They can record video images and produce heat maps. They can be used to track fleeing criminals, stranded hikers — or just as eas-ily, political protesters. And for strapped police forces, they are more affordable than helicopters.

Drones are becoming a darling of law enforcement authorities across the country. But they have spawned fears of government surveillance. And that has prompted lawmakers from Seattle to Tallahassee to pro-scribe how they can be used by po-lice or to ground them altogether.

Although surveillance technolo-gies have become ubiquitous in American life, like cameras for catching speeders, drones have evoked unusual discomfort. “To me it’s big brother in the sky,” said Dave Norris, a city councilman in Char-lottesville, Va., which this month became the first city in the country to restrict the use of drones. “I don’t mean to sound conspiratorial about it, but these drones are coming, and we need to put some safeguards in place so they are not abused.”

Last week, the Seattle Police De-partment agreed to return its two still-unused drones to the manufac-turer after Mayor Michael McGinn answered public protests by ban-ning their use. This week, members of Congress introduced a bill that would prohibit drones from con-ducting what it called “targeted surveillance” of individuals and property without a warrant.

And, on Thursday, the Alameda County Board of Supervisors in Oakland, Calif., listened to the sher-iff’s proposal to buy a four-pound drone to help his officers track sus-pected criminals — and then lis-tened to raucous opposition, includ-ing a group that uses the Twitter handle @N.O.M.B.Y. (Not Over My Back Yard). The antidrone lobby flashed neon pink and green “NO DRONES” stickers on their chests.

Sounding somewhat exasperated by the opposition, Sheriff Gregory J. Ahern put it this way: “We would never deploy it for jaywalking.”

SOMINI SENGUPTA

MOSCOW — Gym class came to a halt inside the Chelyabinsk Railway Institute, and students gathered around the window, gaz-ing at the fat white contrail that arced its way across the morning sky. A missile? A comet? A few quiet moments passed. And then, with incredible force, the win-dows blew in.

The scenes from Chelyabinsk, rocked by an intense shock wave when a meteor hit the Earth’s at-mosphere Friday morning, offer a glimpse of an apocalyptic sce-nario many have walked through mentally, and Hollywood has pop-ularized, but scientists say has never injured so many people.

The flash came in blinding white, so bright that the vivid shad-ows of buildings slid swiftly and sickeningly across the ground. It burst yellow, then orange. And then there was the sound of frightened, confused people.

Around 1,200 people, 200 of them children, were injured, mostly by glass that exploded into schools and workplaces, according to Russia’s Interior Ministry. Oth-ers had skull trauma and broken bones. No deaths were reported. A city administrator in Chely-abinsk said over a million square

feet of glass shattered, leaving buildings exposed to icy cold.

As scientists tried to piece together the events that led to Friday’s disaster — on the day a small asteroid passed close to Earth — Chelyabinsk was left to grapple with what seemed to be-long in science fiction.

“I opened the window from sur-prise — there was such heat com-ing in, as if it were summer in the yard, and then I watched as the flash flew by and turned into a dot somewhere over the forest,” wrote Darya Frenn, a blogger. “And in several seconds there was an explosion of such force that the window flew in along with its frame, the monitor fell, and ev-erything that was on the desk.”

The Russian Academy of Sci-ences said the meteor weighed 10 tons and was 10 feet in diameter. But Peter G. Brown, director of the Center for Planetary Science and Exploration at the University of Western Ontario, said it was closer to 50 feet in diameter and weighed 7,000 tons. He said the en- ergy from the blast was equiva-lent to 300 kilotons of TNT.

Valentina Nikolayeva, a teach-er in Chelyabinsk, described the flash as “an unreal light” that filled all the classrooms on one side of School No. 15. “It was a light which never happens in life, it happens probably only in the end of the world,” she said in a clip posted on a news portal, Life-News.ru. (NYT)

STRONG POINT HAJI RAH-MUDDIN II, Afghanistan — When the last American soldiers to occupy this squat, lonely out-post in southern Afghanistan pulled out this week, they left the same way earlier units had ar-rived: ready for a fight.

They were leaving this violent patch of land outside Kandahar, the south’s main city, just as Tali-ban fighters were filtering back in from winter havens in Pakistan. It was, as First Sgt. Jason Pitman, 35, put it, “no time to get stupid.”

The Americans knew they would be most vulnerable in their final hours after taking down their surveillance and early-warning systems. The Taliban knew it, too, and intelligence reports indicated that they had been working with sympathetic villagers to strike at the departing soldiers. Two days

earlier, the militants made a test run, taking the rare step of en-gaging the outpost in a firefight, albeit a brief one, after the first radio antennas came down.

On the same day President Obama announced roughly half of the U.S. troops left in Afghani-stan would withdraw this year, and Afghan forces would begin taking the lead in the war, the smaller-scale departure from the Haji Rahmuddin II outpost was an uncelebrated milestone.

But it pointed to a harsh real-ity: some of the pullout will hap-pen under fire in areas of the Taliban heartland where the idea of Afghan-led security remains an abstraction. With the start of the fighting season weeks away, some of the hardest-won gains of the war are at risk of being lost.

In the years since the tens of

thousands of U.S. soldiers and their Afghan allies pushed into the grape fields, pomegranate orchards and opium poppy fields of southern Afghanistan, some is-lands of calm have been cleared.

But although this corner of Kan-dahar Province — Zhare district — was also a focus of the troop increase, it is far from calm.

The Taliban have not given up their fight. In one indication of the level of strife in Zhare, many Afghans are hesitant to make the hourlong trip from Kandahar to the mud-brick villages, many of which stand semi-abandoned.

“My sons live in Kandahar City, and they do not like to come back here,” said Abdul Malik, an elder from Tieranon, a village in Zhare. Once you are in the villages, he added, “anything can happen.”

MATTHEW ROSENBERG

Lawmakers SetLimits on Police

In Using Drones

U.S. Faces Fire as It Pulls Out of Afghanistan

Meteor Fragments Rain Over Siberia

www.ng.kz, via associated Press

a flash lit the sky in russia on Friday as a meteor entered the atmosphere and exploded. about 1,200 people, 200 of them children, were reportedly injured.

F R O M T H E PAG E S O F

Saturday, February 16, 2013 © 2013 the New york timesFROM THE PAGES OF

midnight in New York

CARACAS, Venezuela — Amid a heated national debate over the state of the health of President Hugo Chávez, the Venezuelan government on Friday released photographs of him for the first time since his cancer surgery in Cuba more than nine weeks ago.

Officials also provided a rare glimpse into the sequestered world of the convalescing leader, saying he has difficulty breathing and speaking but writes notes to aides while making all govern-ment decisions. Sometimes, there is music in his hospital room and it is like a party, one official said.

The four photographs released by the government show Chávez lying in bed and smiling, with two of his daughters, Rosa Virginia and María Gabriela, on either side.

Jorge Arreaza, the minister of science and technology, who is married to María Gabriela, said the pictures were taken on Thurs-day. In three of the them, Chávez

is holding a copy of what Arreaza said was Thursday’s edition of the Cuban newspaper Granma.

“There he is with his family, always attentive to the people of Venezuela, always attentive and in charge of his functions, working tirelessly,” Arreaza said.

The Venezuelan information minister, Ernesto Villegas, said that doctors had controlled a se-vere lung infection, but added that the president was breathing with a “tracheal tube,” making speech difficult.

In the photographs, Chávez

wore what appeared to be a white and blue jacket, which covered his throat. No tube

was visible.Chávez, 58, has had four cancer

operations in Cuba since June 2011. The latest was on Dec. 11. But in contrast to his previous ab-sences from the country, Chávez has remained out of sight and has not even telephoned a govern-ment television program, which he often did before. That has led to widespread speculation about the severity of his illness, especially after he could not return from Cuba in time to be sworn in for the start of his new term on Jan. 10.

WILLIAM NEUMAN

JOHANNESBURG — The pros-ecution in the case against Oscar Pistorius, the double-amputee track star accused of fatally shoot-ing his girlfriend, said Friday it planned to charge him with “pre-meditated murder,” the most seri-ous murder charge under South African criminal law, as Pistorius made an appearance in a court-room in the capital, Pretoria.

Pistorius repeatedly wept. He did not speak or enter a plea. But later on Friday a statement released by his agent said he dis-puted the murder charge and that “our thoughts and prayers today should be” for the woman who was shot, Reeva Steenkamp, and her family. The defense asked the magistrate, Desmond Nair, for a postponement of the bail hearing, and the case was adjourned until Tuesday. The Paralympic sprinter was sent to a Pretoria police sta-tion, where he will remain in cus-tody.

