Voters in Egypt Cast Ballots on Draft Constitution

Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

A polling site in Cairo on Saturday. Lines were long as a referendum on an Islamist-backed charter got off to an orderly start. More Photos »

CAIRO — Egyptians voted peacefully and in large numbers on Saturday in a referendum on an Islamist-backed draft constitution, hoping that the results would end three weeks of violence, division and distrust between the Islamists and their opponents over the ground rules of Egypt’s promised democracy.

By midmorning, long lines had formed outside polling stations around the country. Military officers were on hand to ensure security. Despite a new outbreak of fighting over the charter in Alexandria the day before and opposition warnings of chaos, the streets of the capital, Cairo, were free of major protests for the first time in weeks. By 9 p.m., lines were still long and election authorities had extended polling hours to 11.

The vote on a new constitution appeared to be yet another turning point for Egypt’s nearly two-year-old revolution. After weeks of violence and threats of a boycott, the strong turnout and orderly balloting suggested a turn toward stability, if not the liberalism some revolutionaries had hoped for.

Regardless of the outcome of the vote, to be completed next Saturday, widespread participation provided the political process with a degree of credibility, pulling Egypt back from the brink of civil discord. It remained to be seen whether the losing side would accept the result, and many Egyptians may have cast ballots mainly out of a desire to end the bedlam of the political transition, but the election was expected to bolster the government’s legitimacy and solidify the power of President Mohamed Morsi.

Neighbors continued to spar as they waited in line. Some said that Egypt’s new Islamist leaders had unfairly steamrollered the charter over the objections of other parties and the Coptic Christian Church, and that as a result the new charter failed to protect fundamental rights. Others blamed the Islamists’ opponents for refusing to negotiate in an effort to undermine democracy because they could not win at the ballot box. Many expressed discontent with political leaders on both sides of the fight.

“Neither group can accept its opposition,” said Ahmed Ibrahim, 40, a government clerk waiting to vote in a middle-class neighborhood in the Nasr City area of Cairo. Whatever the outcome, he said, “one group in their hearts will feel wronged, and the other group will gloat over their victory, and so the wounds will remain.”

The referendum on a new constitution once promised to be a day when Egyptians realized the visions of democracy, pluralism and national unity that defined the 18-day revolt against then-President Hosni Mubarak. But then came nearly two years of chaotic political transition in which Islamists, liberals, leftists, the military and the courts all jockeyed for power over an ever-shifting timetable.

The document that Egyptians voted on was a rushed revision of the old Mubarak charter, and many international experts faulted it as a missed opportunity, stuffed with broad statements about Egyptian identity but riddled with loopholes regarding the protection of rights.

Worse still, for many, was the polarizing endgame battle that the charter provoked. Leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group allied with Mr. Morsi, said more than 35 of its offices around the country, including its Cairo headquarters, had been attacked and vandalized over the last three weeks. A night of street fighting between his Islamist supporters and their opponents killed at least 10.

Many voters waiting in line said they rejected the exploitation of the emotional issue of religion by both sides: the Islamists who sought to frame the debate over the constitution as an argument over Islamic law, and opponents who accused Mr. Morsi and his Islamist allies of laying the groundwork for a theocracy.

“It is not about these emotional issues,” said Talan Hassaballah, a businessman waiting to vote in the Nasr City neighborhood. “I am going to vote no, but not because I disagree with the Muslim Brotherhood or the president.”

Like most who said they would vote against the proposed constitution, he faulted its provisions on “social justice,” like guarantees of human rights, workers’ rights and social services. “They are vague,” he said.

Tensions with Egypt’s Christians, believed to make up about 10 percent of the population, were rubbed raw by the debate. Ultraconservative Islamist satellite networks often faulted angry Christians for provoking violence, and many Christians were shocked that the Islamist leaders of the constitutional assembly had pushed the draft through even after the official representatives of the Coptic Church had withdrawn in protests.

“The entire Christian community was offended,” Nagwa Albert, 56, said after she voted against the constitution. Speaking of the Islamist leaders’ statements to rally support for the draft, she said: “It feels like the beginning of a war.”

Mayy El Sheikh and Mai Ayyad contributed reporting.

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Microsoft Battles Google by Hiring Political Brawler Mark Penn

SEATTLE — Mark Penn made a name for himself in Washington by bulldozing enemies of the Clintons. Now he spends his days trying to do the same to Google, on behalf of its archrival Microsoft.

Since Mr. Penn was put in charge of “strategic and special projects” at Microsoft in August, much of his job has involved efforts to trip up Google, which Microsoft has failed to dislodge from its perch atop the lucrative Internet search market.

Drawing on his background in polling, data crunching and campaigning, Mr. Penn created a holiday commercial that has been running during Monday Night Football and other shows, in which Microsoft criticizes Google for polluting the quality of its shopping search results with advertisements. “Don’t get scroogled,” it warns. His other projects include a blind taste test, Coke-versus-Pepsi style, of search results from Google and Microsoft’s Bing.

The campaigns by Mr. Penn, 58, a longtime political operative known for his brusque personality and scorched-earth tactics, are part of a broader effort at Microsoft to give its marketing the nimbleness of a political campaign, where a candidate can turn an opponent’s gaffe into a damaging commercial within hours. They are also a sign of the company’s mounting frustration with Google after losing billions of dollars a year on its search efforts, while losing ground to Google in the browser and smartphones markets and other areas.

Microsoft has long attacked Google from the shadows, whispering to regulators, journalists and anyone else who would listen that Google was a privacy-violating, anticompetitive bully. The fruits of its recent work in this area could come next week, when the Federal Trade Commission is expected to announce the results of its antitrust investigation of Google, a case that echoes Microsoft’s own antitrust suit in the 1990s. A similar investigation by the European Union is also wrapping up. A bad outcome for Google in either one would be a victory for Microsoft.

But Microsoft, based in Redmond, Wash., has realized that it cannot rely only on regulators to scrutinize Google — which is where Mr. Penn comes in. He is increasing the urgency of Microsoft’s efforts and focusing on their more public side.

In an interview, Mr. Penn said companies underestimated the importance of policy issues like privacy to consumers, as opposed to politicians and regulators. “It’s not about whether they can get them through Washington,” he said. “It’s whether they can get them through Main Street.”

Jill Hazelbaker, a Google spokeswoman, declined to comment on Microsoft’s actions specifically, but said that while Google also employed lobbyists and marketers, “our focus is on Google and the positive impact our industry has on society, not the competition.”

In Washington, Mr. Penn is a lightning rod. He developed a relationship with the Clintons as a pollster during President Bill Clinton’s 1996 re-election campaign, when he helped identify the value of “soccer moms” and other niche voter groups.

As chief strategist for Hillary Clinton’s unsuccessful 2008 campaign for president, he conceived the “3 a.m.” commercial that raised doubts about whether Barack Obama, then a senator, was ready for the Oval Office. Mr. Penn argued in an essay he wrote for Time magazine in May that “negative ads are, by and large, good for our democracy.”

But his approach has ended up souring many of his professional relationships. He left Mrs. Clinton’s campaign after an uproar about his consulting work for the government of Colombia, which was seeking the passage of a trade treaty with the United States that Mrs. Clinton, then a senator, opposed.

“Google should be prepared for everything but the kitchen sink thrown at them,” said a former colleague who worked closely with Mr. Penn in politics and spoke on condition of anonymity. “Actually, they should be prepared for the kitchen sink to be thrown at them, too.”

Hiring Mr. Penn demonstrates how seriously Microsoft is taking this fight, said Michael A. Cusumano, a business professor at M.I.T. who co-wrote a book about Microsoft’s browser war.

“They’re pulling out all the stops to do whatever they can to halt Google’s advance, just as their competition did to them,” Professor Cusumano said. “I suppose that if Microsoft can actually put a doubt in people’s mind that Google isn’t unbiased and has become some kind of evil empire, they might very well get results.”

