Features

NEW ORLEANS — Google is one of the major US corporations researching the power of colour in the working world, in everything from workspaces to marketing and branding.

Meghan Casserly, spokeswoman for the US-based organisation built around the popular search engine, says Google is still early in its research but has already found “a clear link between colour and satisfaction with a person’s work area”, which in turn can boost employee creativity and productivity.

Elyria Kemp, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of New Orleans, says there’s more competition than ever for time and attention, and colour is “the silent salesperson”.

“We have so much stimuli in the environment,” she said. “That’s why it’s so important to have those distinctive colours that really stand out.”

Kemp is following colour trends in business and conducting her own research on the link between emotions and colour. She said she’s also looking at what colours consumers associate with certain services, such as transportation,
healthcare, banks and financial services.

Kemp said when consumers make an evaluation of a product offering, typically they do this within 90 seconds or less, and more than half of their initial assessment is based on colour alone.

That’s why so many companies are researching their colour choices — to the tune of thousands of dollars, Kemp said — and trademarking the colours consumers have come to associate with their products, such as UPS’s Pullman brown, Home Depot’s vibrant orange and Tiffany & Co.’s distinct blue.

Joclyn Benedetto, spokeswoman for Tiffany & Co., based in New York City, said the diamonds and glamour of the company’s jewellery is linked to the signature Tiffany blue colour that wraps every creation. She said the colour was selected by founder Charles Lewis Tiffany for the cover of “Blue Book, Tiffany’s annual collection of exquisitely handcrafted jewels”, which was first published in 1845.

Coca-Cola’s signature red colour also dates back more than 100 years, when it was shipped in barrels painted red to differentiate it from beer barrels, said Ted Ryan, the company’s spokesman.

Home Depot got its original orange colour from deconstructed circus tents used in its early marketing signage — and it stuck.

“When we do consumer research and we ask our customers say a word association for Home Depot, the first thing they say is orange,” said Trish Mueller, Home Depot’s chief marketing officer. “So it is literally seeped into our DNA.”

Smaller companies are also recognising the benefits of colour. Emil Hagopian, an Ann Arbor, Michigan-based distributor for Mar Plast Colour Building Accessories, said even in his line of work — products and accessories for public restroom spaces — there’s been an increased demand for colour beyond the standard neutrals and stainless steel.

“Colour can tend to excite you, make you feel like you are in a better-designed space and just kind of adds to that total feeling of security, comfort,” he said.

Technology has played a role in making more products available in a wider range of colours, he said.

But picking the right colour is important.

“You know when something is right because you get a feeling of security, of safety, and it’s not something that you think about. It just will hit you,” Hagopian said. “And sometimes, if it’s done wrong, that also hits you.”

NEW YORK — The rock music world is notorious for its bickering but Aerosmith belongs to another category altogether — a band with constant and open tensions that has nonetheless managed to stay together.

The friction between guitarist Joe Perry and singer Steven Tyler shows no signs of mellowing with age, with the two Boston rockers both releasing tell-all books that portray each other in a less than flattering light.

Since his memoir “Rocks” came out in October, Perry says he has only exchanged text messages with his bandmate of 40 years.

“It kind of bounced back and forth a bit. He got about a third of the way through the book and said he liked it, and then I didn’t hear from him, but obviously he finished it,” Perry told AFP.

Perry said he had fully expected Tyler, who criticised his bandmate in his own book in 2011, to take exception to parts of the memoir that portray the singer as controlling and self-promoting.

Among the allegations, Perry says that Tyler used to make a habit of stealing and that several years ago he quietly tried out — unsuccessfully — to sing for a reunited Led Zeppelin.

Perry said he knew from the first time they met that he and Tyler had differences but that they had found a way to work together after splitting in the late 1970s.

“We had to figure out a new dynamic instead of just fighting all the time, to put the personal stuff aside, and let our differences as far as the music go work for us, instead of being a point of contention,” Perry said.

Perry isn’t sure whether he and Tyler will ever talk about the guitarist’s book. But, Perry said, he expects it will be “business as usual” the next time they meet.

Not just sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll

In one difference, Perry said that he never took up the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle when it came to sex. 

In the book, he recounts once watching Aerosmith’s merchandise vendor pour whiskey over a body part he had christened “Mr. Important” in an unscientific bid to prevent venereal disease.

Perry, raised in a small town in Massachusetts, said he generally stayed with one woman at a time.

“That’s what I saw when I was growing up and it just seemed natural to me. I didn’t really have this need to prove myself, to bring more notches to my pistol so to speak,” he said.

“I was the odd man out because I wasn’t into that kind of lifestyle. But I was always a loner anyway, so it didn’t bother me much.”

