BBC Inquiry Blames Rigid Management for Mishandling Sex Abuse Scandal

The 200-page report by Nick Pollard, a veteran British broadcast executive, strongly criticized the editorial and management decisions that prompted the BBC to cancel a broadcast last year that would have exposed decades of sexual abuse by Jimmy Savile, a BBC fixture who had been one of Britain’s best-known television personalities.

While the scandal led to the resignation and reassignment of several top executives — including George Entwistle, just two months into his tenure in the BBC’s top job as director general — Mr. Pollard absolved top management of applying “undue pressure” in the decision to stop the broadcast.

The report also did not challenge the assertions of Mark Thompson, then head of the BBC, that he had no role in killing the Savile investigation and was unaware of the sexual abuse accusations until he left the BBC this September. Mr. Thompson is now president and chief executive of The New York Times Company.

The report traced in detail what it described as “a chain of events that was to prove disastrous for the BBC.” Its central conclusion was that confusion and mismanagement, not a cover-up, lay at the heart of the decision to drop the Savile segment on “Newsnight,” an investigative program. Mr. Savile died at 84 in October 2011, weeks before the segment was scheduled to run.

“The efforts to get to the truth behind the Savile story proved beyond the combined efforts of the senior management, legal department, corporate communications team and anyone else for well over a month” after a rival channel, ITV, broadcast its own exposé in October 2012.

That segment presented the accounts of five women who said they had been sexually abused as teenagers by Mr. Savile, the report said. “Leadership and organization seemed to be in short supply.”

Mr. Pollard, a former head of the Sky News channel who began his broadcast career as a BBC reporter, dismissed a widely circulated theory that BBC News executives or their superiors pressured the “Newsnight” team to cancel the Savile segment to avoid embarrassing the BBC. Peter Rippon, the program’s editor, said that he canceled the report because he thought the team’s conclusions about Mr. Savile were inadequately substantiated.

“While there clearly were discussions about the Savile story between Mr. Rippon and his managers,” Mr. Pollard said, he does not believe that they went beyond journalistic considerations.

After publication of the report, Tim Davie, the BBC’s acting director general, said that Stephen Mitchell, the deputy director of news, would be taking early retirement and that Mr. Rippon would be moved to another job. Helen Boaden, director of the news division, who along with Mr. Rippon and Mr. Mitchell was suspended while the nine-week Pollard inquiry was in progress, will return to her job, overseeing new editorial leadership at “Newsnight.”

In a statement, the BBC Trust, which oversees the broadcaster, said the report made clear the need for major changes in the BBC’s operation. It said top executives must take initiative and responsibility, share information and embrace criticism, and persuade employees to rid the company of the “insularity and distrust” revealed in the report.

“The BBC portrayed by the Pollard review is not fundamentally flawed, but has been chaotic,” it said. “That now needs to change.”

The report was strongly critical of several news executives who were directly involved in the decision to cancel the Savile program, including Mr. Rippon and the top executives in the BBC’s news division to whom he reported, Ms. Boaden and Mr. Mitchell, saying they had reached a “flawed” conclusion in canceling the “Newsnight” segment that overrode the “cogent evidence” against Mr. Savile that the “Newsnight” team had gathered.

But it paid scant attention to the role of the former director general, Mr. Thompson, and did not fault him for missing opportunities to learn the details of the allegations against Mr. Savile.

After Mr. Thompson was told about the scuttled segment by a BBC reporter at a reception in late December 2011, he said, he asked his news executives about it. According to his testimony to the Pollard inquiry, he “received reassurances” that it had been killed for “editorial or journalistic reasons” and “crossed it off my list and went off to worry about something else.”

Matthew Purdy contributed reporting from New York.

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Inquiry Into Libya Attack Is Sharply Critical of State Department

WASHINGTON — An independent inquiry into the attack on the United States diplomatic mission in Libya that killed four Americans on Sept. 11 sharply criticized the State Department for a lack of seasoned security personnel and for relying on untested local militias to safeguard the compound, according to a report by the panel made public on Tuesday night.

The investigation into the attack on the diplomatic mission and the C.I.A. annex in Benghazi that resulted in the deaths of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans also faulted State Department officials in Washington for ignoring requests from the American Embassy in Tripoli for more guards for the mission and for failing to make sufficient safety upgrades.

The panel also said American intelligence officials had relied too much on specific warnings of imminent attacks, which they did not have in the case of Benghazi, rather than basing assessments more broadly on a deteriorating security environment. By this spring, Benghazi, a hotbed of militant activity in eastern Libya, had experienced a string of assassinations, an attack on a British envoy’s motorcade and the explosion of a bomb outside the American Mission.