Nick Wingfield reported from Seattle and Claire Cain Miller from San Francisco.

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E.C.B. Sees a Healing Euro Zone but Warns of Risks

FRANKFURT — Tensions in the euro zone have eased noticeably since the summer, the European Central Bank said Friday, but it warned that the situation remained fragile in part because commercial banks were still in a weakened state.

“There is a risk in spite of the recent improvements,” Vitor Constâncio, the vice president of the E.C.B., said at a press briefing Friday.

In its twice-a-year report on financial stability, the E.C.B. noted a number of indications that the euro zone is starting to heal. For example, borrowing costs for troubled countries have dropped substantially, and banks in Portugal and Ireland have regained access to money markets.

Countries including Spain and Italy have been able to increase their exports because labor costs have fallen, improving their competitiveness, the E.C.B. said. While that is positive, it came about partly because of high unemployment and falling wages.

“This adjustment has had a heavy cost,” Mr. Constâncio said. “But at least we can say the adjustment occurred.”

Unemployment will start to fall by 2014 as the stressed countries begin to grow again, Mr. Constâncio said.

The E.C.B. attributed the ebbing of fear in the euro zone to a combination of central bank policy, improved competitiveness at some countries and progress by political leaders toward creating a more durable euro zone. Mr. Constâncio said it was impossible to separate out how much each of those factors contributed.

The E.C.B. gave itself credit for some of the improvement, including its promise to buy government bonds as needed to contain countries’ borrowing costs. It also lauded the decision by euro zone leaders this week to give the E.C.B. overall authority for regulating banks.

Mr. Constâncio emphasized that, even though the E.C.B. has direct control only over about 150 of the biggest banks as part of the so-called banking union, it sees itself as overseer for the whole banking system, with the power to assume oversight of any bank it chooses. Mr. Constâncio said that political leaders understood this.

The E.C.B. “has legal competence over all the banks,” he said. “This is a very important idea.”

Banks, and falling bank profits, were the major weaknesses identified by the E.C.B. in the report. European bank shares are currently valued at much less than the value of their assets, the report said.

“It really is a very negative judgment by the stock market,” Mr. Constâncio said.

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The Neediest Cases: Disabled Young Man and His Protective Mother Deal With Life’s Challenges

Though he would prefer to put his socks on without his mother’s help, Zaquan West, 25, does not have a choice.

Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times

Joann West is a constant caretaker for her son, Zaquan. Though Ms. West works as a receptionist, the family fell behind on rent.

For the past 100 years, The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund has provided direct assistance to children, families and the elderly in New York. To celebrate the 101st campaign, an article will appear daily through Jan. 25. Each profile will illustrate the difference that even a modest amount of money can make in easing the struggles of the poor.

Last year donors contributed $7,003,854, which was distributed to those in need through seven New York charities.

2012-13 Campaign

Previously recorded:

$3,104,694

Recorded Thursday:

$137,451

*Total:

$3,242,145

Last year to date:

$2,862,836

*Includes $596,609 contributed to the Hurricane Sandy relief efforts.

The Youngest Donors

If your child or family is using creative techniques to raise money for this year’s campaign, we want to hear from you. Drop us a line on Facebook or talk to us on Twitter.

A genetic disorder has encumbered Mr. West all his life, but he has needed assistance with this particular task since only last year. In November 2011, he had surgery to remove a cancerous tumor on his left thigh that was as big as a football, but he was left less flexible.

“He doesn’t do well with disability, with the label,” his mother, Joann West, 55, said. “He doesn’t tell people that he has a disability. If they can’t see it, they just can’t see it.”

When her son was 13 months old, Ms. West learned he had neurofibromatosis, a disorder that causes tumors to grow on the nerves and, in some cases, to infringe on vital organs, or as was the case last year, to become malignant. It also creates large bumps on the skin known as nodules.

At ages 5 and 8, Zaquan had operations to remove neurofibromatosis clusters that were eating away at his left hip bone. The disease has left his left leg a few inches shorter than his right. After each operation, he had to relearn how to walk.

Because of his physical disability, he was placed in a special-education class at school and given the same homework every night, his mother said.

“I advocated for him,” Ms. West said. “I kept fighting, because he was no dummy. He was physically impaired, not mentally. I went out of my way to try to give him a better life. The system would have failed him more than it did if I hadn’t stepped in.” Her efforts led to his being moved from a special-education classroom to a regular one in second grade.

Ms. West, a single mother, acknowledges that her protective instincts made her a very controlling parent, and she did not allow Zaquan out of the house much, which limited his friendships.

“I was afraid for him,” she said. “The streets, they don’t care about your disability.”

When Mr. West entered high school, it was the first time he had truly been away from his mother’s watchful eyes. He began skipping class, often going to the park or wandering their Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, neighborhood with truant friends. He eventually dropped out of school.

“It was just me being out on my own and making my own choices,” Mr. West recalled.

Though she did not agree with her son’s decisions, Ms. West said that his need to explore was in some ways a result of her actions. “At a point, I stepped back,” she said, “to allow him to do certain things on his own and do what he wanted to do.”

In 2007, a couple of years after he dropped out, Mr. West joined the Door, an organization focused on empowering young people to reach their potential. There, he obtained his high school equivalency diploma.

Today, Mr. West is job hunting so that he can help pay his and his mother’s expenses.

But paying the monthly bills has become a struggle, Ms. West said, in part because of a recent change in her budget. In August, after an increase in income, they stopped receiving $324 a month in food stamps. The additional income did not cover all their expenses, however, and Ms. West eventually fell behind in the rent on their apartment.

Ms. West, who has been employed in various administrative jobs, currently works as a receptionist for Howie the Harp Advocacy Center, an agency that provides employment help to people with psychiatric disabilities. Her annual salary is about $25,000 before taxes. Her son receives $646 in Social Security disability benefits. After the family’s food stamps were cut off, Mr. West applied individually, and he now receives $200 in food stamps each month.

With the addition of Mr. West’s disability benefits and food stamps, their net monthly income is $2,213. Their contribution for the Section 8-subsidized apartment Ms. West has lived in for the past 30 years is $969.

Knowing she was in need of help, Ms. West’s boss told her about the Community Service Society, one of the organizations supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. And the society drew $1,598 from the fund to cover her debt.

Ms. West remains a constant caretaker for her independent-minded son, who, she says, has come to accept her help grudgingly. She says that even if they are not on speaking terms after a disagreement, she is there to lend him a hand.

Both are continuing to deal with the inevitable challenges: Mr. West is awaiting word from doctors on whether a new growth in his lungs is cancerous. But one of his greatest assets, given all that he has overcome, is that he is comfortable in his own skin.

“I’m just always going to be me,” he said, “so why deal with somebody else?”

Read More..

The Neediest Cases: Disabled Young Man and His Protective Mother Deal With Life’s Challenges

Though he would prefer to put his socks on without his mother’s help, Zaquan West, 25, does not have a choice.

Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times

Joann West is a constant caretaker for her son, Zaquan. Though Ms. West works as a receptionist, the family fell behind on rent.

For the past 100 years, The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund has provided direct assistance to children, families and the elderly in New York. To celebrate the 101st campaign, an article will appear daily through Jan. 25. Each profile will illustrate the difference that even a modest amount of money can make in easing the struggles of the poor.

Last year donors contributed $7,003,854, which was distributed to those in need through seven New York charities.

2012-13 Campaign

Previously recorded:

$3,104,694

Recorded Thursday:

$137,451

*Total:

$3,242,145

Last year to date:

$2,862,836

*Includes $596,609 contributed to the Hurricane Sandy relief efforts.

The Youngest Donors

If your child or family is using creative techniques to raise money for this year’s campaign, we want to hear from you. Drop us a line on Facebook or talk to us on Twitter.

A genetic disorder has encumbered Mr. West all his life, but he has needed assistance with this particular task since only last year. In November 2011, he had surgery to remove a cancerous tumor on his left thigh that was as big as a football, but he was left less flexible.

