Citing Affair, Petraeus Resigns as C.I.A. Director

WASHINGTON — David H. Petraeus, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency and one of America’s most decorated four-star generals, resigned on Friday after an F.B.I. investigation uncovered evidence that he had been involved in an extramarital affair.

Mr. Petraeus issued a statement acknowledging the affair after President Obama accepted his resignation and it was announced by the C.I.A. The disclosure ended a triumphant re-election week for the president with an unfolding scandal.

Government officials said that the F.B.I. began an investigation into a “potential criminal matter” several months ago that was not focused on Mr. Petraeus. In the course of their inquiry into whether a computer used by Mr. Petraeus had been compromised, agents discovered evidence of the relationship as well as other security concerns. About two weeks ago, F.B.I. agents met with Mr. Petraeus to discuss the investigation.

Administration and Congressional officials identified the woman as Paula Broadwell, the co-author of a biography of Mr. Petraeus. Her book, “All In: The Education of General David Petraeus,” was published this year. Ms. Broadwell could not be reached for comment.

Ms. Broadwell, a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, spent 15 years in the military, according to a biography that had appeared on her Web site. She spent extended periods of time with Mr. Petraeus in Afghanistan, interviewing him for her book, which grew out of a two-year research project for her doctoral dissertation and which she promoted on a high-profile tour that included an appearance on “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart.”

Married with two children, she has described Mr. Petraeus as her mentor.

Senior members of Congress were alerted to Mr. Petraeus’s impending resignation by intelligence officials about six hours before the C.I.A. announced it. One Congressional official who was briefed on the matter said that Mr. Petraeus had been encouraged “to get out in front of the issue” and resign, and that he agreed.

As for how the affair came to light, the Congressional official said that “it was portrayed to us that the F.B.I. was investigating something else and came upon him. My impression is that the F.B.I. stumbled across this.”

The Federal Bureau of Investigation did not inform the Senate and House Intelligence Committees about the inquiry until this week, according to Congressional officials, who noted that by law the panels — and especially their chairmen and ranking members — are supposed to be told about significant developments in the intelligence arena. The Senate committee plans to pursue the question of why it was not told, one official said.

The revelation of a secret inquiry into the head of the nation’s premier spy agency raised urgent questions about Mr. Petraeus’s 14-month tenure at the C.I.A. and the decision by Mr. Obama to elevate him to head the agency after leading the country’s war effort in Afghanistan. White House officials said they did not know about the affair until this week, when Mr. Petraeus informed them.

“After being married for over 37 years, I showed extremely poor judgment by engaging in an extramarital affair,” Mr. Petraeus said in his statement, expressing regret for his abrupt departure. “Such behavior is unacceptable, both as a husband and as the leader of an organization such as ours. This afternoon, the president graciously accepted my resignation.”

Mr. Petraeus’s admission and resignation represent a remarkable fall from grace for one of the most prominent figures in America’s modern military and intelligence community, a commander who helped lead the nation’s wartime activities in the decade after the Sept. 11 attacks and was credited with turning around the failing war effort in Iraq.

Mr. Petraeus almost single-handedly forced a profound evolution in the country’s military thinking and doctrine with his philosophy of counterinsurgency, focused more on protecting the civilian population than on killing enemies. More than most of his flag officer peers, he understood how to navigate Washington politics and news media, helping him rise through the ranks and obtain resources he needed, although fellow Army leaders often resented what they saw as a grasping careerism.

 Reporting was contributed by Peter Baker, Helene Cooper, Michael S. Schmidt, Eric Schmitt and Scott Shane.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 9, 2012

An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that David H. Petraeus was expected to remain in President Obama’s cabinet. The C.I.A. director is not a cabinet member in the Obama administration.

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Bits Blog: On Twitter, Steve Jobs Is Immortal

Steve Jobs is gone, but on Twitter his @name lives on. And on.

The chief executive of Apple, who died in 2011, is memorialized on Twitter by about a thousand fans, parodists, traffic seekers, unrepentant haters and crypto-historians, among others. The accounts use his name as either as a title or, with many variations, as an address.

The copycats include @FakeSteveJobs, @FauxSteve and @SteveJobsFalso, a collection of admitted imposters who are following in the footsteps of a parody Web site that was active from 2006 to 2011. Other versions include @RememberSteve, @PulseonJobs and @RealSteveJobs. There are a couple of @BlackSteveJobs, plus Twitter accounts by various articles of clothing and body parts.

Several of the accounts are operated by start-ups hoping to generate attention for themselves. Their tweets contain links to corporate Web pages. Some of the accounts are in languages like Arabic, Thai or Japanese. Many others use Mr. Jobs’s name for the account but have a different address.

Searching the name “Steve Jobs” on Twitter yields about 1,080 accounts, some of which are unrelated to the Apple co-founder; there are people on Twitter who are really named Steve Jobs.

Twitter does not keep score of how many of its 140 million accounts are fakes, but it generally supports the idea of parody accounts. “It’s very helpful for political dissidents, who can’t write under their own name,” said Rachael Horwitz, a company spokeswoman. She also noted that Dick Costolo, Twitter’s chief executive, has a parody account. Jack Dorsey, the chairman of the company’s board, is likewise roasted.

Possibly for his close identification with technology, Mr. Jobs does appear to be the most popular identity on Twitter to leverage. President Obama has about 600 versions of his name, either through the “@” address, or in the name of the account. Given much of the venom of the recent election, several of these accounts are remarkably ugly, certainly worse than the treatment afforded Mr. Jobs. Michelle Obama, who like the president has an official and verified Twitter account, has about 500 copycats.

Bill Gates, Mr. Jobs’s longtime nemesis and eventual frenemey, does better than the president and first lady, with about 840 imitators and parodists. There is also a Klingon version of him, which to date Mr. Jobs’s name does not appear to share. There also appear to be a lot more people on Twitter who are simply named “Bill Gates,” a characteristic that must fill their lives with a lot of predictable humor.

Justin Beiber gets a mere 240 people hoping for a bit of his lustre. John Lennon, Mr. Jobs’ idol, has fewer than 100.

Twitter will take down parody accounts, but usually when it is not clear that they are parodies. That is not a problem in the case of most public figures. “It’s a form of speech,” Ms. Horwitz said. On the Internet, everyone needs a thicker skin. The situation does come up enough that the company has published formal policies on acceptable parody and fan accounts , along with impersonation.

There are parody accounts for Oracle’s chief executive, Larry Ellison; for Larry Page, the chief executive and co-founder of Google; and for Mark Zuckerberg, the chief of Facebook. With so many parody accounts around, some technology chief executives may worry if they are not being parodied.

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FEMA Chief Tours Damaged NYU Langone Medical Center

The federal government’s emergency management chief trudged through darkened subterranean hallways covered with silt and muddy water Friday, as he toured one of New York City’s top academic medical centers in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. The basement of the complex, NYU Langone Medical Center in Manhattan, smelled like the hold of a ship — a mixture of diesel oil and water.

“You’re going to deal with the FUD — fear, uncertainty and doubt,” W. Craig Fugate, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, told NYU Langone officials afterward, as they retreated to a conference room to catalog the losses. “Don’t look at this. Think about what’s next.”

NYU Langone, with its combination of clinical, research and academic facilities, may have been the New York City hospital that was most devastated by Hurricane Sandy. What’s next is a spectacularly expensive cleanup.

Dr. Robert I. Grossman, dean and chief executive of NYU Langone, looking pale and weary — as if he were, indeed, struggling to hold back the FUD — estimated that the storm could cost the hospital $700 million to $1 billion. His estimate included cleanup, rebuilding, lost revenue, interrupted research projects and the cost of paying employees not to work.

As the hurricane raged, the East River filled the basement of the medical center, at 32nd Street and First Avenue, knocked out emergency power and necessitated the evacuation of more than 300 patients over 13 hours in raging wind, rain and darkness. It disrupted medical school classes and shut down high-level research projects operating with federal grants.

