Obama Returning to Capital to Seek Fiscal Deal

A White House official said on Tuesday that the president could depart as early as Wednesday.

Meanwhile, both chambers of Congress will come back from their holiday hiatus on Thursday and return to work. While there are growing signs that some members of both parties are prepared to accept a deal that raises taxes on people at the highest income levels, there is considerable distance between Republicans and Democrats and no guarantee that an agreement could pass.

The president and Congress left Washington late last week after House Republicans rejected a plan that would have left tax rates in place for all but those with incomes above $1 million.

Mr. Obama has since called for a less ambitious approach to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff on Jan. 1, when a series of automatic budget cuts and tax increases will go into effect if Congress and the White House cannot come up with an alternative course of action.

The White House has been seeking a resolution through talks with Senate Democrats, who control the chamber and have gained the tacit support of some of their Republican colleagues.

But the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, has given no indication that his members would not seek to block a deal that includes tax increases.

The main obstacle remains the Republican-led House, where a bloc of conservatives has ruled out any tax increases whatsoever.

Over the last four days, Mr. Obama has had a placid and uneventful vacation of golfing, hiking and exercising on a military base here on the island of Oahu, where he was raised and usually spends the holidays.

He had a quiet Christmas Day with his family. He spent most of the morning and early afternoon at the beach house he is renting on the island, except for an hour and a half he spent at the gym.

It was likely to be Mr. Obama’s last day of solitude for a while. With a fiscal deal still out of reach, the president can ill afford the public relations problems that would arise from being on vacation while the country heads uncertainly toward a deadline that could have a serious impact on the financial markets and the economy.

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Syria Uses Cluster Bombs to Attack as Many Civilians as Possible

After the screams and the desperate gathering of the victims, the staff at the local Freedom Hospital counted 4 dead and 23 wounded. All were civilians, doctors and residents said.

Many forms of violence and hardship have befallen Syria’s people as the country’s civil war has escalated this year. But the Syrian government’s attack here on Dec. 12 pointed to one of the war’s irrefutable patterns: the deliberate targeting of civilians by President Bashar al-Assad’s military, in this case with a weapon that is impossible to use precisely.

Syrians on both sides in this fight have suffered from the bloodshed and sectarian furies given dark license by the war. The victims of the cluster bomb attacks describe the tactic as collective punishment, a mass reprisal against populations that are with the rebels.

The munitions in question — Soviet-era PTAB-2.5Ms — were designed decades ago by Communist engineers to destroy battlefield formations of Western armored vehicles and tanks. They are ejected in dense bunches from free-falling dispensers dropped from aircraft. The bomblets then scatter and descend nose-down to land and explode almost at once over a wide area, often hundreds of yards across.

Marea stands along an agricultural plain, surrounded for miles by empty fields. Even at night, or in bad weather, it cannot be mistaken for anything but what it is — the densely packed collection of small businesses, offices and homes that together form a town.

Two journalists from The New York Times were traveling toward Marea as the attack occurred and arrived not long after the exploding bomblets had rippled across its neighborhoods.

Blood pooled on the street, including beside a water-collection point at an intersection where Nabhan al-Haji, 18, was killed.

Another victim, Ahmad Najjar Asmail, had been riding a motorcycle when a submunition landed beside him. He was decapitated. Ramy Naser, 15, was also fatally wounded.

The hospital was crowded with patients. Many more were en route to hospitals in Turkey.

The use of cluster munitions is banned by much of the world, although Syria, like the United States, is not party to that international convention. In the detached parlance of military planners, they are also sometimes referred to as area weapons — ordnance with effects that cover a sprawling amount of ground.

In the attack on Marea, at least three dispensers, each containing 42 bomblets slightly smaller than a one-liter bottle and packed with a high-explosive shaped charge, were dropped squarely onto neighborhoods and homes.

Two funerals began as the sun set, the latest in a town that rose early against Syria’s government, and has been one of the seats of defiance.

One homeowner, Ali Farouh, showed the place where a PTAB-2.5M struck an exterior wall on his patio. His young son held up bits of shrapnel.

“Bashar is a horse,” Mr. Farouh said, almost spitting with disgust as he said the president’s name. “He is a donkey.”

An examination of the area by daylight found the signature signs of an air-delivered cluster munitions attack, including unexploded PTAB-2.5M submunitions, the tail sections and fins of three dispensers and three main dispenser bodies.

One resident also displayed the nearly intact remains of an ATK-EB mechanical time fuse associated with the same dispensers. Fragments of the submunitions’ fins were in abundance. An interior spacer and dispenser nose plate were also found.

Throughout the town, many of the narrow, telltale craters made by shaped charges could be seen. Some cut deep holes through asphalt into the dirt below, almost like a drill.

It was not immediately clear why Marea was attacked, although many residents ascribed motives that mix collective punishment with revenge.

The town is the home of Abdulkader al-Saleh, a prominent rebel field commander in the Aleppo region. Mr. Saleh, charismatic and lean, is locally known with near reverence as Haji Marea, and is celebrated by his townspeople for his mix of battlefield savvy, courage and luck. This month, just days before the cluster attack on his hometown, he was named a leader in the reorganized Free Syrian Army, as many rebels call themselves.

Residents said Marea’s recent history, and its indelible connection to the commander it produced, has earned it a high place on Mr. Assad’s list of targets.

“The regime especially hates us,” said Yasser al-Haji, an activist who lost a cousin in the attack.

No one disputes that Marea has repeatedly been attacked by some of the Assad government’s most frightening weapons. On Thursday, residents reported being hit by cruise missiles, perhaps Scuds, which they said landed just north of the town with tremendous, earth-heaving explosions.

In the case of the cluster munitions attack, one of the submunitions did strike a building being used by the rebels — a school where some of Haji Marea’s fighters are based. It blasted a small hole in the concrete roof and sprayed bits of concrete and shrapnel into the room below, which was empty.

Several fighters, who were meeting in the next room as the jet screamed overhead — and the sole bomblet, out of more than 100, hit their building — chuckled at their near miss. But they were enraged by the attack.

They spoke of the government’s escalation of weapons throughout the year — from mortars, tanks and artillery to helicopter gunships, then to fixed-wing attack jets. Since summer, Mr. Assad’s military has used cluster munitions repeatedly, and recently began using incendiary cluster munitions, too. This month, Syrian activists and officials in Washington said the government had ratcheted up the pressure with one of the last unused weapons left in its stock — cruise missiles, with conventional warheads. Analysts who have watched the gradual escalations said the Assad government has followed a “boil-the-frog-slowly” strategy.

With the incremental escalations, they say, Mr. Assad has prevented the West from finding cause to enter the war, as NATO did against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya after he rolled out almost all of his military’s full might at the war’s outset.

One fighter, who gave his name as Mustafa, said that Mr. Assad had little left that he had not used. The fighter said he expected no restraint.

“In the coming days, he’ll use the chemicals and he’ll destroy everything,” he said. “And will burn the people, and kill all the people — children, women, old men, the elders.”

Mr. Assad, Mustafa said, “just needs to kill.”

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At Least 2 Firefighters Near Rochester Shot Dead at Fire Scene

William Spengler, 62, shot and killed himself after a gunfight with a police officer in Webster, a Rochester suburb, Webster Police Chief Gerald Pickering said.

"It was a trap set by Mr. Spengler, who laid in wait and shot first responders," Pickering told a news conference.

Separately, a police officer in Wisconsin and another in Texas were shot and killed on Monday, according to police and media reports.

The attacks on first responders came 10 days after one of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history that left 20 students and six adults dead at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, and intensified the debate about gun control in the United States.

Spengler was convicted of manslaughter in 1981 for beating his 92-year-old grandmother to death with a hammer, according to New York State Department of Corrections records. After prison he spent eight years on parole.

"We don't have an easy reason" for the attack on the firefighters, Pickering said, "but just looking at the history ... obviously this was an individual with a lot of problems."

Spengler opened fire around 5:45 a.m. after two of the firefighters arrived at the house in a fire truck and two others responded in their own cars, Pickering said.

