By JUNE FLETCHER

Q: I’m hunting for a rental apartment, and it seems that real estate agents get ticked off if they find out you’re talking to more than one. One agent has been fairly helpful so far. But when I show her ads that others have listed, she often takes a few days to respond. While I’m waiting, should I call the other agents in the ads? And should I call ads listed by owners, to avoid paying a Realtor fee?

—Jersey City, N.J.

A: I understand your dilemma. Despite all the technological advances of the past decades, the way most agents and buyers get together still reminds me of a 1950s teen romance. You’re the ingénue, who meets a few agents, goes out a few times, then waits by the phone for a call. The agents are members of the football team, who are ready to dazzle you for a few dates, but just as ready to drop you if you don’t commit to a more serious relationship.

Who can you blame them? In the beginning, agents must audition for your business by wooing you with their knowledge of the market, listening to your design and decorating preferences, and running up gas bills showing you listings. Whether they admit it to you or not, they all know that you’re also “dating” other agents, at least when you first start home shopping. But at some point, just like a suitor, they want to know whether they’re wasting their time.

Of course, you have the prerogative to choose the agent with whom you have the best chemistry. And you shouldn’t allow yourself to be guilt-tripped into working with someone who doesn’t respond quickly to you (though you should ask her why she is slow getting back to you—she may simply be trying to arrange an appointment to show the unit). Whether you continue your commitment with this agent or break up with her, you should tell her what you are doing and why. Even if you decide that she’s not the right agent for you, if you are honest with her, she’ll respect you—and your reputation with other agents will remain intact.

Meanwhile, it’s up to you whether to respond to for-rent-by-owner ads. People rent places without using agents all the time. If you are an experienced renter with solid knowledge of the neighborhood, it may be a good idea to avoid brokers and their fees. However, if you haven’t had much experience as a renter before, this may not be advisable. A good agent with a granular knowledge of the neighborhood can steer you away from problem buildings that have a history of maintenance issues, like mold or mice. She may be able to help you negotiate more favorable terms on your rent, security deposit or lease length. And perhaps most importantly in these troubled times, she can also help you avoid signing up with a landlord who is in some stage of foreclosure or otherwise in financial distress, so you don’t wake up someday to find a notice to vacate because the property is being sold at auction.

Write to June Fletcher at Fletcher.June@gmail.com

By JIM FUSILLI

When Israeli pop superstar Idan Raichel ran into Malian guitarist Vieux Farka Touré in a Berlin airport in 2008, it was as if a destiny were fulfilled. A gifted pianist, Mr. Raichel is a proponent of African music and an admirer of Mr. Touré as well as Mr. Touré’s father, the late Ali Farka Touré. At the time, the younger Mr. Touré was entering the global marketplace via his self-titled debut album. The two men pledged to play together.

Two years later, they did: Mr. Raichel joined Mr. Touré’s band on stage at the Tel Aviv Opera House; the next day, they gathered in a nearby recording studio and made what became “The Tel Aviv Session” (Cumbancha), the just-released disc by the Touré-Raichel Collective. Culled from a lengthy jam session that also included Israeli bassist Yossi Fine, who produced Mr. Touré’s second solo album, and Malian percussionist Souleymane Kane, the deeply affecting, at times hypnotic album rises from simmering grooves enriched by Mr. Touré’s stinging solos on acoustic and electric guitars and Mr. Raichel’s cascading piano. It’s not so much a cross-cultural exercise as an exploration of common ground.

The heart of “The Tel Aviv Session” is its impromptu feel. The disc’s programming gives listeners a sense of what it was like in the recording studio: In the opening numbers, “Azawade” and “Bamba,” the lead musicians tread gingerly, as if looking for the right moment to strike. But by the time Mr. Raichel kicks off the third track, “Experience,” there’s a sense that they’re on solid footing. The pianist lays down a modal groove so assertive that it seems a challenge to Mr. Touré, who responds with fiery confidence.

“It came out of the heart,” Mr. Touré said by phone. “It was entirely a jam session and at the time I thought that’s all it was. We were having an exchange. But Idan said, ‘There’s an album here.’”

“We played for three hours,” Mr. Raichel said in a separate phone conversation. “I knew there was a diamond hidden in those three hours.”

He said, “In the Collective, everything was very open. Simple melodies, relying on a groove, funky—but not a kind of Western funky or James Brown style. When I tried to follow Souleymane, it was something very different.” Mr. Kane played a variety of percussion instruments, most notably a calabash, a hollow gourd.

