Study Says Yahoo, Google Help Fund Pirate Sites

Google and Yahoo were among the top advertising networks servicing the most ads on pirate sites, according to a new study unveiled Thursday.

The analysis (.pdf) by the Annenberg Innovation Lab at the University of Southern California found that Pasadena, California-based OpenX was the leader in fostering ads on pirate sites. Google ranked second and Yahoo, sixth.

The report, which the lab will release monthly, is expected to renew the debate by the industry on how to tackle pirate sites that offer movies, games, music and software without licenses from the rights holders.

“I thought the whole SOPA and PIPA thing was a disgrace. That’s not the way to solve this issue,” Jonathan Taplin, the lab’s director, said in a telephone interview, referring to legislation that died last year to combat online intellectual property theft.

Many major brand names make sure their ads don’t appear on porn sites, he said. But when it comes to pirate sites, it’s another story, Taplin said.

“Why couldn’t the same thing apply to pirate sites?” he asked.

Taplin said that Google ‘”reached out to me and said, ‘we are trying to stop this from happening.’”

Google said in a statement, however, that the study was “mistaken.”

“The complexity of online advertising has led some to conclude, incorrectly, that the mere presence of any Google code on a site means financial support from Google,” the company said.

Still, Google is removing millions of URLs from its search that link to pirate sites, according to its own Transparency Report. The lab’s report was based off data scraped from Google’s report.

Yahoo, which runs the Right Media ad network, said in a statement:

“Right Media has long standing policies of prohibiting certain types of content and behavior from our Exchange, as part of our commitment to creating a safe and healthy marketplace for our customers and their end users. Our customers are contractually obligated to comply with our Exchange policies, which specifically prohibit introducing content that appears to promote unauthorized use or reproduction of material that is covered by copyright law.”

Here the list of the Top 10 sites, according to the study:

1. Openx
2. Google (including Double Click)
3. Exoclick
4. Sumotorrent
5. Propellerads
6. Yahoo (including Right Media)
7. Quantcast
8. Media Shakers
9. Yesads
10. Infolinks

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‘Lincoln,’ ‘Argo’ earn Writers Guild nominations

LOS ANGELES (AP) — “Lincoln” and “Zero Dark Thirty” are adding to their front-runner status for Hollywood’s awards season.

The two dramas earned nominations from the Writers Guild on Friday for outstanding screen writing.

“Lincoln” is up for adapted screenplay, along with “Argo,” ”Silver Linings Playbook,” ”Life of Pi” and “The Perks of Being a Wallflower.”

“Zero Dark Thirty” was nominated for original screenplay, along with “Flight,” ”Looper,” ”The Master” and “Moonrise Kingdom.”

In the documentary category, “The Central Park Five,” ”The Invisible War,” ”Mea Maxima Culpa, “West of Memphis,” ”We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists,” and “Searching for Sugar Man” earned nominations.

Winners will be announced during simultaneous ceremonies in New York and Los Angeles on Feb. 17.

___

Online:

www.wga.org

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Well: Vegan Recipes for Health

If one of your goals for 2013 is more healthful eating, the Recipes for Health columnist Martha Rose Shulman can get you started. She has proposed five delicious vegan meals for the New Year that may also save you some money. She writes:

Here is a New Year’s project for you. Take an inventory of your pantry, freezer and refrigerator and cook for a week without buying anything except items that you and your children may consume on a daily basis (for me that means bananas). That is what I’m doing this week, and I have decided that I will also make my meals vegan.

Here are some of the items ending the year in my pantry, freezer and produce bins: quinoa (regular, red and rainbow); a bag of mixed dried sprouted lentils packaged by Tru Roots (“Sprouted Lentil Medley”); a bag of yellow lentils (toor dal) from the Indian grocery store across the street (how handy that Mark Bittman had inspired me to explore the world of dals with his New York Times Magazine article in early December); rice in various colors – brown, Alter Eco’s purple jasmine; red Bhutanese; wild, Arborio and basmati; a bag of black beans; rice noodles; farro. I have had a big acorn squash lying around for over a month now, and in my refrigerator there are a few carrots, half of a purple cabbage, tofu, celery, beets and beet greens and a red pepper. There are various frozen stocks in my freezer, including a vegan pho broth from my recipe tests of a few months ago.

This is a healthy, hearty and inexpensive way to begin the New Year and we have been eating extremely well. In fact there is enough on hand that I might extend this to a two-week exercise.