Mr. Fugate arrived to inspect the damage and help plot the institution’s recovery, the advance guard of what aides said would be a hospital task force. He was brought in by Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, who kept saying that there was nothing like seeing the damage firsthand to understand how profound it really was.

“What was that movie — ‘Contagion?’ ” Mr. Schumer said, marveling at the hellish scene.

NYU Langone’s patients, a major source of revenue, have been scattered to other hospitals, creating a risk that they may never return. Dr. Grossman said he was counting on those patients’ loyalty.

John Sexton, president of New York University, which includes NYU Langone, and who also met with Mr. Fugate, raised fears that researchers might be lured away to other institutions because their grants were ticking away on deadline or because they must publish or perish. Outside the hospital, tanks of liquid nitrogen testified to the efforts to keep research materials from spoiling.

In inky blackness, the group stood at the brink of the animal section of the Smilow Research Center, where rodents for experiments had been kept, but they did not go inside. On Nov. 3, a memo sent to NYU Langone researchers said the animal section, or vivarium, was “completely unrecoverable.”

Dr. Grossman said that scientists had managed to save some rodents by raising their cages to higher ground.

A modernized lecture hall with raked seats used by medical students had been filled “like a bathtub,” he said, though it was dry on Friday. The library, he said, “is basically gone.”

Four magnetic resonance scanners, a linear accelerator and gamma knife surgery equipment, kept in the basement, were now worthless. Dr. Grossman said that in the future, he wanted to move such equipment, which is very heavy, to higher floors.

Electronic medical records were protected by a server in New Jersey, he said.

Richard Cohen, vice president for facilities operations, took the group past piles of sandbags and a welded steel door that had been blown out by the force of the flood. “That door was put in around 1959 to 1960, when doors were really doors,” Mr. Cohen said. “And this thing is completely torsionally twisted. I’ve never seen anything like that.”

Walking to the back of the hospital, Mr. Cohen used a loading dock as a measuring stick to estimate that the surge had risen to 14 ½ feet. “We were prepared for 12 feet, no problem,” Dr. Grossman said.

Dr. Grossman said it would take a couple of more weeks of assessing the damage to determine when the hospital could reopen. Outpatient business is already returning. Research and some inpatient services will come next.

Mr. Fugate said his agency would help cover the uninsured losses, and urged NYU Langone officials to move ahead.

At this point, Dr. Grossman said, he could only theorize as to why the generators had shut down. All but one generator is on a high floor, but the fuel tanks are in the basement. The flood, he said, was registered by the liquid sensors on the tanks, which then did what they were supposed to do in the event, for instance, of an oil leak. They shut down the fuel to the generators.

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A Transfer of Power Begins in China

Military delegates arrived for the 18th Communist Party Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Thursday. The weeklong meeting precedes the naming of China’s top leader, who will replace Hu Jintao. The meeting also introduces a new generation of party leaders.

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Groupon Earnings Miss Expectations on Weakness in Europe

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) — Groupon reported financial results late Thursday that fell short of Wall Street’s already cautious expectations, as the daily-deal company failed to turn around its struggling European business.

Groupon also confirmed that it had laid off about 80 employees, mainly in sales, as part of an effort to automate the way it handles its deals.

The company’s shares fell as low as $3.21 in after-hours trading, down as much as 18 percent from their closing price of $3.92. Groupon was the darling of investors during last year’s consumer dot-com boom in initial public offerings, but now it has shed more than 80 percent of its value since making its public debut at $20 a share.

Wall Street has grown uneasy about Groupon’s prospects as daily-deals fever wanes among consumers and merchants, and as growth rates sputter. Adding to the difficulties, the S.E.C. has been looking into Groupon’s accounting and disclosures, an area of controversy during its initial public offering.

Groupon reported third-quarter revenue of $568.6 million, compared with $430.2 million a year earlier. Analysts had expected revenue of $590 million, according to Thomson Reuters.

The company posted a quarterly net loss of $3 million, or break-even on a per-share basis, compared with a net loss of $54.2 million, or 18 cents a share, in the third quarter of 2011.

Andrew Mason, chief executive of Groupon, said a “solid performance” in North America was offset by weakness in Europe. International revenue, including Europe, grew 3 percent to $277 million; North American revenue surged 80 percent to $292 million.

Europe has been a particular problem for Groupon, partly because the sovereign debt crisis there has hurt demand for higher-price deals. Groupon was also offering steeper discounts, disappointing some merchants.

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Advertising: Help Remedies Tries to Cure Ailments in Small Doses

DISAPPOINTED voters, runners with blisters and headache sufferers alike are getting some unexpected relief from a pop-up pharmacy that opened this week in the nation’s capital.

The “help shop,” which offers low-dose drugs for everyday woes, is the idea of Help Remedies, a start-up company that sells minimalist white packets directed at single medical issues like nausea, headache or insomnia.

The company, the collaboration of two marketers, is creating quirky scenes including a high-heel wearing model walking on a treadmill to market its “Help, I have a blister” packet of bandages, or a performer sleeping in a store window to drum up interest for its “Help, I can’t sleep” caplets.

This week, shoppers and passers-by attracted by the napper, for example, could go inside the temporary pharmacy to investigate its 10 over-the-counter remedies for conditions like body aches and allergies.

The store’s team fanned out to polling stations on Tuesday to hand out its headache packets, and then on Wednesday to the nearby Republican National Committee to share nausea relief. Their marketing may be seen as fun and zany, but the company founders, Richard Fine and Nathan Frank, say they have a serious message.

“We want people to see that there are simple solutions,” said Mr. Fine, who said his straightforward approach was influenced by his parents, who are medical professors specializing in epidemiology.

“Most people shop by brand or product, and it’s difficult to know what you should be buying and taking,” he said. “It is a confusing space for people who are not experts.”

Mr. Fine and Mr. Frank, who met while working in branding and advertising, decided to try to streamline what they see as an antiquated and cluttered pharmaceutical market.

“We wanted to take what’s basic and works, and make it human,” Mr. Fine said. Their strategy of providing single ingredients in low dosages is aimed at basic medical conditions that do not require hospitalization.

After starting the company in 2008, they consulted pharmaceutical sources to zero in on the drugs and dosages to use. Their “Help, I have a headache” formulation, for example, contains 325 milligrams of acetaminophen per caplet.

“That is less than the amount in an extra strength caplet,” said Mr. Fine. “If you need more, you can take more. But this is what pharmacists recommend.”

By that summer, Help Remedies was distributing its packets in some high-end hotel chains and business conferences. In 2009, the two men quit their jobs and started the company Web site, helpineedhelp.com, which includes a link to drug facts for each product.

To carve a niche in the crowded pharmaceutical market, Mr. Frank, who handles the company’s creative efforts, said he focused on offbeat marketing, including tactile packaging and performance windows, and viral videos that mixed up the serious, the absurd and even the goofy.

For the packaging, Mr. Frank settled on a flat, white, textured box that opens like a tin. Taking a page from product designers like Apple, he settled on a simple font called century schoolbook, in various colors.

The graphic work was originally done by ChappsMalina and Little Fury, design firms in New York, and was since updated by another firm, Pearlfisher.

Help Remedies, a privately held company, did not disclose its advertising spending, which was $400 in 2010 and $12,500 last year, according to figures from Kantar Media, a WPP unit.

With a small budget, the company has focused on spinning out lighthearted solutions to situations — like countering boredom by focusing on a bouncing ball or hangovers by staring at a rag — on its Web site, videos, bus shelters and other advertising and in the store windows of Ricky’s, a New York beauty supply company.

Help Remedies set up “living windows” like “Help, I’ve never been kissed,” with models on hand to give hugs and kisses in Ricky’s storefronts. There were also serious problems like “Help, I want to save a life,” that provided registration kits from the bone marrow donor center DKMS.

