What's new

For many people, paprikash means winter. After all, it's a dish fit for cold, gray days: A belly-warming mix of meat and spices, it's the perfect cure for the doldrums of late January.

For Merelyn Chalmers, though, the classic Hungarian casserole recalls someone far dearer: her mother, Yolanda. A survivor of Auschwitz, Yolanda had rebuilt her life in Perth, Australia, after the war. "My mum was Hungarian," Chalmers explains. "We ate paprikash probably five nights a week. This was something that she just threw together when I wasn't feeling well."

Merelyn and her mother both considered it a "nothing special" dish, one that was just thrown together in a pressure cooker. But when Merelyn moved to Sydney many years later, she was surprised to learn it was also a favorite among other daughters of Hungarian women. "We have quite a large Hungarian population, and they had all grown up on the same dish."

i i

You might think that retailers have to let you know right away if they get hacked and someone steals your account information.

But recent disclosures by Target and Neiman Marcus that their networks were hacked, and data about their consumers was stolen, have raised questions about how quickly merchants need to alert their customers.

In the case of Neiman Marcus, the company may have had evidence of a breach as far back as July. But the law is a bit murky on just how quickly companies need to let them know.

"This is much more complex than what you might think," says Peter Guffin, an attorney who specializes in privacy and data. He says there's a patchwork quilt of laws that make these disclosure rules complex.

"You've got 46 states, I believe, at last count who actually have their own notions of data breach notification," he says.

States vary in how much they require retailers to inform consumers about breaches. Some states say companies don't have to alert consumers unless there is a real "risk of harm." Guffin says the only place they tend to agree is that "most states want you to be notifying affected individuals as expeditiously as reasonably possible."

But consumer advocates point to a big exception to this rule that gives companies a lot of room.

"If there's a law enforcement investigation going on or if a disclosure about a data breach could impede a law enforcement investigation, then companies don't have to inform consumers of the breach immediately," says Jamie Court of the advocacy group Consumer Watchdog.

Court says companies can use an ongoing investigation as a reason to delay when they fear it will have a negative impact on their bottom line. He suspects that Target and Neiman Marcus may have delayed notifying customers about recent security breaches.

"It happened during the Christmas buying season," Court says. "And we just can't be sure until law enforcement tells us when the companies knew about the breach and whether they delayed the information getting to the American people."

Several state attorneys general are investigating the breaches, and in many cases, they look into the timing of the disclosure as part of the overall investigation.

In emails, spokespeople for Neiman Marcus and Target say they are confident that they are meeting all legal notification requirements.

All Tech Considered

Target Hack A Tipping Point In Moving Away From Magnetic Stripes

One of the dangers of writing a book in this style is that the different little stand-alone sections are inevitably pitted against one another. Some work better than others. A sudden quote from Simone Weil, "Attention without object is a supreme form of prayer," seemed a little bewildering. And a questionnaire about sparrows, a page after the revelation that the couple had lost their baby, made me want to say: let's get back to our characters now.

But there were other times when I was more willing to be taken far afield, such as in a little story about the scientist Carl Sagan's infidelity. Because, in fact, infidelity comes into play in Dept. of Speculation. The husband strays, and the ensuing drama has a held-breath suspense to it.

And the novel is often really funny. Offill refers to the Internet meme of the cat saying, "I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER?" And the payoff comes later, after men are flirting with the wife, who muses to herself, "I CAN HAS BOYFRIEND?"

Offill has successfully met the challenge she seems to have given herself: write only what needs to be written, and nothing more. No excess, no flab. And do it in a series of bulletins, fortune-cookie commentary, mordant observations, lyrical phrasing. And through these often disparate and disconnected means, tell the story of the fragile nature of anyone's domestic life.

Several atrocious gang rapes have been reported in India over the past year or so, and the one this week in West Bengal has a particularly sinister twist.

An all-male village tribunal was allegedly upset that a 20-year old tribal woman had fallen in love with a man outside the community and it ordered that she be gang-raped as punishment.

The young woman is being treated in a hospital after telling authorities that she was sexually assaulted by 12 men earlier this week.

According to police, when her "unauthorized" relationship was discovered, the village council first imposed a fine on the young woman equivalent to hundreds of dollars.

But her family said they were too poor to pay and the council in the village of Subalpur, 110 miles north of Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal, ordered her to be sexually assaulted.

"Go enjoy the girl and have fun," the head of the tribunal told villagers, according to the complaint filed by the woman's family.

The chief of the tribunal, identified as Balai Mardi in news reports, was arrested along with 12 other men and they appeared in court on Thursday.

Related NPR Stories

The Two-Way

Danish Tourist Reportedly Gang-Raped, Robbed In New Delhi