Perry returns to his family roots on a new solo EP of Christmas songs, performing holiday classics that he enjoyed as a child.

The Hollywood star Johnny Depp lent him a studio to record “Joe Perry’s Merry Christmas” and wound up joining on rhythm guitar for a version of Chuck Berry’s “Run Run Rudolph”.

Perry said that Depp “really added some flavor” both artistically and by allowing a live recording of the song, as Perry would otherwise have played both guitar parts and mixed them.

‘Walk This Way’

Aerosmith enjoyed a career renaissance starting in the mid-1980s with songs such as “Janie’s Got a Gun”, “Love in an Elevator” and “Dude [Looks Like a Lady]”.

The resurgence started through a then unlikely source — the 1986 collaboration “Walk this Way” with Run-DMC, one of the earliest hip-hop groups to enjoy mainstream success.

Perry said that the famed producer Rick Rubin persuaded Run-DMC to work with the hard rockers after initial hesitation.

“They weren’t jumping up and down about this,” Perry said of Run-DMC. “They were keen to be getting away from electric guitars, and they were working with a whole different paradigm.”

But Perry hailed the lasting influence of “Walk This Way”. Through the video, Run-DMC became one of the first hip hop acts to enjoy prominence on MTV, where white artists had dominated.

The song’s combination of rap and rock guitars is now itself a mainstream sound favoured by many hip hop and electronic artists.

“If there is anything we have done over the years that has contributed to the legacy of music... that collaboration is one of them that I’m most proud of,” Perry said.

PARIS — In a small village in western France, in makeshift shelters bared to the elements, a treasure trove of extremely rare cars has been discovered after lying forgotten for almost 50 years.

Under a pile of dusty old car magazines, one of only 37 Ferrari 250 GT SWB California Spiders ever made valued at up to 12 million euros ($14 million) is among some 60 classic gems discovered by the elite Artcurial auction house.

The once-in-a-lifetime discovery, announced earlier this month, was likened by Artcurial Managing Director Matthieu Lamoure to stumbling upon the car world’s equivalent of the tomb of Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun.

Lamoure and senior specialist, Pierre Novikoff, got a tip-off about the timeworn fleet while crisscrossing the country earlier this year hunting for rare pieces.

On the farm — Artcurial is keeping the exact location secret — they found a hodge-podge of makeshift structures, describing shock after shock as they realised the treasures they contained.

“This was somewhere between a metallic graveyard and a museum,” said Novikoff, describing valuable cars invaded by ivy, and in some cases corrugated iron resting directly on the cars.

“We were overcome with emotion. Probably much like Lord Carrington and Howard Carter, on being the first for centuries to enter Tutankhamun’s tomb,” said Lamoure.

They may be rusted and weather beaten, but the legendary names such as Bugatti, Hispano-Suiza, Talbot-Lago, Panhard-Levassor, Maserati, Ferrari, Delahaye and Delage are described by Artcurial as “works of art”.

The rare California Spider — a car which features 13 times on the list of the 100 most expensive cars ever sold — was bought new by French actor Gerard Blain and later sold to fellow actor Alain Delon.

Delon was photographed with American actresses Jane Fonda and Shirley MacLaine in the car, which historians thought to be lost forever.

Also uncovered is an extravagant Talbot Lago T26 Cabriolet that belonged to Egypt’s last monarch King Farouk, an immensely rich ruler known for grotesque extravagance, and avid collector who along with fast cars amassed one of the world’s most famous coin collections.

“This is surely the last time that such a discovery will be made, anywhere in the world. What is so special here is the number of cars, the range and the quality and pedigree of the models,” said Novikoff.

‘Sleeping beauties’

But how does such a jackpot of mythical automobiles end up on a rural French farm, left to rust for half a century?

While classic cars are now snapped up and extremely valuable, this was not the case a few decades ago when inventor and automobile enthusiast Roger Baillon became one of the first collectors.

He had a transport business in the west of France where he in 1947 designed and built his own car known as the Bluebird, all while raking in a fortune in the post WWII boom in the sector.

He bought the property in 1953 to turn into an automobile museum, snapping up classic cars — some saved from the scrapyard — and according to Lamoure, even bought a little train which he planned to use to give tours of his museum.

“When the vehicles arrived he put them away without much fuss, one next to the other. He restored some and left others as they were,” said Novikoff.

Much of the collection was built up between 1955 and 1965.

But when the 70s swung in, Baillon’s business went into decline, and he held a large sale of his car collection at the end of the decade and to car historians, that was the end of that.

But it turned out he had clung on to many of the collection’s jewels.