Pickering appeared to wipe tears from his eyes at an earlier news conference when he identified the dead firefighters as Lieutenant Michael Chiapperini and Tomasz Kaczowka. Chiapperini was also a police lieutenant.

The injured firefighters, one of whom was in critical condition, were identified as Joseph Hofsetter and Theodore Scardino. Off-duty Police Officer John Ritter was hit by gunfire as he drove past the scene.

Pickering said police had found several types of weapons, including a rifle used to shoot the firefighters. As a convicted felon it was illegal for Spengler to own guns.

Police had not had any contact with Spengler in the "recent past," Pickering said.

Four houses were destroyed by the fire and four were damaged, Pickering said.

COPS TARGETED

Police Officer Jennifer Sebena, 30, was found dead on Monday in the Milwaukee, Wisconsin, suburb of Wauwatosa, police said.

Sebena was on patrol between 3 a.m. and 5 a.m. and wearing body armor when she was shot several times, police said. She was found by another officer after she did not respond to calls from the police dispatcher.

In Houston, Texas, an officer with the Bellaire Police Department died after a shootout at around 9 a.m. and a bystander was also killed, according to local media reports.

A spokesperson for the Houston Police Department was not immediately available for comment. A police officer answering the telephone confirmed media reports but declined further comment. A suspect was in the hospital, according to reports.

Before Monday's killings, the Washington-based National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund reported that 125 federal, state and local officers had died in the line of duty this year.

Forty-seven deaths were firearms-related, 50 were from traffic-related incidents, and 28 were from other causes, it said.

(This story is corrected with spelling of gunman's name throughout, Spengler not Spangler)

(Reporting by Chris Francescani; Editing by David Brunnstrom and M.D. Golan)

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Jack Klugman Dies in Los Angeles

Klugman, who lost his voice to throat cancer in the 1980s and trained himself to speak again, died with his wife at his side.

"He had a great life and he enjoyed every moment of it and he would encourage others to do the same," son Adam Klugman said.

Adam Klugman said he was spending Christmas with his brother, David, and their families. Their father had been convalescing for some time but had apparently died suddenly and they were not sure of the exact cause.

"His sons loved him very much," David Klugman said. "We'll carry on in his spirit."

Never anyone's idea of a matinee idol, Klugman remained a popular star for decades simply by playing the type of man you could imagine running into at a bar or riding on a subway with — gruff, but down to earth, his tie stained and a little loose, a racing form under his arm, a cigar in hand during the days when smoking was permitted.

He brought a city actor ideal for "The Odd Couple," which ran from 1970 to 1975 and was based on Neil Simon's play about mismatched roommates, divorced New Yorkers who end up living together. The show teamed Klugman — the sloppy sports writer Oscar Madison — and Tony Randall — the fussy photographer Felix Unger — in the roles played by Walter Matthau and Art Carney on Broadway and Matthau and Jack Lemmon in the 1968 film. Klugman had already had a taste of the show when he replaced Matthau on Broadway and he learned to roll with the quick-thinking Randall, with whom he had worked in 1955 on the CBS series "Appointment with Adventure."

"There's nobody better to improvise with than Tony," Klugman said. "A script might say, 'Oscar teaches Felix football.' There would be four blank pages. He would provoke me into reacting to what he did. Mine was the easy part."

They were battlers on screen, and the best of friends in real life. When Randall died in 2004 at age 84, Klugman told CNN: "A world without Tony Randall is a world that I cannot recognize."

In "Quincy, M.E.," which ran from 1976 to 1983, Klugman played an idealistic, tough-minded medical examiner who tussled with his boss by uncovering evidence of murder in cases where others saw natural causes.

"We had some wonderful writers," he said in a 1987 Associated Press interview. "Quincy was a muckraker, like Upton Sinclair, who wrote about injustices. He was my ideal as a youngster, my author, my hero.

"Everybody said, 'Quincy'll never be a hit.' I said, 'You guys are wrong. He's two heroes in one, a cop and a doctor.' A coroner has power. He can tell the police commissioner to investigate a murder. I saw the opportunity to do what I'd gotten into the theater to do — give a message.

"They were going to do cops and robbers with 'Quincy.' I said, 'You promised me I could do causes.' They said, 'Nobody wants to see that.' I said, 'Look at the success of "60 Minutes." They want to see it if you present it as entertainment.'"

For his 1987 role as 81-year-old Nat in the Broadway production of "I'm Not Rappaport," Klugman wore leg weights to learn to shuffle like an elderly man. He said he would wear them for an hour before each performance, "to remember to keep that shuffle."

"The guy is so vital emotionally, but physically he can't be," Klugman said.

"We treat old people so badly. There is nothing easy about 80."

The son of Russian Jewish immigrants, he was born in Philadelphia and began his acting career in college drama (Carnegie Institute of Technology). After serving in the Army during World War II, he went on to summer stock and off-Broadway, rooming with fellow actor Charles Bronson as both looked for paying jobs.

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Neighborhood Joint | Soho: At Dube Juggling Equipment in SoHo, Things Forever Seem Up in the Air

“Not to toot our own horn, but we’ve got a community that’s fairly geeky, fairly technical, definitely artsy,” Brian Dube, the proprietor, said. “But anyone can juggle balls.”

And balls line the laboratory-white walls of the small showroom: contact balls for body rolling, bounce balls for tricks, Russian balls for head balancing, illuminated balls for nightclub visibility and exerballs for bodybuilding. Clubs, whips and knives each have a section. Bowlers and derbies hang from a hat tree near the unicycle. Hula hoops are tucked inside Troo Hoops Alley.

Mr. Dube, 61, stumbled into the business after he dropped out of N.Y.U. and became a juggling addict. “I was eating, drinking, thinking juggling every minute of my life,” he said.

When he learned it would take six months to have custom juggling clubs made, Mr. Dube, the son of a Maine lumberjack, started building them himself in his Washington Square apartment. At his first juggling convention in Delaware he sold out of his products before he could leave the parking lot.

Thirty-seven years later, Mr. Dube employs nine people in the 5,000-square-foot loft he has leased since 1991, most of it used for manufacturing, storage and office work. Only 10 percent of his sales come from walk-in customers, he said, but the showroom is lively, often becoming a stage for the children, hobbyists and performers who hang out there.

On a recent afternoon, Kyle Petersen, 27, a professional juggler, occasional David Letterman guest and star of Mr. Dube’s how-to videos, wobbled across the floor on a miniature clown bike.

“It becomes second nature after awhile,” said Mr. Petersen, his knees practically knocking into his ears as he rode. “Before you know it, you won’t even want a regular bike,” Mr. Dube joked.

An employee, Natalie Wise, said, “My friends are often surprised to find a place where they can actually try out the products.” Ms. Wise, 28, specializes in “all things flow” — practices like hula hooping, poi and fire spinning. She said it had not been easy to impress her colleagues. “This is a serious art form,” Ms. Wise said, “but the juggling community likes to joke that we’re just a bunch of hippies in long skirts dancing around.”

Mr. Dube, who these days spends less time juggling and more in the minutiae of product design, has been working on a programmable LED hula hoop with an accelerometer that will measure movement.

“If we don’t come out with it first, we’ve probably thought of it,” he said.

Neil Abramson, a filmmaker visiting from Los Angeles, shopped while consulting by phone with his 11-year-old daughter, a performer in a youth circus troupe; he had been dispatched to find red-and-black six-panel juggling balls. Seeing Mr. Petersen spin a hula hoop from his nose, Mr. Abramson turned back to his phone and said, “You’d really like this place.”

Another customer, Aidan Dunfey, who sails schooners on the Hudson River and who hoped to replace his homemade, leaking, salt-filled tennis balls with something more refined, tossed beanbags from hand to hand.

“I have trouble quieting my mind,” he remarked, “but juggling seems to do it for me.”

Around the corner, Mr. Dube listened from a desk piled with paperwork, light strips, a melting-clock prop and an employee’s birthday cake. “Hearing people juggle in the showroom is buried in my subconscious,” he said.