If convicted, Pistorius will face a mandatory life sentence, though under the law he could be eligible for parole in 25 years. South Africa halted the death penalty in 1995.

Early news reports said Pistori-us, a gun enthusiast, had mistaken Steenkamp, 29, for an intruder. But the police discounted that notion and disclosed complaints about domestic episodes at his home.

Jenna Edkins, who said she had dated Pistorius took to Twitter to defend him. “I have dated Oscar on off for five years, not once has he ever lifted a finger to me, made me fear for my life,” she posted on Friday. LYDIA POLGREEN

Syrian Group Open to Talks Syria’s main opposition body on Friday

formally endorsed an initiative to pursue a political solution through talks with mem-bers of the Syrian government — provid-ed that Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, and security and military leaders involved in his bloody crackdown are excluded. The group’s president, Moaz al-Khatib, had faced intense criticism from fellow opposi-tion members after proposing the talks, a departure from the opposition’s longstand-ing refusal to negotiate with the govern-ment until after Assad steps down or is re-moved. The opposition group, the National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposi-tion Forces, made the announcement after

its 12-member politburo met. But the Syrian government rejects setting Assad’s remov-al as a precondition to talks. (NYT)

Kidnap Threat for TravelersA United States Embassy warning to

American tourists about a potential kidnap-ping threat in the Cuzco region of Peru, in-cluding the famed Incan citadel of Machu Picchu, drew vehement objections from Peruvian officials on Friday. But a United States Embassy official said credible evi-dence existed of a threat from a Peruvian terrorist group. The official confirmed a re-port in the Peruvian newspaper La Repub-lica that said leaders of the Shining Path out-law band discussed kidnapping foreigners,

particularly Americans, in intercepted com-munications. Tens of thousands of Ameri-cans visit Peru each year. (AP)

Head of Vatican Bank NamedIn one of his last official acts, Pope Bene-

dict XVI on Friday named Ernst von Frey-berg, a German aristocrat and industrialist, as the new head of the Vatican Bank, reduc-ing the Italian presence in a secretive insti-tution that has struggled to restore its cred-ibility and meet international transparency norms. The appointment came after pros-ecutors had spent more than two years in-vestigating the bank on charges relating to money laundering, which the bank has de-nied. (NYT)

Venezuela Releases Photos of Chávez in HospitalPistorius Disputes Murder Charge

In Brief

venezuelan Ministry oF inForMation, via reuters

President Hugo chávez with two of his daughters, María gabriela, left, and rosa virginia.

BERLIN — The workers came from across Europe to pack boxes for the online retailer Amazon at distribution centers in Germany during the Christmas rush. They did not expect to be watched over — some say intimidated — by thugs in neo-Nazi-style clothing and jackboots.

On Friday, Amazon said it was investigating claims made in a documentary that a subcontrac-tor employed security guards with neo-Nazi ties to oversee the immigrant workers.

The documentary, shown Wed- nesday on the ARD public tele-vision network, showed guards in black uniforms with H.E.S.S., after Hensel European Security Services, but also the last name of Hitler’s deputy, Rudolf Hess, em-blazoned on their chests.

According to the film, security guards scared and intimidated hundreds of temporary workers from Hungary, Poland, Spain and other European countries.

The accusations ignited an out-cry on social media and calls for

consumers to think twice about placing their next order on Ama-zon. Amazon responded by pledg-ing to investigate the claims, say-ing it was in its own interest to pro-vide a safe and secure working en-vironment for all of its employees, temporary as well as permanent.

“Amazon does not tolerate dis-crimination or intimidation, and we will act swiftly to eliminate any such behavior,” Ulrike Stöcker, a spokeswoman for the company in Germany, said in a statement. MELISSA EDDY

Amazon to Investigate Claims of Worker Intimidation

INTerNaTIONal Saturday, February 16, 2013 2

WASHINGTON — As the Sen-ate edged toward a nasty filibus-ter vote on Chuck Hagel’s nomina-tion to be defense secretary, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tex., sat silent and

satisfied in the corner of the chamber — his voice robbed by laryngitis — as he absorbed what he had wrought in his mere seven weeks of Sen-ate service.

Hagel, a former Republican sen-ator, was about to be the victim of the first filibuster of a nominee to lead the Pentagon. The blockade was due in no small part to the very junior senator’s relentless pursuit of speeches, financial records or any other files with Hagel’s name on them going back at least five years. Some Republicans praised the work of the brash newcomer, but others joined Democrats in saying he had gone too far.

Without naming names, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., offered a biting label for the Texan’s accusa-tory crusade: McCarthyism.

“It was really reminiscent of a different time and place, when you said, ‘I have here in my pock-et a speech you made on such and such a date,’ and, of course, noth-ing was in the pocket,” she said, a reference to Sen. Joseph R. McCa-rthy’s bloody pursuit of Commu-nists in the 1950s. “It was reminis-cent of some bad times.”

In just two months, Cruz, 42, has made his presence felt in an insti-tution where new arrivals are usu-ally not heard from for months. Besides suggesting Hagel might have received compensation from foreign enemies, he has tangled with the mayor of Chicago, con-fronted the Senate’s third-ranking Democrat on national TV, voted against virtually everything — in-cluding the confirmation of John Kerry as secretary of state — and raised the hackles of colleagues.

Cruz could not be more pleased.

Washington’s new bad boy feels good. “I made promises to the people of Texas that I would come to Washington to shake up the status quo,” he said in e-mailed re-sponses in lieu of a speaking voice. “That is what I intend to do, and it is what I have done in every way possible in the responsibilities that have been granted to me.”

In a body known for comity, Cruz is taking confrontational Tea Par- ty sensibilities to new heights — or lows, depending on one’s per-spective. Wowed conservatives hail him as a hero, but some G.O.P. colleagues are growing frustrated with a man who has taken the zeal of a prosecutor and applied it to the decorous quarters of the Senate.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said that some of the demands Cruz made of Hagel were “out of bounds, quite frankly.” Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., issued a public rebuke after Cruz suggested, with no evidence, Hagel had accepted honorariums from North Korea.

JONATHAN WEISMAN

WASHINGTON — In the span of four years starting in 2007, then-Rep. Jesse L. Jackson Jr. of Illinois amassed a collection of celebrity memorabilia, furs, jewelry and furniture.

Working with an antiques deal-er in Nevada and a furrier in Bev-erly Hills, Jackson bought a $5,000 football signed by U.S. presidents, two hats that once belonged to Michael Jackson — including a $4,600 fedora — and an $800 mink cashmere cape.

Jackson’s desires for such ex-otic objects, however, prompted him to take about $750,000 directly

from his campaign funds in viola-tion of campaign finance laws, according to government docu-ments, unraveling the political ca-reer of one of the country’s most high profile African-American politicians and the son of a famous civil rights activist.

On Friday, federal prosecu-tors in Washington filed charges against Jackson tied to his repeat-ed use of campaign funds.

The charges, however, were a formality. Jackson has already agreed to plead guilty to one or more charges, although a date for him to formally accept the plea

before a judge has not yet been scheduled. He faces up to five years in prison and $250,000 in fines.

The government on Friday also filed charges against Jackson’s wife, Sandra Stevens Jackson, accusing her of having filed false tax returns. She is also expected to plead guilty and faces a maxi-mum of three years in prison and a $100,000 fine.

In a written statement, Jackson apologized to his family, friends and supporters for his “errors in judgment.”

MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT

CHICAGO — President Obama came back home on Friday for a policy speech that turned person-al: He spoke of teaching law near-by, meeting his wife, Michelle, raising their daughters less than a mile away and then, most recently, watching the first lady return for the funeral of a vivacious teenager gunned down in a park.

Less than two minutes into his remarks at the mostly African-American Hyde Park Academy high school, Obama paid tribute to 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton, who

had been just a bit older than his daughter Malia, but who now rep-resents his private connection to the gun violence he has only begun to address in his second term.

Pendleton had attended a nearby high school until she was caught in what the police say was gang gunfire just days after she had marched in the president’s second inaugural parade. In the audience were her parents, Cleo-patra Cowley-Pendleton and Na-thaniel Pendleton Sr., the latest in-voluntary activists for gun safety.

On Tuesday they sat with Michelle Obama in the House gallery for Obama’s State of the Union ad-dress. When the president recog-nized them here on Friday, there was awkward applause, as if peo-ple were unsure whether losing a child was reason to clap.

“Unfortunately, what happened to Hadiya is not unique,” Obama said. “It’s not unique to Chicago. It’s not unique to this country. Too many of our children are being taken away from us.”