Now, the lost “sleeping beauties” will again change hands, in an auction on February 6, 2015, where they are expected to fetch up to 16 million euros.

They will be displayed and sold as they are, and Lamoure said he hopes some will be left as such as works of art, although some buyers may choose to restore them.

“This is a very rare opportunity presenting works of art unknown to the market! For the Talbot Lago T26 Grand Sport coupe Saoutchik, caved in at the rear, I think it should be left in this condition. It is a sculpture.”

You don’t necessarily have to go to extremes with a camera like the Nixie to enjoy the advantages of connected objects, cameras for that matter. There are countless, less science-fictional but nevertheless amazing applications of the technology.

Besides, Nixie, the wearable camera that takes off your wrist and flies like a drone to take the most incredible motion selfies you can imagine, is still in the “early development” phase, as the device’s dedicated website says. For now you can just enjoy the demo video. But who knows, you may find it available to buy online sooner than you think.

Computers and computer-related devices aside, of all the other objects that may be connected (to the web) cameras are those that make most sense. From truly useful to just entertaining, the applications are many.

The “connected” craze has extended to outrageous, totally useless, ridiculous objects. From the cup that knows what you are drinking and that computes how much you drank over a certain period of time, to the connected pill bottle that monitors if you’re taking your medicine as prescribed and would eventually send a notification to your attending physician, the list is long.

Connected cameras are nothing like. To start with, all cameras in smartphones are connected cameras, understandably, and that is not something to be taking lightly. Especially with the quality image they can deliver and the fast Internet link that is built-in, be it through Wi-Fi, 3G or 4G. But there is much more to the phenomenon.

Connected surveillance cameras are the trend and are seeing their usage being extended from the work place to home and even to cars. Today cameras can be connected directly, independently of any tethered device like a smartphone for example. IP cameras can take stills and video and send the digital contents directly over the web to any other connected device, in live streaming.

An IP camera has, as the name implies, an IP (Internet Protocol) address number that uniquely identifies it on the network and that turns it into a web “point” on its own, like any computer, smartphone or big size computer server. Some models connect to the network via standard Cat5/6 Ethernet cable whereas others go wirelessly through Wi-Fi. The latter type, of course, is more expensive. Depending on the resolution and the features, wired IP cameras sell in Jordan between as little as JD20, and up to JD200. Wireless IP models start at around JD100 and can go up to JD600.

One of the latest applications is going automotive and addresses drivers’ security concerns. Just stick a little camera inside your car, behind the rearview mirror, pointing towards the road ahead. It will be constantly recording what’s going on, and in case of accident the recording can serve to prove what happened. The footage can be erased the next day if no accident or incident took place.

This is particularly useful to protect drivers from “scam” accidents, where for instance, pedestrians fake being hit by the car to claim compensation or plainly to blackmail the driver. This phenomenon is growing in many countries in the world. Connectivity here plays a crucial role, for whatever is being recording while you are driving is sent online to be stored on a device kept at home or in your office, and not in the car itself where it could be destroyed in case of extremely violent crash, or simply stolen to deprive you from the tangible proof you got.

We will probably keep seeing new connected devices appear on the market all the time. And time is what will naturally separate the useful from the ridiculous.

In Amman, all that my Jordanian friends want to do is eat Indian food, especially when they visit me. I try and accommodate their choice of selection but once in a while if I serve any other cuisine, I end up getting reprimanded. By the vociferous set, that is. 

Most of them have not been to my home country and the only exposure they have of it is through the curries they have consumed in London. Chicken Tikka Masala, that phenomenal Indian curry has now become the national dish of Great Britain, after all. But, like people from my motherland will tell you, there is more to Indian food than this gravy laden fare. 

I belong to a large nation and we have an overwhelming array of diverse dishes that are cooked across the length and breadth of our land. But our snacking habits draw us together into one cohesive undivided unit, especially our collective weakness for the “samosa”. 

What is that? To the uninitiated, it is just another salty Indian savoury but to us, it is a wonder of creation. Firstly, it is three dimensional in shape, so it has a length, width and height associated with it, quite unlike the two dimensional flat “samosa” that has surfaced in some parts of the world which has a flaky, crisp sort of exterior. We can spot a fake even with our eyes closed. 

Secondly, though it can have any type of filling, the classic samosa is stuffed with bits of potato, green peas, peanuts, raisins and freshly ground spices. It is deep fried to a golden brown colour and supplied with dollops of mint and tamarind chutney. Usually an evening snack, it is an accompaniment to “chai”, that incredibly sweetened and aromatic Indian tea. But anytime is a goodtime to gorge on a samosa. 