To expand, the company is adapting the living window approach to its first pop-up pharmacy, in Washington, which was delayed by Hurricane Sandy and got under way as the election results were unfolding.

In addition to giving “Help, I have a headache” packets to anyone who asked, the store manager, Melinda Welch, and her staff distributed 2,000 packets — for blisters and for body aches — to participants in the annual High Heel Race.

The company’s products are found in major pharmacy outlets like Duane Reade and CVS, as well as Target and Walgreens. Last year, the company reached $4 million in sales and is set to expand after Washington to San Francisco; Seattle; Portland, Ore.; Austin, Tex.; Chicago; and Miami.

As part of its expansion, the Washington store plans to hold a “Help, I am Insecure” event on Saturday with a life coach to provide support and advice, and a manicurist for those insecure about their nails, Ms. Welch said.

Other events at later dates include “Help, I am Lonely,” with an online dating site consultation, and “Help, I’m in an Argument with my Spouse,” with a relationship judge to settle differences.

William G. Daddi, the president of Daddi Brand Communications, said Help Remedies’s distinct packaging was well suited to compete in the crowded health and beauty market.

But he warned that tying so many products to whimsical marketing carried risks because “there will be consumer confusion and the remedies will be seen as novelty products.”

“To build a true brand, the consumer needs to see that the product is effective,” Mr. Daddi said. “There needs to be a link to tangible outcomes so people see that the product works.”

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States Rush to Meet Tight Health Care Deadlines

Jim Lo Scalzo/European Pressphoto Agency

Supporters of President Obama’s Affordable Care Act celebrated at the Supreme Court in June after the justices upheld the law.

After nearly three years of legal and political threats that kept President Obama’s health care law in a constant state of uncertainty, his re-election on Tuesday all but guarantees that the historic legislation will survive.

Now comes another big hurdle: making it work.

The election came just 10 days before a critical deadline for states in carrying out the law, and many that were waiting for the outcome must now hustle to comply. Such efforts will coincide with epic negotiations between Mr. Obama and Congress over federal spending and taxes, where the administration will inevitably face pressure to scale back some of the costliest provisions of the law.

Mr. Obama faces crucial choices about strategy that could determine the success of the health care overhaul: Will the administration, for example, try to address the concerns of insurers, employers and some consumer groups who worry that the law’s requirements could increase premiums? Or will it insist on the stringent standards favored by liberal policy advocates inside and outside the government?

But for now — with Democrats retaining control of the Senate and Mitt Romney’s vow to “repeal and replace” the law no longer a threat — supporters are exulting.

“For our district and for our country, the debate on Obamacare is over,” declared Bill Foster, a Democrat elected Tuesday to the House from a suburban Chicago district.

Many supporters feel one of Mr. Obama’s most important tasks will be to step up efforts to promote and explain the law to a public that remains sharply divided and confused about it. In exit polls on Tuesday, nearly half of voters said the law should be either partly or fully repealed.

“There is still a tremendous amount of disinformation out there,” said Jeff Goldsmith, a health industry analyst based in Virginia. “If you actually are going to implement this law, people need to know what’s in it — not just the puppies-and-ice-cream parts, but ‘Here are the broader social changes intended and how they can help you.’ ”

Already, advocacy groups eager for the law to succeed have shifted into a higher gear. One such group, Families USA, held a conference call on Thursday with about 300 advocates around the country to strategize about next steps, said Ronald F. Pollack, the group’s executive director. Enroll America, a sister organization, will hold focus groups next week in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas to collect ideas for a public education campaign.

Much depends on the states as they decide in the coming weeks and months whether to build online marketplaces known as insurance exchanges, where individuals and small businesses can shop for health plans, and whether to expand their Medicaid programs to reach many more low-income people.

The clock is ticking on the exchange question in particular: states have until next Friday to decide whether they will build their own exchange or let the federal government run one for them. Some states have asked the administration for more time.

So far, only about 15 states and the District of Columbia have created the framework for exchanges through legislation or executive orders; three others have committed to running exchanges in partnership with the federal government. A number of Republican governors, including those in Arizona, Idaho, New Jersey, Virginia and Tennessee, had said they would decide after the election, giving themselves only a 10-day window before the deadline.

“I would expect that starting today there are a significant number of fascinating conversations going on behind closed doors in state capitols all over America,” said John McDonough, a professor of public health at Harvard who helped draft the law.

With deficit-reduction talks beginning in Washington next week, some observers believe that the law’s most expensive provisions — like federal subsidies to help families with incomes up to 400 percent of the poverty level pay their insurance premiums — could be scaled back in the name of deficit reduction.

“We know folks on the Hill are talking about this already,” said David Smith, an analyst at Leavitt Partners, a consulting firm that advises states on the law. “There are a lot of competing factors, but they have to find the savings and we believe health care will be one of the places where they will go.”

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Debt Ceiling Complicates a Tax Shift

WASHINGTON — Come January, should Congress fail to act, the United States will face more than immense tax increases and spending cuts. It will also run out of room to finance its large running deficits.

The Treasury Department expects the country to hit its debt ceiling, a legal limit on the amount the government is allowed to borrow, close to the end of the year. That would give Congress only a matter of weeks to raise the ceiling, now about $16.4 trillion, before sending financial markets into a panic.

Congressional leaders have made clear that the debt ceiling will be part of the intense negotiations over the so-called fiscal cliff, with many members unwilling to raise the ceiling without a broader deal. That has raised financial analysts’ worries of a financial market panic over the ceiling in addition to the slow bleed of the tax increases and spending cuts.

Congressional action is required to raise the debt limit. The Treasury can jostle payments for a few months. But expenses will eventually overwhelm revenue, putting the administration in the position of choosing which bills to pay. It might stop paying soldiers, for instance, or sending Social Security payments.

In 2011, Congressional Republicans would not raise the debt ceiling without a broader agreement to cut the country’s deficit and set it on a better fiscal path. The impasse over finding spending cuts and tax increases to do that led to the creation of the spending cuts on Jan. 1, the same time the Bush-era tax cuts were set to expire.

The threat that the country might not pay all its bills caused a slump in financial markets and led in August 2011 to the first downgrade of the nation’s credit rating. It left broader economic scars, too. Many economists contend it hurt economic growth and jobs.

A July report by the Government Accountability Office found that the delay in raising the debt limit increased the country’s borrowing costs by about $1.3 billion in the 2011 fiscal year. “However, this does not account for the multiyear effects on increased costs for Treasury securities that will remain outstanding after fiscal year 2011,” the report noted, adding that the debt-limit fight diverted Treasury’s time and resources from other priorities.

This year, Congress will have time to negotiate a broader debt deal before needing to raise the ceiling, even if negotiations spill into January. But the ceiling will be a card in the complex political game that the White House, Senate Democrats and Congressional Republicans are playing.

Much as Democrats see President Obama’s veto threat over an extension of the Bush-era tax cuts for the highest earners as leverage over Republicans, some Republicans see the need to raise the debt ceiling as leverage over the White House, Republican aides said.

Even if the stakes do not get that high, both parties view lifting the debt ceiling as part of the fiscal-cliff negotiations, and they do not expect Congress to raise it outside of a broader deal.

“Resolving the issues surrounding the fiscal cliff, especially the replacement of the sequester, and the next debt limit increase (likely necessary in February) will require that the president get serious about real entitlement reform,” Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House majority leader, said in a letter to conservatives this week, as printed on The Hill Web site.

That has Democrats warning Republicans not to risk the country’s credit rating and broader financial stability again.

“They tried it before: ‘We’re going to shut down the government. We’re not going to raise the debt limit,’ ” Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, told reporters this week. “They want to go through that again? Fine, but we’re not going to be held subject to something that was done as a matter of fact in all previous administrations.”