Finally, the report blamed two major State Department bureaus — Diplomatic Security and Near Eastern Affairs — for failing to coordinate and plan adequate security. The panel also determined that a number of officials had shown poor leadership, but they were not identified in the unclassified version of the report that was released.

“Systemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels within two bureaus,” the report said, resulted in security “that was inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place.”

The attack in Benghazi and the Obama administration’s explanation of what happened and who was responsible became politically charged issues in the waning weeks of the presidential campaign, and Republicans have continued to demand explanations since then. Susan E. Rice, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, took herself out of consideration for secretary of state after Republican criticism of comments she made in the aftermath of the lethal attack threatened to become a divisive political battle.

The report affirmed there were no protests of an anti-Islamic video before the attack, contrary to what Ms. Rice had said on several Sunday talk shows days after the attack.

While the report focused on the specific attack in Benghazi, the episode cast into broader relief the larger question of how American diplomats and intelligence officers operate in increasingly unstable environments, like those in the Arab Spring countries across North Africa and the Middle East, without increased security.

In response to the panel’s findings, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a letter to Congress that she was accepting all 29 of the panel’s recommendations, five of which are classified. “To fully honor those we lost, we must better protect those still serving to advance our nation’s vital interests and values overseas,” Mrs. Clinton said in the letter. She is already taking specific steps to correct the problems, according to officials.

They say the State Department is asking permission from Congress to transfer more than $1.3 billion from contingency funds that had been allocated for spending in Iraq. This includes $553 million for hundreds of additional Marine security guards worldwide; $130 million for diplomatic security personnel; and $691 million for improving security at installations abroad.

Noting that the Libyan militias in Benghazi proved unreliable, the report recommended that in the future the United States must be “self-reliant and enterprising.”

In recent weeks, teams of State Department and Pentagon security specialists have been sent to 19 “high threat” diplomatic posts around the world to conduct assessments.

The State Department last month for the first time also appointed a senior official — a deputy assistant secretary of state — to ensure that embassies and consulates in dangerous places get sufficient attention. To that end, the department is revamping deployment procedures to increase the number of experienced and well- trained personnel serving in those posts, and to reduce the high turnover rate that the panel identified as a problem.

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Leak reveals Polaroid’s Android-powered camera with interchangeable lenses

Samsung’s (005930) Galaxy Camera and Nikon’s (NINOY) Coolpix S800c are just the beginning of a swath of Android-powered cameras. Newly leaked images and specs point to Polaroid reviving its camera business with what could be the world’s first Android camera with interchangeable lenses. With no official name yet, the tentatively named IM1836 camera will reportedly feature a 18.1-megapixel sensor, 3.5-inch touchscreen, pop-up flash, Wi-Fi, HDMI and Android 4.0.

[More from BGR: A guide to all the insane predictions made by Google’s new engineering director]

The Galaxy Camera and Coolpix S800c do a fine job taking pictures that are considerably better than what you get from a smartphone, but they still can’t match a mirrorless camera with a good lens. At first glance, Polaroid’s camera looks to be a rebadged Nikon 1 J2, but the resemblance only runs skin deep, as PhotoRumors reports the camera only takes MicroSD cards.

[More from BGR: How not to fix Apple Maps]

Polaroid might not be a major player, but as more companies start incorporating Android into their cameras, there’s going to be a shift in the features consumers expect from them. In the next few years, novelty features such as Wi-Fi, cellular data and photo editing apps will be the norm and we’ll laugh at how we ever lived without them.

This article was originally published by BGR

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A&M's Johnny Football is AP's Player of the Year

Johnny Manziel ran for almost 1,700 yards and 30 touchdowns as a dual-threat quarterback his senior year of high school at Kerrville Tivy.

Who would have thought he'd be even more impressive at Texas A&M when pitted against the defenses of the Southeastern Conference?

On Tuesday, Manziel picked up another major award for his spectacular debut season. He was voted The Associated Press Player of the Year. As with the Heisman Trophy and Davey O'Brien Award that Manziel already won, the QB nicknamed Johnny Football is the first freshman to collect the AP award.

Manziel's 31 votes were more than twice that of second place finisher Manti Te'o, Notre Dame's start linebacker. He is the third straight Heisman-winning quarterback to receive the honor, following Robert Griffin III and Cam Newton.

Manziel erased initial doubts about his ability when he ran for 60 yards and a score in his first game against Florida.

"I knew I could run the ball, I did it a lot in high school," Manziel said in an interview with the AP. "It is just something that you don't get a chance to see in the spring. Quarterbacks aren't live in the spring. You don't get to tackle. You don't get to evade some of the sacks that you would in normal game situations. So I feel like when I was able to avoid getting tackled, it opened some people's eyes a little bit more."