Then he tossed out a question.

“What is the sound of three clubs juggling anyway?”

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Advertising: Selling Made in U.S.A., but Very Carefully

But many companies are stepping gingerly, avoiding sweeping claims and spelling out what “Made in the U.S.A.” means for their products. Consumers are more shrewd about how few consumer goods actually are made in the United States, leaving companies less wiggle room about the origin of products.

The Whirlpool Corporation, for example, specified in full-page print advertisements this year that 80 percent of its appliances “sold in the U.S. come from our U.S. factories.” Despite its deep American roots, the 101-year-old company — which makes Maytag, Amana, KitchenAid and Jenn-Air products — has, like other corporate giants, moved some manufacturing abroad.

As a result of its centennial celebrations last year, some consumers have urged the company to talk more about its American origins, said William Beck, a senior marketing director at Whirlpool, which spent $57.4 million in 2011 on advertising, according to Kantar Media, a WPP unit.

In recent months, the appliance giant has been underlining its American factories, and noting in its overall brand advertising that it employs about 22,000 workers (15,000 of them at its manufacturing plants), and spends $7.4 million annually on operating and maintaining its factories in Iowa, Ohio, Oklahoma and Tennessee.

But Whirlpool, whose ad drew a full-page rebuttal from the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers accusing it of shutting factories in the United States, said nostalgia and similar sentiments do not drive its sales. “Whirlpool’s key differentiating points are quality and innovation,” said Mr. Beck, and “the icing is that, hey, we’re made in the United States.”

Whirlpool does not share its market research, but other market studies show that customers increasingly take note of where a product is made. Perception Research Services International, in a September study, found that four out of five shoppers notice a “Made in the U.S.A.” label on packaging, and 76 percent of them said they would be more likely to buy a product because of the label.

While shoppers, especially those over 35, say they want to help the economy by buying United States-made goods, “the motivating factors actually may be quality and safety,” said Jonathan Asher, executive vice president of Perception Research Services. The company, which is based in Teaneck, N.J., surveyed 1,400 consumers last summer. “People are paying attention in categories that are ingested like food, medicine and personal care products, but less so in electronics, office supplies and appliances,” he said.

In a separate study, the Boston Consulting Group found that 80 percent of consumers surveyed said they would be willing to pay more for “Made in the U.S.A.” products than for those carrying a “Made in China” label.

They would pay the biggest differential for items like baby food and wooden toys, and a smaller percentage for electronics, apparel and appliances, said Kate Manfred, director of the group’s Center for Consumer and Customer Insight in the Americas, which released the study in mid-November.

“Safety and quality, and keeping jobs in America, are the important factors,” she said.

Bixbi, a Boulder, Colo., pet treat provider, has relied on safety to increase sales. The company, which started in 2008 amid revelations of tainted dog food ingredients imported from overseas, sells dog treats made from locally raised chickens and other animals.

“Our sales have grown 600 percent each year,” said James Crouch, who founded the small company with his brother, Michael. “Locally sourced is a key advantage.”

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Gun Makers Based in Connecticut Form a Potent Lobby

One after another, they testified that the technology, called microstamping, was flawed and would increase the cost of guns.

But the witness who commanded the most attention in Hartford that day in 2009 was a representative of one of Connecticut’s major employers: the Colt Manufacturing Company, the gun maker.

The Colt executive, Carlton S. Chen, said the company would seriously consider leaving the state if the bill became law. “You would think that the Connecticut government would be in support of our industry,” Mr. Chen said.

Soon, Connecticut lawmakers shelved the bill; they have declined to take it up since. Now, in the aftermath of the school massacre in Newtown, the lawmakers are formulating new gun-control measures, saying the state must serve as a national model.

But the failed effort to enact the microstamping measure shows how difficult the climate has been for gun control in state capitals. The firearm companies have played an important role in defeating these measures by repeatedly warning that they will close factories and move jobs if new state regulations are approved.

The companies have issued such threats in several states, especially in the Northeast, where gun control is more popular. But their views have particular resonance in Connecticut, a cradle of the American gun industry.

Like manufacturing in Connecticut over all, the state’s gun industry is not as robust as it once was. Still, Connecticut remains the seventh-largest producer of firearms in the country, according to federal data.

Colt, based in Connecticut since the 1800s, employs roughly 900 people in the state. Two other major gun companies, Sturm, Ruger & Company and Mossberg & Sons, are also based in the state. In all, the industry employs about 2,000 people in Connecticut, company officials said.

Gun-control advocates have long viewed Hartford, the capital, as hospitable terrain, because Connecticut is a relatively liberal state and already has more gun restrictions than most. Democrats control both houses of the legislature.

Yet lawmakers in Hartford did more than shelve the microstamping bill in 2009. They also declined to push a bill last year that would have banned high-capacity ammunition magazines — the very accessory used by Adam Lanza to kill 26 people, including 20 children, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown.

In several states, the gun companies have enlisted unions that represent gun workers, mindful that Democratic lawmakers who might otherwise back gun control also have close ties to labor.

In Connecticut, the United Automobile Workers, which represents Colt workers, has testified against restrictions. The union’s arguments were bolstered last year when Marlin Firearms, a leading manufacturer of rifles, closed a factory in Connecticut that employed more than 200 people. Marlin cited economic pressures, not gun regulation, for the decision, but representatives of the gun industry have said the combination of the two factors could spur others to move.

State law significantly restricts the ability of corporations to make political donations in Connecticut. Employees of Connecticut gun companies have contributed several thousand dollars in total in recent years to state candidates, mostly Republicans, according to an analysis of state records.

Financially, the gun companies and their employees in Connecticut have exerted influence by donating to national groups, especially the National Rifle Association, which have in turn helped Connecticut gun rights groups, according to interviews and financial records.

But it appears that in Hartford, the companies are relying largely on economic arguments.

Their strategy has been led by the industry’s trade group, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, which happens to have its national headquarters in Newtown, a few miles from the site of the shootings.

When Connecticut lawmakers held a hearing in 2011 on the measure to ban high-capacity ammunition magazines, the director of government regulations for the foundation, Jake McGuigan, opened his testimony with some statistics.

Mr. McGuigan told lawmakers that the state’s gun companies contributed $1.3 billion to the Connecticut economy, through their own operations and those of their suppliers.

“Each year, they get courted by other firearm-friendly states, like Idaho, Virginia, North Carolina,” Mr. McGuigan said. He later added, “It’s not an idle threat.”

The federation and Colt have declined to comment on gun-control legislation since the school killings.

“Our hearts go out to our fellow Connecticut residents who have suffered such unimaginable loss,” Colt said in a statement. “We do not believe it is appropriate to make further public statements at this very emotional time.”

Gun-control advocates in Hartford said the gun companies’ strategy was shrewd because it allowed Democratic lawmakers to oppose new regulations while proclaiming that they had not bowed to the National Rifle Association.

Michael Moss and Griff Palmer contributed reporting.

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Syrian Forces Lobbing More Scud Missiles at Rebels, U.S. Says

WASHINGTON — Forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria have resumed firing Scud ballistic missiles against rebel positions in recent days, American officials said on Thursday.

“We’ve been clear that we have seen the regime in Syria use Scud missiles against its own people, and that continues,” a senior State Department official said.

American officials said that was no indication that the missiles were armed with chemical weapons. They had no information on possible casualties.

Contacts inside Syria said that one Scud attack took place on Thursday near Maara, a town in a rebel-held area north of Aleppo near the Turkish border. The missile appeared to have missed its target, and the initial accounts were that nobody was hurt. American officials, who have been monitoring Mr. Assad’s military actions via aerial surveillance and other methods, did not corroborate those details but disclosed that the Scud firings, which they first reported last week, had resumed.

“We know they’ve been firing Scuds and continue to fire them,” said a Defense Department official.

American officials said on Dec. 12 that the Syrian military had fired six Scud missiles at the Sheikh Suleiman base north of Aleppo, which rebel forces had occupied. It is unclear whether the Scuds, which are Soviet-era designed missiles not known for their precision, hit the intended target.