“He doesn’t do well with disability, with the label,” his mother, Joann West, 55, said. “He doesn’t tell people that he has a disability. If they can’t see it, they just can’t see it.”

When her son was 13 months old, Ms. West learned he had neurofibromatosis, a disorder that causes tumors to grow on the nerves and, in some cases, to infringe on vital organs, or as was the case last year, to become malignant. It also creates large bumps on the skin known as nodules.

At ages 5 and 8, Zaquan had operations to remove neurofibromatosis clusters that were eating away at his left hip bone. The disease has left his left leg a few inches shorter than his right. After each operation, he had to relearn how to walk.

Because of his physical disability, he was placed in a special-education class at school and given the same homework every night, his mother said.

“I advocated for him,” Ms. West said. “I kept fighting, because he was no dummy. He was physically impaired, not mentally. I went out of my way to try to give him a better life. The system would have failed him more than it did if I hadn’t stepped in.” Her efforts led to his being moved from a special-education classroom to a regular one in second grade.

Ms. West, a single mother, acknowledges that her protective instincts made her a very controlling parent, and she did not allow Zaquan out of the house much, which limited his friendships.

“I was afraid for him,” she said. “The streets, they don’t care about your disability.”

When Mr. West entered high school, it was the first time he had truly been away from his mother’s watchful eyes. He began skipping class, often going to the park or wandering their Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, neighborhood with truant friends. He eventually dropped out of school.

“It was just me being out on my own and making my own choices,” Mr. West recalled.

Though she did not agree with her son’s decisions, Ms. West said that his need to explore was in some ways a result of her actions. “At a point, I stepped back,” she said, “to allow him to do certain things on his own and do what he wanted to do.”

In 2007, a couple of years after he dropped out, Mr. West joined the Door, an organization focused on empowering young people to reach their potential. There, he obtained his high school equivalency diploma.

Today, Mr. West is job hunting so that he can help pay his and his mother’s expenses.

But paying the monthly bills has become a struggle, Ms. West said, in part because of a recent change in her budget. In August, after an increase in income, they stopped receiving $324 a month in food stamps. The additional income did not cover all their expenses, however, and Ms. West eventually fell behind in the rent on their apartment.

Ms. West, who has been employed in various administrative jobs, currently works as a receptionist for Howie the Harp Advocacy Center, an agency that provides employment help to people with psychiatric disabilities. Her annual salary is about $25,000 before taxes. Her son receives $646 in Social Security disability benefits. After the family’s food stamps were cut off, Mr. West applied individually, and he now receives $200 in food stamps each month.

With the addition of Mr. West’s disability benefits and food stamps, their net monthly income is $2,213. Their contribution for the Section 8-subsidized apartment Ms. West has lived in for the past 30 years is $969.

Knowing she was in need of help, Ms. West’s boss told her about the Community Service Society, one of the organizations supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. And the society drew $1,598 from the fund to cover her debt.

Ms. West remains a constant caretaker for her independent-minded son, who, she says, has come to accept her help grudgingly. She says that even if they are not on speaking terms after a disagreement, she is there to lend him a hand.

Both are continuing to deal with the inevitable challenges: Mr. West is awaiting word from doctors on whether a new growth in his lungs is cancerous. But one of his greatest assets, given all that he has overcome, is that he is comfortable in his own skin.

“I’m just always going to be me,” he said, “so why deal with somebody else?”

Read More..

Prosecutor Says Morsi Aides Interfered

Tara Todras-Whitehill for The New York Times

A demonstrator in Cairo on Thursday tried to remove part of a wall near the palace where President Mohamed Morsi resides.

CAIRO — A prosecutor in Cairo is accusing aides to President Mohamed Morsi of applying political pressure to an investigation into the bloody clashes here last week, in order to corroborate Islamists’ claims about a conspiracy against the president involving thugs paid to foment violence.

The complaints by the prosecutor, Mustafa Khater, have raised some of the most serious questions to date about the Morsi government’s commitment to the impartial rule of law, as well as about its ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group whose political arm the president once led.

Since the clashes outside the presidential palace last week, accounts have appeared claiming that Mr. Morsi’s Islamist supporters detained and abused dozens of opponents, whom they accused of being paid to attack them and kept tied up overnight by the gates of the presidential palace. A spokesman for Mr. Morsi said the president was not responsible for those events and had ordered an investigation.

If Mr. Khater’s accusations, detailed in a memorandum to senior judicial authorities that circulated widely on Thursday, are borne out, they would suggest that the president’s chief of staff was directly involved in the captives’ treatment.

The events resonate against the backdrop of the political battle raging over a draft constitution and the referendum on it that is scheduled for Saturday.

Mr. Morsi’s allies argue that the new charter will usher in a government of institutions and laws, but critics say it will provide too little protection for individual freedom. They see ominous hints of authoritarianism in Mr. Morsi’s attempt three weeks ago to claim unchecked powers until the referendum. He said he was putting himself above the law for a short time to keep his political opponents from using the courts to block the referendum.

Mr. Morsi’s first use of those broadened powers was to replace the country’s chief prosecutor, arguing that he had protected corrupt former officials and cronies from the overthrown government of Hosni Mubarak.

The local Cairo prosecutor’s accusations on Thursday suggest that Mr. Morsi merely replaced one politicized national chief prosecutor with another.

A spokesman for Mr. Morsi denied on Thursday that the president had meddled in the investigation of the events outside the palace.

“The presidency does not interfere or comment on the judiciary,” the spokesman, Khaled al-Qazzaz, said in an e-mail.

Defense lawyers confirmed elements of Mr. Khater’s account. During last week’s fighting, thousands of Islamist supporters of the president battled similar numbers of his opponents for hours with thrown rocks and occasional gunshots, and Islamists captured and detained dozens of their opponents. It is unclear how many of the captors belonged to the Muslim Brotherhood or more hard-line groups. But videos, corroborated by the accounts of victims, indicated that the vigilante jailers tried to bully their prisoners into confessing that they were paid to use violence as part of a conspiracy against the president.

Mr. Khater wrote that around dawn the next day, he received a phone call from Mr. Morsi’s newly appointed public prosecutor, Talaat Ibrahim Abdullah, who said that “49 thugs” had been arrested and detained outside a gate to the palace. Mr. Khater said that when he arrived at the scene, the president’s chief of staff, Refaa al-Tahtawi, displayed guns, knives and other implements along with a document stating that the Islamists had confiscated the weapons from the captives.

All 49 captives had been beaten, Mr. Khater wrote, and they said members of the Muslim Brotherhood had tried to coerce them into confessing that they had taken money to commit violence. But prosecutors found no evidence that they had done so.

Even so, Mr. Morsi declared in a televised speech later that night that prosecutors had obtained confessions.

Officials from the chief prosecutor’s office requested a “firm” response in the case, Mr. Khater wrote, and the officials later pressed Mr. Khater to at least order the detention of a group of poor and unemployed prisoners.

When Mr. Khater nonetheless released them all, Mr. Abdullah “reprimanded” him, according to the memorandum, and the following day ordered him transferred to the obscure town of Beni Suef in upper Egypt.

“The transfer was in fact a punishment for a violation that I haven’t committed, and constitutes an explicit threat to the entire team working on the case,” Mr. Khater wrote.

On Thursday, the transfer was canceled and Mr. Khater was restored to his position in Cairo without explanation.

Mr. Khater, Mr. Tahtawi and Mr. Abdullah could not be reached for comment.

Mayy El Sheikh contributed reporting.

Read More..

Citing Internet Standoff, U.S. Rejects International Telecommunications Treaty

DUBAI — Talks on a proposed treaty governing international telecommunications collapsed in acrimony on Thursday when the United States rejected the agreement on the eve of its scheduled signing, citing an inability to resolve an impasse over the Internet.

