasn't involved in the new research.

Three-dimensional printers, which gradually layer materials to form shapes, are widely used in manufacturing. For medicine, Atala said the ear work is part of broader research that shows "the technology now is at the point where we can in fact print these 3-dimensional structures and they do become functional over time."

Today, people who need a new ear often turn to prosthetics that require a rod to fasten to the head. For children, doctors sometimes fashion a new ear from the stiffer cartilage surrounding ribs, but it's a big operation. Spector said the end result seldom looks completely natural. Hence the quest to use a patient's own cells to grow a replacement ear.

The Cornell team started with a 3-D camera that rapidly rotates around a child's head for a picture of the existing ear to match. It beams the ear's geometry into a computer, without the mess of a traditional mold or the radiation if CT scans were used to measure ear anatomy.

"Kids aren't afraid of it," said Bonassar, who used his then-5-year-old twin daughters' healthy ears as models.

From that image, the 3-D printer produced a soft mold of the ear. Bonassar injected it with a special collagen gel that's full of cow cells that produce cartilage — forming a scaffolding. Over the next few weeks, cartilage grew to replace the collagen. At three months, it appeared to be a flexible and workable outer ear, the study concluded.

Now Bonassar's team can do the process even faster by using the living cells in that collagen gel as the printer's "ink." The 3-D technology directly layers the gel into just the right ear shape for cartilage to cover, without having to make a mold first.

The next step is to use a patient's own cells in the 3-D printing process. Spector, a reconstructive surgeon, is focusing on children born without a fully developed external ear, a condition called microtia. They have some ear cartilage-producing cells in that tissue, just not enough. So he's experimenting with ways to boost those cells in the lab, "so we can grow enough of them from that patient to make an ear," he explained.

That hurdle aside, cartilage may be the tissue most amenable to growing with the help of 3-D printing technology, he said. That's because cartilage doesn't need blood vessels growing inside it to survive.

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Greuel accuses Garcetti and Perry of lying about her record

The Los Angeles mayor's race took a sharp negative turn Wednesday as City Controller Wendy Greuel accused rivals Eric Garcetti and Jan Perry of lying about her record to distract from their own spending of taxpayer money on wasteful travel and perks.

Her broadside came after weeks of relentless attacks on Greuel by the two City Council members and Kevin James, a former radio talk-show host. The dynamics of the campaign — Greuel's top rivals each see pockets of opportunity among key voter groups that she is well-positioned to capture — have made her a prime target, leaving the impression at times that opponents have been ganging up on her.

Greuel fought back Wednesday in a mailer that showed a wooden Pinocchio and photos of Garcetti and Perry.

"Why are City Council politicians Eric Garcetti & Jan Perry lying about Wendy Greuel's audits?" it says.

Greuel, whose rivals scoff at her frequent statement that she uncovered $160 million in waste, fraud and abuse at City Hall, said Garcetti and Perry were "asleep at the switch" and failed to give her audits a hearing in the council.

"Garcetti and Perry's reckless disregard for the facts are meant to distract voters away from their record of waste," the mailer says. "Garcetti travels around the world on the taxpayer dime and uses a slush fund to pay his personal staff. Meanwhile, Perry votes to lay off city workers while accepting a pay raise and a free Lincoln Town Car LS paid for by taxpayers."

The attack's potency was limited by, among other things, Greuel's own travel at taxpayer expense and her longtime use of a city car and driver.

But the mailer was significant because it signaled Greuel's approach to taking down her rivals, revealing a crucial part of her campaign strategy to independent committees that are spending more than $1 million for advertising on her behalf.

The committees, formed by public employee unions and other Greuel allies, are barred from coordinating with her campaign, but have been careful to mimic her advertising in an effort to maximize its effect. Unlike the campaign, the independent committees face no limits on contributions, giving a small group of donors enormous influence on the election.

Garcetti responded to Greuel's attack by suggesting that she was a hypocrite.

"I know for a fact that she has travel that she's billed the taxpayers for," Garcetti said outside City Hall after a news conference on the council's approval of his plan to open a city office of immigrant affairs. His campaign released a list of publicly funded trips that Greuel took to New Orleans, San Jose, Sacramento and Washington during her seven years as a City Council member and nearly four years as controller.