JACKIE CALMES

Carnival Cruise Ship To Undergo Inspection

After five days aboard the lifeless cruise ship Triumph, most of the 4,200 passengers and crew members finally reached their homes on Friday as Carnival Cruise Lines hauled the Triumph to a shipyard. Now begins a mechanical investiga-tion by the Coast Guard, the Na-tional Transportation Safety Board and the Bahamas Mari-time Authority that experts say could last months. It will focus on the engine fire on Sunday that knocked out power, strand-ing the Mexico-bound passen-gers with too little food and sew-age-flooded rooms. Even as pas-sengers praised the crew, some scoffed at the $500 they were given by Carnival for their or-deal, saying it hardly compen-sated for days of missed work. Carnival has canceled its next 14 voyages, until April. (NYT)

Hanford Nuclear Tank Is leaking liquids

The long-delayed cleanup of the nation’s most contaminat-ed nuclear site became the sub-ject of more bad news Friday, when Washington Gov. Jay In-slee announced that a radioac-tive waste tank there is leaking. The news raises concerns about the integrity of similar tanks at Hanford nuclear reservation. The tanks, which are already long past their intended 20-year life span, hold millions of gal-lons of a highly radioactive stew left from decades of plutonium production for nuclear weapons. Monitoring wells near the tank have not detected higher radia-tion levels. (AP)

rabbits Taking Toll On Cars at airport

Silly rabbits. The furry crea-tures are wreaking havoc on cars parked at Denver Interna-tional Airport by eating spark plug cables and other wiring. To stop the problem, federal wild-life workers are removing at least 100 rabbits a month while parking companies install bet-ter fences and build perches for predatory birds. Mechanics say coating the wires with fox or coyote urine can rob the rabbits of their appetite. (AP)

Very Junior Texan Upsets Senate’s Courtly Ways

The Lavish Lifestyle of a Lawmaker Yields Charges

In Chicago, a Policy Speech by Obama Becomes Personal

In Brief

sen. ted cruz

NaTIONal Saturday, February 16, 2013 3

When it comes to the volatile new lithium-ion battery technol-ogy, Boeing and Airbus are head-ing in different directions.

Faced with the potential of a lengthy investigation into what caused batteries on two Boeing 787 jets to catch fire or emit smoke last month, Airbus said Friday that it had dropped plans to use the technology on its forthcoming wide-body jet, the A350-XWB, to avoid possible delays in building the planes.

But Boeing, which has much more at stake, said later Friday that it would stick with the bat-teries and that it is now working with regulators on how to reduce the risks even if the cause of the hazards is not clearly found.

All 50 of the 787s delivered so far were grounded in mid-Janu-ary. And even though the prob-

lems have embarrassed Boeing and could cost it hundreds of mil-lions of dollars, the company said Friday, “There’s nothing we’ve learned in the investigations that would lead us to a different deci-sion regarding lithium-ion batter-ies.”

To some extent, Boeing’s bra-vado reflects a sense among battery experts that they have narrowed down the ways that the batteries could fail, and thus increased the chances that a handful of changes could eventu-ally provide enough assurance to keep using them. Boeing also has a strong motivation to stick with the batteries in hopes that such a solution will emerge.

Under flight safety regulations, industry and government offi-cials said, Boeing might not have to go through as extensive — and

time-consuming — an approval process if it redesigned the lithi-um-ion batteries as it would if it switched to conventional nickel-cadmium batteries.

Even though the behavior of the more traditional batteries is better understood, they have not yet been certified for use in the 787s, and the batteries and other parts of the plane’s electrical sys-tem would have to be created and tested from scratch.

Under the safety directive grounding the 787 planes, Boeing might have a more straightfor-ward path to get them flying again if the company could persuade the Federal Aviation Administration that redesigning the lithium-ion batteries could prevent the likely types of failures from occurring. CHRISTOPHER DREW and NICOLA CLARK

WASHINGTON — Incomes for the top 1 percent of earners rose during the economic recovery of 2010 and 2011 but hardly rose for just everybody else, according to new data.

The numbers, produced by Em-manuel Saez, an economist at the University of California, Berke-ley, show overall income growing by just 1.7 percent over the period. But there was a wide gap between the top 1 percent, whose earnings rose by 11.2 percent, and the bot-tom 99 percent, whose earnings rose by just 0.4 percent.

Saez, a winner of the John Bates Clark Medal, an economic laurel considered second only to the No-bel, said “the Great Recession has only depressed top income shares temporarily and will not undo any

of the dramatic increase in top in-come shares that has taken place since the 1970s.”

The disparity between top earners and everybody else can be attributed, in part, to differenc-es in how the groups make their money. The wealthy have bene-fited from a four-year boom in the stock market, while high rates of unemployment have held down the income of wage earners.

“We have in the middle basi-cally three decades of problems compounded by high unemploy-ment,” said Lawrence Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute, a left-of-center research group in Washington. “That high unem-ployment we know depresses wage growth throughout the wage scale, but more so for the

bottom than the middle and the middle than the top.”

In his analysis, Saez said he saw no reason the trend would reverse for 2012, which has not yet been analyzed. For that year, the “top 1 percent income will likely surge, due to booming stock prices, as well as retiming of in-come to avoid the higher 2013 top tax rates,” Saez wrote, referring to income tax increases for the wealthy passed by Congress in January. The incomes of the “bot-tom 99 percent will likely grow much more modestly,” he said.

Excluding earnings from in-vestment gains, the top 10 per-cent of earners took 46.5 percent of all income in 2011, the highest proportion since 1917, Saez said.

ANNIE LOWREY

Clients of SAC Capital Advisors have asked to withdraw $1.7 bil-lion from the hedge fund amid the government’s intensifying insid-er trading inquiry, according to people briefed on the matter.

That amount represents slight-ly more than a quarter of the $6 billion that the fund manages for clients, and underscores the reputational damage sustained by SAC amid criminal cases tied to former employees of the firm.

Investors had to inform SAC by Thursday — a regularly sched-

uled quarterly withdrawal dead-line at the fund — whether they wanted their money back.

While the outflows are a blow to SAC and its owner, the billionaire investor Steven A. Cohen, they are expected to have little impact on the fund’s business. More than half of SAC’s assets under man-agement, which stood at $15 bil-lion as of mid-January, belong to Cohen and his employees.

SAC also has stringent rules in place that prohibit clients from withdrawing all their money at

once. The fund will pay out about $660 million at the end of next month to investors who have made withdrawal requests and return the balance of the $1.7 bil-lion in quarterly installments through year-end.

“As we have been saying, the redemptions will have no signifi-cant impact on our funds,” said Jonathan Gasthalter, a spokes-man for SAC, which is based in Stamford, Conn., and has over 1,000 employees.

PETER LATTMAN

Airbus Drops Plan to Use Lithium-Ion Batteries

Incomes Flat in the Recovery but Not for the 1 %

SAC Clients Are Said to Ask for $1.7 Billion in Refunds

ONlINe: MOre PrICeS aND aNalYSIS

Information on all United States stocks, plus bonds, mu-

tual funds, commodities and for-eign stocks along with analysis of industry sectors and stock indexes: nytimes.com/markets

COMMODITIeS/BONDS

GOLD

D 25.90

$1,608.80

10-YR. TREAS. YIELD

0.01 1.49U

2.01% $96.41

CRUDE OIL

D

the marketS

13,981.76

6,328.26

11,173.83

12,686.63

8.37 0.06%

DJIA

U

0.90 0.01%

FTSE 100

U

133.45 1.18%

NIKKEI 225

D

35.16 0.28%

TSX

D

6.63 0.21%

NASDAQ

3,192.03

D

37.68 0.49%

DAX

7,593.51

D

31.31 0.13%

174.01 0.30%

HANG SENG

BOVESPA

23,444.56

57,903.30D

1.59 0.10%

S&P 500

1,519.79

D

9.23 0.25%

CAC 40

3,660.37

D

Market Holiday

SHANGHAI

274.68 0.63%

BOLSA

44,152.96U

eUrOPe

aSIa/PaCIFIC

aMerICaS

BRITAIN

JAPAN

CANADA

GERMANY

HONG KONG

BRAZIL

FRANCE

CHINA

MEXICO

FOREIGN EXCHANGE Fgn.currency Dollarsin inDollars fgn.currency

Australia (Dollar) 1.0299 .9710Bahrain (Dinar) 2.6525 .3770Brazil (Real) .5081 1.9680Britain (Pound) 1.5515 .6445Canada (Dollar) .9942 1.0058China (Yuan) .1605 6.2323Denmark (Krone) .1791 5.5820Dom. Rep. (Peso) .0245 40.8000Egypt (Pound) .1486 6.7303Europe (Euro) 1.3362 .7484Hong Kong (Dollar) .1290 7.7541Japan (Yen) .0107 93.5300Mexico (Peso) .0788 12.6963Norway (Krone) .1806 5.5386Singapore (Dollar) .8087 1.2365So. Africa (Rand) .1129 8.8552So. Korea (Won) .0009 1078.0Sweden (Krona) .1584 6.3137Switzerland (Franc) 1.0857 .9211

Source: Thomson Reuters

BUSINeSS Saturday, February 16, 2013 4

With his 300 acres of soybeans, corn and wheat, Vernon Hugh Bowman said, “I’m not even big enough to be called a farmer.”