Kamran Jebreili/Associated Press

Participants at the Dubai conference listened on Dec. 3 to Hamdoun Touré of the International Telecommunication Union.

“It is with a heavy heart that I have to announce that the United States must communicate that it is unable to sign the agreement in its current form,” Terry Kramer, head of the American delegation, announced moments after a final draft appeared to have been approved by a majority of nations.

The United States announcement was seconded by Canada and several European countries after nearly two weeks of talks that had often pitted Western governments against Russia, China and developing countries. The East-West and North-South divisions harked back to the cold war, even though that conflict did not stop previous agreements to connect telephone calls across the Iron Curtain.

While the proposed agreement was not set to take effect until 2015 and was not legally binding, Mr. Kramer insisted that the United States and its supporters had headed off a significant threat to the “open Internet.”

The messy end to the proceedings highlighted intractable differences of opinion over the ever-growing importance of digital communications networks as tools for personal communications, global commerce, political proselytization and even unconventional warfare.

“The word ‘Internet’ was repeated throughout this conference and I believe this is simply a recognition of the current reality — the two worlds of telecommunications and Internet are inextricably linked,” said Hamadoun Touré, secretary general of the International Telecommunication Union.

The United States has consistently maintained that the Internet should not have been mentioned in the proposed treaty, which dealt with technical matters like connecting international telephone calls, because doing so could lead to curbs on free speech and replace the existing, bottom-up form of Internet oversight with a government-led model.

“We cannot support a treaty that is not supportive of the multistakeholder model of Internet governance,” Mr. Kramer said. His announcement came moments after the telecommunication union, the United Nations agency that convened the talks here, announced that a final version of the text had been formulated.

A bloc of countries led by Russia that included China and the host nation, the United Arab Emirates, argued throughout the negotiations that the Internet was within the scope of the talks because Internet traffic traveled through telecommunications networks.

The goal of the talks, which were led by Mohamed Nasser al-Ghanim, director general of the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of the United Arab Emirates, was to revise a document that was last updated in 1988, when the Internet was in its early stages of development.

Agreement was never going to be easy. Like most U.N. agencies, the International Telecommunication Union tries to operate by consensus, resorting to majority vote only when this fails.

The United States delegation was apparently angered by developments early Wednesday, when Russia and its allies succeeded in winning, by a mere show of hands, approval of a resolution that mentioned the Internet. The informal vote followed an attempt by Mr. Ghanim to gauge, as he put it, “the temperature of the room.”

The United States and its supporters interpreted the wording of the resolution as supporting a shift in the governance of the Internet to bring it under the regulatory framework of the telecommunication union.

The Internet is currently overseen by a loose grouping of organizations, mostly in the private sector, rather than by governments. But at least one, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, operates under a contract from the United States government.

Resolutions are not officially part of the treaty wording, and Russia and its allies previously tried to include a similar clause in the actual treaty. But under a compromise, it agreed this week to withdraw that proposal and settle for the lesser measure. Even that, however, was insufficient to address the concerns of the United States and its supporters.

Read More..

Citing Internet Standoff, U.S. Rejects International Telecommunications Treaty

DUBAI — Talks on a proposed treaty governing international telecommunications collapsed in acrimony on Thursday when the United States rejected the agreement on the eve of its scheduled signing, citing an inability to resolve an impasse over the Internet.

Kamran Jebreili/Associated Press

Participants at the Dubai conference listened on Dec. 3 to Hamdoun Touré of the International Telecommunication Union.

“It is with a heavy heart that I have to announce that the United States must communicate that it is unable to sign the agreement in its current form,” Terry Kramer, head of the American delegation, announced moments after a final draft appeared to have been approved by a majority of nations.

The United States announcement was seconded by Canada and several European countries after nearly two weeks of talks that had often pitted Western governments against Russia, China and developing countries. The East-West and North-South divisions harked back to the cold war, even though that conflict did not stop previous agreements to connect telephone calls across the Iron Curtain.

While the proposed agreement was not set to take effect until 2015 and was not legally binding, Mr. Kramer insisted that the United States and its supporters had headed off a significant threat to the “open Internet.”

The messy end to the proceedings highlighted intractable differences of opinion over the ever-growing importance of digital communications networks as tools for personal communications, global commerce, political proselytization and even unconventional warfare.

“The word ‘Internet’ was repeated throughout this conference and I believe this is simply a recognition of the current reality — the two worlds of telecommunications and Internet are inextricably linked,” said Hamadoun Touré, secretary general of the International Telecommunication Union.

The United States has consistently maintained that the Internet should not have been mentioned in the proposed treaty, which dealt with technical matters like connecting international telephone calls, because doing so could lead to curbs on free speech and replace the existing, bottom-up form of Internet oversight with a government-led model.

“We cannot support a treaty that is not supportive of the multistakeholder model of Internet governance,” Mr. Kramer said. His announcement came moments after the telecommunication union, the United Nations agency that convened the talks here, announced that a final version of the text had been formulated.

A bloc of countries led by Russia that included China and the host nation, the United Arab Emirates, argued throughout the negotiations that the Internet was within the scope of the talks because Internet traffic traveled through telecommunications networks.

The goal of the talks, which were led by Mohamed Nasser al-Ghanim, director general of the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of the United Arab Emirates, was to revise a document that was last updated in 1988, when the Internet was in its early stages of development.

Agreement was never going to be easy. Like most U.N. agencies, the International Telecommunication Union tries to operate by consensus, resorting to majority vote only when this fails.

The United States delegation was apparently angered by developments early Wednesday, when Russia and its allies succeeded in winning, by a mere show of hands, approval of a resolution that mentioned the Internet. The informal vote followed an attempt by Mr. Ghanim to gauge, as he put it, “the temperature of the room.”

The United States and its supporters interpreted the wording of the resolution as supporting a shift in the governance of the Internet to bring it under the regulatory framework of the telecommunication union.

The Internet is currently overseen by a loose grouping of organizations, mostly in the private sector, rather than by governments. But at least one, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, operates under a contract from the United States government.

Resolutions are not officially part of the treaty wording, and Russia and its allies previously tried to include a similar clause in the actual treaty. But under a compromise, it agreed this week to withdraw that proposal and settle for the lesser measure. Even that, however, was insufficient to address the concerns of the United States and its supporters.

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Recipes for Health: Red Cabbage, Carrot and Broccoli Stem Latkes — Recipes for Health

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

I love finding things to do with broccoli stems. I find that allowing the cabbage mixture to sit for 10 to 15 minutes before forming the latkes allows the cabbage to soften a bit, and the latkes hold together better.

5 cups shredded red cabbage

1/2 pound carrots, shredded (about 1 1/2 cups)

1 1/2 cups shredded peeled broccoli stems

2 tablespoons sesame seeds

2 teaspoons caraway seeds

1 teaspoon baking powder

Salt to taste

3 tablespoons oat bran

3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

3 tablespoons cornmeal

2 tablespoons buckwheat flour

3 eggs, beaten

About 1/4 cup canola, grape seed or rice bran oil

1. Heat the oven to 300 degrees. Line a sheet pan with parchment and place a rack over another sheet pan.

2. In a large bowl mix together the shredded cabbage, carrots, broccoli stems, baking powder, sesame seeds, caraway seeds, salt, oat bran, flour, cornmeal and buckwheat flour. Taste and adjust salt. Add the eggs and stir together. Let the mixture sit for 10 to 15 minutes.

3. Begin heating a large heavy skillet over medium heat. Take a 1/4 cup measuring cup and fill with 3 tablespoons of the mixture. Reverse onto the parchment-lined baking sheet. Repeat with the remaining latke mix. You should have enough to make about 30 latkes.