Here are five vegan meals from the pantry to get you started on a year of healthful eating.

Quinoa With Spiced Lentil Dal: A dal that is spiced up by a little bit of cayenne.

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Warm Lentil Salad With Balsamic Roast Squash: A lentil salad with a cumin-scented vinaigrette.

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Vegan Pho With Carrots, Noodles and Edamame: A pho without some traditional ingredients is still very much pho.

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Rice Bowl With Sweet and Sour Purple Cabbage, Red Peppers and Baked Marinated Tofu: A colorful dish that uses up any sticky rice left in your pantry.

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Enfrijoladas: A simple delicious dish that will use up corn tortillas in your freezer and black beans from the pantry.

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Europe Likely to Be Harder on Google Over Search

SAN FRANCISCO — By some accounts, the United States let Google off the hook by finding that the technology giant had not abused its dominance in the Internet search market.

Few expect the European antitrust watchdog to be as lenient.

The Federal Trade Commission ruled Thursday that Google had not broken antitrust laws, after a 19-month inquiry into how it operates its search engine. But the European Commission, which is pursuing assertions that the company rigs results to favor its own businesses, operates according to a different standard.

The agreement with the American authorities, analysts and competition lawyers say, is unlikely to alter the demands of European regulators, led by the E.U. competition commissioner, Joaquín Almunia.

“We have taken note of the F.T.C. decision, but we don’t see that it has any direct implications for our investigation, for our discussions with Google, which are ongoing,” said Michael Jennings, a spokesman for the European Commission in Brussels.

Faced with nearly $4 billion in possible penalties and restrictions on its business in Europe, Google in July submitted proposals to remedy the concerns of the European Commission, which covered four areas. In its deal with the F.T.C., Google made concessions in two of those areas but was not required to do so in the rest.

A Google spokesman, Al Verney, declined to comment on the content of the company's proposals to Mr. Almunia but said it would “continue to work cooperatively with the European Commission.”

The Google case underscores a basic difference between the European and U.S. approaches to monopoly power. American antitrust regulators tend to focus on whether a company’s dominance is harmful to consumers; the European system seeks to maintain competitors in the market. Mr. Almunia has vowed to restore competition to the Internet search business in Europe.

“History shows that competition law is applied to monopoly power more stringently in the E.U. than in the U.S.,” said Jacques Lafitte, head of the competition practice at Avisa Partners, a consultancy in Brussels, who brought one of the original complaints against Google. “Whether the E.U. is right or not is a different question.”

Mr. Lafitte has some expertise in the matter. He is the former head of corporate affairs at Microsoft Europe and watched as that company did battle with regulators over its dominant computer operating system. Microsoft won a lenient settlement with the U.S. Justice Department in October 2001, he noted, only to be slapped with nearly €1.6 billion, or $2.1 billion, in E.U. fines and penalties from 2004 to 2008.

Google learned from Microsoft’s mistakes, engaging in discussions with both the U.S. and European authorities to reach a deal rather than fighting a desperate legal action. That approach appears to have paid off: Last month, after a meeting with Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s executive chairman, Mr. Almunia said that the sides had “substantially reduced our differences.”

In its deal with the F.T.C., Google agreed to make concessions in two areas that concern European regulators. In one, it will allow rivals to opt out of allowing Google to “scrape,” or copy, text from their sites. It is probable that Google will offer the same concession to European authorities.

But in a second area of European concern — whether Google deliberately favors its own content in search results — the F.T.C. did not require changes.

Mr. Almunia has also demanded that Google put fewer restrictions on advertising distribution deals, an area that his U.S. counterparts did not explore.

The company will make a detailed set of proposed remedies in January, after which the European Commission will allow the complainants to review them in a period of what is known as “market testing.” Antitrust lawyers say a final denouement could arrive by spring, depending on how hostile Google’s rivals are to the proposed remedies.

FairSearch, an alliance of Google rivals, accused the U.S. trade commission of rushing its decision. It said in a statement that closing the F.T.C. investigation “with only voluntary commitments from Google is disappointing and premature.”

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Bieber urges crackdown on paparazzi after photographer's death

Justin Bieber and his collection of exotic cars have been tantalizing targets for celebrity photographers ever since the young singer got his driver's license.

A video captured the paparazzi chasing Bieber through Westside traffic in November. When Bieber's white Ferrari stops at an intersection, the video shows the singer turning to one of the photographers and asking: "How do your parents feel about what you do?"