Economists have warned that the political posturing over the debt ceiling has enormously dangerous economic consequences — even more so than last year, given the threat of huge tax increases and spending cuts hitting households at the same time.

On Wall Street, analysts have tended to use terms like “apocalypse” and “global catastrophe” to describe what might happen should Congress not lift the ceiling.

This week, Fitch, the credit rating agency, threatened a downgrade to the nation’s credit rating if Congress cannot find a timely resolution.

“Failure to reach even a temporary arrangement to prevent the full range of tax increases and spending cuts implied by the fiscal cliff and a repeat of the August 2011 debt ceiling episode would mean that the general election had not resolved the political gridlock in Washington and likely result in a sovereign rating downgrade by Fitch,” analysts at the agency said in a statement on Wednesday.

HSBC analysts this week warned clients of “echoes of 2011” in the uncertainty and market volatility the ceiling might cause.

And economists at the International Monetary Fund cautioned that the unstable situation in the United States might have international ripple effects.

“For now, a lack of political agreement keeps uncertainty about the fiscal road map unresolved,” the fund said in a global risk assessment. “Although bond yields remain low, when contentious political decisions — such as raising the debt ceiling — have come due in the past, uncertainty about the outcome led to unfavorable market reactions.”

But other analysts said they would be surprised if the debate over the ceiling became the debacle it did last year. Many Congressional aides said neither side had any interest in causing market panic for political gain.

“Markets are now starting to become the disciplinarians,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at Mesirow Financial in Chicago. “C.E.O.’s are finally stepping up to the plate and saying, ‘Excuse me, we can’t do this.’ And that puts political donations and jobs on the line.”

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China Prepares for Party Congress and Leadership Transition

Diego Azubel/European Pressphoto Agency

Soldiers marched past the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Wednesday, on the eve of the 18th Communist Party Congress.

BEIJING — China’s Communist Party leader, Hu Jintao, defended his decade in power on Thursday and warned that the country faced stark challenges at home and abroad. He spoke at the start of a congress that will culminate in his retirement and the appointment of a new generation of leaders after a transition marked by scandal and anxiety about the party’s future.

Mr. Hu told the ranks of party-picked delegates assembled in the Great Hall of the People that China faced a period of major change and “complicated domestic and international circumstances.” Seated near him was his presumed successor, Xi Jinping, who is all but certain to take over as party chief after the congress ends next week and to take the reins as president in March.

Mr. Xi has privately signaled that he is aware of increasingly urgent calls from economists, intellectuals and some party insiders for a new round of market liberalization and even measured political relaxation to cure what they see as a deepening economic and social malaise. Mr. Hu acknowledged the problems facing the party, including corruption, but avoided specific mention of the scandals that have blighted his final year in power.

“Currently, the conditions of the world, the country and the party are continuing to undergo profound changes,” he said, reading from excerpts from his report to the party congress, which convenes every five years.

“We are confronting unprecedented development opportunities and challenges,” he said, adding, “The gap between rich and poor is growing.”

While acknowledging that China’s wealth remains unbalanced among regions and unequally distributed, Mr. Hu told the congress that his decade as top leader had brought robust economic growth and the makings of a “moderately prosperous society.”

“Over the past five years, there have been major achievements in every aspect of work,” he said. “Reform and opening up have gained major advances, and the people’s standard of living has clearly risen.”

Mr. Hu’s congress report is a major part of the public ceremony that accompanies China’s leadership transitions. But the real decisions about who will succeed him and his cohorts have been made in secretive negotiations involving senior officials and party elders.

In a show of unity, Mr. Hu earlier entered the assembly hall accompanied by the dominant party elder, former President Jiang Zemin, who shuffled gingerly to his seat. But party insiders have said Mr. Jiang, 86, played a major role in shaping the next leadership circle and voiced frustration with the record of Mr. Hu and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao.

Contrary to some observers’ predictions, Mr. Hu did not play down the founder of the People’s Republic of China, Mao Zedong, whose revolutionary heritage sits increasingly awkwardly with urban middle-class wealth and values. Mr. Hu also repeatedly mentioned the phrases “scientific development” and a “harmonious society,” which he has used to sum up his goals of a stable society under firm party control.

Officially, the new leadership team is to be selected in the coming week by the 2,268 delegates to this congress, the 18th in the party’s 91-year history. In fact, much of what will go on during the congress has already been decided. The delegates are voted on by lower-ranking members but based on guidance provided by higher-ups, a process known as “democratic centralism.”

Mr. Hu repeated vows of “political system reform” in his report to the congress. But officials have made clear that the party’s notions of political change do not embrace any idea of full-fledged electoral democracy.

On the contrary, at a news conference on Wednesday, the congress’s spokesman and deputy head of Communist Party propaganda, Cai Mingzhao, defended China’s current system.

“The leading position of the Communist Party in China is a decision made by history and by the people,” Mr. Cai said.

Still uncertain is who will be standing next to Mr. Xi when the top leadership is presented in a week. This group, known as the Politburo’s Standing Committee, essentially runs China. According to plan, it will include Mr. Xi and Li Keqiang, who is expected to take over as head of the government bureaucracy next year. Both men are current members of the Standing Committee.

It is also unclear how many members the committee will have. It now has nine posts and is expected to be cut to seven.

Nor has Mr. Hu indicated when he will give up his post as chairman of the Central Military Commission, which gives him continued influence over Mr. Xi’s policies and personnel choices.

In his report, Mr. Hu lauded China’s growing military strength, promising to continue modernizing the People’s Liberation Army forces, and calling them a defender of peace, a point sure to be questioned by regional neighbors, including Japan, that are embroiled in territorial disputes with Beijing.

Mr. Cai, the spokesman, also said the party had learned from the scandals surrounding two high-ranking officials: Bo Xilai, the former Politburo member, and Liu Zhijun, the former railway minister. Both have been accused of corruption, and Mr. Bo is also accused of covering up the murder of a British businessman. Mr. Hu did not refer explicitly to Mr. Bo in his report, but said corrupt officials should be punished “no matter how high or low in rank.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 7, 2012

An earlier version of this article gave an incorrect number for the delegates to China’s 18th Communist Party Congress. There are 2,268 delegates, not 2,280.

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After Many Slip-Ups, Mideast E-Commerce Gains Its Footing

DUBAI — Back in 2005, Souq.com was a new Web site modeled after eBay in the United States, catering to the nascent online retailing market in the Middle East. In the last week of October 2012, the fast-growing site received $45 million in funding from international investors, creating a new benchmark for the region’s evolving e-commerce scene.

“When we launched at the end of 2005, e-commerce was still in its infancy, and getting started that early gave us time to find a business model that works today,” said Ronaldo Meshawar, chief executive of Souq, which is based in Dubai. “It also helped us be an enabler in the region for businesses to sell their products online.”

The $45 million deal bolsters an industry that is still relatively young and fragmented, extremely capital intensive, and facing logistical hurdles that have led many sites to shut down.

The large size of the funding shows that money, particularly from foreign investors, is available for the right kind of business. That means one that appeals to consumers and has the potential to grow.

There have been a lot of mixed messages for the regional e-commerce community over the last year. The sudden exit of LivingSocial, the global daily deals site, from the Middle East in August seemed put a nail in the coffin of the regional online retailing market.

The demise of other promising, local sites, including Joob, Nahel, Mizado and Jamalon, in the months preceding the abrupt closure of LivingSocial’s regional operations suggested that e-commerce business models in the Gulf were not working.

But success stories are now starting to emerge from a handful of e-commerce sites that are figuring out how to run an online business in the area.

Namshi.com, a copycat of Zappos.com, which sells shoes online, has shown strong growth in its first year of operation. The site grew from three to 100 employees since it began in October 2011, and now manages 600 orders a day, according to Namshi’s founders.

Backed by e-commerce veterans, including Rocket Internet in Germany, Namshi also received $20 million in funding from J.P. Morgan and Blakeney Management in September to further grow the business.