It has three pointy edges and some people prefer to eat the outer covering of the patty first, while others scoop out the stuffing, before attacking the jacket. 

But several thoughtless folks actually squish it inside a dinner roll, smear large quantities of tomato sauce on it and gobble it like a burger. I consider this to be a cruel gesture because according to me it’s a gastronomical sin to flatten a symmetrically majestic samosa into crumbly morsels and call the concoction, bun-samosa. I have no quarrel with fusion cuisine, but this version of it, makes me want to stamp my feet in irritation. 

Recently a persistent vendor sold me a samosa making device. It was a triangular shaped container that looked like a cookie cutter with a lid. He put invisible ingredients into it, and asked me to imagine how perfectly the shape would turn out when I opened the box. He even pointed at the picture of a smiling lady about to bite into an impeccable samosa that was printed on the carton. I bought it immediately. 

Once home, I struggled with it from the word go. Either the potato would spill out or the green-peas got entangled at the edges. When I tried to fry it in the wok, it disintegrated into tiny pieces. So I simply placed it inside two slices of bread and tried to pass it off as a sandwich.

“You crushed the samosa?” my husband was horrified. 

“Seems like it,” I mumbled. 

“But I thought you hated it this way,” he said.

“That new cutter is faulty,” I insisted. 

“Blaming your tools?” my spouse asked.

“The salesman too,” I confessed. 

MIN SAW, Myanmar — Ka Lar Nar caught malaria for the sixth time when he was working away from home on his small farm in the jungle of south-eastern Myanmar but this time it was a lot harder to get rid of it.

After testing positive for malaria he got a three-day course of drugs from a community health volunteer in his village but even though his fever subsided, he continued to be plagued by headaches and another test still showed positive results.

Experts say his case could be an indication of drug resistance to the mosquito-borne disease, which has been spreading in Myanmar and other countries in the Mekong River Basin in what threatens to become the next big global health emergency if it marches on to India and Africa.

“This was a missed opportunity,” said Eisa Hamid, an epidemiologist working with the United Nations in Myanmar, who specialises in monitoring and evaluating malaria programmes.

Normally, after three days of treatment the farmer’s blood should have been clear of malaria-transmitting parasites.

“With any patient showing positive test results after three days of treatment, we have to suspect drug resistance, and more sophisticated blood testing should have been done as he could still carry the parasites that cause malaria in his blood.”

Malaria’s new ground zero

Malaria death rates dropped by 47 per cent between 2000 and 2014 worldwide but it still killed some 584,000 people in 2013, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Much of the success in fighting the disease is due to the use of combination therapies (ACTs) based on artemisinin, a Chinese herb derivative, which is now under threat as malaria parasites have been building up resistance to the drugs.

Experts say Myanmar, which has the largest malaria burden in the region, is the next frontier in the spread of resistance to artemisinin.

Positioned between the Andaman Sea and the Himalayas and bordering India and China — home to 40 per cent of the world’s population — Myanmar is in a unique position to halt the spread of resistance to India and Africa.

“We need to act fast to avoid a big catastrophe,” said Pascal Ringwald of the WHO’s Global Malaria Programme. “The consequences could be disastrous.”

If the problem spreads beyond the region, history would repeat itself for a third time, as resistance to other malaria drugs developed in the area before and spread to Africa to claim the lives of millions, especially children.

But the urgency is far greater this time as new drugs to replace ACTs are not yet available.

“Artemisinin resistance could wipe out a lot of the gains we’ve made in containing malaria and there is nothing yet to replace it,” said Nyan Sint, an epidemiologist and regional malaria officer working with the government’s national malaria control programmme.

Before being identified in Myanmar in 2008, signs of resistance were found in Cambodia and since have also been confirmed in Thailand, Laos and Vietnam, according to WHO.

Why parasites become resistant to drugs is not entirely clear but prolonged civil conflict, dense jungles, migration and poor quality drugs are all believed to play a part.

The human and economic cost of failing to stop the spread would be huge, according to a model published in the Malaria Journal last month.

The study estimated an extra 116,000 deaths per year if artemisinin resistance is not stopped. Medical costs could exceed $32 million per year, while productivity losses from a rise in cases and deaths are estimated at $385 million.

Worse than Ebola?

Francois Nosten, a French malaria expert who has been studying the disease along the Myanmar-Thai border for about three decades, said drug-resistance is a quiet menace that is at risk of being overlooked as world attention focuses on the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

“You don’t see people dying in the streets, like with Ebola, but the consequences of it spreading further could be a lot worse,” he said.

In Myanmar the partner drugs in ACTs are still working, but they are already failing in western Cambodia, a sign that the clock is ticking fast in the fight against drug resistance.

