Drone Pilots Found to Get Stress Disorders Much as Those in Combat Do

U.S. Air Force/Master Sgt. Steve Horton

Capt. Richard Koll, left, and Airman First Class Mike Eulo monitored a drone aircraft after launching it in Iraq.

The study affirms a growing body of research finding health hazards even for those piloting machines from bases far from actual combat zones.

“Though it might be thousands of miles from the battlefield, this work still involves tough stressors and has tough consequences for those crews,” said Peter W. Singer, a scholar at the Brookings Institution who has written extensively about drones. He was not involved in the new research.

That study, by the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center, which analyzes health trends among military personnel, did not try to explain the sources of mental health problems among drone pilots.

But Air Force officials and independent experts have suggested several potential causes, among them witnessing combat violence on live video feeds, working in isolation or under inflexible shift hours, juggling the simultaneous demands of home life with combat operations and dealing with intense stress because of crew shortages.

“Remotely piloted aircraft pilots may stare at the same piece of ground for days,” said Jean Lin Otto, an epidemiologist who was a co-author of the study. “They witness the carnage. Manned aircraft pilots don’t do that. They get out of there as soon as possible.”

Dr. Otto said she had begun the study expecting that drone pilots would actually have a higher rate of mental health problems because of the unique pressures of their job.

Since 2008, the number of pilots of remotely piloted aircraft — the Air Force’s preferred term for drones — has grown fourfold, to nearly 1,300. The Air Force is now training more pilots for its drones than for its fighter jets and bombers combined. And by 2015, it expects to have more drone pilots than bomber pilots, although fighter pilots will remain a larger group.

Those figures do not include drones operated by the C.I.A. in counterterrorism operations over Pakistan, Yemen and other countries.

The Pentagon has begun taking steps to keep pace with the rapid expansion of drone operations. It recently created a new medal to honor troops involved in both drone warfare and cyberwarfare. And the Air Force has expanded access to chaplains and therapists for drone operators, said Col. William M. Tart, who commanded remotely piloted aircraft crews at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada.

The Air Force has also conducted research into the health issues of drone crew members. In a 2011 survey of nearly 840 drone operators, it found that 46 percent of Reaper and Predator pilots, and 48 percent of Global Hawk sensor operators, reported “high operational stress.” Those crews cited long hours and frequent shift changes as major causes.

That study found the stress among drone operators to be much higher than that reported by Air Force members in logistics or support jobs. But it did not compare the stress levels of the drone operators with those of traditional pilots.

The new study looked at the electronic health records of 709 drone pilots and 5,256 manned aircraft pilots between October 2003 and December 2011. Those records included information about clinical diagnoses by medical professionals and not just self-reported symptoms.

After analyzing diagnosis and treatment records, the researchers initially found that the drone pilots had higher incidence rates for 12 conditions, including anxiety disorder, depressive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse and suicidal ideation.

But after the data were adjusted for age, number of deployments, time in service and history of previous mental health problems, the rates were similar, said Dr. Otto, who was scheduled to present her findings in Arizona on Saturday at a conference of the American College of Preventive Medicine.

The study also found that the incidence rates of mental heath problems among drone pilots spiked in 2009. Dr. Otto speculated that the increase might have been the result of intense pressure on pilots during the Iraq surge in the preceding years.

The study found that pilots of both manned and unmanned aircraft had lower rates of mental health problems than other Air Force personnel. But Dr. Otto conceded that her study might underestimate problems among both manned and unmanned aircraft pilots, who may feel pressure not to report mental health symptoms to doctors out of fears that they will be grounded.

She said she planned to conduct two follow-up studies: one that tries to compensate for possible underreporting of mental health problems by pilots and another that analyzes mental health issues among sensor operators, who control drone cameras while sitting next to the pilots.

“The increasing use of remotely piloted aircraft for war fighting as well as humanitarian relief should prompt increased surveillance,” she said.

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Many States Say Cuts Would Burden Fragile Recovery

States are increasingly alarmed that they could become collateral damage in Washington’s latest fiscal battle, fearing that the impasse could saddle them with across-the-board spending cuts that threaten to slow their fragile recoveries or thrust them back into recession.