The 6-foot-1 Manziel threw for 3,419 yards and 24 touchdowns and ran for 1,181 yards and 19 more scores to help the Aggies win 10 games for the first time since 1998 — and in their inaugural SEC year, too.

Ryan Tannehill, Manziel's predecessor now with the Dolphins after being drafted eighth overall this season, saw promise from the young quarterback last year when he was redshirted. But even he is surprised at how quickly things came together for Manziel.

"It's pretty wild. I always thought he had that playmaking ability, that something special where if somebody came free, he can make something exciting happen," Tannehill said. "I wasn't really sure if, I don't think anyone was sure if he was going to be able to carry that throughout an SEC season, and he's shocked the world and he did it."

After Manziel sat out as a redshirt in 2011, Texas A&M's scheduled season-opener against Louisiana Tech this year was postponed because of Hurricane Isaac. That left him to get his first taste of live defense in almost two years against Florida.

He responded well, helping the Aggies race to a 17-7 lead early using both his arm and his feet. The Gators shut down Manziel and A&M's offense in the second half and Texas A&M lost 20-17.

But Manziel's performance was enough for Texas A&M's coaching staff to realize that his scrambling ability was going to be a big part of what the Aggies could do this season.

"The first half really showed that I was a little bit more mobile than we had seen throughout the spring," Manziel said. "Me and (then-offensive coordinator) Kliff Kingsbury sat down and really said: 'Hey we can do some things with my feet as well as throwing the ball.' And it added a little bit of a new dimension."

Manziel knew that the biggest adjustment from playing in high school to college would be the speed of the game. Exactly how quick players in the SEC were was still a jolt to the quarterback.

"The whole first drive I was just seeing how fast they really flew to the ball and I felt like they just moved a whole lot faster," he said of the Florida game. "It was different than what I was used to, different than what I was used to in high school. So it was just having to learn quick and adjust on the fly."

He did just that and started piling up highlight reel material by deftly avoiding would-be tacklers to help the Aggies run off five consecutive wins after that.

His storybook ride hit a roadblock when he threw a season-high three interceptions in a 24-19 loss to LSU. But Manziel used it as a learning experience, taking to heart some advice he received from Kingsbury.

"He just told me to have a plan every time, before every snap," Manziel said. "Make sure you have a plan on what you want to do and where you want to go with the ball."

"I feel like as the year went on, I just learned the offense more and knew exactly where I wanted to go, instead of maybe evading the blitz and just taking off running for the first down instead of hitting a hot route or throwing it underneath to an open guy and doing things a lot simpler and cleaner."

The Aggies and Manziel rebounded from the loss to LSU by winning their last five games, highlighted by their stunning 29-24 upset of top-ranked Alabama on Nov. 10.

By the time Manziel wrapped up a 253-yard passing and 92-yard rushing performance to lead Texas A&M to the victory in Tuscaloosa, you could hardly call him a freshman anymore.

"You keep growing and growing every week," he said. "By the time I played Alabama I had a much better grasp of the game than I did in the first one."

The 4,600 yards of total offense Manziel gained in 12 games broke the SEC record for total yards in a season. The record was previously held by 2010 Heisman winner Newton, who needed 14 games to pile up 4,327 yards. The output also made him the first freshman, first player in the SEC and fifth player overall to throw for 3,000 yards and run for 1,000 in a season.

Manziel, who turned 20 two days before taking home the Heisman, has been so busy he hasn't had a second to step back and digest the historical significance of his accomplishments this season.

He's far more concerned with helping the Aggies extend their winning streak to six games with a win over Oklahoma on Jan. 4 in the Cotton Bowl.

"I think it will happen after the bowl game and after the season is completely over," he said. "I'm just ready for it to die down a little bit and get back into a practice routine where we get better and hopefully do what we want to do in the bowl game."

He'll have to do it without his mentor Kingsbury, who left A&M last week to become coach at Texas Tech, where he starred at quarterback not that long ago. Manziel said is happy Kingsbury got to return to his alma matter, but is still adjusting to the idea of playing without him.

"I'm the happiest guy on the face of the earth for him," Manziel said, speaking from California where he appeared on the "Tonight Show" Monday evening. "I think he deserves it with how hard he's worked this year to get us where we were. It's bittersweet though, because I'd like him to be here for the entire time that I'm here."

Manziel is eager to get back on the field for the Cotton Bowl and is focused on helping the offense pick up where it left off in the regular-season finale.