Some 60 per cent of Myanmar’s 51 million people live in malaria-endemic areas, many of them migrants and people in hard-to-reach rural areas.

The number of people dying from the disease fell sharply after ACTs became more widely available but the country still recorded 333,871 malaria cases in 2013 and 236 deaths, WHO data shows.

In Kayin state, formerly known as Karen state, much progress has been made since a January 2012 ceasefire between the government and the Karen National Union (KNU), halting one of the world’s longest-running civil wars.

Villages like Min Saw used to have lots of malaria cases but better access to healthcare workers since the ceasefire, ACTs, rapid diagnosis tests and mass distribution of insecticide-treated bed nets led to a sharp drop.

“We used to have much higher incidence rates,” said Saw Ohn Myint, a community health worker. “But we need more training and more equipment to continue to make progress.”

International aid organisations have been working with ethnic groups and the government to set up a network of 1,500 village health volunteers that can dispense ACTs.

But thousands of Kayin’s state 1.5 million people remain uncovered because they are in hard-to-reach areas, sometimes still controlled by armed ethnic groups restricting access for government health workers.

Mistrust following five decades of military rule in Myanmar still runs deep in Kayin state as its people recover from shelling, land mines explosions and forced displacement.

The situation is also complicated by fake or low-quality anti-malaria medicines dispensed at village shops, which instead of killing the parasites only make them stronger.

“This is a big problem,” said Kayin State Health Minister Aung Kyaw Htwe. “We’re trying to educate shopkeepers not to sell these drugs and people not to take them.”

In Min Saw, where a package a colourful tablets purportedly containing anti-malaria drugs sells for as little as 10 cents, villagers like Ka Lar Nar say sometimes it is easier to buy medication from the “village quack” than to see a health worker.

All-out assault

Under a $100 million, three-year initiative in the Greater Mekong region, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has allocated $40 million to Myanmar to fight artemisinin resistance.

Part of the plan is an all-out assault to eliminate plasmodium falciparum, the deadliest malaria parasite, as containment through bed nets, insecticides and treating only those who test positive no longer works.

Villages with a high number of infected people will be flooded with drugs to be taken by everybody, well and sick, to eliminate falciparum before treatments fail completely. The plan has received ethical clearance from the Myanmar government.

Nosten, whose team is mapping 800 villages on the Thai-Myanmar border for potential mass treatment, says elimination is a challenge, in particular as malaria is worst in remote rural areas and because of a large number of migrants in the region.

“Some of these villages are five days walk from the nearest road,” said Nosten, director of the Shoklo Malaria Research Unit in the Thai border town of Mae Sot. “But if we don’t do it quickly, it will be too late and millions of people will die.”

PARIS — In bed asleep, eating, in her underwear or even displaying her scars after weight loss surgery, photographer Jen Davis has always been as comfortable in front of the camera as she is behind it.

But when Davis, 36, set out on a “journey of self discovery” to explore her own weight problem through a series of self-portraits, she discovered a side to herself she didn’t know existed.

Just published in a book titled “11 Years”, Davis came up with the idea in 2002 when she was a student.

“I was at the beach on a spring break vacation. I guess I hadn’t been in a bathing suit for a while and there was this heightened sense of being very uncomfortable,” she told AFP in an interview in Paris.

“That was the starting point — to look at my anxieties,” she said.

The resulting photograph, titled “Pressure Point”, showed her sitting awkwardly on the beach next to a svelte and toned friend in a bikini. 

Davis began photographing herself in everyday situations, initially choosing images that were “safe and easy” such as hanging out her washing or having a meal with a friend.

“I wasn’t thinking about an audience and I knew I didn’t have to show them to anyone, so it didn’t inhibit me from taking pictures that were hard to look at,” she said.

But as the project went on she started to challenge herself to reveal more flesh with pictures of her trying to do up the waistband of her trousers or showing a close-up of her chin.

“I realised that I was looking at this private side of myself that I didn’t know, looking underneath this shield of how I projected myself to the world,” she said.

Journey of self discovery

Over the following years, Davis, a Brooklyn-based photographer who specialises in portraits, amassed hundreds of photographs of herself .

But nearly a decade after beginning her photographic project, she realised that despite the years of self-discovery, her weight remained unchanged.

In 2011, she decided to undergo weight loss surgery by having a gastric band fitted.

As the kilos fell off — 52 kilogrammes within a year — Davis came to realise just how much the excess kilos had dominated her life.

“It was all about my body and discomfort and dealing with pressures that I felt, like feeling scrutinised by people’s eyes,” she said.

“I felt judged in society. On the subway I felt that people were starring at me or making fun of me,” she said.