“There are challenges around delivery of product, setting up efficient distribution centers and making the right decisions about styles to keep in our inventory base,” said Muhammed Mekki, one of Namshi’s three co-founders.

“The initial funding was there to test and see if fashion e-commerce can work in the Mideast,” he said. “Now that we’ve proven the model works, we’ll focus on expanding.”

MarkaVIP, a Jordanian site that provides discounts on luxury items, has also caught the eye of international investors, attracting $10 million in capital from European and American investment firms in April.

Souq is the latest and biggest in a string of new sites. The firm received funding from the South African group Naspers and Tiger Global, a New York hedge fund.

The firm’s parent company, Jabbar Internet Group, still holds a majority stake. Jabbar Internet manages the spin-off brands that were not purchased by Yahoo when Maktoob, a news site, was sold to Yahoo in 2009 for $175 million.

When Souq started up in 2005, the team brought eBay’s auction model to the region, in Arabic. They soon faced a slew of problems that smaller sites had been unable to resolve in the early years.

For one thing, transporting goods ordered on the Web across the Gulf countries was not easy because currencies and legal structures varied from place to place. Often, there was the added necessity of opening new bank accounts or finding a local partner to share the business. This also made it more difficult to manage inventory.

Online payment was also a hurdle. Many customers preferred to pay with cash on delivery rather than entering credit card details online. Cash on delivery put a strain on the company’s resources as it had to ship goods first and collect, or not, the money later.

Online payments are now becoming more widely accepted and some of the shipping issues have been resolved. As part of those efforts, Namshi joined with Aramex, a global shipping firm based in Amman. The arrangement lets Namshi use Aramex’s network of warehouses to store its inventory and ship orders in 24 hours.

To simplify things, Souq scrapped the eBay-style auction model in 2010 and instead adopted fixed prices. “You can’t take a model and just apply it to the region,” Mr. Meshawar said. “The copycat model doesn’t work, we had to execute on the ground and adapt.”

Now, Souq has 8 million to 9.5 million unique visits each month and a client base of 3.5 million customers across the Gulf, according to Mr. Meshawar. The site ships thousands of items a day.

The new funding will go toward setting up new distribution centers, expanding geographically and streamlining operations. Plans are in place to open logistics centers in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, where the site already has a strong following.

The money will also help Souq expand into new categories, including fashion and lifestyle, following the site’s recent acquisition of the fashion site Sukar.com and the sports site run2sport.com.

This is the third round of financing for Souq, which has 200 employees and 50,000 sellers in its online marketplace.

“The failure of some sites just shows that the get-rich-quick, poorly managed sites won’t make it, and it’s a learning curve for entrepreneurs trying to enter the region’s market,” said Alexandra Toomey, an independent e-commerce analyst in Dubai. “Established e-commerce companies with a proven product can succeed if they adapt to the market correctly and have the right backing.”

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Recipes for Health: Cabbage, Onion and Millet Kugel — Recipes for Health

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

Light, nutty millet combines beautifully with the sweet, tender cabbage and onions in this kugel. I wouldn’t hesitate to serve this as a main dish.

 

1/2 medium head cabbage (1 1/2 pounds), cored and cut in thin strips

Salt to taste

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 medium onion, finely chopped

1/4 cup chopped fresh dill

Freshly ground pepper

1 cup low-fat cottage cheese

2 eggs

2 cups cooked millet

 

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Oil a 2-quart baking dish. Toss the cabbage with salt to taste and let it sit for 10 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, heat 1 tablespoon of the oil over medium heat in a large, heavy skillet and add the onion. Cook, stirring, until it begins to soften, about 3 minutes, then add a generous pinch of salt and turn the heat to medium-low. Cook, stirring often, until the onion is soft and beginning to color, about 10 minutes. Add the cabbage, turn the heat to medium, and cook, stirring often, until the cabbage is quite tender and fragrant, 10 to 15 minutes. Stir in the dill, taste and adjust salt, and add pepper to taste. Transfer to a large bowl.

3. In a food processor fitted with the steel blade, purée the cottage cheese until smooth. Add the eggs and process until the mixture is smooth. Add salt (I suggest about 1/2 teaspoon) and pepper and mix together. Scrape into the bowl with the cabbage. Add the millet and stir everything together. Scrape into the oiled baking dish. Drizzle the remaining oil over the top and place in the oven.

4. Bake for about 40 minutes, until the sides are nicely browned and the top is beginning to color. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for at least 15 minutes before serving. Serve warm or at room temperature, cut into squares or wedges.

Yield: 6 servings.

Advance preparation: The cooked millet will keep in the refrigerator for 3 to 4 days and freezes well. The kugel will keep for 3 days in the refrigerator. Reheat in a medium oven.

Nutritional information per serving (6 servings): 195 calories; 7 grams fat; 1 gram saturated fat; 1 gram polyunsaturated fat; 4 grams monounsaturated fat; 64 milligrams cholesterol; 23 grams carbohydrates; 4 grams dietary fiber; 148 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste); 10 grams protein

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

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Recipes for Health: Cabbage, Onion and Millet Kugel — Recipes for Health

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

Light, nutty millet combines beautifully with the sweet, tender cabbage and onions in this kugel. I wouldn’t hesitate to serve this as a main dish.

 

1/2 medium head cabbage (1 1/2 pounds), cored and cut in thin strips

Salt to taste

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 medium onion, finely chopped

1/4 cup chopped fresh dill

Freshly ground pepper

1 cup low-fat cottage cheese

2 eggs

2 cups cooked millet

 

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Oil a 2-quart baking dish. Toss the cabbage with salt to taste and let it sit for 10 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, heat 1 tablespoon of the oil over medium heat in a large, heavy skillet and add the onion. Cook, stirring, until it begins to soften, about 3 minutes, then add a generous pinch of salt and turn the heat to medium-low. Cook, stirring often, until the onion is soft and beginning to color, about 10 minutes. Add the cabbage, turn the heat to medium, and cook, stirring often, until the cabbage is quite tender and fragrant, 10 to 15 minutes. Stir in the dill, taste and adjust salt, and add pepper to taste. Transfer to a large bowl.

3. In a food processor fitted with the steel blade, purée the cottage cheese until smooth. Add the eggs and process until the mixture is smooth. Add salt (I suggest about 1/2 teaspoon) and pepper and mix together. Scrape into the bowl with the cabbage. Add the millet and stir everything together. Scrape into the oiled baking dish. Drizzle the remaining oil over the top and place in the oven.

4. Bake for about 40 minutes, until the sides are nicely browned and the top is beginning to color. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for at least 15 minutes before serving. Serve warm or at room temperature, cut into squares or wedges.

Yield: 6 servings.

Advance preparation: The cooked millet will keep in the refrigerator for 3 to 4 days and freezes well. The kugel will keep for 3 days in the refrigerator. Reheat in a medium oven.

Nutritional information per serving (6 servings): 195 calories; 7 grams fat; 1 gram saturated fat; 1 gram polyunsaturated fat; 4 grams monounsaturated fat; 64 milligrams cholesterol; 23 grams carbohydrates; 4 grams dietary fiber; 148 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste); 10 grams protein

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

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DealBook: On Wall Street, Time to Mend Fences With Obama

Del Frisco’s, an expensive steakhouse with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Boston harbor, was a festive scene on Tuesday evening. The hedge fund billionaires Steven A. Cohen, Paul Singer and Daniel Loeb were among the titans of finance there dining among the gray velvet banquettes before heading several blocks away to what they hoped would be a victory party for their presidential candidate, Mitt Romney.

The next morning was a cold, sobering one for these executives.

Few industries have made such a one-sided bet as Wall Street did in opposing President Obama and supporting his Republican rival. The top five sources of contributions to Mr. Romney, a former top private equity executive, were big banks like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Wealthy financiers — led by hedge fund investors — were the biggest group of givers to the main “super PAC” backing Mr. Romney, providing almost $33 million, and gave generously to outside groups in races around the country.