The Syrian foreign minister, Walid al-Moallem, later issued a statement denying that Syria had used Scuds. It called the reports “untrue rumors.”

There appeared to a lull in the Scud firings after the first reports, but now the Syrian government is firing them again.

NATO recently approved the deployment of American, Dutch and Germany Patriot antimissile batteries to Turkey, a neighbor of Syria that has become one of Mr. Assad’s most ardent critics, to protect against a possible Syrian missile attack. The United States is sending two Patriot batteries and 400 troops to operate them.

Syria has several types of Scuds, including Scud-B systems that were provided by Russia and Scud-C’s and Scud-D’s that were developed with the assistance of Iran and North Korea, according to Joseph Holliday, an expert on Syria at the Institute for the Study of War, a nongovernmental research group.

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Occupy Movement Was Investigated by F.B.I. Counterterrorism Agents, Records Show

The F.B.I. records show that as early as September 2011, an agent from a counterterrorism task force in New York notified officials of two landmarks in Lower Manhattan — Federal Hall and the Museum of American Finance — “that their building was identified as a point of interest for the Occupy Wall Street.”

That was around the time that Occupy Wall Street activists set up a camp in Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan, spawning a protest movement across the United States that focused the nation’s attention on issues of income inequality.

In the following months, F.B.I. personnel around the country were routinely involved in exchanging information about the movement with businesses, local law-enforcement agencies and universities.

An October 2011 memo from the bureau’s Jacksonville, Fla., field office was titled Domain Program Management Domestic Terrorist.

The memo said agents discussed “past and upcoming meetings” of the movement, and its spread. It said agents should contact Occupy Wall Street activists to ascertain whether people who attended their events had “violent tendencies.”

The memo said that because of high rates of unemployment, “the movement was spreading throughout Florida and there were several Facebook pages dedicated to specific chapters based on geographical areas.”

The F.B.I. was concerned that the movement would provide “an outlet for a lone offender exploiting the movement for reasons associated with general government dissatisfaction.”

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the F.B.I. has come under criticism for deploying counterterrorism agents to conduct surveillance and gather intelligence on organizations active in environmental, animal-cruelty and poverty issues.

The disclosure of the F.B.I. records comes a little more than a year after the police ousted protesters from Zuccotti Park in November 2011. Law-enforcement agencies undertook similar actions around the country against Occupy Wall Street groups.

Occupy Wall Street has lost much of its visibility since then, but questions remain about how local and federal law-enforcement officials monitored and treated the protesters.

The records were obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, a civil-rights organization in Washington, through a Freedom of Information request to the F.B.I. Many parts of the documents were redacted by the bureau.

The records provide one of the first glimpses into how deeply involved federal law-enforcement authorities were in monitoring the activities of the movement, which is sometimes described in extreme terms.

For example, according to a memo written by the F.B.I.’s New York field office in August 2011, bureau personnel met with officials from the New York Stock Exchange to discuss “the planned Anarchist protest titled ‘Occupy Wall Street,’ scheduled for September 17, 2011.”

“The protest appears on Anarchist Web sites and social network pages on the Internet,” the memo said.

It added: “Numerous incidents have occurred in the past which show attempts by Anarchist groups to disrupt, influence, and or shut down normal business operations of financial districts.”

A spokesman for the F.B.I. in Washington cautioned against “drawing conclusions from redacted” documents.

“The F.B.I. recognizes the rights of individuals and groups to engage in constitutionally protected activity,” said the spokesman, Paul Bresson. “While the F.B.I. is obligated to thoroughly investigate any serious allegations involving threats of violence, we do not open investigations based solely on First Amendment activity. In fact, the Department of Justice and the F.B.I.’s own internal guidelines on domestic operations strictly forbid that.”

But Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, said the documents demonstrated that the F.B.I. had acted improperly by gathering information on Americans involved in lawful activities.

“The collection of information on people’s free-speech actions is being entered into unregulated databases, a vast storehouse of information widely disseminated to a range of law-enforcement and, apparently, private entities,” she said. “This is precisely the threat — people do not know when or how it may be used and in what manner.”

The records show little evidence that the members of the movement planned to commit violence. But they do describe a discussion on the Internet “regarding the Occupy Wall Street movement about when it is okay to shoot a police officer” and a law-enforcement meeting held in Des Moines because “there may potentially be an attempt to stop the Iowa Caucuses by people involved in Occupy Iowa.”

There are no references within the documents to agency personnel covertly infiltrating Occupy branches.

The documents indicate, however, that the F.B.I. obtained information from police departments and other law-enforcement agencies that appear to have been gathered by someone observing the protesters as they planned activities.

The documents do not detail recent activities by the F.B.I. involving Occupy Wall Street.

But one activist, Billy Livsey, 48, said two F.B.I. agents visited him in Brooklyn over the summer to question him about planned protests at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., and about plans to celebrate the first anniversary of Occupy Wall Street in September.

The agents, Mr. Livsey said, told him they knew he was among a group of people involved in the Occupy Wall Street “direct action” group that distributed information about the movement’s activities.

He said he felt unnerved by the visit.

“It was surprising and troubling to me,” Mr. Livsey said.

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Circus Elephant Ban Considered in Los Angeles

But “The Greatest Show on Earth” might have made its last stop here.

Los Angeles is poised to ban elephants from performing in circuses within its city limits, after pressure from animal welfare advocates who have for decades condemned the methods used to train and transport elephants as abusive and cruel.

If the City Council adopts the ban early next year, Ringling Brothers, the oldest continuously operated circus in the country, will be barred from the nation’s second-largest city unless its owners agree to abandon one of the show’s signature acts.

“The treatment of elephants in traveling circuses is one of the crueler practices, and it’s time for us to stand up for them,” said Paul Koretz, the City Council member who sponsored the ban. He predicted that once Los Angeles outlawed circus elephants, other communities would follow. “At some point, this will be universally banned throughout the country,” he said.

The movement to ban elephant acts, which had until recently made little progress in this country, may now have found a foothold in Southern California, a region that has emerged as a hub of animal welfare legislation of all kinds. (It is illegal for pet owners to declaw their cats in this city, while in neighboring West Hollywood, the city government went so far as to officially deem pets “companion animals” and their owners “guardians.”)

Six Southern California cities already ban circus elephants, more than in any other state, according to animal welfare organizations. In addition, over the last year, the Santa Ana Zoo and the Orange County Fair both stopped offering elephant rides.

Ringling Brothers has fought back, arguing that its treatment of elephants, tigers and other animals is humane, and pointing to frequent inspections by the Department of Agriculture as proof that the animals are receiving exemplary care.

But the fight over whether elephants should be allowed to perform in traveling shows is only partly about how they are treated: an endangered species, Asian elephants are part of a broader debate over how, and whether, humans should interact with wild animals.

Trainers argue that letting people interact with elephants makes them more likely to support conservation efforts.

“Seeing animals up close is one of the main reasons people come to Ringling Brothers,” said Stephen Payne, a spokesman for Feld Entertainment, which bought Ringling Brothers in 1967. “Animal rights organizations want no human-animal interaction, period, regardless of how the animals are cared for.”

Elephants had been trained to work with humans for thousands of years before they became fixtures in circuses and roaming carnivals (just ask Hannibal). Intelligent and normally docile, they can learn tricks like headstands for wide-eyed children.

But pressure on circuses to drop wild animal acts has grown steadily, as activists have waged a campaign to convince the public that it is cruel to haul animals back and forth across the country to perform in front of crowds.

Animal rights organizations have criticized the conditions in which the animals are kept, offering what they say is evidence of mistreatment, including undercover videos of handlers hitting elephants over the head with bull hooks, rods with a curved, sharp end long used to train and control elephants.

Some organizations, like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, want to remove animals not only from circuses but also from zoos, even though those animals are not made to travel in boxcars or perform tricks.

“For the circuses, profit is always the priority,” said Lindsay Rajt, a spokeswoman for PETA. “Any time animals are used for profit, you’re going to see corners cut on their welfare, because it’s not the top priority.”