“Even if it was not in a verbal way, it was in a look, people staring or rolling their eyes.”

The most upsetting experiences came when people tried to temper comments about her weight with what they saw as kindness.

“People would say ‘oh you have such a pretty face but your body needs to change’. Or ‘you’re so overweight but you’re pretty so if you lose weight you’ll be happy or have a boyfriend’,” she said.

“That happened at a wedding. A woman said that to me and I burst into tears.”

‘People were staring’

As the number of obese people increases worldwide — creating looming public health crises in some countries — Davis said the issue had become a minefield.

The most vicious prejudice was now expressed under cover of anonymity in online forums and comment boxes, she added.

People in the public eye, meanwhile, such as the governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, who opted for gastric bypass surgery without publicly announcing their decision, risked incurring the wrath of the public.

“All of a sudden he was losing weight and the public was so angry that he didn’t come forward with this,” she said.

Having concluded that her own problem was caused by a psychological need to comfort eat, Davis knows she will have to work hard for rest of her life to maintain her new weight.

But she is grateful for the surgery without which she believes she could never have achieved it.

“Some people are ‘fat positive’. But I could never see myself as beautiful or subscribe to that,” she said.

LONDON — A radical Muslim killed a soldier outside Canada’s parliament. A right-wing extremist opened fire on buildings in Texas’ capital and tried to burn down the Mexican consulate. An Al Qaeda-inspired assailant hacked an off-duty soldier to death in London.

Police said all three were terrorists and motivated by ideology. Authorities and family members said they may have been mentally ill. A growing body of research suggests they might well have been both.

New studies have challenged several decades of thinking that psychological problems are only a minor factor in the making of terrorists. The research has instead found a significant link between mental problems and “lone wolf” terrorism.

Now academics and law enforcement officials are working to turn that research into tools to prevent deadly attacks.

“It’s never an either-or in terms of ideology versus mental illness,” said Ramon Spaaij, a sociologist at Australia’s Victoria University who conducted a major study, funded by the US Justice Department, of lone wolf extremists. “It’s a dangerous cocktail.”

The study preceded Tuesday’s end to a deadly, 16-hour siege involving a gunman who took hostages in a cafe in Sydney. Prime Minister Tony Abbott said the gunman — Iranian-born Man Haron Monis — had “a long history of violent crime, infatuation with extremism and mental instability”.

With groups like Islamic State spreading violence in Syria and Iraq — and bloodthirsty rhetoric on the Internet — authorities around the world have issued increasingly insistent warnings about the threat posed by lone wolf attackers.

They can be difficult to stop with a counterterrorism strategy geared towards intercepting communications and disrupting plots.

Solo terrorism “doesn’t take an awful lot of organising. It doesn’t take too many people to conspire together. There’s no great complexity to it”, London police chief Bernard Hogan-Howe told the BBC recently. “So what that means is that we have a very short time to interdict, to actually intervene and make sure that these people don’t get away with it.”

Police forces and intelligence agencies are examining whether insights from research by Spaaij and others could help.

Spaaij said a number of law enforcement and intelligence agencies have shown interest in his work. In Britain, a police counterterrorism unit is using a major study of lone wolf terrorists to develop risk-assessment analysis.

A British security official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorised to talk on the record said many attackers display warning signs, but that recognising them is easier in retrospect. He said British intelligence officials are studying the link between mental illness and lone-actor terrorism.

Most people with mental health problems are neither terrorists nor violent, and mental illness alone can’t explain lone wolf attackers. Some experts dispute whether there is a link at all.

After Michael Zehaf-Bibeau’s deadly attack on a soldier October 22 in Ottawa, Jocelyn Belanger, a psychology professor at the University of Quebec at Montreal, told the Canadian senate’s national security committee that “to believe that radicalised individuals are crazy or not playing with a full deck will be our first mistake in developing effective counterterrorism strategies”.

But the new research suggests that solo terrorists are much more likely to have mental health problems than either members of the general public or participants in group terrorism.

Spaaij and Mark Hamm of Indiana State University studied 98 lone wolf attackers in the US. They found that 40 per cent had identifiable mental health problems, compared with 1.5 per cent in the general population.

Their conclusion? Mental illness is not the only factor that drives individuals to commit terrorist acts, but it is one of the factors.

Spaaj said mental illness can play a part “in shaping particular belief systems and in constructing the enemy, externalising blame for one’s own failure or grievances onto this all-threatening enemy”.

A second study by Paul Gill and Emily Corner of University College London looked at 119 lone wolf attackers and a similar number of members of violent extremist groups in the US and Europe. Almost a third of the lone wolves — nearly 32 per cent — had been diagnosed with a mental illness, while only 3.4 per cent of terrorist group members were mentally ill.