"Even though Kliff Kingsbury's not here anymore, we just need to continue to get better and do what we do," Manziel said. "Push tempo, go fast and be the high-flying offense that we have been all year."

_____

AP Sports Writer Steven Wine contributed to this story from Miami.

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Attackers in Pakistan Kill Anti-Polio Workers

Athar Hussain/Reuters

Relatives of Nasima Bibi, a worker in a polio vaccination drive, at a hospital morgue in Karachi.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Gunmen shot dead five female health workers who were immunizing children against polio on Tuesday, causing the Pakistani government to suspend vaccinations in two cities and dealing a fresh setback to an eradication campaign dogged by Taliban resistance in a country that is one of the disease’s last global strongholds.

“It is a blow, no doubt,” said Shahnaz Wazir Ali, an adviser on polio to Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf. “Never before have female health workers been targeted like this in Pakistan. Clearly there will have to be more and better arrangements for security.”

No group claimed responsibility for the attacks, but most suspicion focused on the Pakistani Taliban, which has previously blocked polio vaccinators and complained that the United States is using the program as a cover for espionage.

The killings were a serious reversal for the multibillion-dollar global polio immunization effort, which over the past quarter century has reduced the number of endemic countries from 120 to just three: Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria.

Nonetheless, United Nations officials insisted that the drive would be revived after a period for investigation and regrouping, as it had been after previous attacks on vaccinators here, in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Pakistan has made solid gains against polio, with 56 new recorded cases of the diseases in 2012, compared with 192 at the same point last year, according to the government. Worldwide, cases of death and paralysis from polio have been reduced to less than 1,000 last year, from 350,000 worldwide in 1988.

But the campaign here has been deeply shaken by Taliban threats and intimidation, though several officials said Tuesday that they had never seen such a focused and deadly attack before.

Insurgents have long been suspicious of polio vaccinators, seeing them as potential spies. But that greatly intensified after the C.I.A. used a vaccination team headed by a local doctor, Shakil Afridi, to visit Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, reportedly in an attempt to obtain DNA proof that the Bin Laden family was there before an American commando raid on it in May 2011.

In North Waziristan, one prominent warlord has banned polio vaccinations until the United States ceases drone strikes in the area.

Most new infections in Pakistan occur in the tribal belt and adjoining Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province — some of the most remote areas of the country, and also those with the strongest militant presence. People fleeing fighting in those areas have also spread the disease to Karachi, the country’s largest city, where the disease has been making a worrisome comeback in recent years.

After Tuesday’s attacks, witnesses described violence that was both disciplined and well coordinated. Five attacks occurred within an hour in different Karachi neighborhoods. In several cases, the killers traveled in pairs on motorcycle, opening fire on female health workers as they administered polio drops or moved between houses in crowded neighborhoods.

Of the five victims, three were teenagers, and some had been shot in the head, a senior government official said. Two male health workers were also wounded by gunfire; early reports incorrectly stated that one of them had died, the official said.

In Peshawar, the capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, gunmen opened fire on two sisters participating in the polio vaccination program, killing one of them. It was unclear whether that shooting was directly linked to the Karachi attacks.

In remote parts of the northwest, the Taliban threat is exacerbated by the government’s crumbling writ. In Bannu, on the edge of the tribal belt, one polio worker, Noor Khan, said he quit work on Tuesday once news of the attacks in Karachi and Peshawar filtered in.

“We were told to stop immediately,” he said by phone.

Still, the Pakistani government has engaged considerable political and financial capital in fighting polio. President Asif Ali Zardari and his daughter Aseefa have been at the forefront of immunization drives. With the help of international donors, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, they have mounted a huge vaccination campaign aimed at up to 35 million children younger than 5, usually in three-day bursts that can involve 225,000 health workers.

The plan seeks to have every child in Pakistan immunized at least four times per year, although in the hardest-hit areas one child could be reached as many as 12 times in a year.

Declan Walsh reported from Islamabad, and Donald G. McNeil Jr. from New York. Salman Masood contributed reporting from Islamabad, and Zia ur-Rehman from Karachi, Pakistan.

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Getco Wins Knight With $2 Billion Sweetened Offer-Sources

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Getco Holding Company LLC will buy Knight Capital Group for about $2 billion (1.2 billion pounds) after sweetening its offer for the equities market-making firm to beat out rival Virtu Financial LLC, people close to the deal said.

Getco clinched the deal after it increased the amount of cash in its cash-and-stock offer that will essentially see it merge into Knight to create a new publicly traded company, the sources said.

The deal seals a whirlwind five months for Knight after a near-fatal trading error on August 1. The company, which executes about 10 percent of U.S. equity trading volume, making it a vital cog in the stock trading system, had to be rescued by a $400 million injection from a group of investors led by Jefferies Group Inc and including Chicago-based Getco.