Even people who are not actively involved in animal rights have grown more receptive to this argument.

Rebecca Goldstein, a Los Angeles resident, said it would be a shame if she could not take children of her own to see a circus with live animals, like the one she went to when she was young.

“But if the way they’re treating animals is inhumane,” Ms. Goldstein, 29, said, “I’ll take them to see people instead.”

More than a dozen countries have banned at least some wild animals from performing in public. Several major American circuses have voluntarily eliminated animals from their shows, instead focusing on human acrobatics, while zoos, including the Los Angeles Zoo, have moved away from use of the bull hook.

But the pull to see elephants up close has proved a difficult force to overcome. Lawsuits designed to force Ringling Brothers to abandon elephant acts have been dismissed. Only a scattering of relatively small cities have adopted bans of their own.

About 10 million people nationwide came to see Ringling Brothers circuses in 2012, according to Feld Entertainment, including 100,000 in Los Angeles.

Despite the continued popularity of elephant acts, though, some elephant trainers fear that their work may soon be outlawed.

Kari Johnson, a co-owner of Have Trunk Will Travel, a company that trains and rents elephants for shows, including Hollywood movies, said the end of elephant rides in Orange County had hurt her business. A ban in Los Angeles could be ruinous.

“I believe if something drastic doesn’t happen, then we will be the last generation that trains elephants,” said Ms. Johnson, whose stepfather was also an elephant trainer. “People love elephants because they get to be around them a little.”

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The Lede Blog: Updates on Connecticut Shooting Aftermath

December 20

Video and a transcript of Julian Assange's complete remarks to supporters at Ecuadorean Embassy in London on Thursday night.

December 20

A small Turkish town in the Aegean region is braced for thousands of visitors who hope to be among the few to survive the Dec. 21, 2012, doomsday supposedly predicted by the Mayan calendar.

December 20

Ahmad Fakhouri, a prominent Syrian state television anchor, announced that he left his position and the country, and had settled in Egypt, in a telephone interview shown on Thursday by a Saudi news channel.

December 20

Live updates from Connecticut and around the world in the aftermath of the second deadliest mass shooting in the United States.

December 19

More details about the lives lost to gun violence since the Connecticut school shooting that President Obama discussed Wednesday.

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Storms Blamed in 3 Deaths Head East

Post-Christmas travelers braced for flight delays and a raft of weather warnings for drivers, a day after rare winter twisters damaged buildings in Louisiana and Alabama.

Snow and ice covered roads in southern Illinois and southern Indiana early Wednesday. Officials urged residents to stay home if they can. State police reported numerous slide-off accidents in the Evansville, Ind., area and white-out conditions on Interstate 64 in Indiana with wind gusts around 30 mph.

The storm system headed from the Gulf Coast to New England has been blamed for three deaths and several injuries, though no one was killed outright in the tornadoes. The storms also left more than 100,000 without power for a time across the South, darkening Christmas celebrations.

Severe thunderstorms were forecast for the Carolinas while a line of blizzard and winter storm warnings stretched from Arkansas up the Ohio River to New York and on to Maine.

Thirty-four tornadoes were reported in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama during the outbreak Tuesday, the National Weather Service said.

Rick Cauley's family was hosting relatives for Christmas when tornado sirens went off in Mobile. Not taking any chances, he and his wife, Ashley, hustled everyone down the block to take shelter at the athletic field house at Mobile's Murphy High School in Mobile.

It turns out, that wasn't the place to head.

"As luck would have it, that's where the tornado hit," Cauley said. "The pressure dropped and the ears started popping and it got crazy for a second." They were all fine, though the school was damaged, as were a church and several homes, but officials say no one was seriously injured.

Camera footage captured the approach of the large funnel cloud.

Mobile was the biggest city hit by numerous twisters. Along with brutal, straight-line winds, the storms knocked down countless trees, blew the roofs off homes and left many Christmas celebrations in the dark. Torrential rains drenched the region and several places saw flash flooding.

More than 325 flights around the U.S. were canceled as of Wednesday morning, according to the flight tracker FlightAware.com. The cancelations were mostly spread around airports that had been or soon would be in the path of the storm.

Holiday travelers in the nation's much colder midsection battled treacherous driving conditions from freezing rain and blizzard conditions from the same fast-moving storms. In Arkansas, highway department officials said the state was fortunate the snowstorm hit on Christmas Day when many travelers were already at their destinations.

Texas, meanwhile, dealt with high winds and slickened highways.

On Tuesday, winds toppled a tree onto a pickup truck in the Houston area, killing the driver, and a 53-year-old north Louisiana man was killed when a tree fell on his house. Icy roads already were blamed for a 21-vehicle pileup in Oklahoma, and the Highway Patrol there says a 28-year-old woman was killed in a crash on a snowy U.S. Highway near Fairview.

Trees fell on homes and across roadways in several communities in southern Mississippi and Louisiana. Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant declared a state of emergency, saying eight counties reported damages and some injuries.

It included McNeill, where a likely tornado damaged a dozen homes and sent eight people to the hospital, none with life-threatening injuries, said Pearl River County emergency management agency director Danny Manley.

The snowstorm that caused numerous accidents pushed out of Oklahoma late Tuesday, carrying with it blizzard warnings for parts of northeast Arkansas, where 10 inches of snow was forecast. Freezing rain clung to trees and utility lines in Arkansas and winds gusts up to 30 mph whipped them around, causing about 71,000 customers to lose electricity for a time.

Christmas lights also were knocked out with more than 100,000 customers without power for at least a time in Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama.

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Chinese Driver Runs Down Students

HONG KONG — A man who was angry over a court ruling in the case of his daughter’s murder used his car to run down a group of  high school students in northern China, causing 13 to be hospitalized with injuries, the state news media reported on Tuesday. It was the second major attack on students in China in less than two weeks.

The man, Yin Tiejun, 48, ran down 23 students at the school in Fengning County, in Hebei Province, during their lunch break on Monday, Xinhua, the state news agency, reported. He then tried to set fire to his car by igniting a container of diesel fuel. Xinhua quoted the police as saying he was upset that the court did not sentence all his daughter’s killers to death. Mr. Yin has been detained on charges of endangering public safety.  

As with the previous attack, in which a man with a meat cleaver injured 23 students in adjacent Henan Province on Dec. 14, the episode received limited attention from the state news media. The Chinese media have given heavy coverage instead to the school shooting in Newtown, Conn. — in which 20 first graders and 6 adults were killed by a gunman who had already killed his mother and later killed himself — and the shootings on Monday of four firefighters, two of whom died, in Webster, N.Y.

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Russian Parliament Sends Adoption Ban to Putin

Enactment of the adoption ban, which was developed in retaliation for an American law punishing Russians accused of violating human rights, would be the most severe blow yet to relations between Russia and the United States in a year marked by a series of setbacks.

Since Mr. Putin returned to the presidency in May, Russian officials have used a juggernaut of legislation and executive decisions to curtail United States influence and involvement in Russia, undoing major partnerships that began after the fall of the Soviet Union.

In September, the Kremlin ordered the United States Agency for International Development to cease operations here, shutting a wide portfolio of public health, civil society and other initiatives. And officials announced plans to terminate a joint effort to dismantle nuclear, chemical and other nonconventional weapons known as the Nunn-Lugar agreement.

Russia also passed a law requiring nonprofit groups that get financing from abroad to register as “foreign agents,” sharply curtailing the ability of the United States to work with good-government groups, and another law broadening the definition of treason to include “providing financial, technical, advisory or other assistance to a foreign state or international organization.”

The adoption ban, however, is the first step that takes direct aim at the American public and would effectively undo a bilateral agreement on international adoptions ratified just this year, which took effect on Nov. 1. The agreement called for heightened oversight in response to several high-profile cases of abuse and deaths of adopted Russian children in the United States.

About 1,000 Russian children were adopted by parents from the United States in 2011, more than any other country, and more than 45,000 such children have been adopted by American parents since 1999.