“Group-based terrorists are psychologically quite normal,” the researchers said. They said one reason may be that terrorist recruiters are likely to reject candidates who appear erratic or mentally ill.

Mental illness could make lone wolf attacks easier to foresee: Gill said 60 per cent of the attackers he studied leaked details of their plans, sometimes telling friends or family.

He and Corner are working with a British counterterrorism unit as police try to develop ways of distinguishing genuine threats from hot-headed talk. The unit declined to discuss the project, but recent cases suggest determining who really is a threat is fraught with difficulty.

More than a year before he hacked a soldier to death in London in 2013, Michael Adebowale’s online extremism drew the attention of Britain’s intelligence services.

Domestic intelligence agency MI5 told a parliamentary inquiry into the murder that it uses a range of factors to assess the threat from potential lone wolves, including an inability to cope with stress and anxiety, social isolation and mental health problems.

MI5 agents suggested that Adebowale — who is now serving a life sentence in a psychiatric hospital — be assessed by the agency’s Behavioural Science Unit, a team of psychologists and social scientists, but the assessment was never done. The lawmakers’ report called that a missed opportunity, and recommended that “MI5 should ensure that the unit’s advice is integrated more thoroughly into investigations”.

Signals also were misread in the case of Nicky Reilly, a 22-year-old convert to Islam who walked into a restaurant in the English town of Exeter in 2008 with a homemade bomb. The device went off in the restroom, injuring Reilly and no one else.

At his trial, jurors were told that Reilly had learning difficulties and had had many years of contact with mental health services. In 2003, he talked to a psychiatrist about making a bomb. The information was passed on to the police, who judged that Reilly wasn’t a serious threat.

American authorities, in contrast, have been accused of being too aggressive in pursuit of lone attackers. The FBI has foiled several alleged attacks through sting operations in which agents posed as terror supporters, supplying advice and equipment. Critics say the strategy can amount to entrapment of mentally vulnerable people who wouldn’t have the wherewithal to act alone.

Meanwhile, the fundamental question of whether there is a link between mental health problems and terrorism remains controversial.

The most lethal lone-wolf attacker in recent years was anti-Muslim extremist Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 people in a bombing and gun rampage in Norway in 2011. Breivik was unrepentant. One psychiatric report found him to be insane, while a second concluded that he was sane — and judges agreed, sending him to prison indefinitely.

The killer was happy with the outcome. For Breivik, it was recognition that his views were legitimate and not those of a madman.

RIO DE JANEIRO — A drug-resistant “super bacteria” that’s normally found in hospitals and is notoriously difficult to treat has been discovered in the waters where Rio de Janeiro’s Olympic sailing events will be held, scientists said Monday.

The Instituto Oswaldo Cruz, Brazil’s most respected health research institute, said it has discovered bacteria that produce an enzyme that make it resistant to most forms of treatment in water samples taken from various spots along the Carioca River. Among the spots is where the river flows into the city’s Guanabara Bay, site of the 2016 sailing and wind surfing events.

Bacteria with the so-called KPC enzyme are difficult to treat. The institute said no instances of infection resulting from the contaminated water have yet been detected but warned of possible danger to swimmers.

“The illnesses caused by these microorganisms are the same as those caused by common bacteria, but they require stronger antibiotics and, sometimes, can require hospitalisation,” the study’s coordinator, Ana Paula D’Alincourt Carvalho Assef, wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press. 

“Since the super bacteria are resistant to the most modern medications, doctors need to rely on drugs that are rarely used because they are toxic to the organism.”

Even if they don’t immediately fall ill, those who come into contact with the bacteria run the risk of becoming carriers of the microorganism, the institute said in its statement.

“Carriers can take these resistant bacteria back to their own environments and to other people, resulting in a cycle of dissemination,” said the institute, which is affiliated with Brazil’s health ministry.

With some 70 per cent of sewage in this city of 12 million going untreated — and flowing, raw, into rivers, onto beaches and into the Guanabara Bay — water quality has been a major worry ahead of the 2016 summer games. In their Olympic bid, organisers pledged to slash by 80 per cent the amount of sewage and garbage that’s pumped into the bay daily, but critics insist little has been done.

Water quality tests still show sky-high levels of faecal matter throughout much of the bay, and authorities have a near-blanket standing recommendation against swimming on any of its beaches. Flamengo beach, where the super bacteria was discovered, is among the Guanabara Bay beaches considered unfit for swimming.

The beach, which is adjacent to the Gloria Marina, the starting point for the Olympic sailing events, is also to be the viewing area for the events.