Yet the 75-year-old farmer from southwestern Indiana will face off Tuesday against the world’s larg-est seed company, Monsanto, in a Supreme Court case that could have a huge impact on the future of genetically modified crops, and also affect other fields from medi-cal research to software.

At stake is whether patents on seeds — or other things that can self-replicate — extend beyond the first generation of the prod-ucts. Farmers who plant seeds with Monsanto’s technology must sign an agreement not to save the seeds, which means they must buy new seeds every year.

It is one of two cases before the court related to the patenting of living organisms, a practice that has helped fuel the biotechnology

industry. The other case, involv-ing a breast cancer risk test from Myriad Genetics, will determine if human genes can be patented. It is to be heard on April 15.

A victory for Bowman would “devastate innovation in biotech-nology,” Monsanto wrote in its brief. “Investors are unlikely to make such investments if they cannot prevent purchasers of liv-ing organisms containing their invention from using them to pro-duce unlimited copies.”

The decision might also apply to live vaccines, cell lines and DNA used for research or medi-cal treatment and some types of nanotechnology. Many organiza-tions have filed briefs in support of Monsanto’s position — univer-sities worried about incentives for research, makers of laborato-ry instruments and some farmer groups like the American Soy-bean Association, which say pat-

ents have spurred crop improve-ments. The Justice Department is also supporting Monsanto.

BSA/The Software Alliance, which represents companies like Apple and Microsoft, said in a brief that a decision against Mon-santo might “facilitate software piracy on a broad scale” because software can be easily replicated. But it also said a ruling too far the other way could make nuisance software patent infringement lawsuits too easy to file.

Some critics of biotechnology say a victory for Bowman could weaken what they see as a stran-glehold that Monsanto and other biotech companies have over farmers. “Seed-saving would act as a much needed restraint on skyrocketing biotech seed prices,” said Bill Freese, science policy analyst for the Center for Food Safety.

ANDREW POLLACK

Electricity prices in New Eng-land have been four to eight times higher than normal in the last few weeks, as the region’s extreme reliance on natural gas for power supplies has collided with a surge in demand for heating.

Frigid temperatures and the snowstorm that hammered parts of the Northeast last week have revived concerns about the lack of alternatives to natural gas. Many plants that ran on coal or oil have been shuttered, and the few that remain cannot be put into service quickly enough to meet spikes in demand. The price of electricity is determined by the price of gas.

Last year, natural gas provided 52 percent of New England’s elec-tricity, and that share is expected to rise. Gas is generally cheaper than other energy sources, and the lower costs have spurred the re- tirement of aging coal generators and nuclear reactors. The six-state New England region and parts of Long Island are the most vulnera-ble to overreliance on gas, but offi-cials worry that similar problems could spread to the Midwest.

“We are sticking a lot of straws into this soft drink,” said William P. Short III, an energy consultant whose clients include companies that move and burn gas. “This is a harbinger of things to come in New England, as well as New York.”

James G. Daly, vice president for energy supply at Northeast Utilities, a company that, through its subsidiaries, provides electric-ity to homes and businesses in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, said: “There is concern we don’t have enough capacity to supply heating and electricity generation.”

Northeast and many other com-panies are temporarily insulated from the spot market because they sign long-term contracts for electricity supply. But North-east’s energy charges next year could be 10 percent higher than they are now, Daly said, because the companies that sell power on a long-term basis will charge more to absorb the risk of short-term spikes in electricity and natural gas prices.

“It is certainly true that a re-

gion like New England that relies on a single fuel source like natural gas for the bulk of its power does leave itself open for more disrup-tions than a region with a more diverse fuel mix,” said Jay Apt, executive director of the Electric-ity Industry Center at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. “It’s not a knock against natural gas; it’s a knock against a single fuel source.”

The American Public Power Association has warned since 2010 that demand is outpacing the delivery capacity of gas infra-structure. At coal plants, “you can look out the window and see that 60-day supply of your fuel,” said Joe Nipper, the group’s senior vice president of government relations. But gas plants tend to deliver fuel just as it is needed.

MATTHEW L. WALD

Farmer’s Court Case Puts Monsanto Patents at Risk

In Region Reliant on Gas, Energy Costs Soar

Stocks that moved substantially or traded heavily on Friday.

CBS Corp., up $1.70 at $44.64. The media company said revenue and earnings grew in the fourth quarter, helped by the presidential election.

Herbalife Ltd., up 47 cents at $38.74. A regulatory filing showed that the bil-lionaire investor Carl Icahn holds a 12.98 percent stake in the company.

Transocean Ltd., down $3.04 at $56.26. A Deutsche Bank analyst cut his rating on the oil drilling company to “sell,” partly because of rising costs and increasing downtime.

Orbitz Worldwide Inc., up 18 cents at $3.33. The online travel company’s fourth-quarter revenue exceeded ex-pectations, and there were signs its ho-tel business was improving.

V.F. Corp., up $5.07 at $157.88. The clothing company, with brands includ-ing Wrangler and Nautica, said fourth-quarter net income rose 30 percent.

Agilent Technologies Inc., down $2.33 at $42.25. The maker of diagnos-tic machines cut its income and sales outlook, saying demand is volatile.

IPG Photonics Corp., down $6.72 at $62.76. The maker of lasers used to process industrial materials posted higher fourth-quarter profit, but ana-lysts expected stronger growth. (aP)

Stocks on the Move

Most Active, GAiners And Losers % VolumeStock(TICKER) Close Chg Chg (100)

10MoSTACTIVEBank of Am (BAC) 12.03 ◊0.10 ◊0.8 1548482BlackBerry (BBRY) 14.15 ◊0.92 ◊6.1 925925Microsoft (MSFT) 28.01 ◊0.03 ◊0.1 495919Cisco Syst (CSCO) 20.99 0.00 0.0 444372Micron Tec (MU) 7.91 ◊0.17 ◊2.1 401453CenturyLin (CTL) 33.02 +0.75 +2.3 393062General El (GE) 23.29 ◊0.12 ◊0.5 389711Herbalife (HLF) 38.74 +0.47 +1.2 377812Sprint Nex (S) 5.91 +0.04 +0.7 345062Intel Corp (INTC) 21.11 ◊0.12 ◊0.5 338076

10TopGAInERS

Methes (MEIL) 5.40 +1.39 +34.7 259BioFue (BIOF) 6.73 +1.23 +22.4 17712Qlik T (QLIK) 26.83 +4.07 +17.9 92008Trulia (TRLA) 35.35 +4.85 +15.9 5790Millen (MM) 14.20 +1.74 +14.0 30304MeadWe (MWV) 35.65 +3.97 +12.5 59303Tower (TOWR) 11.06 +1.23 +12.5 1012inCont (SAAS) 6.74 +0.73 +12.1 15728Parame (PAMT) 10.01 +0.81 +8.8 1262NetSol (NTWK) 9.76 +0.78 +8.7 3799

10TopLoSERS

LogMeI (LOGM) 16.65 ◊7.01 ◊29.6 70200Ehealt (EHTH) 19.71 ◊5.69 ◊22.4 8957Motorc (MPAA) 5.85 ◊1.20 ◊17.0 2994Five S (FVE) 5.39 ◊0.91 ◊14.4 12563Ruckus (RKUS) 19.61 ◊3.15 ◊13.8 21327Orchar (OSH) 6.22 ◊0.81 ◊11.5 1562On Ass (ASGN) 21.87 ◊2.79 ◊11.3 23154Fonar (FONR) 5.19 ◊0.58 ◊10.1 1676IPG Ph (IPGP) 62.76 ◊6.72 ◊9.7 43944Sandst (SAND) 10.86 ◊1.00 ◊8.4 16543

% VolumeStock(TICKER) Close Chg Chg (100)

% VolumeStock(TICKER) Close Chg Chg (100)

Source: Thomson Reuters

Barry cHin/tHe Boston gloBe

a snowstorm last week felled utility lines in Massachusetts. Many areas lost power, and backup generators could not start up overnight.