Some states, like Maryland and Virginia, are vulnerable because their economies are heavily dependent on federal workers, federal contracts and military spending, which will face steep reductions if Congress allows the automatic cuts, known as sequestration, to begin next Friday. Others, including Illinois and South Dakota, are at risk because of their reliance on the types of federal grants that are scheduled to be cut. And many states simply fear that a heavy dose of federal austerity could weaken their economies, costing them jobs and much-needed tax revenue.

So as state officials begin to draw up their budgets for next year, some say that the biggest risk they see is not the weak housing market or the troubled European economy but the federal government. While the threat of big federal cuts to states has become something of a semiannual occurrence in recent years, state officials said in interviews that they fear that this time the federal government might not be crying wolf — and their hopes are dimming that a deal will be struck in Washington in time to avert the cuts.

The impact would be widespread as the cuts ripple across the nation over the next year.

Texas expects to see its education aid slashed hundreds of millions of dollars, which could force local school districts to fire teachers, if the cuts are not averted. Michigan officials say they are in no position to replace the lost federal dollars with state dollars, but worry about cuts to federal programs like the one that helps people heat their homes. Maryland is bracing not only for a blow to its economy, which depends on federal workers and contractors and the many private businesses that support them, but also for cuts in federal aid for schools, Head Start programs, a nutrition program for pregnant women, mothers and children, and job training programs, among others.

Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia, a Republican, warned in a letter to President Obama on Monday that the automatic spending cuts would have a “potentially devastating impact” and could force Virginia and other states into a recession, noting that the planned cuts to military spending would be especially damaging to areas like Hampton Roads that have a big Navy presence. And he noted that the whole idea of the proposed cuts was that they were supposed to be so unpalatable that they would force officials in Washington to come up with a compromise.

“As we all know, the defense, and other, cuts in the sequester were designed to be a hammer, not a real policy,” Mr. McDonnell wrote. “Unfortunately, inaction by you and Congress now leaves states and localities to adjust to the looming threat of this haphazard idea.”

The looming cuts come just as many states feel they are turning the corner after the prolonged slump caused by the recession. Gov. Martin O’Malley of Maryland, a Democrat, said he was moving to increase the state’s cash reserves and rainy day funds as a hedge against federal cuts.

“I’d rather be spending those dollars on things that improve our business climate, that accelerate our recovery, that get more people back to work, or on needed infrastructure — transportation, roads, bridges and the like,” he said, adding that Maryland has eliminated 5,600 positions in recent years and that its government was smaller, on a per capita basis, than it had been in four decades. “But I can’t do that. I can’t responsibly do that as long as I have this hara-kiri Congress threatening to drive a long knife through our recovery.”

Federal spending on salaries, wages and procurement makes up close to 20 percent of the economies of Maryland and Virginia, according to an analysis by the Pew Center on the States.

But states are in a delicate position. While they fear the impact of the automatic cuts, they also fear that any deal to avert them might be even worse for their bottom lines. That is because many of the planned cuts would go to military spending and not just domestic programs, and some of the most important federal programs for states, including Medicaid and federal highway funds, would be exempt from the cuts.

States will see a reduction of $5.8 billion this year in the federal grant programs subject to the automatic cuts, according to an analysis by Federal Funds Information for States, a group created by the National Governors Association and the National Conference of State Legislatures that tracks the impact of federal actions on states. California, New York and Texas stand to lose the most money from the automatic cuts, and Puerto Rico, which is already facing serious fiscal distress, is threatened with the loss of more than $126 million in federal grant money, the analysis found.

Even with the automatic cuts, the analysis found, states are still expected to get more federal aid over all this year than they did last year, because of growth in some of the biggest programs that are exempt from the cuts, including Medicaid.

But the cuts still pose a real risk to states, officials said. State budget officials from around the country held a conference call last week to discuss the threatened cuts. “In almost every case the folks at the state level, the budget offices, are pretty much telling the agencies and departments that they’re not going to backfill — they’re not going to make up for the budget cuts,” said Scott D. Pattison, the executive director of the National Association of State Budget Officers, which arranged the call. “They don’t have enough state funds to make up for federal cuts.”