Ben Remocker, a former member of Canada’s Olympic sailing team who represents athletes in two sailing disciplines, called the findings “serious for our athletes”.

“We’re going to be troubled by this,” he said by telephone, adding he didn’t think the possible health risks would dissuade sailors from taking part in the games. “I think the sailors are probably going to cross their fingers they aren’t going to get sick.”

The super bacteria were discovered in three out of five samples taken from along the course of the Carioca River. While it’s not entirely clear how the bacteria may have gotten into the river, the statement quotes Assef as saying that no bacteria was discovered at the headwaters.

“The first point in which we detect its presence was... after the river passes through areas with homes and hospitals,” the statement quotes her as saying.

Organisers of the Rio games declined to comment, saying they would have to look into the findings before responding.

NEW YORK — When a new episode of ABC Family’s “Pretty Little Liars” airs, its show-runner, I. Marlene King, makes a point to go on Twitter to see what the fans have to say.

King is among the newest class of TV celebrities on social media: show-runners who are both gaining in followers and who find that social media gives back perhaps even more than they put in.

“I pay enormous attention to it,” King said. “I am on social media live every night when the show airs and the next day as well looking at the feedback we got regarding the episode. Yes, I have vision for the show and a creative destination where I know the show is going, but I would be foolish not to take advantage of this wonderful, giant focus group of millions of people we have each week when the show airs.”

A show-runner is typically the executive producer of a TV show, with the most creative control. King said social media has helped validate her decisions about the fate of certain characters on “PLL”.

“I started falling in love with the character of Toby early on in the show,” she said. “We were going to follow the books and have his character die early on, but as I started to fall in love with him I noticed fans were really falling in love with him, and together as the show and the fans we decided to keep him.”

Show-runner Hart Hanson (“Bones”, Fox) pays attention to what the fans are saying online but makes the point that not all of his viewers are using social media.

“The entire audience is not represented by the Twitter follower, especially the verbose and noisy Twitter follower,” he said. “If I did what the Twitter followers wanted me to do on my show ‘Bones’, [characters] Booth and Brennan would’ve gotten together in the third episode. That would’ve been a very bad thing for the series. It’s complicated but you have to keep your distance.”

Show-runner Shonda Rhimes, whose block of prime-time ABC programming on Thursday nights “Grey’s Anatomy”, “Scandal” and “How to Get Away with Murder” has boosted her fame and has more than 791,000 Twitter followers, puts it into perspective with the disclaimer in the bio of her Twitter account:

“I make stuff up for a living. Remember, it’s not real, OK? Don’t tweet me your craziness.”

Andrew Adashek, head of TV at Twitter, says fans who follow show-runners can get inside information they wouldn’t otherwise have access to via dropped spoilers and hints about upcoming plots.

“It’s like getting a director’s cut of every episode and people love that,” Adashek said.

Added Julie Plec, show-runner of The CW’s “The Vampire Diaries” and “The Originals”: “I think one thing the fans have realised is you can interact with the stars and that’s great, but the stars are sworn to secrecy and not allowed to tell you anything... If I decide I want to give something away today and tell a secret, I can because it’s my rule.”

It can also just be plain entertaining to follow these creative people.

“I think it is safe to say they are super expressive and therefore able to manifest the creativity in a form of engaging Twitter content and it is something that fans really, really latch on to,” said Adashek.

Not everyone wants to be that accessible. “Teen Wolf” show-runner Jeff Davis used to be on Twitter and closed his account in December 2012.

“There is a lot of deep negativity online that personally I like to stay away from,” he said. “It’s hard to look at those things online and not feel a sting. The problem with people critiquing online or letting loose their own personal demons online is the individuation. You can’t see the other person. You can’t see how what you’re saying online affects them. And you objectify them and lose all compassion.”

Plec empathises when fans get worked up about a particular storyline and feel the need to communicate that on social media.

“If I had grown up with Twitter I would’ve been just like them. I would’ve been tweeting at the ‘General Hospital’ writers being like, ‘Oh my God! How could you do that to Lucky?’” she laughed. “So, I get it.”

She says she often turns to Twitter herself to follow the people that she’s a fan of.

“Probably every ninth tweet is about how much I worship Shonda Rhimes. In fact, she finally followed me about a year ago because I had been tweeting about her so much that the people in her office were like, ‘Would you please follow this woman? She’s like a desperate fan girl,’” she said. “You can look at it like it’s so exciting for fans to have an outreach to these shows and create a direct line to these show-runners but, for me as a show-runner, I geek out so hard when like [‘Cougar Town’ show-runner] Bill Lawrence tweets at me.”