A few months earlier, he was at the wheel of his Fisker sports car when a California Highway Patrol officer pulled him over for driving at high speeds while trying to outrun a paparazzo.

This pursuit for the perfect shot took a fatal turn Tuesday when a photographer was hit by an SUV on Sepulveda Boulevard after taking photos of Bieber's Ferrari. And the singer now finds himself at the center of the familiar debate about free speech and the aggressive tactics of the paparazzi.

Since Princess Diana's fatal accident in Paris in 1997 while being pursued by photographers, California politicians have tried crafting laws that curb paparazzi behavior. But some of those laws are rarely used, and attorneys have challenged the constitutionality of others.

On Wednesday, Bieber went on the offensive, calling on lawmakers to crack down.

"Hopefully this tragedy will finally inspire meaningful legislation and whatever other necessary steps to protect the lives and safety of celebrities, police officers, innocent public bystanders and the photographers themselves," he said in a statement.

It remained unclear if any legislators would take up his call. But Bieber did get some support from another paparazzi target, singer Miley Cyrus.

She wrote on Twitter that she hoped the accident "brings on some changes in '13 Paparazzi are dangerous!"

Last year, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge threw out charges related to a first-of-its-kind anti-paparazzi law in a case involving Bieber being chased on the 101 Freeway by photographer Paul Raef. Passed in 2010, the law created punishments for paparazzi who drove dangerously to obtain images.

But the judge said the law violated 1st Amendment protections by overreaching and potentially affecting such people as wedding photographers or photographers speeding to a location where a celebrity was present.

The L.A. city attorney's office is now appealing that decision.

Raef's attorney, Dmitry Gorin, said new anti-paparazzi laws are unnecessary.

"There are plenty of other laws on the books to deal with these issues. There is always a rush to create a new paparazzi law every time something happens," he said. "Any new law on the paparazzi is going to run smack into the 1st Amendment. Truth is, most conduct is covered by existing laws. A lot of this is done for publicity."

Coroner's officials have not identified the photographer because they have not reached the next of kin. However, his girlfriend, Frances Merto, and another photographer identified him as Chris Guerra.

The incident took place on Sepulveda Boulevard near Getty Center Drive shortly before 6 p.m. Tuesday. A friend of Bieber was driving the sports car when it was pulled over on the 405 Freeway by the California Highway Patrol. The photographer arrived near the scene on Sepulveda, left his car and crossed the street to take photos. Sources familiar with the investigation said the CHP told him to leave the area. As he was returning to his vehicle, he was hit by the SUV.

Law enforcement sources said Wednesday that it was unlikely charges would be filed against the driver of the SUV that hit the photographer.

Veteran paparazzo Frank Griffin took issue with the criticism being directed at the photographer as well as other paparazzi.

"What's the difference between our guy who got killed under those circumstances and the war photographer who steps on a land mine in Afghanistan and blows himself to pieces because he wanted the photograph on the other side of road?" said Griffin, who co-owns the photo agency Griffin-Bauer.

"The only difference is the subject matter. One is a celebrity and the other is a battle. Both young men have left behind mothers and fathers grieving and there's no greater sadness in this world than parents who have to bury their children."

Others, however, said the death focuses attention on the safety issues involving paparazzi

"The paparazzi are increasingly reckless and dangerous. The greater the demand, the greater the incentive to do whatever it takes to get the image," said Blair Berk, a Los Angeles attorney who has represented numerous celebrities. "The issue here isn't vanity and nuisance, it's safety."

richard.winton@latimes.com

andrew.blankstein@latimes.com

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RIM Pays Nokia $65M to Settle Patent Dispute

RIM has paid Nokia $65 million to settle what may be the saddest slap-fight of a patent war in recent memory by forking over an amount that would just cover Google’s annual budget for employee sleeping pods, yoga classes and on-campus massages.

The Financial Times reported the specifics of the recent agreement, which appeared in documents RIM filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The $65 million settlement puts to rest the ongoing dispute over RIM’s use of Wi-Fi in its mobile devices. Nokia had filed suit against RIM in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, trying to have the BlackBerry maker adhere to the ruling of a Swedish arbitration ruling.

The two companies reached an agreement in December, but the terms were not disclosed. According to analysts contacted by the Financial Times, RIM could also be on the hook to pay Nokia an additional $2 to $5 per handset sold — a potentially larger hit to RIM’s bottom line.