The cuts would not hit all states equally, the Pew Center on the States found. While the federal grants subject to the cuts make up more than 10 percent of South Dakota’s revenue, it found, they make up less than 5 percent of Delaware’s revenue.

Many state officials find themselves frustrated year after year by the uncertainty of what they can expect from Washington, which provides states with roughly a third of their revenues. There were threats of cuts when Congress balked at raising the debt limit in 2011, when a so-called super-committee tried and failed to reach a budget deal, and late last year when the nation faced the “fiscal cliff.”

John E. Nixon, the director of Michigan’s budget office, said that all the uncertainty made the state’s planning more difficult. “If it’s going to happen,” he said, “at some point we need to rip off the Band-Aid.”

Fernanda Santos contributed reporting.

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In Drought-Stricken Heartland, Snow is No Savior

Matthew Staver for The New York Times

Thin mountain snow in Colorado and across the West could signal another summer of drought and wildfire.

DENVER — After enduring last summer’s destructive drought, farmers, ranchers and officials across the country’s parched heartland had hoped that plentiful winter snows would replenish the ground and refill their rivers, breaking the grip of one of the worst dry spells in American history. No such luck.

Across the West, lakes are half full and mountain snows are thin, omens of another summer of drought and wildfire. Complicating matters, many of the worst-hit states now have even less water on hand than a year ago, raising the specter of shortages and rationing that could inflict another year of losses on struggling farms.

Reservoir levels have fallen sharply in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada. The soil is drier than normal. And while a few recent snowstorms have cheered skiers, the snowpack is so thin in parts of Colorado that the government has declared an “extreme drought” around the ski havens of Vail and Aspen.

“We’re worse off than we were a year ago,” said Brian Fuchs, a climatologist at the National Drought Mitigation Center.

This week’s blizzard brought a measure of relief to the Plains when it dumped more than a foot of snow. But it did not change the basic calculus for forecasters and officials in the drought-scarred West. Ranchers are straining to find hay — it is scarce and expensive — to feed cattle. And farmers are fretting about whether they will have enough water to irrigate their fields.

“It’s approaching a critical situation,” said Mike Hungenberg, who grows carrots and cabbage on a 3,000-acre farm in northern Colorado. There is so little water available this year, he said, that he may scale back his planting by a third, and sow less thirsty crops, like beans.

“A year ago we went into the spring season with most of the reservoirs full,” Mr. Hungenberg said. “This year, you’re going in with basically everything empty.”

National and state forecasters — some of whom now end phone calls by saying, “Pray for snow” — do have some hope. An especially wet springtime could still spare the western plains and mountains and prime the soil for planting. But forecasts are murky: They predict warmer temperatures and less precipitation across the West over the next three months but say the Midwest could see more rain than usual.

Water experts get more nervous with each passing day.

“We’re running out of time,” said Andy Pineda of the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District. “We only have a month or two, and we are so far behind it’s going to take storms of epic amounts just to get us back to what we would think of as normal.”

Parts of Montana, the Pacific Northwest and Utah have benefited from a snowy winter. But across Colorado, the snowpack is just 72 percent of average as of Feb. 1, which means less water to dampen hillsides and mountains vulnerable to fire, less water for farms to use on early season crops and less to fill lakes and reservoirs that ultimately trickle down into millions of toilets, taps and swimming pools across the state.

Heavy rains and snow have recently brought some hope to the parched states of Iowa, Minnesota and Missouri, where the drought is easing. But 55.8 percent of the United States remains locked in drought, according to the government’s latest assessments. And states like Nebraska and Oklahoma are facing precipitation deficits of as much as 16 inches. Without damp soil, many wheat crops will have trouble growing come March and April when they should be in full bloom, and corn and soybeans could be stunted after they are planted this spring. In a year when farmers are planning another record planting, some might be forced to sow fewer seeds because there is not enough soil moisture to go around.

In southwestern Kansas, Gary Millershaski said the wheat on his 3,000 acres was as dry as it had ever been after two years of drought. But as snow fell around him, he was smiling, a guarded optimist for this year’s planting. “If we get above average rainfall from here on, we’re going to raise a wheat crop,” he said. “But what are the odds of that?”

Senator Mark Udall, Democrat of Colorado, put it this way: “Mother Nature is testing us.”