BUSINeSS Saturday, February 16, 2013 5

The otherworldly inhabitants in “Beautiful Creatures,” a pop Southern Gothic amusement about teenage love and other powerful magic, tend to look fairly average, just paler and more dan-dified than average folks. Every-one else would call them witches, but they prefer Casters, as in spell casters, probably because the authors of the book on which the movie is based wanted a new name for that old black and white magic. Despite their rebranding, Casters move through a familiar genre world of ghosts, enchant-ments and honey-dipped accents, with slithering gators, trees shrouded in Spanish moss and lives wreathed in mystery.

“Beautiful Creatures,” its sweet young things and supernatural shenanigans have been marshaled to help fill the box-office void left by the end of the “Harry Potter” and “Twilight” franchises. It’s a void that “The Hunger Games” has already started to fill, partly by tapping into deeply American themes and giving them thrilling female form. “Beautiful Crea-tures” has been spun from thinner material, despite its strong female characters, nods at the Civil War and a story that turns on good vs. evil, a fight that — as in many young-adult stories — is some-what mirrored in the struggle between the high school herd and

the individual. There’s not much new under the moon here.

Among the movie’s charms is its button-cute narrator-hero, Ethan Wate (a delightful Alden Ehren-reich), one of those high school boys who sound and act too good to be true, but it’s sure nice to pre-tend they exist. When the movie opens, he’s writhing and dream-ing of a mysterious figure whose long streaming locks suggest a Freudian interpretive progres-sion and that takes a turn for the safe when his possible dream girl, Lena Duchannes (Alice Englert), abruptly materializes.

“Beautiful Creatures” slowly ignites with the mind-and-body sparks set off when Ethan meets

Lena — offspring from seeming-ly incompatible families, which means it’s kind of like Romeo and Juliet, but, like, you know, happier. But things are complicated, after all, what with a curse, some lore and spooky relations, among them Uncle Macon (Jeremy Irons).

With his satiny clothes and silky purr, Uncle Macon helps bring the movie to another level by deep-ening its emotional colors and widening its pleasures. He brings wit, timing and actual acting to the mix, as does Viola Davis, who plays Amma, Ethan’s nanny, and a loosey-goosey Emma Thompson.

The past may not be dead, but that’s only because it’s entertain-ment. MANOHLA DARGIS

The romantic thriller “Safe Ha-ven” plays like an extended info-mercial for the lulling charms of Southport, N.C., where the movie was filmed. This picture-perfect town is presented as the go-to des-tination for damsels in distress. Here in this tiny paradise, where gentle waters lap the shore, a new beginning awaits.

Watching this weepy suds-fest, the eighth film adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks novel, is like drawing a scented bath. The first spritz from the faucet may be scalding, but once you adjust the temperature, you can settle into a warm and caressing soup and dream the impossible dream. But before that dream can come true, you must endure one final test: a nightmarish Fourth of July of fire and fury in which the past screeches into town to drag you back into the bowels of hell.

That hell is Boston. The dis-tressed damsel, Katie Feldman (Julianne Hough), is shown in the opening scene fleeing her home with a policeman in hot pursuit.

Katie boards an Atlanta-bound bus and impulsively gets off at Southport. Here she meets Prince Charming, a k a Alex Wheatley (Josh Duhamel), a widowed store-keeper raising two children.

“Safe Haven,” directed by Lasse Hallstrom, spices this idyll with enough small shocks to sustain an underlying tone of dread.

The weakest parts of “Safe Haven” are its ac-tion sequences, in which the illusion of reality is shat-

tered by ham-handed editing, garish special effects and comic-book dialogue. The climactic in-ferno, which explodes whatever credibility the movie built up, is immediately followed by a cheap, out-of-the-blue supernatural twist. The equivalent of a forged signature, it attests to the movie’s essential falsity.

STEPHEN HOLDEN

“It’s not 1986 anymore,” a sneer-ing Russian villain (one of several in “A Good Day to Die Hard”) says to John McClane. “Reagan is dead.” The bad guy’s remark pays oblique homage to the longevity of the “Die Hard” franchise, which made a movie star of Bruce Wil-lis in 1988, and also perhaps to its patriarchal, populist politics.

McClane himself has evolved from angry Everyman to weary, worried dad. He travels to Mos-cow to help his son, Jack (Jai Courtney), who at first looks like a bad seed but turns out to be a chip off the old block. Some dads take

their boys fishing, but the Mc-Clanes prefer a more primal form of bonding — killing miscreants.

Though it will most likely scare up some domestic business in the pre-Oscar lull, “A Good Day to Die Hard” is squarely aimed at the overseas marketplace. About a third of the dialogue is already subtitled, and the rest would take a good translator about 15 minutes to render.

The movie’s real idiom is the Esperanto of violence — sex is a more culturally sensitive issue, so there’s none of that — and sweaty machismo.

This is what the new global cin-ema looks like. The special effects sequences are put together with some ingenuity, though the last one shows signs of sloppy digi-tal overkill. But everything that made the first “Die Hard” memo-rable — the nuances of character, the political subtext, the cowboy wit — has been dumbed down or scrubbed away entirely. I’m not saying I wish it was the ’80s again — or maybe I am. If that makes me a grumpy old man, it’s John Mc-Clane’s fault. A. O. SCOTT

Her Date Is a Single Dad; His, a Possible Killer

Family Business Is in Action

Ding, Dong! The Witch Is Cute

Frank Masi/20tH century Fox

Bruce willis reprises his role as John Mcclane in “a good day to die Hard.”

JaMes Bridges/relativity Media

Julianne Hough and Josh duhamel star in the romantic thriller “safe Haven.”

warner BrotHers Pictures

viola davis, alice englert and alden ehrenreich star in “Beautiful creatures,” a southern gothic supernatural movie.

MOVIeS Saturday, February 16, 2013 6

The Internet may be disrupting much of the book industry, but for short-story writers it has been a good thing.

Story collections, an often underappreciat-ed literary cousin of novels, are experiencing a resurgence, driven by digital options that offer not only new creative opportunities but additional exposure and revenue as well.

Already 2013 is seeing an unusually rich offering of short-story collections, including George Saunders’s “Tenth of December,” which arrived in January with a media splash normally reserved for Hollywood movies and has glided onto the best-seller lists. Tellingly, many of the current and forthcoming collec-tions are not from authors like Saunders who

have always preferred short stories, but from best-selling novelists like Tom Perrotta who are returning to the form.

Recent and imminent releases include “Vampires in the Lemon Grove” by Karen Russell, whose 2011 novel “Swamplandia” was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize; “Dam-age Control,” a collection by Amber Dermont, whose novel “The Starboard Sea” was a best seller in 2012; and another first story collec-tion, “We Live in Water,” by Jess Walter, just off his best-selling “Beautiful Ruins” (2012).

“It is the culmination of a trend we have seen building for five years,” said Cal Morgan, the editorial director of Harper Perennial Originals, who ran a blog called Fifty-Two

Stories devoted to short fiction until last year. “The Internet has made people a lot more open to reading story forms that are different from the novel, and you see a generation of writers very engaged in experimentation.”

In recent decades, the traditional outlets for short stories have dwindled, with liter-ary magazines collapsing or shrinking. But the Internet has created an insatiable maw to feed. Amazon created its Kindle Singles program in 2011 for publishing short fiction and nonfiction brief enough to be read in un-der two hours. Although the list price of the singles is usually modest, a dollar or two, au-thors keep up to 70 percent of the royalties — welcome revenue for fledgling authors and a potentially big payoff for well-known writers.

In addition, smaller, Internet publishers like Byliner are snapping up short fiction and gaining traction as distributors of stories. And the shorter format is a good fit for the small screens people are increasingly using to read.

“The single-serving quality of a short nar-rative is the perfect art form for the digital age,” said Dermont, whose collection is due out next month. “Stories are models of conci-sion, can be read in one sitting, and are infi-nitely downloadable and easily consumed on screens.”

Short stories are also perfect for the digital age, she added, because readers “want to con-nect and want that connection to be intense and to move on.” That is, after all, what the format is all about.

Morgan said that years of editing short fic-tion for his blog showed him that digital com-munication was influencing writers who are just coming of age.

“The generation of writers out of college in the last few years has been raised to engage with words like no generation before,” he said. “Our generation was raised on passive media like television and telephones; this genera-tion has been engaged in writing to each other in text messages on a 24-hour basis. I think it has made them bolder and tighter.”