Nokia has aggressively defended its patent portfolio while its handset business has fallen on tough times. The former king of cellphones has hitched its smartphone wagon to Microsoft’s less-than-stellar-selling Windows Phone platform in a bid to recapture some of market lost to Apple and Google’s mobile offerings.

Like Nokia, RIM has been losing market share since the introduction of the iPhone and Android devices. The company is betting on the BlackBerry 10 operation system and its devices to reverse the current trend. BlackBerry 10 will launch at the end of January.

Roberto is a Wired Staff Writer for Gadget Lab covering augmented reality, home technology, and all the gadgets that fit in your backpack. Got a tip? Send him an email at: roberto_baldwin [at] wired.com.

Read more by Roberto Baldwin

Follow @strngwys on Twitter.

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Depardieu, in tax fight, gets Russian citizenship

MOSCOW (AP) — The Kremlin has cast Gerard Depardieu in one of the most surprising roles of his life — as a new Russian citizen.

The announcement Thursday that President Vladimir Putin has approved Depardieu‘s application for citizenship is almost a real-life analogue to the French actor’s 1990 comedy “Green Card,” in which his character enters into a sham marriage in order to work in the United States.

But in this version, taxes appear to be at the heart of the matter. Depardieu has waged a battle against a proposed super tax on millionaires in his native country.

French President Francois Hollande plans to raise the tax on earned income above €1 million ($ 1.3 million) to 75 percent from the current 41 percent, while Russia has a flat 13-percent tax rate.

A representative for the former Oscar nominee declined to say whether he had accepted the Russian offer.

Thursday was a holiday in Russia and officials from the Federal Tax Service and Federal Migration Service could not be reached for comment on whether the decision would require Depardieu to have a residence in Russia.

But it’s clearly an image buffer for Russia, calling attention to the country’s attractive tax regime and boosting Putin’s efforts to show that the economic chaos of the early post-Soviet period has passed.

“The distinctiveness of our tax system is poorly known about in the West. When they know about it, we can expect a massive migration of rich Europeans to Russia,” Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin bragged on Twitter.

Others aren’t so sure.

Political analyst Pavel Svyatenkov told the state news agency RIA Novosti that the move was “very good, very high-quality PR for Russia” but he was didn’t think it would ignite a flood of new residents.

“I don’t expect a massive movement of rich people to here, for the reason that Russia remains a pretty poor country by Western measurements and here there are bigger problems with crime and corruption,” he said.

As Depardieu’s criticism of the proposed tax roiled his country, French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault called him “pathetic.”

Depardieu responded angrily in an open letter.

“I have never killed anyone, I don’t think I’ve been unworthy, I’ve paid €145 million ($ 190 million) in taxes over 45 years,” the 64-year-old actor wrote. “I will neither complain nor brag, but I refuse to be called ‘pathetic’.”

Depardieu said in the letter that he would surrender his passport and French social security card. In October, the mayor of a small Belgian border town announced that Depardieu had bought a house and set up legal residence there, a move that was slammed by Hollande’s newly-elected Socialist government.

Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, the French government spokeswoman, didn’t comment directly on Depardieu’s tax fight. But she drew a clear distinction between people who have personal or professional reasons to live abroad and “French citizens who proclaim loudly and clearly that they they’re exiling themselves for fiscal reasons.”

She said Putin’s offer “is an exclusive prerogative of the Russian chief of state.”

Depardieu has had increasingly high-profile ties with Russia.

Last October he visited Grozny, the capital of the Russian province of Chechnya, to celebrate the birthday of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov. And in 2011, he was in Russia’s Arkhangelsk region to play the lead role in the film “Rasputin.”

He is well known in the country, where he appears in an ad for Sovietsky Bank’s credit card and is prominently featured on the bank’s home page.

“You have to understand that Depardieu is a star in Russia,” Vladimir Fedorovski, a Russian writer living in France, told the Europe 1 network on Thursday. “There are crowds around Depardieu. He’s a symbol of France. He’s a huge ambassador of French culture.”

Depardieu has made more than 150 films and was nominated for an Academy Award for his role as Cyrano de Bergerac in the 1990 film of the same name.

The Kremlin statement gave no information on why Putin made the citizenship grant, but the Russian president had expressed sympathy with the actor in December, days after Depardieu reportedly said he was considering Russian citizenship.

“As we say, artists are easily offended and therefore I understand the feelings of Mr. Depardieu,” Putin said.