But Washington is also posing a challenge.

Mr. Udall, Senator Michael Bennet, a Democrat, and other members of Colorado’s Congressional delegation are seeking $20 million in emergency funds to help restore watersheds in Colorado ravaged by last year’s wildfires. So far, there has been little action on the measure. Western politicians are also urging the Forest Service to move more quickly to modernize the shrinking and aging fleet of tanker planes it uses to douse wildfires.

John Eligon contributed reporting from Kansas City, Mo.

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Hackers circulate tainted version of China cyber security report

BOSTON (Reuters) - Unknown hackers are trying to infect computers by capitalizing on strong interest in a recent report by a security firm that accuses the Chinese military of supporting widespread cyber attacks on U.S. companies.

Tainted digital versions of the report from cyber forensics firm Mandiant infect PCs with computer viruses that allow hackers to gain remote control of computers after users attempt to read those documents, according to security researchers.

Anti-virus software maker Symantec Corp said on its blog that some of those tainted documents were attached to Japanese-language emails purporting to be from someone recommending the report.

Security engineer Brandon Dixon said on his blog that he had identified a similar document on the Internet, which appeared to have originated in India.

"It was only a matter of time," Mandiant said on its blog, adding that its own network had not been compromised. "Reports downloaded, previously and currently from our website, do not contain exploits."

The report, which is available from Mandiant at http://intelreport.mandiant.com/ charges that a secretive Chinese military unit is behind a series of hacking attacks. It prompted a strong denial from Beijing and accusations that China was in fact the victim of U.S. hacking.

(Reporting By Jim Finkle; editing by Andrew Hay)

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Mindy McCready's funeral set for Tuesday in Fla.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Mindy McCready's funeral has been scheduled for Tuesday in her hometown of Fort Myers, Fla.

The funeral for the late country star will be held at Crossroads Church and will be private. A Friday news release says a memorial organized by friends and the music community is tentatively scheduled for March 6 at Cathedral of the Incarnation.

McCready committed suicide Sunday at her home in Heber Springs, Ark., days after leaving a court-ordered substance abuse treatment program. The 37-year-old mother of two died from a single gunshot to the head about a month after her longtime boyfriend David Wilson was believed to have killed himself in the same location.

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India Ink: Two Explosions Kill at Least Eleven in India

Two blasts near a bus stop killed at least 11 people and injured dozens in the south Indian city of Hyderabad on Thursday night, in what officials said may be a coordinated terrorist attack.

“Two blasts took place in Diksukh Nagar in old Hyderabad,” Sushil Kumar Shinde, India’s home affairs minister, told journalists in New Delhi. The blasts came from two bicycles at two sites 150 meters away from each other, he said, and killed eight at one site and three at the other. About fifty people have been injured.

The central government had warned state governments earlier that an attack was planned, he said. “We have had some information for the last two days of such an incident,” Mr. Shinde said, and states had been alerted of the possibility of blasts. “At this stage it is difficult to say more,” he said, except that the death toll may go up.

Teams from the National Investigation Agency, the National Security Guard and the Intelligence Bureau are headed to the site, he said.

“This is a dastardly attack, the guilty will not go unpunished,” prime minister Manmohan Singh said on Twitter.

Hyderabad has been the site of frequent terrorist activities in recent years, particularly those using homemade bombs.

In May 2007, 13 people died after a bomb went off at the Mecca Masjid, killing 11, and then the police and Muslims clashed after the explosion. In August 2007, a pair of synchronized explosions tore through two popular gathering spots in Hyderabad, killing at least 42 and wounding dozens more. Police found and defused 19 more bombs in the hours after the blasts, left at bus stops, movie theaters, pedestrian bridges and road intersections.

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Sony seeks head start over Microsoft with new PlayStation

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Sony Corp said it will launch its next-generation PlayStation this year, hoping its first video game console in seven years will give it a much-needed head start over the next version of Microsoft's Xbox and help revive its stumbling electronics business.

The new console will have a revamped interface, let users stream and play video games hosted on servers, and allow users to play while downloading titles as well as share videos with friends. Its new controller, dubbed DualShock 4, will have a touchpad and a camera that can sense the depth of the environment in front of it.