4. Add the oil to the pan and heat for 3 minutes or until hot. When it is hot (hold your hand a few inches above – you should feel the heat), slide a spatula under one portion of the latke mixture and transfer it to the pan. Press down with the spatula to flatten. Repeat with more mounds. In my 10-inch pan I can cook four at a time without crowding; my 12-inch pan will accommodate four or five. Cook on one side until golden brown, about four to five minutes. Slide the spatula underneath and flip the latkes over. Cook on the other side until golden brown, another two to three minutes. Transfer to the rack set over a baking sheet and place in the oven to keep warm.

5. Serve hot topped with low-fat sour cream, Greek yogurt or crème fraîche.

Yield: about 30 latkes, serving 6

Advance preparation: You can prep the ingredients and combine everything except the eggs and salt several hour ahead. Refrigerate in a large bowl. Do not add salt until you are ready to cook, or the mixture will become too watery, as salt draws the water out of the vegetables.

Nutritional information per serving: 226 calories; 14 grams fat; 2 grams saturated fat; 4 grams polyunsaturated fat; 8 grams monounsaturated fat; 93 milligrams cholesterol; 20 grams carbohydrates; 5 grams dietary fiber; 151 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste); 7 grams protein

Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health.”

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Failings Found in Trial of Ukrainian Ex-Premier

MOSCOW — In a report commissioned by the government of Ukraine, a team of American lawyers has concluded that important legal rights of the jailed former prime minister, Yulia V. Tymoshenko, were violated during her trial last year on charges of abusing her official power, and that she was wrongly imprisoned even before her conviction and sentencing.

The lawyers, led by President Obama’s former White House counsel, Gregory B. Craig, concluded that Ms. Tymoshenko was denied legal counsel at “critical stages” of her trial and that at other times her lawyers were wrongly barred from calling relevant witnesses.

Those two findings suggest that she could have some success in a pending appeal before the European Court of Human Rights.

But over all, the lawyers, from the firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, seemed to side heavily with the government of President Viktor F. Yanukovich, which commissioned their report. They concluded that Ms. Tymoshenko’s conviction was supported by the evidence presented at trial, and they found no evidence in the trial record to support to her main contention: that her prosecution was a politically motivated effort by Mr. Yanukovich, her archrival, to sideline her and cripple Ukraine’s main opposition party.

“The trial court based its finding of Tymoshenko’s guilt on factual determinations that had evidentiary support in the trial record,” the lawyers wrote. “Based on review of the record,” they added, “we do not believe that Tymoshenko has provided specific evidence of political motivation that would be sufficient to overturn her conviction under American standards.”

In an interview on Wednesday, Mr. Craig, one of the most connected lawyers in the Washington establishment, said his team was not able to judge the local politics that brought Ms. Tymoshenko to trial on charges of abusing her authority in agreeing to a natural gas deal with Russia when she was prime minister. He acknowledged that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was among many Western leaders who have criticized the prosecution as crass political reprisal.

“We leave to others the question of whether this prosecution was politically motivated,” he said. “Our assignment was to look at the evidence in the record and determine whether the trial was fair.”

The report is dated September 2012, but it was held back by the Ukrainian government. It will be publicly released Thursday.

Once a strong candidate for the European Union, Ukraine has become increasingly isolated under Mr. Yanukovich’s leadership. The trial led to a sharp deterioration in relations between Ukraine and the West, and there were subsequent efforts to prosecute Ms. Tymoshenko on charges of tax evasion and embezzlement.

Ms. Tymoshenko, who has chronic back problems, was sentenced to seven years and is being held in a prison hospital in eastern Ukraine. International monitors sharply criticized parliamentary elections that were held in Ukraine in October, citing the jailing of opposition leaders as a main concern.

The Skadden lawyers sharply criticized the judge’s handling of Ms. Tymoshenko’s trial.

“Tymoshenko’s ability to present a defense in her trial appears to have been compromised to a degree that is troubling under Western standards of due process and the rule of law,” they wrote in describing how defense witnesses were barred.

Still, Ms. Tymoshenko’s supporters rejected the report as biased. Her main defense lawyer, Sergei Vlasenko, who met with the Skadden team, also accused the Yanukovich government of lying about how much it paid for the analysis. (Mr. Craig would not say what his firm was paid.)

“They are not independent lawyers,” Mr. Vlasenko said in a telephone interview from Kiev. “There were clear violations of Ukrainian and international standards.” As for the findings that supported Ms. Tymoshenko’s conviction, he said, “They received the clients’ demand: Please find something good for us.”

David M. Herszenhorn reported from Moscow, and David E. Sanger from Washington.

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Malcolm Harris Pleads Guilty Over 2011 March

In the end, the tweets told the tale.

After more than a year of arguing in court papers that police officers had led hundreds of Occupy Wall Street marchers on to the roadway of the Brooklyn Bridge and then arrested 700 of them, a Brooklyn writer’s own Twitter postings showed that he had, in fact, heard warnings from the police to stay off the road.

“They tried to stop us, absolutely did not want us on the motorway,” the writer, Malcolm Harris, posted during the march on Oct. 1, 2011, according to passages read by a prosecutor in court. “They tried to block and threaten arrest. We were too many and too loud. They backed up until they could put up barricades.”

Those postings and others by Mr. Harris, 23, were described publicly for the first time on Wednesday in Criminal Court in Manhattan as Mr. Harris pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct.

The case had become a significant focus of attention for its involvement of posts to social networking sites and legal arguments over who controls that material. Mr. Harris and Twitter had opposed a subpoena of Twitter for Mr. Harris’s postings, which had been pushed off his public page by more recent postings.

In September, Twitter complied with a court order to turn over thousands of Mr. Harris’s archived postings to Judge Matthew A. Sciarrino Jr. of Criminal Court in Manhattan, who reviewed the messages himself and later turned over a few pages to the Manhattan district attorney’s office.

Prosecutors wanted the postings because they suspected the notes would contradict what they expected to be Mr. Harris’s defense: that the police had baited people onto the roadway of the bridge. Mr. Harris’s lawyer, Martin R. Stolar, voiced that theory in motions he filed in court.

“Destined for Brooklyn, the marchers began crossing the Brooklyn Bridge on the pedestrian walkway,” Mr. Stolar wrote in court papers last year. “When their numbers grew too numerous, the police directed them onto the vehicular roadway, announcing through a barely audible bullhorn that a march on the roadway was not permitted.”

Faced with the messages that he acknowledged would be detrimental to his case, Mr. Harris offered to plead guilty on Wednesday, as a trial was about to begin, to disorderly conduct, a violation that carries a penalty of up to 15 days in jail.

Judge Sciarrino withdrew an early offer of not sentencing Mr. Harris to anything beyond the nine hours he was held after his arrest.

Lee Langston, an assistant district attorney, requested a sentence of 10 days’ community service, arguing that Mr. Stolar had wasted judicial resources by representing that marchers had not heard warnings from police officers on the bridge, something his client’s writing contradicted.

“I had no idea what was in those tweets until about a month ago,” Mr. Stolar said. “If you really want to get into it,” he continued, before being interrupted by the judge.

“Not really,” Judge Sciarrino said. “Nor are you doing any service to your client.”

The judge offered Mr. Harris a choice of three days of community service, or six days if Mr. Harris wanted to pick a program himself.

“I’ll take the latter,” Mr. Harris said.

Outside court, Mr. Stolar and Mr. Harris said the charge against Mr. Harris was not the focus of their concerns. They were more focused on appealing the ruling that approved the subpoena of material from Twitter.

“Setting the legal precedent for how this material is going to be used is much more important than six days of community service,” Mr. Harris said.

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Climate Change Threatens Ski Industry’s Livelihood

Caleb Kenna for The New York Times

A ski lift at Mount Sunapee in Newbury, N.H., where cold weather in late November allowed the resort to open. But higher temperatures quickly returned, melting the resort’s manufactured snow.

NEWBURY, N.H. — Helena Williams had a great day of skiing here at Mount Sunapee shortly after the resort opened at the end of November, but when she came back the next day, the temperatures had warmed and turned patches of the trails from white to brown.