Pavel Astakhov, Russia’s child rights commissioner, told news agencies on Wednesday that the ban if enacted could prevent the departure of 46 children who are ready to be adopted by parents from the United States. Some of those adoptions have already received court approval, he said. And some lawmakers said that they believed the bilateral agreement on adoptions with the United States would be void as of Jan. 1, even though Mr. Putin, at his annual news conference last week, said that changes to the agreement require one-year notice by either side.

The proposed ban has opened a rare split at the highest levels of the Russian government, with several senior officials speaking out against it. And it has provoked a huge public outcry and debate, with critics of the ban saying that it would most hurt Russian orphans, many of whom are already suffering in the country’s deeply troubled foster care and orphanage system.

In debate on Wednesday, lawmakers said that they felt an imperative to retaliate for a law signed by President Obama earlier this month that will punish Russian citizens accused of violating human rights, by prohibiting them from traveling to the United States and from owning real estate or other assets there.

Lawmakers also said that Russia, which has more than 650,000 children living without parental supervision, should take care of them on its own. The vote in the Federation Council was 143 to 0.

“We need to set a plan for the future,” said Valery V. Ryazanksy, a senator from the Kursk region. Then, reiterating a slogan adopted by many lawmakers in recent days, he declared: “Russia without orphans!” Gennady I. Makin, a senator from Veronezh, gave it a slight twist: “Russia without orphanages.”

Several child-welfare advocates have mocked this sort of rhetoric, noting that more than 80,000 children were identified as in need of supervision in 2011 and that the country has been unable to find homes for the vast majority of children eligible for adoption.

There were slightly more than 10,000 adoptions in Russia in 2011, about 3,400 of which were by foreigners.

In addition to banning adoptions by Americans, the bill approved on Wednesday would impose sanctions on American judges and others accused of violating the rights of adopted Russian children in the United States.

A number of cases involving the abuse or even deaths of adopted Russian children in recent years have generated publicity and outrage in Russia, including a case in which a 7-year-old boy was sent on a flight back to Russia alone by his adoptive mother in Tennessee.

The Russian law was named for Dmitri Yakovlev, a toddler who died of heatstroke in Virginia in 2008, after his adoptive father left him in a parked car for nine hours. The father, Miles Harrison, was acquitted of manslaughter by a judge who ruled the death was an accident.

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Chicken Farms Try Oregano as Antibiotic Substitute

Oregano lies loose in trays and tied into bunches on tabletops and counters, and a big, blue drum that held oregano oil stands in the corner. “Have you ever tried oregano tea?” Mr. Sechler asked, mashing leaves between his broad fingers.

Off and on over the last three years or so, his chickens have been eating a specially milled diet laced with oregano oil and a touch of cinnamon. Mr. Sechler swears by the concoction as a way to fight off bacterial diseases that plague meat and poultry producers without resorting to antibiotics, which some experts say can be detrimental to the humans who eat the meat. Products at Bell & Evans, based in this town about 30 miles east of Harrisburg, have long been free of antibiotics, contributing to the company’s financial success as consumers have demanded purer foods.

But Mr. Sechler said that nothing he had used as a substitute in the past worked as well as oregano oil.

“I have worried a bit about how I’m going to sound talking about this,” he said. “But I really do think we’re on to something here.”

Skeptics of herbal medicines abound, as any quick Internet search demonstrates. “Oil of oregano is a perennial one, advertised as a cure for just about everything,” said Scott Gavura, a pharmacist in Toronto who writes for the Web site Science-Based Medicine. “But there isn’t any evidence, there are too many unanswered questions and the only proponents for it are the ones producing it.”

Nonetheless, Mr. Gavura said he would welcome a reduction in the use of antibiotics in animals.

At the same time, consumers are growing increasingly sophisticated about the content of the foods that they eat.

Data on sales of antibiotic-free meat is hard to come by, but the sales are a tiny fraction of the overall meat market. Sales in the United States of organic meat, poultry and fish, which by law must be raised without antibiotics, totaled $538 million in 2011, according to the Organic Trade Association. By comparison, sales of all beef that year were $79 billion.

Still, retailers like Costco, Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s, as well as some restaurant chains, complain that they cannot get enough antibiotic-free meat.

Noodles & Company, a fast-growing chain of more than 300 restaurants, recently added antibiotic-free pork to the choices of ingredients that customers can add to their made-to-order pastas. It ensured its supply by ordering cuts of meat that were not in relatively high demand and by committing in advance to buy a year’s worth, said Dan Fogarty, its executive vice president for marketing.

“We’re deliberately voting with our pocketbooks,” he said.

In a nationwide telephone survey of 1,000 adults in March, more than 60 percent told the Consumer Reports National Research Center that they would be willing to pay at least 5 cents a pound more for meat raised without antibiotics.

“Before, it was kind of a nice little business, and while it’s still microscopic in the grand scheme of things, we’re seeing acceptance from retailers across the country, not just in California and on the East Coast,” said Stephen McDonnell, founder and chief executive of Applegate, an organic and natural meats company.

Mr. McDonnell said a confluence of trends, from heightened interest in whole and natural foods to growing concerns about medical problems like diabetes, obesity and gluten allergies, were contributing to the demand for antibiotic-free meat.

There is growing concern among health care experts and policy makers about antibiotic resistance and the rise of “superbugs,” bacteria that are impervious to one or more antibiotics. Those bacteria can be passed on to consumers, who eat meat infected with them and then cannot be treated.

In November, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and 25 national health organizations and advocacy groups issued a statement on antibiotics that, among other things, called for “limiting the use of medically important human antibiotics in food animals” and “supporting the use of such antibiotics in animals only for those uses that are considered necessary for assuring animal health.”

In 2011, there were several prominent recalls involving bacterial strains that are resistant to antibiotics, including more than 60 million pounds of ground beef contaminated with salmonella Typhimurium and about 36 million pounds of ground turkey spoiled with salmonella Heidelberg.

Consumer Reports released a study last month that found the bacteria Yersinia enterocolitica in 69 percent of 198 pork chop and ground pork samples bought at stores around the country. Some of the bacteria were resistant to one or more antibiotics.

Analysis of Food and Drug Administration data by the Center for Science in the Public Interest found that 80 percent of all antibiotics sold in the United States are used in animals. The majority of those antibiotics are used to spur growth or prevent infections from spreading in the crowded conditions in which most animal production takes place today.

The European Union has banned the use of antibiotics to accelerate growth, and the European Parliament is pushing to end their use as tools to prevent disease as well.

The oregano oil product Mr. Sechler uses, By-O-Reg Plus, is made by a Dutch company, Ropapharm International. In the late 1990s, Bayer conducted trials on the product, known as Ropadiar in Europe, comparing its ability to control diarrhea in piglets caused by E. coli with that of four of the company’s products.

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Hollywood Rebounds at the Box Office

Projections show that about 1.36 billion people will see films this year, compared with 1.29 billion in 2011. Ticket revenue at North American theaters is projected to jump by 6 percent, to $10.8 billion, according to Paul Dergarabedian, a box-office analyst for Hollywood.com. What really matters, however, is that Hollywood achieved the increase without raising prices.

The anticipated lift in attendance, which factors in crowds for two big movies that are to open on Christmas Day, “Django Unchained” and “Les Misérables,” would be the industry’s biggest yearly increase since 2002. Lately, studios and publicly traded theater chains like Regal Entertainment suffered drops in annual attendance, forcing them to prop up revenue by charging more for admission and concessions.

“I really believe that momentum from weekend to weekend is crucial — that was fun, let’s come back — and we had sustained periods of that this year,” said Greg Foster, chairman of Imax Filmed Entertainment. Imax’s domestic ticket revenue will end the year up 50 percent, he said, the result of popular movies and an increasing reliance on Imax by studios as a way to differentiate releases.

Hollywood’s upswing is particularly notable because it comes despite a poor summer season, a period from the first full weekend in May to Labor Day when studios typically record 40 percent of their annual revenue. Summer ticket revenue dropped 3 percent and attendance hit a 19-year low. The July theater shootings in a Colorado theater kept some people home, but a lot of films were simply mediocre.