Sony, which only displayed the controller but not the console, said on Wednesday the PlayStation 4 would be available for the year-end holiday season and flagged games from the likes of Ubisoft Entertainment SA and Activision Blizzard Inc, whose top executives also attended the glitzy launch event.

It did not disclose pricing or an exact launch date.

Sony's announcement comes amid industry speculation that Microsoft Corp is set to unveil the successor to its Xbox 360 later this summer. The current Xbox 360 beats the seven-year-old PlayStation 3's online network with features such as voice commands on interactive gaming and better connectivity to smartphones and tablets.

But all video game console makers are grappling with the onslaught of mobile devices into their turf.

Tablets and smartphones built by rivals such as Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd already account for around 10 percent of the $80 billion gaming market. Those mobile devices, analysts predict, will within a few years be as powerful as the current slew of game-only consoles.

"It looks good and had a lot of great games but the industry is different now," Billy Pidgeon, an analyst at Inside Network Research, said of the new PlayStation.

"It'll be a slow burn and not heavy uptake right away."

MIGRATION TO MOBILE

Console makers will also have to tackle flagging video game hardware and software sales, which research firm NPD group says have dropped consistently every month over the last year as users migrate to free game content on mobile devices.

PlayStation 4 will have an app on Android and Apple mobile devices that connects to console games and can act as a second screen, Jack Tretton, President and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment of America, said in an interview.

"Playstation 4 ... really connects every device in the office and the smartphone and the tablet out there in the world," Tretton said.

The console, which has been in development for the last five years, will have 8 GB of memory and will instantly stream game content from the console to Sony's handheld PlayStation Vita through a feature called "Remote Play," the company said.

"What Sony is banking on is the ease of the use of this system," Greg Miller, PlayStation executive editor at video game site IGN.com, said.

After six years, Sony PlayStation sales are just shy of Xbox's 67 million installed base and well behind the 100 million Wii consoles sold by Nintendo Co Ltd, according to analysts.

Tretton said it would be a big undertaking to manufacture and distribute the console in Sony's four major markets by the end of the year, adding that it would be a "phased rollout" that starts before the end of the year.

Sterne Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia predicted Sony would probably get a couple of million units of the PlayStation 4 out by the 2013 holiday season and 7 million or 8 million out a year later.

Sony also announced a strategic partnership with video game publisher Activision Blizzard to take its Diablo III game to the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3 consoles.

Activision's upcoming sci-fi shooter game "Destiny" in development by its Bungie Studio will also be available on PlayStation consoles.

(Editing by Gary Hill, Bernard Orr and Edwina Gibbs)

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Well: Getting Patients to Think About Costs

A colleague and I recently got into a heated discussion over health care spending. It wasn’t that he disagreed with me about the need to rein in costs; but he said he was frustrated every time he tried to do so.

Earlier that week, for example, he had tried to avoid ordering a costly M.R.I. scan for a patient who had been suffering from headaches. After a thorough examination, my colleague was convinced the headaches were the result of stress.

But the patient was not.

“She wouldn’t leave until she got that M.R.I.,” my colleague said. Even after he had explained his conclusions several times, proposed a return visit in a month to reassess the situation and ran so far overtime that his office nurse knocked on the door to make sure nothing had gone awry, the patient continued to insist on getting the expensive study.

When my colleague finally evoked cost – telling the woman that while an M.R.I. might ferret out rare causes, it didn’t make sense to spend the enormous fee on something of such marginal benefit – the woman became belligerent. “She yelled that this was her head we were talking about,” he recalled. “And expensive tests like this were the reason she had health insurance.”

Face flushed, he paused to take a deep breath. “Yeah, I may be all for controlling costs,” he finally said. “But are our patients?”

According to a new study in the journal Health Affairs, his concern about patients may not be far off the mark.

A growing number of initiatives aimed at controlling spiraling health care costs have been championed in recent years, aiming to replace the current model in which doctors are reimbursed for every office visit, test or procedure performed. These programs range from pay-for-performance, where doctors can earn more money by meeting predetermined quality “goals” like controlling patients’ blood sugar or high blood pressure, to accountable care organizations, where clinicians and hospitals in partnership are paid a lump sum to cover all care.