“It’s worrisome for the start of the season,” said Ms. Williams, 18, a member of the ski team at nearby Colby-Sawyer College. “The winter is obviously having issues deciding whether it wants to be cold or warm.”

Her angst is well founded. Memories linger of last winter, when meager snowfall and unseasonably warm weather kept many skiers off the slopes. It was the fourth-warmest winter on record since 1896, forcing half the nation’s ski areas to open late and almost half to close early.

Whether this winter turns out to be warm or cold, scientists say that climate change means the long-term outlook for skiers everywhere is bleak. The threat of global warming hangs over almost every resort, from Sugarloaf in Maine to Squaw Valley in California. As temperatures rise, analysts predict that scores of the nation’s ski centers, especially those at lower elevations and latitudes, will eventually vanish.

Under certain warming forecasts, more than half of the 103 ski resorts in the Northeast will not be able to maintain a 100-day season by 2039, according to a study to be published next year by Daniel Scott, director of the Interdisciplinary Center on Climate Change at the University of Waterloo in Ontario.

By then, no ski area in Connecticut or Massachusetts is likely to be economically viable, Mr. Scott said. Only 7 of 18 resorts in New Hampshire and 8 of 14 in Maine will be. New York’s 36 ski areas, most of them in the western part of the state, will have shrunk to 9.

In the Rockies, where early conditions have also been spotty, average winter temperatures are expected to rise as much as 7 degrees by the end of the century. Park City, Utah, could lose all of its snowpack by then. In Aspen, Colo., the snowpack could be confined to the top quarter of the mountain. So far this season, several ski resorts in Colorado have been forced to push back their opening dates.

“We need another six or eight inches to get open,” said Ross Terry, the assistant general manager of Sunlight Mountain, near Aspen, which has delayed its opening a week, until Friday.

The warming trend “spells economic devastation for a winter sports industry deeply dependent upon predictable, heavy snowfall,” said another report, released last week by the Natural Resources Defense Council and Protect Our Winters, an organization founded to spur action against climate change.

Between 2000 and 2010, the report said, the $10.7 billion ski and snowboarding industry, with centers in 38 states and employing 187,000 people directly or indirectly, lost $1.07 billion in revenue when comparing each state’s best snowfall years with its worst snowfall years.

Even in the face of such dire long-range predictions, many in the industry remain optimistic. Karl Stone, the marketing director for Ski New Hampshire, a trade group, said that good winters tended to come after bad ones — the winter of 2010-11 was one of the snowiest in recent memory — and that a blizzard could balance out a warm spell. The basic dynamic he lives with is unpredictability; some areas that were warm last week have snow this week and vice versa.

“Things can change quickly, thanks to one storm, and that’s usually how it works this time of year,” he said, noting the current on-again, off-again snow pattern.

On a warm day last week, when the thermometer reached 51, Bruce McCloy, director of marketing and sales here at Mount Sunapee, was generally upbeat about the coming season, but he could not ignore the brown slopes outside his office window.

“The real problem with a day like this is that you can’t make more snow,” he said. “There are only so many days until Christmas, and we need so many days at certain temperatures to get the whole mountain done.”

Even in the Rockies, it is difficult to find enough water to make snow. After last year’s dry winter and a parched, sweltering summer, reservoirs are depleted, streams are low, and snowpack levels stand at 41 percent of their historical average.

At Sunlight in Colorado, the creek that supplies the pond that, in turn, provides water for snow guns has slowed to a near-trickle.

Jack Healy contributed reporting from Denver.

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Another Look at a Drink Ingredient, Brominated Vegetable Oil

James Edward Bates for The New York Times

Sarah Kavanagh, 15, of Hattiesburg, Miss., started an online petition asking PepsiCo to change Gatorade’s formula.

Sarah Kavanagh and her little brother were looking forward to the bottles of Gatorade they had put in the refrigerator after playing outdoors one hot, humid afternoon last month in Hattiesburg, Miss.

But before she took a sip, Sarah, a dedicated vegetarian, did what she often does and checked the label to make sure no animal products were in the drink. One ingredient, brominated vegetable oil, caught her eye.

“I knew it probably wasn’t from an animal because it had vegetable in the name, but I still wanted to know what it was, so I Googled it,” Ms. Kavanagh said. “A page popped up with a long list of possible side effects, including neurological disorders and altered thyroid hormones. I didn’t expect that.”

She threw the product away and started a petition on Change.org, a nonprofit Web site, that has almost 200,000 signatures. Ms. Kavanagh, 15, hopes her campaign will persuade PepsiCo, Gatorade’s maker, to consider changing the drink’s formulation.

Jeff Dahncke, a spokesman for PepsiCo, noted that brominated vegetable oil had been deemed safe for consumption by federal regulators. “As standard practice, we constantly evaluate our formulas and ingredients to ensure they comply with federal regulations and meet the high quality standards our consumers and athletes expect — from functionality to great taste,” he said in an e-mail.

In fact, about 10 percent of drinks sold in the United States contain brominated vegetable oil, including Mountain Dew, also made by PepsiCo; Powerade, Fanta Orange and Fresca from Coca-Cola; and Squirt and Sunkist Peach Soda, made by the Dr Pepper Snapple Group.

The ingredient is added often to citrus drinks to help keep the fruit flavoring evenly distributed; without it, the flavoring would separate.

Use of the substance in the United States has been debated for more than three decades, so Ms. Kavanagh’s campaign most likely is quixotic. But the European Union has long banned the substance from foods, requiring use of other ingredients. Japan recently moved to do the same.

“B.V.O. is banned other places in the world, so these companies already have a replacement for it,” Ms. Kavanagh said. “I don’t see why they don’t just make the switch.” To that, companies say the switch would be too costly.

The renewed debate, which has brought attention to the arcane world of additive regulation, comes as consumers show increasing interest in food ingredients and have new tools to learn about them. Walmart’s app, for instance, allows access to lists of ingredients in foods in its stores.

Brominated vegetable oil contains bromine, the element found in brominated flame retardants, used in things like upholstered furniture and children’s products. Research has found brominate flame retardants building up in the body and breast milk, and animal and some human studies have linked them to neurological impairment, reduced fertility, changes in thyroid hormones and puberty at an earlier age.

Limited studies of the effects of brominated vegetable oil in animals and in humans found buildups of bromine in fatty tissues. Rats that ingested large quantities of the substance in their diets developed heart lesions.

Its use in foods dates to the 1930s, well before Congress amended the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act to add regulation of new food additives to the responsibilities of the Food and Drug Administration. But Congress exempted two groups of additives, those already sanctioned by the F.D.A. or the Department of Agriculture, or those experts deemed “generally recognized as safe.”

The second exemption created what Tom Neltner, director of the Pew Charitable Trusts’ food additives project, a three-year investigation into how food additives are regulated, calls “the loophole that swallowed the law.” A company can create a new additive, publish safety data about it on its Web site and pay a law firm or consulting firm to vet it to establish it as “generally recognized as safe” — without ever notifying the F.D.A., Mr. Neltner said.

About 10,000 chemicals are allowed to be added to foods, about 3,000 of which have never been reviewed for safety by the F.D.A., according to Pew’s research. Of those, about 1,000 never come before the F.D.A. unless someone has a problem with them; they are declared safe by a company and its handpicked advisers.

“I worked on the industrial and consumer products side of things in the past, and if you take a new chemical and put it into, say, a tennis racket, you have to notify the E.P.A. before you put it in,” Mr. Neltner said, referring to the Environmental Protection Agency. “But if you put it into food and can document it as recognized as safe by someone expert, you don’t have to tell the F.D.A.”

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Afghan Army Still Needs Support, Pentagon Says

WASHINGTON — As President Obama considers how quickly to withdraw the remaining 68,000 American troops in Afghanistan and turn over the war to Afghan security forces, a bleak new Pentagon report has found that only one of the Afghan National Army’s 23 brigades is able to operate independently without air or other military support from the United States and NATO partners.