On Wednesday, Mr. Loeb, who had supported Mr. Obama in 2008, was sanguine. “You win some, you lose some,” he said in an interview. “We can all disagree. I have friends and we have spirited discussions. Sure, I am not getting invited to the White House anytime soon, but as citizens of the country we are all friendly.”

Wall Street, however, now has to come to terms with an administration it has vilified. What Washington does next will be critically important for the industry, as regulatory agencies work to put their final stamp on financial regulations and as tax increases and spending cuts are set to take effect in the new year unless a deal to avert them is reached. To not have a friend in the White House at this time is one thing, but to have an enemy is quite another.

“Wall Street is now going to have to figure out how to make this relationship work,” said Glenn Schorr, an analyst who follows the big banks for the investment bank Nomura. “It’s not impossible, but it’s not the starting point they had hoped for.”

Traditionally, the financial industry has tended to support Republican candidates, but, being pragmatic about power, has also donated to Democrats. That script got a rewrite in 2008, when many on Wall Street supported Mr. Obama as an intelligent leader for a country reeling from the financial crisis. Goldman employees were the leading source of campaign donations for Mr. Obama, who reaped far more contributions — roughly $16 million — from Wall Street than did his opponent, John McCain.

The love affair between Wall Street and Mr. Obama soured soon after he took office and championed an overhaul in financial regulations that became the Dodd-Frank Act.

Some financial executives complained that in meetings with the president, they found him disinterested and disengaged, while others on Wall Street never forgave Mr. Obama for calling them “fat cats.”

The disillusionment with the president spawned reams of critical commentary from Wall Street executives.

“So long as our leaders tell us that we must trust them to regulate and redistribute our way back to prosperity, we will not break out of this economic quagmire,” Mr. Loeb wrote in one letter to his investors.

The rhetoric at times became extreme, like the time Steven A. Schwarzman, co-founder of the private equity firm Blackstone Group, compared a tax proposal to “when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939.” (Mr. Schwarzman later apologized for the remark.)

Mr. Loeb was not alone in switching allegiances in the recent presidential race. Hedge fund executives like Leon Cooperman who had supported Mr. Obama in 2008 were big backers of Mr. Romney in 2012. And Wall Street chieftains like Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase and Lloyd C. Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, who have publicly been Democrats in the past, kept a low profile during this election. But their firms’ employees gave money to Mr. Romney in waves.

Starting over with the Obama White House will not be easy. One senior Wall Street lawyer who spoke on condition of anonymity said Wall Street “made a bad mistake” in pushing so hard for Mr. Romney. “They are going to pay a price,” he said. “It will soften over time, but there will be a price.”

Mr. Obama is not without supporters on Wall Street. Prominent executives like Hamilton James of Blackstone, and Robert Wolf, a former top banker at UBS, were in Chicago on Tuesday night, celebrating with the president.

“What we learned is the people on Wall Street have one vote just like everyone else,” Mr. Wolf said. Still, while the support Wall Street gave Mr. Romney is undeniable, Mr. Wolf said, “Mr. Obama wants a healthy private sector, and that includes Wall Street.

“If you look at fiscal reform, infrastructure, immigration and education, they are all bipartisan issues and are more aligned than some people make it seem.”

Reshma Saujani, a former hedge fund lawyer who was among Mr. Obama’s top bundlers this year and is planning to run for city office next year, agreed.

“Most people in the financial services sector are social liberals who support gay marriage and believe in a woman’s right to choose, so I think many of them will swing back to Democrats in the future,” she said.

---

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 8, 2012

An earlier version of this article misidentified Reshma Saujani as a male.

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Obama Wins New Term as Electoral Advantage Holds

Damon Winter/The New York Times

Americans voted to give President Obama a second chance to change Washington.

Barack Hussein Obama was re-elected president of the United States on Tuesday, overcoming powerful economic headwinds, a lock-step resistance to his agenda by Republicans in Congress and an unprecedented torrent of advertising as a divided nation voted to give him more time.

In defeating Mitt Romney, the president carried Colorado, Iowa, Ohio, New Hampshire, Virginia and Wisconsin, a near sweep of the battleground states, and was holding a narrow advantage in Florida. The path to victory for Mr. Romney narrowed as the night wore along, with Mr. Obama winning at least 303 electoral votes.

A cheer of jubilation sounded at the Obama campaign headquarters in Chicago when the television networks began projecting him as the winner at 11:20 p.m., even as the ballots were still being counted in many states where voters had waited in line well into the night. The victory was far narrower than his historic election four years ago, but it was no less dramatic.

“Tonight in this election, you, the American people, reminded us that while our road has been hard, while our journey has been long, we have picked ourselves up, we have fought our way back,” Mr. Obama told his supporters early Wednesday. “We know in our hearts that for the United States of America, the best is yet to come.”

Mr. Obama’s re-election extended his place in history, carrying the tenure of the nation’s first black president into a second term. His path followed a pattern that has been an arc to his political career: faltering when he seemed to be at his strongest — the period before his first debate with Mr. Romney — before he redoubled his efforts to lift himself and his supporters to victory.

The evening was not without the drama that has come to mark so many recent elections: For more than 90 minutes after the networks projected Mr. Obama as the winner, Mr. Romney held off calling him to concede. And as the president waited to declare victory in Chicago, Mr. Romney’s aides were prepared to head to the airport, suitcases packed, potentially to contest several close results.

But as it became increasingly clear that no amount of contesting would bring him victory, he called Mr. Obama to concede shortly before 1 a.m.

“I wish all of them well, but particularly the president, the first lady and their daughters,” Mr. Romney told his supporters in Boston. “This is a time of great challenges for America, and I pray that the president will be successful in guiding our nation.”

Hispanics made up an important part of Mr. Obama’s winning coalition, preliminary exit poll data showed. And before the night was through, there were already recriminations from Republican moderates who said Mr. Romney had gone too far during the primaries in his statements against those here illegally, including his promise that his get-tough policies would cause some to “self-deport.”

Mr. Obama, 51, faces governing in a deeply divided country and a partisan-rich capital, where Republicans retained their majority in the House and Democrats kept their control of the Senate. His re-election offers him a second chance that will quickly be tested, given the rapidly escalating fiscal showdown.

For Mr. Obama, the result brings a ratification of his sweeping health care act, which Mr. Romney had vowed to repeal. The law will now continue on course toward nearly full implementation in 2014, promising to change significantly the way medical services are administrated nationwide.

Confident that the economy is finally on a true path toward stability, Mr. Obama and his aides have hinted that he would seek to tackle some of the grand but unrealized promises of his first campaign, including the sort of immigration overhaul that has eluded presidents of both parties for decades.

But he will be venturing back into a Congressional environment similar to that of his first term, with the Senate under the control of Democrats and the House under the control of Republicans, whose leaders have hinted that they will be no less likely to challenge him than they were during the last four years.

Michael Cooper contributed reporting.

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Social Media Finds a Role in Case Against Zimmerman

MIAMI — When Mark O’Mara agreed to defend George Zimmerman in the Trayvon Martin murder case, one of his first major decisions was to embrace the Internet.

He set up a legal defense Web site for his client, a Twitter page and a Facebook account, all with the purpose of countering what he called the “avalanche of misinformation” about the case and Mr. Zimmerman.

It was a risky move, unorthodox for a criminal defense lawyer, legal experts said, but a bold one. Late last month, the judge in the case, rebuffing the prosecution, allowed Mr. O’Mara to keep the online presence.

In so doing, the judge sanctioned the use of social media in a high-profile murder case that was already steeped in the power of Facebook, Twitter and blogs. Not long after Mr. Martin was shot and killed, protesters took their cues from Facebook and demonstrated across the country. Angry words coursed through Twitter.