Their uninspired monikers aside, all of these plans share one defining feature: doctors are to be the key agents of change. Whether linked with quality measures, bundled payments or satisfaction scores, it is the doctors’ behavior and choice of treatments that result in savings, goes the thinking.

But as the new study reveals, doctors need to take into account more than just symptoms and diseases when deciding what to prescribe and offer. They must also consider their patients’ opinions and willingness to be cost conscious when it comes to their own care.

The researchers conducted more than 20 patient focus groups and asked the participants to imagine themselves with various symptoms and a choice of diagnostic and treatment options that varied only slightly in effectiveness but significantly in cost. They were asked, for example, to choose between an M.R.I. or a CT scan for a severe long-standing headache, with the M.R.I. being much more expensive but also more likely to catch some extremely rare problems.

When it came to their own treatment, “patients for the most part did not want cost to play any role in decision-making,” said Dr. Susan Dorr Goold, one of the study authors and a professor of internal medicine and health management and policy at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Most did not want their doctors to take expenditures into account, and many made it clear that they would ask for the significantly more expensive medications, procedures or diagnostic studies, even if those options were only slightly better than the cheaper alternatives. “That puts doctors, whose primary responsibility is to their individual patients, in a very difficult position.”

A majority of the participants refused to consider the expenses borne by insurers or by society as a whole when making their choices. Some doubted that one individual’s efforts would have any real overall impact and so gave up considering cost-savings altogether. Others said they would go out of their way to choose the more expensive options, viewing such decisions as acts of defiance and a kind of well-deserved “payback” after years of paying insurance premiums.

Underlying all of these comments was the belief that cost was synonymous with quality. Even when the focus group leaders reminded participants that the differences between proposed options were nearly negligible, participants continued to choose the more expensive options as if it were beyond question that they must be more efficacious or foolproof.

The study’s findings are disheartening. But Dr. Goold and her co-investigators believe that public beliefs and attitudes about cost and quality can be changed. They cite the dramatic transformation in attitudes about end-of-life care as an example of how initiatives to improve understanding can lead people to make higher quality and more cost-effective decisions, like choosing hospices over hospitals.

“We need to begin to talk about these issues in a way that doesn’t turn it into a discussion pitting money against life, and we need to find ways of getting people to think about not spending money on things that offer marginal benefit” Dr. Goold said. “Because it’s going to be tough otherwise trying to implement any cost-saving measures, if patients don’t accept them.”

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DealBook: Carlyle's Profit Fell in 4th Quarter as Growth Slowed

11:18 a.m. | Updated Most of the publicly traded private equity giants proudly reported glowing fourth-quarter earnings.

The Carlyle Group isn’t one of them.

On Thursday, the alternative investment giant disclosed a 28 percent drop in fourth-quarter profit from the period a year earlier, as the growth of its portfolio companies slowed. That sent the company’s stock down more than 8 percent by midmorning, to $33.70.

Carlyle reported fourth-quarter profit of $182 million, expressed as economic net income, compared with $254 million in the year-earlier period. That amounts to 47 cents per unit. Analysts surveyed by Capital IQ had expected about 66 cents per unit, on average.

And Carlyle’s distributable earnings, a measure the firm prefers because it tracks actual payouts to its limited partners, fell 24 percent, to $188 million. Using generally accepted accounting principles, Carlyle earned $12 million in net income.

The results fall short of those of rivals like the Blackstone Group and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts. Private equity firms in general have gained from improvements in the markets, which have lifted the valuations of their portfolios and bolstered their core business of buying and selling companies.

Carlyle attributed the decline in economic net income to a smaller appreciation in the value of its portfolio. It reported a 4 percent gain for the quarter, compared with a 7 percent increase in the period a year earlier.

The decision to delay reaping carried interest from its latest mainstay fund, Carlyle Partners V, weighed on distributable earnings. The company opted to hold off, given the relative freshness of the fund and the influx of new investments like the buyouts of the TCW Group and Getty Images.

Carlyle highlighted its strong fund-raising and gains from selling investments. The firm raised $4.6 billion in new money for the quarter and $14 billion for the year, compared with a total of $6.6 billion raised in all of 2011. It generated $6.8 billion in realized proceeds for the quarter and $18.7 billion for the year, compared with $17.6 billion in 2011.