The deal is two-thirds cash and values Knight at $3.75 a share, the sources said.

Getco, an electronic trading firm that often competes against Knight, will borrow $1 billion to execute the deal, they said, adding that Knight's board had accepted the terms after the markets closed on Tuesday.

Knight and Virtu declined to comment.

Getco had originally offered $3.50 a share for Knight in an unsolicited bid that was 50 percent cash, and was helped by an infusion from private equity firm General Atlantic, one of its biggest investors.

Knight shares rose 5.1 percent to $3.50 in after-hours trading on the New York Stock Exchange after closing at $3.33.

"We never dreamed this would come about so quickly," said Curt Bradbury, chief operating officer of Stephens, a Little Rock Arkansas broker-dealer that took part in Knight's rescue.

"On the surface, the deals looks good, and I'm looking forward to taking a closer look. We appreciate the board's effort at sorting this out."

Jefferies, which agreed earlier this year to be bought by Leucadia National Corp, worked with Getco on the deal and is helping it with financing. At one point during the negotiations, Jefferies' role raised concerns among some at Knight about whether the investment bank was trying to push a sale to make a quick buck. A Jefferies spokesman declined to comment.

Other investors involved in the rescue included Blackstone Group LP, TD Ameritrade Holding Corp, Stifel Financial. General Atlantic, Blackstone and TD Ameritrade took seats following the rescue on Knight's board.

NEW EXECUTIVE TEAM

Both Getco and Virtu coveted Knight's U.S. market-making business, which uses computer models to match buy and sell orders in stocks and options. Knight's market-making has remained profitable despite a market-wide slump in equities volume, though its profits have been eroded by ventures into other areas.

Knight also runs bond and foreign exchange trading platforms, and owns a reverse mortgage lender as well as a stake of about 20 percent in Direct Edge, the No. 4 U.S. cash equities exchange.

Getco is expected to divest most of Knight's noncore assets, the sources said.

The latest discussions started after Getco made an unsolicited bid late last month for Knight, which was followed by Virtu's bid, also unsolicited.

Under Getco's proposal, Knight Chief Executive Thomas Joyce will step down from that role, but will remain as executive chairman of the combined company. Getco's Daniel Coleman will become the CEO of the combined firm.

Knight's board was initially split on the relative merits of the competing bids, the sources said.

Virtu this week boosted its all-cash bid to $3.20 a share, one of the sources said, leaving Knight to weigh the value of cash against what stock in a newly combined Getco-Knight would be worth.

Knight's directors were also divided over the future management and financial health of the company, sources said.

The board questioned Getco's motivations, worrying that, with its profit down 60 percent this year, it was scrambling to find a stronger partner, one source said.

The board also had questions about Virtu's debt load, another source said. Virtu had lined up some financing for its bid from private equity firm Silver Lake, a Virtu investor.

One concern for brokerages such as TD Ameritrade was whether the new owner would continue to pay discount brokers to route orders through Knight in order to create liquidity for the market, the sources said. That also became a point of discussion for Knight's board as it debated the rival bids, they said.

On August 1, Knight's errant software sent millions of unintentional orders in almost 150 stocks in the opening 45 minutes of the U.S. trading session.

Knight ended up selling the shares it purchased at a large discount to Goldman Sachs Group Inc, leading to a $461.1 million loss that overwhelmed the $365 million of cash on its books. In the wake of the debacle, its stock, which had traded at a high of $13.59 this year, fell to as low as $2.58.

(Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman, Andrew Hay, Gunna Dickson and Edwina Gibbs)

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Japan’s Next Leader, Shinzo Abe, Shifts Focus

Yoshikazu Tsuno/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Shinzo Abe, set to be prime minister, said Monday that there would be no negotiation over Japan’s stake in islands that China also claims, but his position is no tougher than the incumbents’.

TOKYO — Shinzo Abe, set to return as Japan’s prime minister after his party’s landslide victory on Sunday, means it when he says he knows what it feels like to hit rock bottom. His last term in office was marred by political financing scandals, a nationalist agenda that seemed off the mark and rumors — later confirmed — that he had resigned over an intestinal ailment, an ignominious exit that prompted snide jokes about his condition.

Mr. Abe’s impending comeback says more about the spectacular failure of the leaders who succeeded him than about a revival on his part. But Mr. Abe, 58, is in many ways a changed man. Though analysts say he remains deeply nationalistic at heart, he has toned down his hawkish language and instead has focused on reviving Japan’s moribund economy.