The report, released Monday, also found that violence in Afghanistan is higher than it was before the surge of American forces into the country two years ago, although it is down from a high in the summer of 2010.

The assessment found that the Taliban remain resilient, that widespread corruption continues to weaken the central Afghan government and that Pakistan persists in providing critical support to the insurgency. Insider attacks by Afghan security forces on their NATO coalition partners, while still small, are up significantly: there have been 37 so far in 2012, compared with 2 in 2007.

As bright spots the report identified the continued transition by Afghan security forces into taking the lead on most routine patrols throughout the country and a decline in violence in populated areas like Kabul, the Afghan capital, and Kandahar, the largest city in the south.

The assessment, “Report on Progress Toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan,” is required twice a year by Congress and covers the six-month period from April 1 through the end of September. Although the problems in the report have been familiar for years to national security officials in Washington, the report’s publication comes at an important juncture in the war.

American officials say that Gen. John R. Allen, the senior American commander in Afghanistan, wants to keep a large majority of the 68,000 troops in Afghanistan through the fighting season next fall so that Afghan forces have as much support as possible as they move out on their own by 2014. But military officials anticipate that the White House may push for a more rapid withdrawal to cut losses in an increasingly unpopular war.

More than 2,000 American service members have died in the war, which has cost the United States more than $500 billion since 2001. More than 1,200 American service members have died in Afghanistan from the beginning of 2010 to the present, which is roughly the period of the surge.

Obama administration officials have said that progress in the war in large part depends on whether the Taliban could rebuild after the hammering it took during the surge, when American forces, with 33,000 additional troops, aggressively pursued insurgents and drove them from critical territory in the south.

But the report was blunt in its assessment of the Taliban’s current strength. “The Taliban-led insurgency remains adaptive and determined, and retains the capability to emplace substantial numbers of I.E.D.s and to conduct isolated high-profile attacks,” the report said, using the term for homemade bombs. “The insurgency also retains a significant regenerative capacity.”

The report said that although the insurgents had less capability to directly attack American and Afghan forces, they had increasingly resorted to “assassinations, kidnappings, intimidation tactics, encouraging insider attacks and strategic messaging campaigns.”

A defense official who briefed reporters at the Pentagon sought to offer a more positive picture of the Afghan security forces’ abilities than the report would suggest. Acknowledging that the progress of the security forces had been “incremental,” the official said that many of the forces patrol and carry out some operations independently, without help from NATO. “They often don’t rely on any assistance from us at all,” said the official, who declined to be named under ground rules imposed by the Pentagon.

But the official said there were nonetheless broad problems with the Afghan National Army and the Afghan National Police, which together number 350,000 personnel. The security forces still depend over all on American air power, communications, intelligence gathering, logistics and leadership. That is true especially at the level of a brigade, which typically is composed of 3, 000 to 5,000 troops.

The official acknowledged that it would be a “challenge” to have the security forces ready to defend their own country by the end of 2014, when most American troops are to be out of Afghanistan. The White House is debating how many American forces should be left in the country after 2014 and it has opened negotiations with the Afghans on what their mission should be.

The defense official said that the rise in violence in Afghanistan — measured by what the report termed “enemy initiated attacks” — was a result of Afghan security forces pushing into Taliban-dominated areas, forcing the Taliban to fight back. The official cited three volatile districts in Kandahar Province — Maiwand, Panjwai and Zhari — as highly contested, violent areas.

Although the report did not provide month-by-month specific numbers of enemy-initiated attacks, it plotted them on a bar graph that showed, for example, that in July 2012 there were slightly more than 3,000 enemy-initiated attacks. In July 2009, before the surge began, the graph showed some 2,000 enemy-initiated attacks.

The official said it was a sign of progress that the report found that enemy-initiated attacks had declined in the city of Kandahar by 62 percent from a year ago.

The report found many problems with the Afghan government that American security officials have been aware of for years. The government, the report said, suffers from “widespread corruption, limited human capacity, lack of access to rural areas due to a lack of security, a lack of coordination between the central government and the Afghan provinces and districts, and an uneven distribution of power among the judicial, legislative and executive branches.”

One area of improvement, the report said, was the American relationship with Pakistan, which has been acrimonious in recent years. The report noted that the Pakistanis had agreed to reopen their country to trucks transporting matériel for the war in Afghanistan. However, the report said that “tensions remain” over insurgent sanctuaries in Pakistan and cross-border attacks.

The report had been due to be released in early November, before the presidential election, but was delayed. The Pentagon did not give a reason for the delay.

Michael R. Gordon contributed reporting.

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You for Sale: Company Envisions ‘Vaults’ for Personal Data

Peter DaSilva for The New York Times

Michael Fertik, the founder and chief executive of Reputation.com, at its offices in Redwood City, Calif., where he has amassed a database of information collected on millions of consumers.

“YOU are walking around naked on the Internet and you need some clothes,” says Michael Fertik. “I am going to sell you some.”

Naked? Not exactly, but close.

Mr. Fertik, 34, is the chief executive of Reputation.com, a company that helps people manage their online reputations. From his perch here in Silicon Valley, he views the digital screens in our lives, the smartphones and the tablets, the desktops and the laptops, as windows of a house. People go about their lives on the inside, he says, while dozens of marketing and analytics companies watch through the windows, sizing them up like peeping Toms.

By now many Americans are learning that they are living in a surveillance economy. “Information resellers,” also known as “data brokers,” have collected hundreds to thousands of details — what we buy, our race or ethnicity, our finances and health concerns, our Web activities and social networks — on almost every American adult. Other companies that specialize in ranking consumers use computer algorithms to covertly score Internet users, identifying some as “high-value” consumers worthy of receiving pitches for premium credit cards and other offers, while dismissing others as a waste of time and marketing money. Yet another type of company, called an ad-trading platform, profiles Internet users and auctions off online access to them to marketers in a practice called “real-time bidding.”

As these practices have come to light, several members of Congress, and federal agencies, have opened investigations.

At least for now, however, these companies typically do not permit consumers to see the records or marketing scores that have been compiled about them. And that is perfectly legal.

Now, Mr. Fertik, the loquacious, lion-maned founder of Reputation.com, says he has the free-market solution. He calls it a “data vault,” or “a bank for other people’s data.”

Here at Reputation.com’s headquarters, a vast open-plan office decorated with industrial-looking metal struts and reclaimed wood — a discreet homage to the lab where Thomas Edison invented the light bulb — his company has amassed a database on millions of consumers. Mr. Fertik plans to use it to sell people on the idea of taking control of their own marketing profiles. To succeed, he will have to persuade people that they must take charge of their digital personas.

Pointing out the potential hazards posed by data brokers and the like is part of Mr. Fertik’s M.O. Covert online profiling and scoring, he says, may unfairly exclude certain Internet users from marketing offers that could affect their financial, educational or health opportunities — a practice Mr. Fertik calls “Weblining.” He plans to market Reputation.com’s data vault, scheduled to open for business early next year, as an antidote.

“A data privacy vault,” he says, “is a way to control yourself as a person.”

Reputation.com is at the forefront of a nascent industry called “personal identity management.” The company’s business model for its vault service involves collecting data about consumers’ marketing preferences and giving them the option to share the information on a limited basis with certain companies in exchange for coupons, say, or status upgrades. In turn, participating companies will get access both to potential customers who welcome their pitches and to details about the exact products and services those people are seeking. In theory, the data vault would earn money as a kind of authorization supervisor, managing the permissions that marketers would need to access information about Reputation.com’s clients.

To some, the idea seems a bit quixotic.

Reputation.com, with $67 million in venture capital, is not making a profit. Although the company’s “privacy” products, like removing clients’ personal information from list broker and marketing databases, are popular, its reputation management techniques can be controversial. For instance, it offers services meant to make negative commentary about individual or corporate clients less visible on the Web.