Although France’s highest court struck down the new tax on Dec. 29, the government has promised to resubmit the law in a slightly different form. On Wednesday, the French government estimated the court decision to overturn the tax would cost the country €210 million ($ 275 million) in 2013.

In an interview, Depardieu told the Sunday Parisien the court decision made no difference.

France’s debt burden is around 90 percent of national income — not far off levels that have caused problems elsewhere in the 17-country eurozone.

Depardieu is not the only high-profile Frenchman to object to the super tax. Bernard Arnault — chief of the luxury goods and fashion giant LVMH and worth an estimated $ 41 billion — has said he would leave for Belgium.

____

Hinnant contributed from Paris. Silvie Corbet also contributed from Paris.

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Question Mark: Why Am I Getting Shorter With Age?

Sal DiMarco Jr. for The New York Times

The upward trajectory of youth starts falling for most people after 40. In a file photo, a Macungie, Pa., middle school nurse, Linda Duffy, measures a student.

Relax. You’ve been through this before.

Back when you were a baby baby boomer, your doctor probably laid you down every few months and measured your height.

Then came the big day: you toddled into the doctor’s office on your own two feet and instead of lying down to be measured, you stood up. And the odds are that when the doctor jotted down your height, it seemed to suggest that you had shrunk since the last visit.

The truth, of course, was that you weren’t really shrinking. When you were measured standing up, gravity compressed your spine. In follow-up visits, you quickly made up for lost ground, your height milestones rising on the doctor’s chart much as they may have in pencil markings on a kitchen wall.

Decades later, pretty much the same thing is probably happening to you right now, with two minor differences: you actually are shrinking. And you are not likely to get that height back.

Starting at about age 40, people tend to lose about four-tenths of an inch of height every decade, said Dr. David B. Reuben, chief of geriatrics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at U.C.L.A. Some of the height loss occurs as part of the normal aging process, and some because of disease. Our old friend gravity, bane of the first vertical height measurement, also plays a role. “It’s a Newton thing,” said Dr. Reuben, a past president of the American Geriatrics Society.

As we age, the disks between the vertebrae of the spine, sometimes described as gel-like cushions, dry out and become thinner, with the result that the spine becomes compressed. The bone loss known as osteoporosis can also contribute. People who have the condition may sustain small compression fractures in the spine, often without their knowledge. “The best way to think about those is if you step on a soda can and the soda can just kind of crumples,” Dr. Reuben said.

The fractures can lead to excessive curving of the spine, which can be seen in many people as they age. When it is very pronounced, it is considered hyperkyphosis, sometimes known as dowager’s hump. Hyperkyphosis, however, can occur even in the absence of fractures, often as a result of a loss of muscle tone, especially in core muscles like the abdominals. Even the flattening of the arches of the feet that comes with time can contribute to a loss of height.

There is not much to be done about many of these changes, but people who exercise, strengthening their core, may retain or gain height through better posture. And some research, while not definitive, has offered promising evidence that yoga may even help reverse the curving of the spine. If the yoga is begun at an earlier age, it may be possible to prevent the condition altogether, though more research would need to be done to establish this.

Making sure to get enough calcium and vitamin D can help, Dr. Reuben said, and there are medications used to prevent the fractures caused by osteoporosis.

Of course, if sit-ups or downward dogs are not your style, there are two simple tricks to being taller. Check your height in the morning, when it is at its maximum. Or ask your doctor to measure you lying down.

Questions about aging? E-mail boomerwhy@nytimes.com

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DealBook: Hormel to Buy Skippy Peanut Butter

3:12 p.m. | Updated

The Hormel Foods Corporation, the producer of canned and cured meats and Spam, said on Thursday that it had agreed to buy the Skippy peanut butter business from Unilever for $700 million in cash.

The acquisition adds to the company’s growing stable of foods that do not contain any meats, which include Wholly Guacamole and a wide variety of Mexican foods and several of its Country Crock side dishes.

“We’re still very enthusiast about our meat portofolio, but we have been making a very deliberate effort to become a bigger player in general packaged foods,” Jeffrey M. Ettinger, chief executive of Hormel, said in a brief telephone interview.

Many of the company’s acquisitions reflect an effort to appeal to the growing ethnic diversity of American consumers, as well as their increasing awareness of the role that food plays in health. Mr. Ettinger noted, for instance, peanut butter’s high protein content as one attraction in the acquisition.