It is still possible that China, which has been enmeshed in a territorial quarrel with Japan, could prompt Mr. Abe to show his nationalist colors. He said Monday that there would be no negotiation over Japan’s claims to the set of islands in dispute, but he went no further than the incumbent Democrats, who have also asserted Japanese sovereignty over the islands.

So far, Mr. Abe has reserved his tough talk for the economy, promising public spending largess, a far more aggressive stand against deflation and bolder measures to weaken the strong yen, which has stifled Japan’s export-led economy. He peppered his campaign speeches with promises to rebuild a strong country, emphasizing resilience against natural disasters and economic downturns, rather than dwelling on North Korean rockets or the Chinese Navy.

The economic focus helped Mr. Abe lead his party, the Liberal Democrats, to victory while sidestepping difficult issues like nuclear power. The Liberal Democrats promoted nuclear power during their half-century of almost uninterrupted leadership until the Democrats ousted them from power in 2009, less than two years before the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, which killed more than 20,000 people and set off the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

Markets have cheered on Mr. Abe’s economic turn, and rallied on Monday after his party’s decisive victory. The United States dollar reached as high as 84.48 yen on Monday, its highest level against the Japanese currency since April 2011. The Nikkei stock average, which surged 10 percent in the monthlong prelude to Sunday’s elections in anticipation of Mr. Abe’s economic policies, gained an additional 0.94 percent on Monday, rising to 9,828.88.

At a news conference on Monday, Mr. Abe said: “I once fell to rock bottom and was hit with a storm of criticism. Now, I want to prove it’s possible to start over again.”

Mr. Abe’s first stint as prime minister, in 2006-7, began on a high note. The Japanese news media hailed him as the first prime minister born after World War II and the handpicked successor to a popular leader, Junichiro Koizumi.

But Mr. Abe made the mistake of focusing on a drive to instill patriotism in schools and elevate the military’s status, an approach that appeared to be out of touch with a population more concerned about the state of the national pension system and other bread-and-butter issues. Mr. Abe quickly became an object of ridicule in the popular media, an embodiment of an expression popular at the time: “K.Y.,” for “kuuki yomenai,” which literally means “can’t read the air,” or “clueless.”

Mr. Abe’s cabinet was weakened by gaffes and a series of money and pension-related scandals that led four of his ministers to resign and a fifth to commit suicide. Overseas, he was criticized for denying that Japan’s wartime army had forced women into sexual slavery, despite historical documents and testimony. The controversy prompted United States lawmakers to pass a bill calling for an apology. And 10 months into his term, Mr. Abe’s governing party suffered a humiliating defeat in elections for Parliament’s upper house; two months later, he was gone.

With upper house elections expected this summer, Mr. Abe is determined not to make the same mistakes, analysts say. He will be especially cautious, they say, because his mandate is not as rock solid as the Liberal Democrats’ supermajority in the lower house might suggest. The party won just 40 percent of the vote in the country’s electoral districts, but benefited from a splintering of the opposition. If the opposition regroups or the Liberal Democrats stumble, the tables could quickly turn against them.

“In the beginning, he will keep a moderate tone,” said Yoshiaki Kobayashi, a professor of political science at Keio University in Tokyo. “He will avoid making waves by staying close to the United States. He knows he must focus on the economy first, for the upper house elections.”

Martin Fackler contributed reporting from Tokyo.

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Judge rejects Apple injunction bid vs. Samsung

(Reuters) – A U.S. judge on Monday denied Apple Inc‘s request for a permanent injunction against Samsung Electronics‘ smartphones, depriving the iPhone maker of key leverage in the mobile patent wars.

Apple had been awarded $ 1.05 billion in damages in August after a U.S. jury found Samsung had copied critical features of the iPhone and iPad. The Samsung products run on the Android operating system, developed by Google.

Apple and Samsung are going toe-to-toe in a patents dispute that mirrors the struggle for industry supremacy between the two companies, which control more than half of worldwide smartphone sales.

For most of the year, Apple had been successful in its U.S. litigation campaign against Samsung. Apple convinced U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California to impose two pretrial sales bans against Samsung — one against the Galaxy Tab 10.1, and the other against the Galaxy Nexus phone.

Apple then sought to keep up the pressure after its sweeping jury win. It asked Koh to impose a permanent sales ban against 26 mostly older Samsung phones, though any injunction could potentially have been extended to Samsung’s newer Galaxy products.

Yet the jury exonerated Samsung on the patent used to ban Galaxy Tab 10.1 sales, and Koh rescinded that injunction. Then, in October, a federal appeals court reversed Koh’s ban against the Nexus phone.