As for his own travel, Garcetti recalled going to Washington at taxpayer expense for National League of Cities meetings. He said he took other trips as an Aspen Institute or Asia Society fellow. A spokesman said city agencies paid for Garcetti's 2002 visit to Asia on a trade mission.

Garcetti also denied slowing down the city's response to audits released by Greuel's office. At the same time, he described the audits as nearly useless.

"The truth of the matter is, on her own website, she's brought in $239,000," he said. "During that time period, she was paid $800,000 as controller. Those results speak for themselves."

Perry spokeswoman Helen Sanchez also challenged Greuel's facts. Perry and other council members took a pay cut in 2010 as the city was reeling from a budget shortfall that led to layoffs and furloughs, she said. Perry's city car was a Lincoln after she first took office in 2002, but has been a Honda Accord hybrid since 2006, according to Sanchez.

"The only thing revealing about this mailer," Perry strategist Eric Hacopian said, "is that they just confirmed to the world which candidate is in third place."

For his part, James, a former federal prosecutor, opened a new line of attack against Greuel, saying she was stonewalling in responding to a public records request for her email with campaign advisors, and with Brian D'Arcy, business manager of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 18.

The union, which represents more than 8,600 Department of Water and Power employees, has put $700,000 into an independent committee backing Greuel.

"What do they have to hide?" James asked reporters outside City Hall. "Where are the documents?"

A Times review of the controller's calendars from September 2009 through June 2012 found that Greuel scheduled nine meetings with D'Arcy, 20 dinners, social events or meetings with lobbyists for his union, and two appointments with Don Attore, co-founder of the committee that the union is using to buttress her mayoral campaign.

At a morning campaign stop in Studio City, Greuel said she would need to ask her city staff whether any email between her and D'Arcy existed on her city account. But she denied stalling any response to records requests.

"We're transparent," she said.

michael.finnegan@latimes.com

Times staff writer David Zahniser contributed to this report.

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Pistorius Denies Murdering Girlfriend

Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters

Oscar Pistorius wept at a hearing on Tuesday seeking bail.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alan Cowell contributed reporting from London.

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What's Next for Mindy McCready's Two Young Boys?

By Steve Helling

02/19/2013 at 07:00 PM EST

Mindy McCready's apparent suicide on Sunday has left her two young sons in custodial limbo.

The boys – Zander, 6, and Zayne, 10 months – had been in state custody since Feb. 7, when McCready called police to ask for help in making her father and stepmother leave her home. When police arrived, McCready appeared to be intoxicated, according to a Department of Human Services report.

In a subsequent petition, the singer's father, Tim McCready, asked the court to order her to undergo mental health and substance abuse evaluation and treatment, alleging that his daughter, who had recently lost her boyfriend, "hasn't had a bath in a week ... screams about everything ... [is] very verbally abusive to Zander."

After a judge granted the petition, the children were quickly removed and placed into foster care. Although McCready was released from treatment, the boys remained in state custody.

At the time, Zander's father, Billy McKnight, requested custody of his son. "My son needs me," he told PEOPLE on Feb. 8. "I'm married, working and successful. I'm on the right track and proud of it. I've been sober for years. I just want my son."

But McCready's mother and stepfather, Gayle and Michael Inge, also want custody of the children – and authorities seem to agree.

In a proposed order sent to Circuit Judge Lee Harrod, the Department of Human Services proposed that the Inges might be a better fit for the children, claiming that they have "a substantial relationship." The Inges had custody of Zander for much the past few years, during McCready’s rehab and jail stints.

With McCready's death, the judge will have to determine what is in the children's best interest. A custody hearing has been scheduled for April 5.

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Drug overdose deaths up for 11th consecutive year

CHICAGO (AP) — Drug overdose deaths rose for the 11th straight year, federal data show, and most of them were accidents involving addictive painkillers despite growing attention to risks from these medicines.

"The big picture is that this is a big problem that has gotten much worse quickly," said Dr. Thomas Frieden, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which gathered and analyzed the data.

In 2010, the CDC reported, there were 38,329 drug overdose deaths nationwide. Medicines, mostly prescription drugs, were involved in nearly 60 percent of overdose deaths that year, overshadowing deaths from illicit narcotics.

The report appears in Tuesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.

It details which drugs were at play in most of the fatalities. As in previous recent years, opioid drugs — which include OxyContin and Vicodin — were the biggest problem, contributing to 3 out of 4 medication overdose deaths.