Mr. Zimmerman, in hiding, started a Web site to raise money. The Martin family’s lawyers, who made ample use of traditional media, used Twitter to bring attention to Mr. Martin’s death.

Social media is playing a role in the courtroom, too. Mr. O’Mara wants to use Mr. Martin’s Facebook page and Twitter feed to bolster Mr. Zimmerman’s claim of self-defense. But he will most likely face a protracted battle to authenticate the material, in part because Mr. Martin is no longer alive. Last month, the judge allowed Mr. O’Mara to subpoena Twitter and Facebook for the information.

In ways large and small, the State of Florida v. George Zimmerman is serving as a modernized blueprint for deploying social media in a murder case.

“The way the whole case has been playing out in social media is typical of our times, but more typical of civil cases than criminal cases,” said Robert Ambrogi, a lawyer and technology expert who writes a blog on the intersection of the legal profession and social media. “It’s not without precedent, but it’s on the cutting edge.”

In civil cases, lawyers routinely dig up Facebook photos of people claiming to have a back injury dancing atop bars or revealing posts from supposedly faithful spouses.

“In the world of electronic information, the amount of potentially relevant information in discovery has exploded,” said Kenneth Withers, the director of judicial education and content for The Sedona Conference, a nonprofit law and policy research organization, referring to the pretrial exchange of information and evidence between lawyers on both sides. “And with social media, there has been an explosion of an explosion.”

It no longer makes sense for criminal defense lawyers who have tread more cautiously into social media to brush it off or avoid it, legal experts said.

Nicole Black, a co-author of “Social Media for Lawyers,” said criminal lawyers are getting crash courses on how to best use social media to help their clients and themselves.

“There is almost hysteria among the lawyers to understand it and how it’s affecting their practice,” said Ms. Black, who is also the director of business development and community relations at MyCaseInc.com.

Mr. O’Mara said as much in court recently when he pressed for access to Mr. Martin’s Facebook page and for the continued use of the legal defense Web site and its Twitter feed. “This is 2012, and I’m sorry, I used to have the books on the shelf, and those days are long gone,” he said. “We now have an active vehicle for information. I will tell you that today, if every defense attorney is not searching for information on something like this, he will be committing malpractice.”

Mr. Zimmerman, a Hispanic neighborhood watch volunteer in Sanford, Fla., is charged with second-degree murder in the shooting death of Mr. Martin, an unarmed black teenager who was killed in February as he walked to a house where he was staying as a guest.

Mr. O’Mara has been careful to hew to ethical requirements on his Twitter feed and Web site, which he uses to post legal documents, react to developments in the case and raise money for his client. He allows comments to be posted so long as they are not inflammatory. When the Facebook page “devolved into people bickering,” he said, he shut it down.

Social media is difficult to control, which for many is precisely its allure. Last month, Mr. Zimmerman’s brother, Robert Zimmerman Jr., fired off an angry post on Twitter at Natalie Jackson, one of the Martin family’s lawyers.

“My Life’s work = you WILL be held accountable for your words/actions. You A’INT seen NOTHIN’ yet ... I will see U disbarred,” he posted on Twitter.

Mr. O’Mara wrote a reaction on his Web site.

“Regarding Robert Zimmerman Jr.’s media campaign and Twitter comments, Robert is acting on behalf of his family, and he is not acting with the approval or the input of the defense team,” he wrote. He noted that, “The Zimmerman family has been through a lot, and they have been frequently misrepresented in the media, so we do not begrudge Robert for wanting to speak out and set the record straight.”

While Mr. O’Mara has become adept at social media, rattling off the number of Google hits on the words Trayvon Martin and the tally of visits to the legal defense site — 267,089 as of Monday — plunging into the world of Twitter, Facebook and blogs is not a welcome development for all in the courtroom.

“I’m new to this, quite frankly; I’m old,” a prosecutor, Bernie de la Rionda, said as the two sides faced off over social media in the courtroom.

Before long, Judge Debra S. Nelson will have to decide how to handle social media during the trial, which is scheduled to begin on June 10. Some jurors in other cases across the country have taken to posting about the proceedings on Facebook or Twitter, posing a risk of mistrials. Judges have cracked down.

Considering the publicity in the case, Judge Nelson may wind up following the lead of the judge in another high-profile Florida murder trial, that of Casey Anthony, who was acquitted of killing her young daughter. She could sequester the jury members, confiscate their cellphones and laptops, and monitor their calls and computer time.

If Judge Nelson does follow suit, she must be prepared to deal with another juror dilemma: extreme withdrawal.

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Alarm Over India’s Dengue Fever Epidemic

Enrico Fabian for The New York Times

A man at the Yamuna River, an ideal breeding ground for mosquitoes. Filthy standing water abounds in New Delhi. More Photos »

NEW DELHI — An epidemic of dengue fever in India is fostering a growing sense of alarm even as government officials here have publicly refused to acknowledge the scope of a problem that experts say is threatening hundreds of millions of people, not just in India but around the world.

India has become the focal point for a mosquito-borne plague that is sweeping the globe. Reported in just a handful of countries in the 1950s, dengue (pronounced DEN-gay) is now endemic in half the world’s nations.

“The global dengue problem is far worse than most people know, and it keeps getting worse,” said Dr. Raman Velayudhan, the World Health Organization’s lead dengue coordinator.

The tropical disease, though life-threatening for a tiny fraction of those infected, can be extremely painful. Growing numbers of Western tourists are returning from warm-weather vacations with the disease, which has reached the shores of the United States and Europe. Last month, health officials in Miami announced a case of locally acquired dengue infection.

Here in India’s capital, where areas of standing water contribute to the epidemic’s growth, hospitals are overrun and feverish patients are sharing beds and languishing in hallways. At Kalawati Saran Hospital, a pediatric facility, a large crowd of relatives lay on mats and blankets under the shade of a huge banyan tree outside the hospital entrance recently.

Among them was Neelam, who said her two grandchildren were deathly ill inside. Eight-year-old Sneha got the disease first, followed by Tanya, 7, she said. The girls’ parents treated them at home but then Sneha’s temperature rose to 104 degrees, a rash spread across her legs and shoulders, and her pain grew unbearable.

“Sneha has been given five liters of blood,” said Neelam, who has one name. “It is terrible.”

Officials say that 30,002 people in India had been sickened with dengue fever through October, a 59 percent jump from the 18,860 recorded for all of 2011. But the real number of Indians who get dengue fever annually is in the millions, several experts said.

“I’d conservatively estimate that there are 37 million dengue infections occurring every year in India, and maybe 227,500 hospitalizations,” said Dr. Scott Halstead, a tropical disease expert focused on dengue research.

A senior Indian government health official, who agreed to speak about the matter only on the condition of anonymity, acknowledged that official figures represent a mere sliver of dengue’s actual toll. The government only counts cases of dengue that come from public hospitals and that have been confirmed by laboratories, the official said. Such a census, “which was deliberated at the highest levels,” is a small subset that is nonetheless informative and comparable from one year to the next, he said.

“There is no denying that the actual number of cases would be much, much higher,” the official said. “Our interest has not been to arrive at an exact figure.”

The problem with that policy, said Dr. Manish Kakkar, a specialist at the Public Health Foundation of India, is that India’s “massive underreporting of cases” has contributed to the disease’s spread. Experts from around the world said that India’s failure to construct an adequate dengue surveillance system has impeded awareness of the illness’s vast reach, discouraged efforts to clean up the sources of the disease and slowed the search for a vaccine.

“When you look at the number of reported cases India has, it’s a joke,” said Dr. Harold S. Margolis, chief of the dengue branch at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

Neighboring Sri Lanka, for instance, reported nearly three times as many dengue cases as India through August, according to the World Health Organization, even though India’s population is 60 times larger.

Hari Kumar contributed reporting.