LESLIE KAUFMAN

A Good Fit for Today’s Little Screens: Short Stories

ACROSS 1 Help for

someone just browsing?

8 1-Across source

15 Raving

16 Buds

17 Stimulant

18 “The Consul” composer

19 What a screen may block

21 Submitted

22 Noggins

24 Mouth filler

25 Zulu’s counterpart

29 “___ Arizona Skies” (early John Wayne film)

31 Giveaway

33 Stimulate

35 Shadows

37 Creature whose genus name and English name are the same

38 Dare to put in one’s two cents

41 Tool shed tool

42 Flip

43 Clipped

44 Number of strings on a Spanish guitar

46 Tourney round

48 Some homages

49 Bush whackers?

51 Actress Berger

53 Not strictly adhering to tempo

55 Part of an ice pack?

59 Simian

61 Series begun in 2007

63 Bet everything

64 Midday appointments

65 Like some director’s cuts

66 Wraps

DOWN 1 Goliath, e.g.

2 “Suicide Blonde” band

3 Torment

4 ___ Railroad, 1832-1960

5 Like a lot?

6 Shipping weight

7 They might include BMX and wakeboarding, informally

8 Year “Tosca” premiered

9 Sources of iron and manganese

10 Defensive strategies

11 Part of a plot

12 Source of a secret, in a phrase

13 Triple-platinum Gloria Estefan album with “Rhythm Is Gonna Get You”

14 Alphabet book phrase

20 Spies often don’t use them

23 Queued

25 Eastern generals

26 Stockpiled

27 Orange children’s character

28 Actor Butterfield of “Hugo”

30 Fielder’s challenge

32 Pool parts

34 Bit of work

36 Alma mater for McDonnell and Douglas of McDonnell Douglas

39 Bashes

40 Prefix with realism

45 Part of an “@” symbol

47 Board

50 Supporting post

52 Temporarily formed

53 ___ Bolognese

54 Sooner alternative

56 Spanish title

57 “Your” alternative

58 “Days of Heaven” co-star, 1978

60 Wideout, in football

62 Stovetop sound

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE

PUZZLE BY MICHAEL ASHLEY

2/16/13 (No. 0216)

S T O N E A G E S E C A D AC E R E B R A L P R O P E LO L D W O R L D R I P O F FO L E A N E T A L I IP A R T I T A S A R C A N EE L I C H I T D E E R ER I N G S I D E S E A TS E G A S E P I A I M A Y

S L I D I N G S C A L EA T E I N N E L L D O W

P L A N T S S W E E P O U TI L L G O T N I N E RN I K I T A J O E D A N T EK E E N E N U S S E N A T EO D D E S T T E A R O S E S

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Even before the cost estimates and program details have been made public, President Obama’s proposal for expanding high-quality preschool education has encountered criti-cism from House Republicans. Yet decades of research have shown that well-designed preschool programs more than pay for them-selves by giving young children the skills they need to move ahead. The challenge at the fed-eral level will be to make sure that taxpayer dollars flow to proven, high-quality programs instead of being wasted on subsidies for glori-fied day care.

Countless studies have found that preschool education has real value, both for the children and for society as whole. But design is obvi-ously crucial.

The most famous and frequently cited pro-gram was conducted at Perry Elementary School in Ypsilanti, Mich., during the 1960s, where the teachers focused on a creative process in which low-income children were encouraged to plan, initiate and discuss their learning activities. In addition to teaching the children for 2.5 hours during the school day, the teachers regularly visited their homes to reinforce the lessons and forge a partnership with parents.

Followed into adulthood, the Perry students were found to have lower dropout and arrest rates and higher incomes than those who did not attend preschool. Research led by James Heckman, the Nobel Prize-winning econo-mist, concluded in 2009 that each $1 invested in the Perry program had returned a value of

between $7 and $12 to society.Unfortunately, preschool researchers say

that few programs meet the standards of the Perry system. With mediocrity the norm for many programs — and with many educators habituated to mediocrity — a new federal preschool initiative would likely come under heavy pressure to compromise downward.

Obama called for just the opposite in his State of the Union address on Tuesday. He wants to upgrade the preschool system through a cost-sharing partnership with the states to expand high-quality public preschool to all 4-year-olds from families at or below 200 percent of the poverty level. The proposal also contains an incentive for states to broaden participation to include additional middle-class families.

To be eligible for the program, the states would have to offer programs with well-trained teachers paid comparably to those teaching in kindergarten-through-12 classrooms, small classes and rigorous statewide standards for early learning. The White House has yet to re-lease cost estimates or say how the program would be financed. But officials have said the money could be found in the budget, and the program would not add to the deficit.

Given the current national emphasis on strengthening the public schools — and pre-paring young people to compete in the new economy — expanding preschool education would seem to be an obvious bipartisan goal.

Instead of saying “no” right out of the gate, the president’s critics should recognize the value in his proposal.

Across the country, state securities regula-tors are reporting an upsurge in fraud cases involving retirement savers who have been lured by brokers into complex investments.

Prolonged periods of low interest rates cre-ate the conditions for fraud and bubbles, as investors seek higher yields by putting their money in riskier investments and as asset pric-es are driven upward. It happened in the dot-com era of the 1990s and in the housing bubble of the last decade, and it is happening now, in the post-financial-crisis world of near-zero in-terest rates. Despite the link between low in-terest rates and fraud, investor protections are being blocked or loosened at precisely the time when more protection is needed.

For instance, there is no federal requirement for financial brokers who give advice and earn commissions to act in the best interests of their clients. Two years ago, the Securities and Ex-change Commission pushed to impose a fidu-ciary duty on brokers, but the effort has been stalled by lobbyists and their Congressional allies, who contend, against all evidence, that more research is needed to justify a rule.

As things stand, brokers still have latitude to recommend products that do more to fatten their commissions than to enrich their clients.

As detailed in a recent article in The Times by Nathaniel Popper, financial firms are paying brokers hefty commissions to sell “alternative investments,” including complex offerings in commodities, real estate trusts, luxury car fleets and television productions. Unlike stocks and bonds, the alternatives are often private offerings that are not subject to disclosure re-quirements and other investor safeguards that apply to publicly held companies.

And the rules are about to become looser. Last year, Congress, with the support of the White House, passed a law to repeal a federal ban on the mass advertising of private invest-ment offerings. The rules issued by the S.E.C. to carry out the law do nothing to minimize the threat that investors will be drawn into risky or fraudulent investments. They do not spec-ify basic steps for brokers to take to verify the ability of potential investors to analyze and ab-sorb the risks. The rules are not final, but with Congressional Republicans and the agency’s G.O.P. commissioners pushing for their com-pletion, improvements seem doubtful.

The state securities regulators know well that it is treacherous out there. The question is whether the S.E.C. can and will prevent condi-tions from deteriorating further.

We seem to be short one secretary of defense. Well, there’s Leon Panetta, who has already had his farewell ceremony, given his farewell briefing and his farewell address, then flown home to California. But the Pentagon still has his cell number in case a war breaks out.

And there’s Chuck Hagel, nominated yet totally-still-not-confirmed by the U.S. Senate. A Senate that is beginning to resemble a bad Carnival cruise. They’re dead in the water, nothing’s working and the chief engineer is Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

People, what do you think happened with Lindsey Graham? Have you noticed that lately he seems to be on television more often than the Geico gecko? Graham doesn’t hold any Senate position higher than ranking member of the Armed Services subcommittee on per-sonnel. Yet there he is, on the air all the time.

And what do you think has happened to John McCain? Actually, we’ve had that conversa-tion a number of times before.

When it comes to the Hagel nomination, Mc-Cain is supposed to be the Republican point man. If we were on a Carnival cruise, he would be the captain. A captain who got on the P.A. and announced that the ship was going to Mex-ico. No, Alabama! No, in a circle! Or maybe we’ll just stay dead in the water until a week from Tuesday and see what happens.

McCain and Graham have changed their tune repeatedly over what the problem is about making Hagel the defense chief. The goal posts have not just been moved; they’ve been put on a tractor-trailer and driven down every high-way exit in the continental United States.

The complaints that have come up so far range from the reasonable (seems to have trouble communicating), to the lunatic. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, the ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee, suggested Hagel had been “endorsed” by “terrorist-type countries.” This presumably had to do with a spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry saying he hoped the nomination would im-prove relations between the two countries. Let us all say a prayer that someday a spokesman for the International League of Puppy Murder- ers appears out of nowhere to say he thinks Inhofe would make a great animal warden.