“The connection is innate,” Mr. Touré said. “We never prepared anything for the session. I kind of hesitate to call them songs. They are riffs, musical ideas.”

When Mr. Raichel returned to the studio, he decided the sonic palette could be expanded without losing the music’s essence. Though he’s an unabashed devotee of the still-evolving Touré legacy—”What the Buena Vista Social Club was for Cuba, and Edith Piaf for France, Ali Farka Touré and Vieux Farka Touré are to Mali,” he said—when it came time to review the recordings, he became disoriented while listening to the playback.

“I’d find myself drifting to the desert of the Sahara,” he recalled. “It would be uncomfortable for me, but then it would take me to another way of living.”

To add a touch of the Middle East, Mr. Raichel brought in two members of his band to augment the original recordings: On “Kfar,” Yankale Segal plays tar, a long-necked string instrument from Persia; and Cabra Casay, an Ethiopia-born Israeli, sings “Ane Nahatka” in Tigrit. (Mr. Touré sings “Alkataou” in Songhay.) Other guests included the Beninese bassist Patrick Ruffino; French harmonica player Frédéric Yonnet, who contributed to the song “Touré”; and Russian émigré Mark Eliyahu of Israel, who added a kamanche, a bowed string instrument, to “Alem.”

Though the contributors bring color to the music, Mr. Raichel succeeded in preserving what makes the Collective special. In his own band, Mr. Touré often sings and plays with a forceful rhythm section that blends Malian and Western influences. In the Idan Raichel Project, the leader’s keyboards can be overlooked amid whirling multicultural pop. Here, the two are both out front without much cover. At times, Mr. Raichel mutes the piano strings to evoke the sound of the kora, a traditional West African harp; otherwise, he’s reacting to opportunity, largely on acoustic piano. At the same time Mr. Touré, who hasn’t featured much acoustic guitar on his solo discs, plays without enhancing effects. Both musicians sparkle in the different environment.

“It was something I wanted to do for my soul,” Mr. Raichel said. “I wanted to bring something of my Israeli melodies to Farka’s more organic sound. But I think this was really about the groove.”

Mr. Fusilli is the Journal’s rock and pop music critic. Email him at jfusilli@wsj.com or follow him on Twitter: @wsjrock.

A version of this article appeared April 4, 2012, on page D5 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Jamming on Common Ground.

Por EVAN PÉREZ

WASHINGTON—El Departamento de Justicia de Estados Unidos inició una investigación sobre la pérdida de más de US$2.000 millones en negociaciones de valores de J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. anunciada por la compañía el jueves, según una fuente con conocimiento del tema.

La pesquisa está en la etapa inicial y aún no está claro en qué posible violación de leyes federales pueden estar concentrándose los investigadores.

La oficina de Nueva York del FBI está encabezando la investigación, según un oficial informado sobre el asunto.

J.P: Morgan declinó hacer comentarios.

La semana pasada, la Comisión de Bolsa y Valores de Estados Unidos, SEC, comenzó a investigar el asunto, con la revisión de la contabilidad de la compañía y los informes para los inversionistas, según otra fuente familiarizada con el tema.

—Reed Albergotti contribuyó a este artículo.

Next year, you’ll likely pay more for your workplace health benefits, but you may have to read the fine print to figure out where the bite will come.

As companies head into open-enrollment season, when they let employees pick their plans for next year, many firms say they are reluctant to boost health-care premiums too sharply at a time when wages are stagnant. Instead, workers can expect to pay significantly more for such out-of-pocket items as deductibles, co-payments and other fees.

Employees’ charges next year are expected to jump 10.1% from 2008, to an average of $1,880, according to a recent projection by Hewitt Associates, a benefits consulting firm. By contrast, health-care premiums are expected to rise 7.8%, after posting double-digit percentage gains in four of the last five years. In 2008, out-of-pocket costs also increased 10.1%.

Workers are generally on the hook for various fees whenever they visit a doctor, fill a prescription or go to a hospital. These costs can vary depending on the type of health plan they choose. Hewitt says the average employee spends only about five to 15 minutes on open enrollment, and nearly two-thirds of workers select the same option they picked the previous year. So many people may not notice any new charges, which often aren’t as obvious as changes in premiums. Of course, they’ll probably figure it out once they start getting bills.