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Alarm Over India’s Dengue Fever Epidemic

Enrico Fabian for The New York Times

A man at the Yamuna River, an ideal breeding ground for mosquitoes. Filthy standing water abounds in New Delhi. More Photos »

NEW DELHI — An epidemic of dengue fever in India is fostering a growing sense of alarm even as government officials here have publicly refused to acknowledge the scope of a problem that experts say is threatening hundreds of millions of people, not just in India but around the world.

India has become the focal point for a mosquito-borne plague that is sweeping the globe. Reported in just a handful of countries in the 1950s, dengue (pronounced DEN-gay) is now endemic in half the world’s nations.

“The global dengue problem is far worse than most people know, and it keeps getting worse,” said Dr. Raman Velayudhan, the World Health Organization’s lead dengue coordinator.

The tropical disease, though life-threatening for a tiny fraction of those infected, can be extremely painful. Growing numbers of Western tourists are returning from warm-weather vacations with the disease, which has reached the shores of the United States and Europe. Last month, health officials in Miami announced a case of locally acquired dengue infection.

Here in India’s capital, where areas of standing water contribute to the epidemic’s growth, hospitals are overrun and feverish patients are sharing beds and languishing in hallways. At Kalawati Saran Hospital, a pediatric facility, a large crowd of relatives lay on mats and blankets under the shade of a huge banyan tree outside the hospital entrance recently.

Among them was Neelam, who said her two grandchildren were deathly ill inside. Eight-year-old Sneha got the disease first, followed by Tanya, 7, she said. The girls’ parents treated them at home but then Sneha’s temperature rose to 104 degrees, a rash spread across her legs and shoulders, and her pain grew unbearable.

“Sneha has been given five liters of blood,” said Neelam, who has one name. “It is terrible.”

Officials say that 30,002 people in India had been sickened with dengue fever through October, a 59 percent jump from the 18,860 recorded for all of 2011. But the real number of Indians who get dengue fever annually is in the millions, several experts said.

“I’d conservatively estimate that there are 37 million dengue infections occurring every year in India, and maybe 227,500 hospitalizations,” said Dr. Scott Halstead, a tropical disease expert focused on dengue research.

A senior Indian government health official, who agreed to speak about the matter only on the condition of anonymity, acknowledged that official figures represent a mere sliver of dengue’s actual toll. The government only counts cases of dengue that come from public hospitals and that have been confirmed by laboratories, the official said. Such a census, “which was deliberated at the highest levels,” is a small subset that is nonetheless informative and comparable from one year to the next, he said.

“There is no denying that the actual number of cases would be much, much higher,” the official said. “Our interest has not been to arrive at an exact figure.”

The problem with that policy, said Dr. Manish Kakkar, a specialist at the Public Health Foundation of India, is that India’s “massive underreporting of cases” has contributed to the disease’s spread. Experts from around the world said that India’s failure to construct an adequate dengue surveillance system has impeded awareness of the illness’s vast reach, discouraged efforts to clean up the sources of the disease and slowed the search for a vaccine.

“When you look at the number of reported cases India has, it’s a joke,” said Dr. Harold S. Margolis, chief of the dengue branch at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

Neighboring Sri Lanka, for instance, reported nearly three times as many dengue cases as India through August, according to the World Health Organization, even though India’s population is 60 times larger.

Hari Kumar contributed reporting.

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Suzuki, Small-Car Maker, Gives Up on U.S. Market

TOKYO — For all of Suzuki’s tough talk about its “brush-busting” Samurai off-roader, the Japanese automaker never made it big in the United States. Its cars were too small, its safety record iffy and its branding a bit too comical (Suzuki Sidekick, anyone?).

So it came as little surprise to most analysts when Suzuki announced late Monday that it would stop selling automobiles in the United States and put its American unit into Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

“The United States was ultimately a tough market to crack,” said Kentaro Arita, auto analyst and industry research division manager at Mizuho Corporate Bank. “Its exit was a matter of time.”

Still, despite Suzuki’s retreat in North America, the company has made spectacular inroads into emerging markets over the last decade. The low-cost, compact cars sold by Suzuki’s India unit have the top share in that fast-growing market, and the automaker also has a growing presence in Southeast Asia.

Back home in Japan, Suzuki is a leader in a category of small cars called kei vehicles that enjoy preferential tax treatment by meeting limits on length, width, engine size and horsepower. The kei category, created in Japan’s lean postwar years to help ordinary Japanese buy cars, has stayed popular as a cheap option fit for navigating the country’s claustrophobic roads.

One of the company’s kei cars, the long-selling Wagon R, is less than 14 feet long, about 5 feet wide and 6 feet high, and its engine size is limited to two-thirds of a liter, or motorcycle-caliber. Last month, almost as many units were sold in Japan as Toyota’s Prius hybrid.

Suzuki’s decision to pull out of the United States, whose market is dominated by larger models, was a sensible step to focus on its strengths, said Koji Endo, an auto industry analyst and managing director at Advanced Research, an equity research firm in Tokyo. The strong yen also made it difficult to profit by making cars in Japan and shipping them to the United States, he said.

“Basically, Suzuki does not need the United States, and the United States didn’t need Suzuki,” Mr. Endo said.

The American Suzuki Motor Corporation, the sole distributor of Suzuki vehicles in the United States, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Monday with $346 million in debt, the company said. In a statement, Suzuki said that various challenges led to its withdrawal from the American market, including low sales volume, the limited number of models in its lineup and unfavorable foreign exchange rates.

Suzuki also blamed “the high costs associated with growing and maintaining an automotive distribution system in the continental United States,” as well as “the disproportionately high” costs associated with meeting increasingly stringent state and federal regulatory requirements.

The company said it would sell its remaining inventory through its dealer network, honor existing warranties and continue to supply replacement parts for its vehicles. The company also intends to continue selling motorcycles, all-terrain vehicles and marine products in the United States.

Suzuki shares gained 0.65 percent to 1,847 yen (about $23.02) in Tokyo after the announcement, against a 0.36 percent decline in the benchmark Nikkei index.

While an exit makes sense for Suzuki’s bottom line, it does represent another disappointing failure by Japan’s second tier of automakers in their attempts to follow Toyota, Honda and Nissan into the American market.

A foray by Daihatsu, another Japanese manufacturer of compact cars, lasted only four years before it withdrew in 1992. (Subaru, manufactured by Fuji Heavy Industries, has fared better.)

Suzuki also had big hopes for its Japan-made Samurai 4-wheel-drive vehicle, introduced in the United States in 1985. A $30 million television advertising campaign urged American car owners to try the lightweight yet “rough, tough and brush-busting” off-roader.

The Samurai found a small but loyal following as a low-cost off-roader. But it also suffered early setbacks, including a drawn-out legal battle with Consumer Reports over whether the vehicles were prone to flipping over.

Suzuki later introduced several other models to the United States, including its Swift compact, and its executives spoke of selling 200,000 vehicles a year in the American market.

A partnership with General Motors proved beneficial for both sides, giving the American company access to expertise in smaller cars, while allowing Suzuki to tap G.M.’s dealership network to sell its cars.

But just as Suzuki’s sales were gaining traction in the United States, topping 100,000 in the mid-2000s for the first time, the global financial crisis hit, decimating Japanese exports.

General Motors, scrambling for cash, sold off its stake in Suzuki, and the Japanese manufacturer withdrew from a joint manufacturing venture in Canada.

Since then, Suzuki’s sales in the United States have dwindled. In the first 10 months of 2012, it sold just 21,000 vehicles. A budding partnership with Volkswagen also grew acrimonious, forcing Suzuki to regroup.

Experts said that Suzuki was likely to concentrate its managerial resources on strengthening its grip on markets like India, where it has been hit by worker strife in recent months.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 6, 2012

An earlier version of this article misstated a description Suzuki used to promote its Samurai off-roader. It is “brush-busting,” not “bush-busting.”

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