On Thursday, the Republicans declined to permit an up-or-down vote on the Hagel nomination, something that has never before happened with a defense nominee. “After the break, we can have a cloture vote, and I feel pretty comfortable I’d vote to move on — un-less there’s some bombshell,” Graham said.

Let’s take a vote ourselves. Would you rather have the Senate:

A) Spend a week on vacation then the last week of the month debating Chuck Hagel, or

B) Stay where they are and figure out what to do about those enormous, economy-blasting spending cuts that are to kick in March 1.

O.K., I see a whole lot of hands for staying and fixing the spending cuts. None of you are ever going to get to be a U.S. senator.

e D I t o r I a L S o f t h e t I m e S

Getting Preschool Education Right

Investors Beware

GaIl COllINS

Senators Overboard!

OPINION Saturday, February 16, 2013 8

It was around 11 a.m. Friday when David Testo’s cellphone be-gan to vibrate constantly. There were missed calls. Voice mails. E-mails.

Testo, a former professional soccer player, announced he was gay in 2011 after his playing career ended. And as he paged through his messages from friends and family, he learned the news that stunned much of the global soccer community: Robbie Rogers, a for-mer midfielder for the U.S. nation-al team who most recently played in England, had revealed in a blog post that he was gay, too.

Testo’s first thought, he said, was pride. But then he wondered whether Rogers, 25, would do what Testo, and many others, chose not to: become one of the rare openly gay male athletes to actively par-ticipate in a high-profile profes-sional team sport.

“Deep down, that’s what I was hoping for,” Testo said. “It’s what we’re all waiting for.”

Megan Rapinoe, the U.S. wom-en’s team star, came out before last summer’s Olympics, but, at this point, it does not appear Rog-ers will follow her example on the male side. In his letter, which he published on his personal Web site, Rogers wrote he was leav-ing the sport to “discover myself away from football.”

Rogers had recently been play-ing for Stevenage, a third-division English team, after being loaned away by second-division Leeds United. He did not specify when — or if — he might return, instead focusing on his personal issues.

Throughout his life, he wrote, he has “been afraid, afraid to show whom I really was because of fear. Fear that judgement and rejec-tion would hold me back from my

dreams and aspirations. Fear that my loved ones would be farthest from me if they knew my secret. Fear that my secret would get in the way of my dreams.”

Asked to elaborate, Rogers did not respond to an e-mail request for an interview. One of Rogers’s sisters, Alicia Nunn, wrote in an electronic message that “at this moment we not ready to make a comment.” His younger brother, Timothy, said in a brief telephone interview that, “I know we are all very proud of Robbie and every-thing he has done.”

Rogers was similarly embraced throughout the soccer world. Play-ers took to social media to support him, including Eddie Pope, the for-mer U.S. defender, who wrote on Twitter that, “Brave men like you will make it so that one day there is no need for an announcement.” SAM BORDEN

Shortly after Ted Ligety be-came the first man in 45 years to win three events at ski racing’s world championships on Friday, the United States ski team coach Sasha Rearick was asked to weigh the historic significance of Ligety’s accomplishment.

“Think of all the great skiers — Hermann Maier, Kjetil Andre Aa-modt, Bode Miller — who could not do it in the last 45 years,” Rearick said in a telephone interview from Schladming, Austria. “The biggest change in the modern era of ski racing is the number of guys who specialize in one or two events. And it was those special-ists who would always get in the

way of a multi-event guy trying to win three or four events.

“But Ted found a way to get past them anyway,” Rearick said. “It speaks to his mastery of the sport. And it speaks to one other thing: Ted hates to lose.”

Ligety, 28, dominated the giant slalom, his best event. He built a 1.3-second first-run lead and held it to finish in a combined time of 2 minutes 28.92 seconds. Marcel Hirscher of Austria was 0.81 sec-onds behind in second place, and Manfred Moelgg of Italy took third, trailing Ligety by 1.75 sec-onds.

The last man to win at least three gold medals at the world ski

championships was Jean-Claude Killy, who won four golds in 1968. Ligety is the fifth man to win three events in one championship and the first non-European.

“I felt I had a chance in every event but to get three gold med-als far exceeds my expectations,” Ligety said. “I thought maybe I’d sneak in with a bronze or silver in a couple of the events. But I did ski to win every day.

“This hasn’t sunk in yet,” Ligety said. “It’s just really cool to have your name mentioned with Jean-Claude Killy’s. You dream about it as a little kid, but I don’t know if you ever really think it can hap-pen.” BILL PENNINGTON

Former Midfielder for U.S. Reveals He Is GaySerena williams returns to No. 1

An emotional Serena Williams returned to the top of women’s tennis, overcoming a series of potentially career-ending inju-ries since 2010 to become the oldest woman to hold the No. 1 ranking. The 31-year-old Wil-liams rallied from 4-1 down in the third to beat former Wimble-don champion Petra Kvitova 3-6, 6-3, 7-5 in the quarterfinals of the Qatar Open on Friday. She will replace Victoria Azarenka at No. 1. Chris Evert held the top ranking in 1985 just shy of her 31st birthday. (AP)

N.F.l. Paid Goodell $29 Million in 2011

Commissioner Roger Good-ell was paid $29.49 million by N.F.L. owners in 2011, nearly triple his compensation from the previous year. According to the league’s most recent tax return, most of Goodell’s pay comes in the form of a $22.3 mil-lion bonus. His base pay was $3.1 million. In 2011, Goodell helped the league reach a new 10-year labor deal and work out lucrative TV contracts. (AP)

Ligety Pulls Off Rare Triple at Skiing Championships

weaTHerHigh/low temperatures for the 21 hours ended at 4 p.m. yesterday, eastern time, and precipitation (in inches) for the 18 hours ended at 1 p.m. yesterday. expected conditions for today and tomorrow.

Weather conditions: C-clouds, F-fog, H-haze, I-ice, PC-partly cloudy, r-rain, S-sun, Sh-showers, Sn-snow, SS-snow showers, t-thunderstorms, tr-trace, W-windy.

U.S. CITIeS Yesterday Today Tomorrowalbuquerque 51/ 25 0 54/ 27 S 57/ 32 Satlanta 61/ 37 0 44/ 26 PC 49/ 34 Sboise 52/ 27 0 51/ 32 PC 43/ 24 Cboston 47/ 30 0 37/ 25 Sn 28/ 14 Snbuffalo 33/ 33 0.01 24/ 11 SS 19/ 13 CCharlotte 61/ 27 0 42/ 22 r 44/ 27 SChicago 30/ 23 0 24/ 13 PC 32/ 27 PCCleveland 33/ 28 0.03 28/ 18 SS 24/ 15 SSdallas-Ft. Worth 52/ 46 0 56/ 38 S 70/ 53 Sdenver 37/ 16 0 58/ 28 S 56/ 21 PCdetroit 34/ 28 0 27/ 15 SS 25/ 16 PC

Houston 68/ 39 0 60/ 34 S 68/ 54 SKansas City 36/ 19 0 40/ 27 S 57/ 37 SLos angeles 81/ 47 0 82/ 54 PC 71/ 52 PCMiami 74/ 63 0.95 77/ 43 PC 62/ 51 SMpls.-St. Paul 18/ 6 0 20/ 7 PC 30/ 22 CNew york City 53/ 37 0 38/ 21 Sn 30/ 19 WOrlando 69/ 54 0 70/ 36 PC 57/ 35 SPhiladelphia 57/ 31 0 39/ 23 Sn 32/ 18 WPhoenix 76/ 48 0 76/ 49 S 72/ 48 SSalt Lake City 40/ 25 0 38/ 25 S 39/ 17 CSan Francisco 66/ 46 0 62/ 46 PC 59/ 44 PCSeattle 56/ 41 0 48/ 36 r 48/ 34 CSt. Louis 39/ 30 0 36/ 26 PC 49/ 38 SWashington 59/ 36 tr 42/ 25 SS 37/ 23 W

FOreIGN CITIeS Yesterday Today Tomorrowacapulco 88/ 68 0 89/ 74 S 88/ 72 Sathens 54/ 45 0.10 53/ 47 r 52/ 45 PCbeijing 37/ 12 0 38/ 26 PC 46/ 25 PCberlin 34/ 28 0.02 37/ 25 C 35/ 25 Cbuenos aires 90/ 68 0 84/ 65 PC 76/ 60 rCairo 68/ 54 0 67/ 51 S 67/ 53 PC