Frieden said many doctors and patients don't realize how addictive these drugs can be, and that they're too often prescribed for pain that can be managed with less risky drugs.

They're useful for cancer, "but if you've got terrible back pain or terrible migraines," using these addictive drugs can be dangerous, he said.

Medication-related deaths accounted for 22,134 of the drug overdose deaths in 2010.

Anti-anxiety drugs including Valium were among common causes of medication-related deaths, involved in almost 30 percent of them. Among the medication-related deaths, 17 percent were suicides.

The report's data came from death certificates, which aren't always clear on whether a death was a suicide or a tragic attempt at getting high. But it does seem like most serious painkiller overdoses were accidental, said Dr. Rich Zane, chair of emergency medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.

The study's findings are no surprise, he added. "The results are consistent with what we experience" in ERs, he said, adding that the statistics no doubt have gotten worse since 2010.

Some experts believe these deaths will level off. "Right now, there's a general belief that because these are pharmaceutical drugs, they're safer than street drugs like heroin," said Don Des Jarlais, director of the chemical dependency institute at New York City's Beth Israel Medical Center.

"But at some point, people using these drugs are going to become more aware of the dangers," he said.

Frieden said the data show a need for more prescription drug monitoring programs at the state level, and more laws shutting down "pill mills" — doctor offices and pharmacies that over-prescribe addictive medicines.

Last month, a federal panel of drug safety specialists recommended that Vicodin and dozens of other medicines be subjected to the same restrictions as other narcotic drugs like oxycodone and morphine. Meanwhile, more and more hospitals have been establishing tougher restrictions on painkiller prescriptions and refills.

One example: The University of Colorado Hospital in Aurora is considering a rule that would ban emergency doctors from prescribing more medicine for patients who say they lost their pain meds, Zane said.

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Stobbe reported from Atlanta.

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Online:

JAMA: http://www.jama.ama-assn.org

CDC: http://www.cdc.gov

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AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner can be reached at http://www.twitter.com

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Massive mixed-use project in Hollywood clears a hurdle

A proposal for two skyscrapers that would flank the Capitol Records tower in Hollywood gained the approval of the city's planning department Tuesday despite push-back from dozens of disgruntled residents.

The Millennium Hollywood plans are the most ambitious in a string of revitalization projects in the area, including the W Hotel and the Hollywood & Highland Center. The $664-million mixed-use development could include more than 1 million square feet of apartment, office and retail space.

The proposal comes less than a year after the L.A. City Council approved new zoning guidelines for Hollywood that allow more and taller buildings near transit hubs. The strategy is part of a vision to cluster new development around bus stops and Metro stations — a theory that Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa calls "elegant density."

In architectural renderings, balconies jut from the thin towers like a teetering game of Jenga. The 4.5-acre lot from which the skyscrapers would rise would also include green space, a pool and an outdoor library.

The site is one block from the Metro Red Line's Hollywood and Vine station, and developers say they would install bike lanes and lockers.

Nearby residents say Millennium Hollywood would make Hollywood's notoriously bad traffic worse, lengthening commutes and response times from police and firefighters. Construction noise and dust could hurt seniors and students living in the area, said Jan Martin, the president and chief executive of the American Musical and Dramatic Academy, which is next to the site. The college has nearly 1,000 students and faculty who cross Vine Street daily, steps from where the construction would occur.

"You could not possibly tune a violin with that kind of noise going on," Martin said.

Millennium Hollywood representatives said that if the school were for children, city law would require them to reduce noise or dust around the school. Because the students are adults, there are no such requirements.

Residents also said they were concerned that the skyscrapers would spoil their million-dollar views from the Hollywood Hills. According to plans, the towers could be as tall as 485 and 585 feet — more than twice the tallest building in Hollywood.

"You go too far from that, you've changed the district," said City Councilman Tom LaBonge, who took a break from a council meeting down the hall to come to the hearing. Then he turned to city planner Jim Tokunaga. "What's your favorite building in Hollywood?"

"Uh, Capitol Records," Tokunaga responded.

LaBonge nodded and looked at Tokunaga long and hard. The audience laughed.

The personality of Hollywood may favor shorter buildings now, said Phillip Aarons, an attorney representing the development, but the new skyscrapers represent the future. There has never been a height limit in the area, he said.

"Hollywood evolves," Aarons said. "That's its nature."

The Planning Commission will consider the development next month.

laura.nelson@latimes.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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