Unilever, the British-Dutch food and consumer products giant, announced in October that it was considering selling Skippy, the No. 2 peanut butter brand in the United States, behind J.M. Smucker’s Jif. Skippy has annual sales of roughly $370 million, with $100 million of that coming from outside the United States.

One attraction for Hormel is that Skippy is the leading brand in China, where peanut butter is in a relatively small number of households, but is growing rapidly. Skippy sales in China account for between $30 million to $40 million of the $100 million in international sales.

“Outside the U.S., peanut butter is a growth story,” Mr. Ettinger said. “Skippy has a good franchise in Canada, it’s growing in Mexico, and we really see opportunity in Asia.”

Skippy is the biggest acquisition by Hormel, known primarily for its meats business. Nonfrozen grocery products account for 14 percent of its annual revenue, according to Thomson Reuters data. Its brands include Chi-Chi’s, Dinty Moore, El Torito and perhaps its best known, Spam.

The last big purchase by Hormel, based in Austin, Minn., was its $334 million acquisition of the Turkey Store Company in 2001, according to Standard & Poor’s Capital IQ data. The company said it expected that the Skippy acquisition would add 13 to 17 cents to earnings per share in its 2014 fiscal year.

In August 2011, MegaMex Foods LLC, a joint venture between Hormel and Herdez Del Fuerte, acquired Fresherized Foods, the maker of Wholly Guacamole and Wholly Salsa products. The company did not disclose the amount spent on this acquisition.

Monday’s acquisition includes Unilever’s Skippy production plants in Little Rock, Ark., and in Weifang, China. “It will be our third facility in China producing on a daily basis,” Mr. Ettinger said.

He said he had been hearing all morning about different combinations of peanut butter, ranging from peanut butter and pickles to peanut butter and bananas and peanut butter and bacon, a favorite of a former Hormel chief executive.

“I’m kind of a traditionalist, I guess, because I like to have peanut butter – and it’s Skippy, actually – several mornings a week on a toasted English muffin,” Mr. Ettinger said.

Shares of Hormel were up more than 3 percent in late afternoon trading, at $33.10.

Skippy was first sold by the Rosefield Packing Company of Alameda, Calif., in 1933, according to a corporate Web site. Chunky peanut butter was introduced the same year. (One fun fact: It takes 772 peanuts to make a single 16.3-ounce jar of Skippy.)

Unilever has a huge portfolio of food and household goods brands, including Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, Dove soap and Lipton and PG Tips teas. It has shed brands in North America and Europe to focus on faster-growing emerging markets, which now account for more than half the conglomerate’s sales.

Barclays is advising Hormel Foods. Lazard and the law firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore advised Unilever.

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White House eases path to residency for some illegal immigrants

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration eased the way Wednesday for illegal immigrants who are immediate relatives of American citizens to apply for permanent residency, a change that could affect as many as 1 million of the estimated 11 million immigrants unlawfully in the U.S.

A new rule issued by the Department of Homeland Security aims to reduce the time illegal immigrants are separated from their American families while seeking legal status, immigration officials said.

Beginning March 4, when the changes go into effect, illegal immigrants who can demonstrate that time apart from an American spouse, child or parent would create “extreme hardship,” can start the application process for a legal visa without leaving the U.S. 

Once approved, applicants would be required to leave the U.S. briefly in order to return to their native country and pick up their visa.

PHOTOS: Notable moments of the 2012 presidential election

The change is the latest move by the administration to use its executive powers to revise immigration procedures without Congress passing a law. In August, the Obama administration launched a program to halt the deportation of young people brought to the U.S. unlawfully as children.

The new procedures could reduce a family's time apart to one week in some cases, officials said. In recent years a few relatives of U.S. citizens have been killed in foreign countries while waiting for their applications to be resolved.

“The law is designed to avoid extreme hardship to U.S. citizens, which is precisely what this rule achieves,” said Alejandro Mayorkas, director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, in a statement. “The change will have a significant impact on American families by greatly reducing the time family members are separated from those they rely upon,” he said.

Until now, many immigrants who might seek legal status do not pursue it out of fear they will not receive a "hardship waiver" of strict U.S. immigration laws: An illegal immigrant who has overstayed a visa for more than six months is barred from reentering the U.S. for three years; those who overstay more than a year are barred for 10 years.

The new rule allows those relatives to apply for the waiver without first leaving the U.S.

PHOTOS: Scenes from the 'fiscal cliff'

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brian.bennett@latimes.com

Twitter: @ByBrianBennett

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