Cape town 73/ 61 0 86/ 65 S 92/ 63 Sdublin 48/ 37 0 48/ 41 PC 46/ 37 PCGeneva 43/ 30 0.01 44/ 29 S 43/ 30 PCHong Kong 75/ 68 0 69/ 65 PC 75/ 69 PCKingston 88/ 75 0 85/ 75 S 85/ 75 ShLima 83/ 70 0 87/ 70 PC 85/ 67 CLondon 50/ 36 0 48/ 39 PC 44/ 35 PCMadrid 61/ 32 0 57/ 37 PC 54/ 37 PCMexico City 76/ 46 0 69/ 40 PC 78/ 43 SMontreal 37/ 30 0.03 22/ 6 PC 15/ 4 WMoscow 28/ 14 0.08 28/ 19 PC 23/ 13 CNassau 88/ 71 0 81/ 58 Sh 68/ 61 PCParis 48/ 36 0 45/ 29 C 41/ 32 SPrague 32/ 28 0 34/ 29 Sn 32/ 21 Crio de Janeiro 93/ 77 0 94/ 80 t 94/ 80 trome 52/ 30 0 52/ 39 S 52/ 34 SSantiago 91/ 59 0 77/ 53 S 76/ 53 PCStockholm 36/ 32 0.01 34/ 28 C 36/ 27 CSydney 77/ 66 0.04 79/ 64 PC 78/ 62 Shtokyo 45/ 43 0.16 44/ 32 W 45/ 36 PCtoronto 30/ 28 tr 24/ 8 SS 21/ 9 CVancouver 48/ 39 0 47/ 34 Sh 44/ 35 CWarsaw 36/ 30 0 35/ 16 C 21/ 13 C

In Brief

N.H.l. SCOreSFRIDAYbuffalo 4, boston 2devils 5, Philadelphia 3Pittsburgh 3, Winnipeg 1anaheim 5, detroit 2Chicago 4, San Jose 1

N.B.a. SCOreSTHURSDAY’S LATE GAMEL.a. Clippers 125, L.a. Lakers 101

SPOrTS Saturday, February 16, 2013 9

Craig Staley could barely keep up with the demand for Livestrong merchandise at Mellow Johnny’s Bike Shop in Austin, Tex., in 2008, when Lance Armstrong an-nounced that he would return to professional cycling after a brief retirement. Customers at the store, co-owned by Armstrong, stocked up on yellow bracelets, T-shirts, sunglasses, hats and water bottles bearing the name of Arm-strong’s foundation, Livestrong, which had raised millions to aid cancer research and survivors.

For customers, the merchan-dise stood for hope and victory.

“Maybe you call it the Lance ef-fect,” Staley, a general manager at Mellow Johnny’s, said.

But sales of Livestrong items at Mellow Johnny’s declined after Armstrong rode in the 2009 Tour de France. “A lot of these folks aren’t flocking here to get a con-nection to Lance like they used to be,” he said.

Armstrong has experienced an extraordinary fall from grace in recent months. The United States Anti-Doping Agency released a report saying he participated in an elaborate doping program and bullied others to cheat with him so he could succeed. After years of adamantly denying all allega-tions that he used performance-enhancing drugs, Armstrong ad-mitted last month that some of the accusations were true.

Now, in an effort to have his life-time competition ban reduced, he is talking with antidoping officials about possibly disclosing who helped him and how he covered up

his doping for nearly a decade.

With Arm- strong in-volved in one of the biggest dop-ing scandals in sports history, will consumers continue to buy licensed Livestrong items?

For the f o u n d a -tion, the question is significant.

Last year, it generated more than $48 million in revenue, much of which was received before Arm-strong was stripped in October of his seven Tour de France titles. Of that total, about a third, $16.79 mil-lion, came from the sale of licensed Livestrong products and mer-chandise. Rae Bazzarre, a Live-strong spokeswoman, said the sale of Livestrong products was down about 17 percent since 2010.

David Reibstein, a professor of marketing at the University

of Pennsylvania, said, “I think there’s no question that some peo-ple are going to be disillusioned and therefore are not interested in continuing their support.

“But people still care about fighting cancer, so I don’t think we’ll see it totally disappearing,” Reibstein said.

The bicycle maker Trek is end-ing its Livestrong brand-licensing agreement and will no longer sell bikes with the Livestrong name.

“We do have some remaining in-ventory that we currently intend to sell and give Livestrong its roy-alty per the original agreement,” a Trek spokesman, Eric Bjorling, said. Trek began its partnership with Livestrong in the 1990s and continued it as Armstrong’s ca-reer soared. “We are not currently in discussions with them about a renewal,” Bjorling said. “We sup-port many charitable organiza-tions and will evaluate future op-portunities to support Livestrong as appropriate.”

Nike, RadioShack, Giro and Oakley are among the companies that have announced they would no longer sponsor Armstrong. However, they said they would sell Livestrong merchandise.

Ultimately, customers will de-termine the fate of Livestrong gear. “It will be interesting for us to see what happens,” Staley said.

MARY PILON and ANDREW W. LEHREN

Scandal Leaves Its Mark on Livestrong Brand

Tattoos as Reminder of Personal Connections, Not Tarnished Brand

Packers release Defensive Back

The Green Bay Packers re-leased the veteran defensive back Charles Woodson. General Manager Ted Thompson said that the team would not have won the 2010 Super Bowl with-out Woodson and that he was a “once-in-a-generation talent” who was an ambassador for the organization off the field. Wood-son, 36, had two years left on a five-year contract that was worth as much as $55 million. He is the only player in N.F.L. history with touchdowns off in-terceptions in six straight sea-sons, a feat he pulled off each year from 2006 to 2011. (AP)

jacobson Shares lead in los angeles

Fredrik Jacobson birdied the two toughest holes at Rivi-era on his way to a six-under-par 65 and a share of the lead with Sang-Moon Bae going into the weekend at the Northern Trust Open in Los Angeles. Bae played in the morning and be-gan the day with four straight birdies. He wound up making birdies on half of his holes in his round of 65. Still very much in the picture was Luke Donald, who chipped in twice for birdie and had a 66. (AP)

As Jax Mariash went under the tattoo needle to have “Lives-trong” emblazoned on her wrist in bold black letters, she did not think about Lance Armstrong or doping allegations, but rather the 10 people affected by cancer she wanted to commemorate in ink. It was Jan. 22, 2010, a year since the disease had taken the life of her stepfather. After years of wearing yellow Livestrong wristbands, she wanted something permanent.

A lifelong runner, Mariash got the tattoo to mark her 10-10-10 goal to run the Chicago Marathon on Oct. 10, 2010, and fund-raising efforts for Livestrong. Then, less than three years later, officials laid out their case against Armstrong — an account of his years-long practice of doping and bullying. He did not contest the charges and was barred for life from compet-ing in Olympic sports.

“It’s heartbreaking,” Mariash of Wilson, Wyo., said of the anti-doping officials’ report and Arm-strong’s confession to Oprah Win-frey. “When I look at the tattoo now, I just think of living strong and it’s more connected to the cancer fight and optimal health than Lance.”

Now the tattoos are a compli-cated symbol of an epic crusade against cancer and a cyclist who stood defiant in the face of accu-sations for years but ultimately admitted to lying. The Internet abounds with epidermal remind-ers of the power of the Armstrong and Livestrong brands: the iconic yellow bracelet wrapped around a wrist; block letters stretching along a rib cage; a heart on a foot bearing the word Livestrong; a mural on a back depicting Armstrong with the years of his Tour de France victories and the phrase, ride with pride.

For Eddie Bonds, co-owner of Rabbit Bicycle in Hill City, S.D., getting a Livestrong tattoo was a reflection of the growth of the sport of cycling. His wife, Joey, operates a tattoo parlor in front of their store and in 2006 she de-signed a yellow Livestrong band

that wraps around his right calf, topped off with a series of small cyclists. “He kept breaking the Livestrong bands,” Joey Bonds said. “So it made more sense to tattoo it on him.”

“It’s about the cancer, not Lance,” Eddie Bonds said.

As for Mariash, she said she donated all of her Livestrong shirts, shorts and running gear and watched Armstrong’s con-fession to Winfrey and wondered whether his apology was an effort to reduce his lifetime ban from the sport or a genuine appeal to those who showed their support to him and now wear a visible sign of it.

Mariash said she did not plan to remove her tattoo, either. “Can-cer isn’t something that just goes away from people. I wanted to show this is permanent and keep people remembering the fight.”

MARY PILON

Joel saget/aFP/ getty iMages

the sale of licensed items raised millions for lance armstrong’s foundation.

In Brief

david swiFt For tHe new york tiMes

Jax Mariash, a runner, said her tattoo was about more than lance armstrong.

SPOrTS Saturday, February 16, 2013 10