In her order late on Monday, Koh cited that appellate ruling as binding legal precedent, ruling that Apple had not presented enough evidence that its patented features drove consumer demand for the entire iPhone.

“The phones at issue in this case contain a broad range of features, only a small fraction of which are covered by Apple’s patents,” Koh wrote.

“Though Apple does have some interest in retaining certain features as exclusive to Apple,” she continued, “it does not follow that entire products must be forever banned from the market because they incorporate, among their myriad features, a few narrow protected functions.”

An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment on Koh’s ruling, and a Samsung representative could not immediately be reached.

In a separate order on Monday, Koh rejected a bid by Samsung for a new trial based on an allegation that the jury foreman was improperly biased in favor of Apple.

The case in U.S. District Court, Northern District of California is Apple Inc. vs. Samsung Electronics Co Ltd et al, 11-1846.

(Reporting by Dan Levine in Oakland, California; Editing by Ron Popeski)

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Boeheim wins 900th; No. 3 Syracuse 72, Detroit 68

SYRACUSE, N.Y. (AP) — Jim Boeheim called it just another number. The message board in the Carrier Dome didn't agree.

Moments after his third-ranked Syracuse Orange held off Detroit for a 72-68 victory Monday night in the Gotham Classic, making Boeheim just the third Division I men's coach to reach 900 wins, Hall of Famer Dave Bing, Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski and Louisville's Rick Pitino offered congratulations on the big screens inside the Teflon dome as the hometown faithful cheered.

Boeheim, 68 and in his 37th year at his alma mater, is 900-304 and joined an elite fraternity. Krzyzewski (936) and Bob Knight (902) are the only other men's Division I coaches to win that many games.

"To me, it's just a number," said Boeheim, whose first victory was against Harvard in 1976. "If I get 900, have I got to get more? That's why maybe it's just not that important to me because to me it's just a number, and the only number that matters is how this team does."

So far, it's done OK.

James Southerland had 22 points for Syracuse (10-0), which increased its home winning streak to 30 games, longest in the nation. Detroit (6-5), which lost 77-74 at St. John's in the second game of the season and 74-61 at Pitt earlier this month, had its four-game winning streak snapped.

Bing, Boeheim's college roommate, teammate and fellow Hall of Famer, and Roosevelt Bouie, a star on Boeheim's first team in 1976-77, were in the Carrier Dome crowd of 17,902.

Bing was standing tall in the locker room after the game.

"Nobody would have thought when we came here 50 years ago that either one of us would have had the kind of success we've had," said Bing, today the mayor of Detroit. "I'm so pleased and proud of him because he stuck with it. He's proven that he's one of the best coaches ever in college basketball, and he'll be No. 2 shortly."

After a victory that nearly was short-circuited, Boeheim was presented a jersey encased in glass with 900 emblazoned on it.

"I'm happy. I've stayed around long enough. I was a little nervous," Boeheim said at center court. "I'm proud to be here. To win this game is more pressure than I've felt in a long time. I wasn't thinking about losing until the end. That wouldn't have been a good thing to happen, but it very well could have."

Indeed.

Midway through the second half with Syracuse dominating, fans were given placards featuring cardboard cutouts of Boeheim's face with 900 wins printed on the back to wave in celebration. But when the public address announcer in the Carrier Dome invited fans to stick around for the postgame ceremony, the Titans roared back.

Juwan Howard Jr., who finished with 18 points, scored 14 over the last 6 minutes to key a 16-0 run, his two free throws pulling Detroit within 67-63 with 55.1 seconds left after the Titans had trailed by 20 with 6:09 to play.

"You know what, I didn't hear it, but the players probably heard because they sure came alive," Detroit coach Ray McCallum said. "This is a big stage. Guys sitting around the hotel watching television getting ready to play the No. 3 team in the country and they're talking about going for 900 wins, coach Boeheim. That's a lot for a young man to digest."

Michael Carter-Williams hit three of four free throws in the final seconds to secure the win.

"Michael made big-time free throws you've got to make. If he misses a couple, it's a new game. That was the difference," Boeheim said. "We have not been in that situation. Hopefully, we'll learn from that."

Carter-Williams finished with 10 assists and 12 points, his sixth straight double-double.

"It was great to be part of this," Carter-Williams said. "It's a part of history."

Doug Anderson scored 18 points and Nick Minnerath had 13 for Detroit. Ray McCallum Jr., the coach's son and Detroit's leading scorer at 19.4 points per game, finished with nine, while Jason Calliste had seven.

Southerland scored a career-high 35 points, matching a school record with nine 3-pointers, in a win at Arkansas in late November and, after an 0-for-10 slump over three games, found his range again Saturday night with three 3s in a win over Canisius. He finished 5 of 8 from behind the arc against the Titans.