Why did Adam Shankman’s adaptation of “Rock of Ages” sputter? “It was a bad movie,” David Geffen said at an industry gathering in July. “And it’s unusual when a bad movie succeeds.”

Still, how Americans respond to movies became less important to studios in 2012. Look no further than “Ice Age: Continental Drift,” from 20th Century Fox, to understand why. North American ticket sales for “Continental Drift,” the fourth installment in the animated series, totaled $161 million, a 24 percent decline from “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs” in 2009, after adjusting for inflation.

Then why is Fox thrilled with its performance and developing ideas for a fifth chapter? Because “Continental Drift” took in $714 million overseas, including $68 million in China alone. “This is a turning-point year for the relationship between China and Hollywood,” said Phil Contrino, editor of Boxoffice.com. “It’s becoming very clear how important China is to the worldwide gross of a film.”

Movies are a cyclical business in which a couple of hits (or misses) can whipsaw results. To that end, analysts emphasize that 2012 benefited greatly from just two films: “The Hunger Games” in March and “Skyfall” in November.

Backed by an effective social media marketing campaign, Lionsgate’s “Hunger Games” blew past robust expectations to become the No. 3 movie of the year, taking in about $408 million domestically, and producing a global total of $686.5 million.

(“The Avengers,” from Disney’s Marvel Studios, was by far the No. 1 movie, taking in $623.4 million in North America, for a global total of $1.51 billion — while “The Dark Knight Rises,” from Warner Brothers, was second, taking in $448.1 million, for a global total of $1.08 billion.)

“Skyfall,” from Sony and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, demonstrated how an aging franchise can be reinvigorated if new installments are actually worth seeing. “Skyfall,” which earned glowing reviews, has so far taken in $280 million in North America and $694.3 million overseas, making it one of the best-performing James Bond movies on record, even when adjusting for inflation.

It was a particularly lucrative year for Lions Gate Entertainment, which includes both the Lionsgate and Summit banners. Along with “The Hunger Games,” the company had “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 2,” which has so far generated $783 million in global ticket sales. According to Rentrak, a company that tracks box office data, Lions Gate, a small movie company that leapt forward with its acquisition of Summit Entertainment, will end the year as North America’s fifth-largest distributor as measured by ticket sales, surpassing 20th Century Fox and Paramount.

MGM roared back to life after years of fiscal turmoil, including bankruptcy. Aside from “Skyfall,” MGM benefited from “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” a coproduction with Warner’s New Line Cinema unit that was No. 1 over the weekend, taking in an estimated $36.7 million, for a new domestic total of $149.9 million, according to Hollywood.com.

But most movie companies had a mixed year.

In a display of marketing strength, nine of Sony’s movies were No. 1 at the box office. Sony also successfully reintroduced its most important franchise with “The Amazing Spider-Man,” taking in $752.2 million worldwide. Still, high costs for movies like “Men in Black III” and flops like “Total Recall” ate into profitability.

Disney found a blockbuster new franchise with “The Avengers,” but also took a $200 million write-down for the big-budget science-fiction epic “John Carter.”

Similarly, Universal Pictures had steep losses from its costly “Battleship” but found new franchises in the raunchy “Ted,” which sold $502 million in tickets worldwide, and “Snow White and the Huntsman,” which took in nearly $400 million.

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Pope Prays for Freedom in China and Peace in Syria

“May peace spring up for the people of Syria, deeply wounded and divided by a conflict which does not spare even the defenseless and reaps innocent victims,” Benedict said. “I appeal for an end to the bloodshed, easier access for the relief of refugees and the displaced, and dialogue in the pursuit of a political solution to the conflict.”

Wearing a short red cape lined with snow-white ermine and trimmed with gold embroidery, Benedict smiled as he offered Christmas greetings in 65 languages to thousands of faithful in Saint Peter’s Square. Marching bands from from the Italian armed forces and the Carabinieri police played festive anthems. During Christmas Eve Mass on Monday evening, the 85-year-old pontiff had appeared tired and his voice hoarse, but on Tuesday he appeared more vivacious as he delivered the traditional message, “Urbi et orbi” — to the city and the world.

He also addressed China, where in recent weeks the Vatican has been increasingly at odds with the government over the ordination of bishops, who cannot hold office without approval from the authorities, to the dismay of the Vatican.

“May the King of Peace turn his gaze to the new leaders of the People’s Republic of China for the high task which awaits them,” Benedict said. “I express my hope that, in fulfilling this task, they will esteem the contribution of the religions, in respect for each, in such a way that they can help to build a fraternal society for the benefit of that noble people and of the whole world.”

Aggravating tensions, the Chinese Bishops’ Council, a government entity, stripped Thaddeus Ma Daqin, 45, the auxiliary bishop of Shanghai, of his title this month, according to Catholic Web sites that cited sources in the Chinese church.

The bishop had been under house arrest since he shocked Communist Party officials and his faithful by renouncing his government position during his consecration in July. In recent years, China’s Patriotic Catholic Association, which does not recognize the authority of the pope, has consecrated a number of bishops over the Vatican’s objections, resulting in their excommunication.

On Tuesday, Benedict asked God to give Israelis and Palestinians the “courage to end to long years of conflict and division, and to embark resolutely on the path of negotiation” and called for peace in Egypt, “land where the Redeemer was born.”

The pope also urged “the return of peace in Mali and that of concord in Nigeria, where savage acts of terrorism continue to reap victims, particularly among Christians.” He prayed for “the refugees from the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo,” and for peace to Kenya, “where brutal attacks have struck the civilian population and places of worship.”

On Monday evening, communicating through his new Twitter handle, @Pontifex, Benedict recalled that as a boy he loved his family’s Christmas crèche, and asked his followers what their favorite Christmas traditions were. “The cribs that we built in our home gave me much pleasure,” his message read. “We added figures each year and used moss for decoration.”

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Fiscal Cutoff Gradually Morphs Into a Horizon

Until late last week, most observers had expected the president and Congressional Republicans to come up with at least a short-term compromise before the year-end deadline. But the failure of Speaker John A. Boehner to win support for tax increases on the wealthiest Americans from fellow House Republicans has forced many economic observers to reconsider what might happen if political leaders remain deadlocked into 2013. Wall Street is still betting on a quick deal, but that confidence is misplaced, said Julia Coronado, chief North American economist at BNP Paribas. “Markets have been incredibly complacent about this,” she said. If a compromise cannot be found by Jan. 1, she said, “the markets will take that hard.” Some hits — like a two percentage point increase in payroll taxes and the end of unemployment benefits for more than two million jobless Americans — would be felt right away. But other effects, like tens of billions in automatic spending cuts, to include both military and other programs, would be spread out between now and the end of the 2013 fiscal year in September. These could quickly be reversed if a compromise is found. Similarly, the expiration of Bush-era tax cuts on Jan. 1 would not have a major impact on consumers if Congress quickly agreed to extend them for all but the wealthiest Americans in early 2013, as is widely expected. Other probable changes, like a jump in taxes on capital gains and dividends, would most likely be felt over a broader period rather than as an immediate blow to the economy. In the meantime, more observers are contemplating what the impact will be if Washington ignores the year-end deadline and waits until January or February to act. “It’s still possible they will work something out by the end of the year, but the probability seems reasonably high that we may go into January with no agreement,” said Dean Maki, chief United States economist at Barclays Capital. “But the longer this goes on, the more nervous I get about first-quarter growth. If negotiations were to linger into March, then the first quarter could be much weaker.” If the impasse lasted even longer and the full force of more than $500 billion in tax increases and spending cuts hit the economy, the Congressional Budget Office predicts the country would slip into recession in the first half of 2013, with unemployment rising to 9.1 percent by the fourth quarter of 2013. But for all the pessimism recently, most observers still think a compromise will be reached, even if it takes a few more weeks. Negotiations are set to resume in the coming days, following a break for Christmas, although hopes for a so-called grand bargain have faded. Instead, President Obama is pushing for a scaled-back plan that would extend the Bush-era tax cuts on incomes below $250,000, while suspending the automatic spending cuts and extending unemployment benefits. Michelle Meyer, senior United States economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, said there is a 40 percent chance of what she calls a “bungee-jump over the fiscal cliff,” with Congress failing to act until after Jan. 1 but eventually averting the full package of tax increases and spending cuts by mid-January. If that were to happen, she predicts a steep sell-off on Wall Street, which would quickly force political leaders to compromise. Over all, Ms. Meyer estimates that the economy will grow by just 1 percent in the first quarter of 2013, well below the 3.1 percent pace recorded in the third quarter of 2012. What’s worrisome, she added, is that consumer anxiety about the fiscal impasse has begun to mount, catching up with business leaders who have been warning of economic danger since summer. “What’s been missing in this recovery has been confidence,” she said. “We’d see a healthy recovery if it weren’t for this uncertainty and the potential shock from Washington.” Indeed, the economy has been showing signs of life recently. Unemployment in November sank to 7.7 percent, a four-year low. Consumer spending has been picking up, and the housing market has continued to recover in many parts of the country. Overseas worries like slowing growth in China and recession in Europe have also faded. Those trends have encouraged some observers, like Steve Blitz, chief economist at ITG Investment Research. He estimates that the economy will grow by nearly 2.5 percent in the first quarter if Washington comes up with even a modest compromise. In the absence of a deal, the pace of growth would be more like 1 percent, he said. “I don’t think that not having a deal going into the new year is all that critical,” Mr. Blitz said. “It doesn’t mean you will immediately go into a recession.”
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Legislative Handcuffs Limit A.T.F.’s Ability to Fight Gun Crime