Lauralee Schiraga, a nurse from Brewster, Mass., says she was surprised when she was billed $250 last month for a breast biopsy that had been done to check on a suspicious mass. Around the same time, she got another $250 charge, this time for an endoscopy ordered by her doctor after she had digestive problems. She called her health insurer and was told the bills were her co-payments for the out-patient procedures.

“It never occurred to me for one second they would charge me $250 for an outpatient procedure,” says Ms. Schiraga, who says she could only afford to send $50 initially to each hospital. “I was beside myself.” Afterward, when she closely reviewed the benefits information from her employer, she found the co-payment listed in the middle of a page full of small text. Next year she plans to set aside money for such expenses.

Employers say another reason they are raising fees at a faster pace than premiums is fairness: Higher fees place a greater cost burden on workers with the highest expenses. Forcing employees to pay charges out-of-pocket also makes them more aware of how expensive medical services really are, some employers say.

“Folks don’t know how much things cost,” says Robert Meyer, vice president and co-owner of Johnstone Supply of Atlanta, a wholesaler of heating and cooling equipment. “Health care is one of the few things your average consumer doesn’t shop for.”

Starting last month, Johnstone sharply increased the maximum employees are required to pay out-of-pocket for self-injectable drugs, such as the rheumatoid arthritis treatment Enbrel. It raised co-payments only slightly, and didn’t boost employee premiums. Johnstone also began for the first time requiring all of its workers to pay a deductible, which will be $2,500 for an individual. The company plans to offset the cost of deductibles through health-reimbursement arrangements, which are tax-advantaged accounts that allow employers to set aside money for workers’ health expenses.

Getty Images

Linda Hoffman and her granddaughter, Riley Bulnes, 4, pick up prescriptions from a Publix Supermarket in Miami, Florida.

Higher costs can prompt some people to forgo care that may be needed. A forthcoming survey by human-resources consultant Watson Wyatt Worldwide, which tallied 2,487 American workers this spring, found that cost concerns had driven 17% of them to skip a recommended doctor visit. The same percentage had failed to fill a prescription or had skipped doses.

If you are choosing your workplace health plan soon, here are some things to watch.

Paying Your Share

For services such as doctor visits, hospital stays, outpatient procedures and imaging scans, keep an eye out for higher co-payments. These can kick in whether you are in a traditional preferred provider organization plan, which offers more coverage for care provided by preferred doctors, or a health-maintenance organization plan, which traditionally requires participants to use approved physicians for nearly all services.

Also be alert for shifts from flat co-pays to co-insurance charges, which typically require you to pay a percentage of the total cost of a service and often take far more out of your wallet.

Briggs & Stratton Corp.,

a Milwaukee-based maker of small engines and lawn mowers, has done away with most co-payments in its main plans — a standard preferred-provider organization and a high-deductible option. In the standard PPO, workers pay 20% for all medical services with providers in the plan’s network, including doctor visits. That comes with an in-network, out-of-pocket annual maximum of $5,500 for an individual and $11,000 for a family. “There’s a much better case for shopping around” among medical providers if employees are paying a percentage of the cost of care, rather than a flat co-pay, says R. Craig Reynolds, the corporate director of employee benefits.

Fees can be structured in different, and sometimes confusing, ways. Some employers’ plans may demand a co-payment for each day you’re in the hospital, while other plans levy a fee for each stay. Ken Goulet, president of WellPoint Inc.’s

commercial business unit, warns that in certain employer plans, a hospital admission may require a co-payment, and then separate co-insurance charges for services during the hospital stay. “Don’t just think, ‘Wow, a $200 co-pay, this is great,’” he says. “It may not just be a co-pay.”

Some employers also are raising the maximum workers are responsible for paying in out-of-pocket costs each year. One tricky twist is for the annual deductible not to count toward that cap, sharply increasing the total you could spend.

Taking Your Medicine

Keep a close eye on your medications. Most employees by now are accustomed to paying less for generics than for brand-name drugs. But if your employer tweaks the design of the drug benefit, the changes may have a substantial impact on your costs, or even knock your drug off the approved list altogether. In a recent employer survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research & Educational Trust, 41% of those offering health benefits said they were very or somewhat likely to increase workers’ drug expenses in the next year.

Drugs injected in a doctor’s office, which are often high-priced medications for such diseases as cancer, are one area to watch. Some plans that have lumped these in with the co-pay for physician visits may now charge separately for the medicine.