One of the keys to breaking Syracuse's 2-3 zone is hitting the long ball, and Detroit struck out in the first half. The Titans were 0 for 10 and the lone 3 they did make — by McCallum with just over 6 minutes left — was negated by a shot-clock violation.

Detroit could only lament what might have been if a couple had gone in.

"We never gave up. That's a tribute to our team," Howard said. "We had the right attitude. We played a tough opponent. You usually don't want a moral victory, but we can take some positives from this game."

Syracuse plays again Saturday against Temple in Madison Square Garden, and the Orange faithful are likely to be out in numbers as they usually are when the team plays there.

Boeheim was effusive in praise of the support the team has received during his long tenure. Syracuse has had 71 crowds of over 30,000 since the Carrier Dome opened in 1980 and holds the NCAA on-campus record of 34,616, set nearly three years ago against Villanova.

"The support of fans cannot be overestimated," he said. "You have to have that kind of support in your building to bring recruits in, to help you play better. We've had a tremendous loyal fan base. That's why I always felt this was a great place to coach and why I never really thought about going anywhere else. The support from the fans is the No. 1 thing you have to have."

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N.I.H. to Start Initiatives to Raise Number of Minority Scientists

Few blacks enter biomedical research, and those who do often encounter obstacles in their career paths.

A study published last year found that a black scientist was markedly less likely to obtain research money from the National Institutes of Health than a white one — even when differences of education and stature were taken into account.

The institute has now announced initiatives aimed at helping blacks and other ethnic and racial groups who have been unrepresented among medical researchers, including a pilot program that will test a grant review process in which all identifying information about the applicant is removed.

The initiatives take a step further than addressing the problem identified in the study — the goal is to entice more minorities into the field.

“It needed to go well beyond that,” said Francis S. Collins, director of the N.I.H., “because even if we fixed that, it would still be the case that there would be a very distressingly low number of individuals from underrepresented groups who are part of what we’re trying to do in science.”

The N.I.H. program will provide research opportunities for undergraduate students, financial support for undergraduate and graduate students, and set up a mentoring program to help students and researchers beginning their careers.

When the program ramps up, it will cost about $50 million a year and support about 600 students.

The N.I.H. formed a group of 16 scientists to study the causes of the problem, and the group presented its recommendations in June. At a meeting this month of his advisory committee, Dr. Collins and other officials discussed how to implement the recommendations.

At the meeting, Dr. Reed Tuckson, an executive vice president and the chief of medical affairs for UnitedHealth Group, who was one of the group’s co-chairman, acknowledged the controversies that would inevitably accompany the effort, especially as the N.I.H., like the rest of the federal government, could soon face sizable cuts in its budget.

“This is a heavy, laden issue which no matter which way you turn, someone is going to be irritated,” he said.

Dr. Tuckson, who is black, urged his colleagues to support the efforts. “A lot of people put themselves on the line,” he said.

The study last year, published in the journal Science, reviewed 83,000 grant applications between 2000 and 2006. For every 100 applications submitted by white scientists, 29 were awarded grants. For every 100 applications from black scientists, only 16 were financed.

After statistical adjustments to ensure a more apples-to-apples comparison, the gap narrowed but persisted.

That raised the uncomfortable possibility that the scientists reviewing the applications were discriminating against black scientists, possibly reflecting an unconscious bias. Members of other races and ethnic groups, including Hispanics, do not appear to run into the same difficulties, the study said.

Only about 500 doctoral degrees in a year in biological sciences go to underrepresented minorities, like blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans.

To persuade more students to pursue this as a career, the N.I.H. aims to provide more summer research opportunities for undergraduates.

“That is the single strongest predictor of somebody deciding that that’s the career they want to pursue,” Dr. Collins said of mentored research.”

The program will also provide money to professors so that they can have more time to mentor students or train new mentors.

“They’re talking about a multipronged approach, which I think is a smart approach,” said Dr. Raynard S. Kington, president of Grinnell College in Iowa and a former deputy director of N.I.H. who was a co-author of the Science paper. “If they had just said, ‘We’re going to focus on review,’ I would have been deeply disappointed.”

Donna K. Ginther, an economics professor at the University of Kansas who led the Science study, has taken a closer look at a subset of 2,400 proposals included in the original study. It turns out, she said, that the black applicants published fewer papers and have fewer co-authors than other scientists.

That helps explain the financing gap, but also suggests that the professional networks of black scientists are smaller. “The hypothesis being that professionally, they’re not as integrated,” Dr. Ginther said, “and that’s why I think the mentoring network is such a good idea.”

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