For example, under current laws the bureau is prohibited from creating a federal registry of gun transactions. So while detectives on television tap a serial number into a computer and instantly identify the buyer of a firearm, the reality could not be more different.

When law enforcement officers recover a gun and serial number, workers at the bureau’s National Tracing Center here — a windowless warehouse-style building on a narrow road outside town — begin making their way through a series of phone calls, asking first the manufacturer, then the wholesaler and finally the dealer to search their files to identify the buyer of the firearm.

About a third of the time, the process involves digging through records sent in by companies that have closed, in many cases searching by hand through cardboard boxes filled with computer printouts, hand-scrawled index cards or even water-stained sheets of paper.

In an age when data is often available with a few keystrokes, the A.T.F. is forced to follow this manual routine because the idea of establishing a central database of gun transactions has been rejected by lawmakers in Congress, who have sided with the National Rifle Association, which argues that such a database poses a threat to the Second Amendment. In other countries, gun rights groups argue, governments have used gun registries to confiscate the firearms of law-abiding citizens.

Advocates for increased gun regulation, however, contend that in a country plagued by gun violence, a central registry could help keep firearms out of the hands of criminals and allow law enforcement officials to act more effectively to prevent gun crime.

As has been the case for decades, the A.T.F., the federal agency charged with enforcing gun laws and regulating the gun industry, is caught in the middle.

Law enforcement officials say that in theory, the A.T.F. could take a lead role in setting a national agenda for reducing gun crime, a goal that has gained renewed urgency with the school massacre in Newtown, Conn. But it is hampered, they say, by politically driven laws that make its job harder and by the ferocity of the debate over gun regulation.

“I think that they’ve really been muzzled over the last several years, at least, from doing their job effectively,” said Frederick H. Bealefeld III, a former police commissioner in Baltimore. “They’ve really kind of been the whipping agency, caught in the political turmoil of Washington on the gun issue.”

The bureau’s struggles are epitomized by its lack of a full-time director since Congress, prodded by the N.R.A., decided that the position should require Senate confirmation. That leadership vacuum, Mr. Bealefeld and others said, has inevitably depleted morale and kept the agency from developing a coherent agenda.

At a news conference last Wednesday, Mr. Obama called on the Senate to confirm a permanent director, saying lawmakers should “make this a priority early in the year.” But given the complicated politics, it may be difficult for the White House to get a director confirmed. Mr. Obama’s Republican predecessor, George W. Bush, was unable to do so.

In 2010, Mr. Obama nominated Andrew Traver, who is now the head of the bureau’s Denver division, for the post. But Mr. Traver, whose candidacy is opposed by the N.R.A., has yet to have a hearing, and his nomination has languished in the Senate Judiciary Committee. The senior Republican on the panel, Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, has raised questions about Mr. Traver’s nomination, and his prospects for confirmation looked so dim that the White House told Democrats on the committee to make nominations for other posts a higher priority, according to a Senate Democratic aide.

Erica Goode reported from Martinsburg, and Sheryl Gay Stolberg from Washington. Michael S. Schmidt contributed reporting from Washington.

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Gaza City Journal: Gaza Cease-Fire Expands Fishing Area, but Risks Remain

But testing the waters late last month, Mr. Bakr apparently sailed out too far. An Israeli gunboat patrolling against arms smuggling ordered him to stop and strip to his underwear. As the Israelis sank his boat, he jumped into the sea and was hauled aboard the Israeli vessel for questioning.

“I spent four hours trembling,” he said, before the Israelis ordered another Palestinian fishing boat to ferry Mr. Bakr back to shore.

Run-ins with Israeli patrols are still the bane of Gaza fishermen. But in most respects, the new arrangement has been a boon.

The fishermen have raced to take advantage of broader fishing grounds, farther from the shore where sewage is pumped into the water untreated.

Catches have improved in quantity, quality and freshness, and thus price. The fish are bigger and include desirable species like grouper, red mullet and Mediterranean sea bass that were no longer present closer to land.

But the fishermen risk rapidly overfishing. “In the first few days, I caught fish worth $1,580 to $1,850,” said Yasser Abu al-Sadeq. “Today, I made around $1,050.” But the situation is still better, he said. “Before the cease-fire, I would barely catch $790.”

“It’s like when you come to a house that’s been abandoned for years and start cleaning it,” he said. “When you start cleaning, you get out a lot of trash, but when you clean daily, you get out only a little.”

He and his crew go out for 24 hours at a time, he said, cooking the small crabs and squid they catch in the nets.

He described an early trip out past the six-mile limit, when an Israeli gunboat circled his boat, shaking it in the wake, and ordered him back toward shore.

He remembers a golden time, before the second Palestinian intifada in 2000, when he could go out as far as 12 nautical miles, where he could find sardines and what he called guitarfish, a small ray. “There, it’s a reserve protected by God,” he said.

The fishermen say they estimate their distance, since most of them lack precise navigational systems, but there is usually one indicator.

“When we were allowed within 3 miles, the gunboats would attack us at 2.5 miles,” said Monzer Abu Amira, as he repaired his green nylon nets. “Today, they hit us when we are at 5.5 miles.”

The Israelis generally use loudspeakers and water cannons, but sometimes they shoot live ammunition at fishing gear, the motor or the boat itself. Gazans in principle can apply for compensation if boats are damaged or destroyed, but in practice few do.

A senior Israeli official said that there had never been an official announcement that the fishing limit had been extended to six miles from three, but he confirmed that six was the new reality. Israel is continuing to negotiate indirectly with Hamas, the Islamist movement that rules Gaza, with Egypt as an intermediary, to turn the cease-fire agreement into something more permanent, the official said.

“We have an interest in prolonging the longevity of the quiet,” the official said. “We understand that relaxation of some of the restrictions is conducive to that goal. Quiet is in our interest. So we have an interest in showing flexibility where we can, and to show the Egyptians that we’re serious.”

There were problems immediately after the cease-fire, the Israeli official said, because “some in Gaza were interested in testing the limits and pushing the envelope,” and because the expansion of the fishing zone meant deploying more Israeli resources to cover more sea.

“But if people don’t exceed the six-mile limit, it’s O.K.,” he said.

The Israelis are not interested in the smuggling of “Kalashnikovs and bullets,” he added, but in preventing Iran from resupplying longer-range missiles and preventing Hamas from smuggling in foreign experts to aid them in missile development and technology. “The important thing for us is to prevent Hamas from rearming,” he said.

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