“We had another excellent year,” David M. Rubenstein, one of Carlyle’s co-chief executives, said in a statement. “Our performance over the past two years was marked by steady, continuous progress across our business.”

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In Cyprus Trial, Man Says Hezbollah Scouted Israeli Targets in Europe

LIMASSOL, Cyprus — A man on trial here admitted Wednesday to being a member of the militant group Hezbollah, staking out locations Israelis would frequent and acting as a courier for the group inside the European Union.

In a little-watched proceeding in a small courtroom here, the defendant, Hossam Taleb Yaacoub, 24, described how he would be picked up in a van to meet with his handler, whom he knew only as Ayman, and used code words to confirm his identity. “I never saw the face of Ayman because he was always wearing a mask,” Mr. Yaacoub said.

In written testimony read out loud in Greek by his interpreter, the man said that he had not taken part in a plot to target Israeli tourists visiting Cyprus, as prosecutors charge. “Even if they asked me to participate in a terrorist action I would refuse. I could never do that,” Mr. Yaacoub said. “I’m only trained to defend Lebanon.”

But he was arrested in July with the license plates of buses ferrying Israelis written in a small red notebook. He said that he wrote them down because one of the license numbers, LAA-505, reminded him of a Lamborghini sports car, while the other, KWK-663, reminded him of a Kawasaki motorcycle.

The Cypriot police arrested Mr. Yaacoub on July 7. Less than two weeks later, a busload of Israelis was blown up in Burgas on Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast, killing five Israelis and a Bulgarian bus driver. This month, Bulgarian officials announced that evidence pointed to Hezbollah as being behind the attack.

While the trial here on this little Mediterranean island has received little public attention, the stakes are high both for Hezbollah and the European Union, which has thus far resisted following Washington’s lead and declaring the militant group a terrorist organization. Experts say that a conviction here in Cyprus could put even more pressure on the bloc for a designation.

Officials in Cyprus have tried to keep the case as low-key as possible, declining in most instances to comment on it or to release documents. “It’s a very serious and delicate case,” the justice minister, Loucas Louca, said shortly after Mr. Yaacoub was arrested. “I don’t want to make a statement because any publicity could harm the case.”

The prosecution and the defense have both declined to comment before a verdict is reached, sometime in March. But a preliminary ruling by the three-judge panel last week found that the prosecutor had provided enough evidence to proceed on all eight counts, including four charges of conspiracy to commit a felony, two charges for participating in a criminal organization, one for participating in the preparation of a crime and a charge for covering it up.

Mr. Yaacoub, who has both Swedish and Lebanese passports, said that he had been a member of Hezbollah since 2007, and worked for the group for four years. He also owned a trading company in Lebanon. He had visited Cyprus in 2008 but first came for business in December 2011. Though he traded in shoes, clothing and wedding goods, he was interested in branching out into importing juice.

It was unclear from his testimony exactly how he got involved with the man he called Ayman. He said that he had been on “previous missions with Hezbollah,” in Antalya, on Turkey’s southwest coast; Lyon, France; and Amsterdam.

In France he said he “picked up some bags,” while in Amsterdam he “picked up a cellphone, two SIM cards and something that was rolled in a newspaper but I don’t know what it was,” Mr. Yaacoub said. He said that he delivered the items to Lebanon.

On June 26, 2012, he traveled to Sweden to renew his passport there. He returned to Cyprus via Heathrow Airport. Ayman asked him to observe two locations, a parking lot behind a Limassol hospital and a hotel called the Golden Arches. He was also supposed to acquire two SIM cards for cellphones and locate Internet cafes in Limassol and the Cypriot capital, Nicosia. Ayman also asked him to locate restaurants that served kosher food, but Mr. Yaacoub said he could not find any.

Mr. Yaacoub said that on his visit to Cyprus last summer he bought several thousand dollars worth of juice from a Cypriot company but could not find a way to transport it.

He explained multiple trips to the airport at Larnaca, which authorities said were for surveillance, as a result of a rental car with faulty air-conditioning that had to be returned. “I have no accomplices and I am not hiding weapons,” he said.

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