And there are other hurdles, like competition. A few companies, like Personal, have already introduced vault services. Also, a number of other enterprises have tried — and quickly failed — to sell consumers on data lockers.

Even so, Mr. Fertik contends Reputation.com has the answer. The company already has several hundred thousand paying customers, he says, and patents on software that can identify consumers’ information online and score their reputations. He intends to show clients their scores and advise them on how to improve them.

“You can’t just build a vault and wish that vendors cared enough about your data to pay for it,” Mr. Fertik says. “You have to build a business that gives you the lift to accumulate a data set and attract consumers, the science to create insights that are valuable to vendors, and the power to impose restrictions on the companies who consume your data.”

THE consumer data trade is large and largely unregulated.

Companies and organizations in the United States spend more than $2 billion a year on third-party data about individuals, according to a report last year on personal identity management from Forrester Research, a market research firm. They spend billions more on credit data, market research and customer data analytics, the report said.

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DealBook: HSBC to Pay $1.92 Billion Fine to Settle Charges Over Laundering

2:07 a.m. | Updated

State and federal authorities decided against indicting HSBC in a money-laundering case over concerns that criminal charges could jeopardize one of the world’s largest banks and ultimately destabilize the global financial system.

Instead, authorities on Tuesday announced a record $1.92 billion settlement with HSBC. The bank, which is based in Britain, faces accusations that it transferred billions of dollars for nations like Iran and enabled Mexican drug cartels to move money illegally through its American subsidiaries.

HSBC said on Tuesday that it had “reached agreement with United States authorities in relation to investigations regarding inadequate compliance with anti-money laundering and sanctions laws.” The bank also expected to reach an agreement “shortly” with the Financial Services Authority, the British regulator.

“We accept responsibility for our past mistakes,’’ HSBC’s chief executive, Stuart Gulliver, said in the statement. “We are committed to protecting the integrity of the global financial system. To this end, we will continue to work closely with governments and regulators around the world.”

While the settlement with HSBC is a major victory for the government, the case raises questions about whether certain financial institutions, having grown so large and so interconnected, are too big to indict. Four years after the failure of Lehman Brothers nearly toppled the financial system, regulators are still wary that a single institution could undermine the recovery of the industry and the economy.

But the threat of criminal prosecution acts as a powerful deterrent. If authorities signal such actions are remote for big banks, the threat could lose its sting.

Behind the scenes, authorities debated for months the advantages and perils of a criminal indictment against HSBC.

Some prosecutors at the Justice Department’s criminal division and the Manhattan district attorney’s office wanted the bank to plead guilty to violations of the federal Bank Secrecy Act, according to the officials with direct knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The law forces financial institutions to report any cash transaction of $10,000 or more and requires banks to bring any dubious activity to the attention of regulators.

Given the extent of the evidence against HSBC, some prosecutors saw the charge as a healthy compromise between a settlement and a harsher money-laundering indictment. While the charge would most likely tarnish the bank’s reputation, some officials argued that it would not set off a series of devastating consequences.

A money-laundering indictment, or a guilty plea over such charges, would essentially be a death sentence for the bank. Such actions could cut off the bank from certain investors like pension funds and ultimately cost it its charter to operate in the United States, officials said.

Despite the Justice Department’s proposed compromise, Treasury Department officials and bank regulators at the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency pointed to potential issues with the aggressive stance, according to the officials briefed on the matter. When approached by the Justice Department for their thoughts, the regulators cautioned about the impact on the broader economy.

“The Justice Department asked Treasury for our view about the potential implications of prosecuting a large financial institution,” David S. Cohen, the Treasury’s under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in a statement. “We did not believe we were in a position to offer any meaningful assessment. The decision of how the Justice Department exercises its prosecutorial discretion is solely theirs and Treasury had no role.”

Still, some prosecutors proposed that Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. meet with Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, people briefed on the matter said. The meeting never took place.

After months of discussions, prosecutors decided against a criminal indictment, but only after securing record penalties and wide-ranging sanctions.

The HSBC deal includes a deferred prosecution agreement with the Manhattan district attorney’s office and the Justice Department. The deferred prosecution agreement, a notch below a criminal indictment, requires the bank to forfeit more than $1.2 billion and pay about $700 million in fines, according to the officials briefed on the matter. The case, officials say, will claim violations of the Bank Secrecy Act and Trading with the Enemy Act.

As part of the deal, one of the officials briefed on the matter said, HSBC must also strengthen its internal controls and stay out of trouble for the next five years. If the bank again runs afoul of the federal rules, the Justice Department can resume its case and file a criminal indictment. An independent auditor also will monitor the bank’s progress to strengthen its internal controls, and will make regular assessments on the firm’s progress.

The HSBC case is part of a sweeping investigation into the movement of tainted money through the American financial system. In 2010, Lanny A. Breuer, the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, created a money-laundering task force that has collected more than $2 billion in fines from banks, a number that is set to double with the HSBC case.

The inquiry — led by the Justice Department, the Treasury and the Manhattan prosecutors — has ensnared six foreign banks in recent years, including Credit Suisse and Barclays. In June, ING Bank reached a $619 million settlement to resolve claims that it had transferred billions of dollars in the United States for countries like Cuba and Iran that are under United States sanctions.

On Monday, federal and state authorities also won a $327 million settlement from Standard Chartered, a British bank. Standard, which in September agreed to a larger settlement with New York’s top banking regulator, admitted processing thousands of transactions for Iranian and Sudanese clients through its American subsidiaries. To avoid having Iranian transactions detected by Treasury Department computer filters, Standard Chartered deliberately removed names and other identifying information, according to the authorities.

“You can’t do it. It’s against the law, and today Standard Chartered is being held to account,” Mr. Breuer said in an interview.

HSBC’s actions stand out among the foreign banks caught up in the investigation, according to several law enforcement officials with knowledge of the inquiry. Unlike those of institutions that have previously settled, HSBC’s activities are said to have gone beyond claims that the bank flouted United States sanctions to transfer money on behalf of nations like Iran. Prosecutors also found that the bank had facilitated money laundering by Mexican drug cartels and had moved tainted money for Saudi banks tied to terrorist groups.

HSBC was thrust into the spotlight in July after a Congressional committee outlined how the bank, between 2001 and 2010, “exposed the U.S. financial system to money laundering and terrorist financing risks.” The Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations held a subsequent hearing at which the bank’s compliance chief resigned amid mounting concerns that senior bank officials were complicit in the illegal activity. For example, an HSBC executive at one point argued that the bank should continue working with the Saudi Al Rajhi bank, which has supported Al Qaeda, according to the Congressional report.

Despite repeated urgings from federal officials to strengthen protections in its vast Mexican business, HSBC instead viewed the country from 2000 to 2009 as low-risk for money laundering, the Senate report found. Even after HSBC’s Mexican operation transferred more than $7 billion to the United States — a volume that law enforcement officials said had to be “illegal drug proceeds” — lax controls remained.

HSBC has since moved to bolster its safeguards. The bank doubled its spending on compliance functions and revamped its oversight, according to a spokesman. In January, HSBC hired Stuart A. Levey as chief legal officer to come up with stricter internal standards to thwart the illegal flow of cash. Mr. Levey was formerly an under secretary at the Treasury Department who focused on terrorism and financial intelligence.

On Monday, the bank said it was promoting Robert Werner, who oversaw the group at the Treasury Department that enforces sanctions, to run a specially created division focused on anti-money laundering efforts.

Regulators have also vowed to improve. The Congressional hearings exposed weaknesses at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the national bank regulator. In 2010, the regulator found that HSBC had severe deficiencies in its anti-money laundering controls, including $60 trillion in transactions and 17,000 accounts flagged as potentially suspicious, activities that were not reviewed. Despite the findings, the regulator did not fine the bank.

During the hearings this summer, lawmakers blasted the regulator. At one point, Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, called the comptroller “a lapdog not a watchdog.”

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