Eric Smith, a middle-school technology teacher in Dalton, Ga., who gets his health benefits through a state agency, has to pick a new HMO this fall because his plan will no longer be offered next year. He expects his premiums to go up by about $12 a month. But his drug costs will rise much more sharply, by more than $50 a month, mainly because of two brand-name medicines he takes that aren’t on the state’s preferred list; he says cheaper alternatives didn’t work as well. “That just negated my raise this year,” he says.

Filling Your Needs

Check for coverage of any care you know you will need; don’t assume it is included. Some employers looking to limit costs may trim certain benefits, though this isn’t expected to be widespread. Consultants say they’ve seen some clients cut back in areas including physical therapy and speech therapy. You should watch for limits on equipment such as hearing aids and prosthetics.

Once you’ve done your due diligence on the coverage options, decide what’s best for you. You may opt for a plan with more out-of-pocket charges and a lower premium. At the most extreme, there are high-deductible plans paired with health-savings accounts, a model being pushed by many employers but slow to catch on with workers. The key is to understand the real costs and coverage you get with each of the plan options.

McDonald’s Corp.,

for instance, offers its 18,000 eligible U.S. employees three different PPOs. The most popular is the one with the highest premiums, but no deductible and a flat co-pay for doctor visits. The plan with the lowest premium comes with a $1,000 deductible for a single employee and a company-funded health-reimbursement arrangement. In the middle is a plan with a $250 deductible and a 20% co-insurance charge for in-network doctor visits. McDonald’s offers online tools to help employees choose. Says Bob Wittcoff, the company’s senior director of global benefits: “One size does not fit all.”

Write to Anna Wilde Mathews at anna.mathews@wsj.com

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page D1

By JULIA ANGWIN

(See Correction & Amplification below
.)

Sens. John Kerry and John McCain proposed legislation Tuesday to create a “privacy bill of rights” to protect people from the increasingly invasive commercial data-collection industry.

The bill, labeled the Commercial Privacy Bill of Rights Act of 2011, would impose new rules on companies that gather personal data, including offering people access to data about them, or the ability to block the information from being used or distributed. Companies would have to seek permission before collecting and sharing sensitive religious, medical and financial data with outside entities.

The bipartisan proposal would create the nation’s first comprehensive privacy law and largely adopts recommendations made by the Obama Administration last year. Current laws cover only the use of certain types of personal data, such as financial and medical information.

The move comes amid widening scrutiny of the commercial data-gathering industry, which has been chronicled in The Wall Street Journal’s “What They Know” series. In his comments, Sen. McCain, an Arizona Republican, read an excerpt from the Journal series revealing that 56 popular cellphone applications transmitted information about users to outsiders without users’ awareness or consent. “Customers must have control of their data when it is transferred to a third party,” Sen. McCain said.

“These companies can do virtually whatever they want with our personal information,” said Sen. Kerry (D., Mass.). “Sen. McCain and I seek to change that.”

Some provisions of the bill changed from a draft the senators circulated a month ago. The bill no longer requires data gatherers to seek permission for sharing any data with outsiders—now the requirement is only for sensitive data.

The senators also added an exemption for companies that gather data through others, but have an “established business relationship” with a customer and are “clear, conspicuous and visible” to the customer.

Some privacy advocates said that could benefit Facebook Inc., which gathers data on its users as they browse other sites. A Facebook spokesman, Andrew Noyes, said the company is pleased the bill “encourages those who offer products and services on the Internet to have a trusted relationship with their users.”

Sen. McCain said the senators attempted to “strike a balance” between consumer-advocacy groups and industry.

Other consumer-advocacy groups, including Consumers Union and the Center for Democracy and Technology, praised the bill, as did four big technology companies: Hewlett-Packard Co., Microsoft Corp., eBay Inc. and Intel Corp.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau, whose members are responsible for most online tracking, said the bill gave too much discretion to the Federal Trade Commission. The bill would give the FTC authority to write rules for personal-data gatherers. The Commerce Department could help craft those rules.

FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said in a statement, “It’s terrific that we’re seeing so much Congressional interest in protecting consumer privacy.”

Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said in a statement that he was pleased that the legislation incorporated the administration’s recommendations.

Write to Julia Angwin at julia.angwin@wsj.com

Correction & Amplification

Interactive Advertising Bureau members were responsible for most of the online tracking discovered in a Wall Street Journal survey last year of the top 50 U.S. websites. This article incorrectly says that the group’s members are responsible for most online tracking.