Chinese Regulator’s Family Profited From Stake in Insurer

Gilles Sabrie for The New York Times

The Ping An International Finance Center, being built in Shenzhen. Ping An is among the world's biggest financial institutions.

SHANGHAI — Relatives of a top Chinese regulator profited enormously from the purchase of shares in a once-struggling insurance company that is now one of China's biggest financial powerhouses, according to interviews and a review of regulatory filings.

The regulator, Dai Xianglong, was the head of China's central bank and also had oversight of the insurance industry in 2002, when a company his relatives helped control bought a big stake in Ping An Insurance that years later came to be worth billions of dollars. The insurer was drawing new investors ahead of a public stock offering after averting insolvency a few years earlier.

With growing attention on the wealth amassed by families of the politically powerful in China, the investments of Mr. Dai's relatives illustrate that the riches extend beyond the families of the political elites to the families of regulators with control of the country's most important business and financial levers. Mr. Dai, an economist, has since left his post with the central bank and now manages the country's $150 billion social security fund, one of the world's biggest investment funds.

How much the relatives made in the deal is not known, but analysts say the activity raises further doubts about whether the capital markets are sufficiently regulated in China.

Nicholas C. Howson, an expert in Chinese securities law at the University of Michigan Law School, said: "While not per se illegal or even evidence of corruption, these transactions feed into a problematic perception that is widespread in the P.R.C.: the relatives of China's highest officials are given privileged access to pre-I.P.O. properties." He was using the abbreviation for China's official name, the People's Republic of China.

The company that bought the Ping An stake was controlled by a group of investment firms, including two set up by Mr. Dai's son-in-law, Che Feng, as well as other firms associated with Mr. Che's relatives and business associates, the regulatory filings show.

The company, Dinghe Venture Capital, got the shares for an extremely good price, the records show, paying a small fraction of what a large British bank had paid per share just two months earlier. The company paid $55 million for its Ping An shares on Dec. 26, 2002. By 2007, the last time the value of the investment was made public, the shares were worth $3.1 billion.

In its investigation, The New York Times found no indication that Mr. Dai had been aware of his relatives' activities, or that any law had been broken. But the relatives appeared to have made a fortune by investing in financial services companies over which Mr. Dai had regulatory authority.

In another instance, in November 2002, Dinghe acquired a big stake in Haitong Securities, a brokerage firm that also fell under Mr. Dai's jurisdiction, according to the brokerage firm's Shanghai prospectus.

By 2007, just after Haitong's public listing in Shanghai, those shares were worth about $1 billion, according to public filings. Later, between 2007 and 2010, Mr. Dai's wife, Ke Yongzhen, was chairwoman on Haitong's board of supervisors.

A spokesman for Mr. Dai and the National Social Security Fund did not return phone calls seeking comment. A spokeswoman for Mr. Che, the son-in-law, denied by e-mail that he had ever held a stake in Ping An. The spokeswoman said another businessman had bought the Ping An shares and then, facing financial difficulties, sold them to a group that included Mr. Che's friends and relatives, but not Mr. Che.

The businessman "could not afford what he has created, so he had to sell his shares all at once," the spokeswoman, Jenny Lau, wrote in an e-mail.

The corporate records reviewed by The Times, however, show that Mr. Che, his relatives and longtime business associates set up a complex web of companies that effectively gave him and the others control of Dinghe Venture Capital, which made the investments in Ping An and Haitong Securities. The records show that one of the companies later nominated Mr. Che to serve on the Ping An board of supervisors. His term ran from 2006 to 2009.

The Times reported last month that another investment company had also bought shares in Ping An Insurance at an unusually low price on the same day in 2002 as Dinghe Venture Capital. That company, Tianjin Taihong, was later partly controlled by relatives of Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, then serving as vice premier with oversight of China's financial institutions. In late 2007, the shares Taihong bought in Ping An were valued at $3.7 billion.

The investments by Dinghe and Taihong are significant in part because by late 2002, Beijing regulators had granted Ping An an unusual waiver to rules that would have forced the insurer to sell off some divisions. Throughout the late 1990s, the company was fighting rules that would have required a breakup, a move that Ping An executives worried could lead to bankruptcy.

It is unclear whether Mr. Wen or Mr. Dai intervened on behalf of Ping An, but in April 2002 the company was allowed to reorganize and retain its brokerage and trust division. Two years later, Ping An sold shares to the public for the first time in Hong Kong. In 2007, after a second stock listing in Shanghai, the value of the company's shares skyrocketed. Today, Ping An is one of the world's biggest financial institutions, worth an estimated $65 billion.

The decision to grant the waiver came after Ping An executives and the insurer's bankers had aggressively lobbied regulators, including Mr. Dai.

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In Shift, Israel Lets Building Materials Into Gaza

Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters

A member of the Hamas security forces inspected a truck with gravel at the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza on Sunday.

Israeli officials said that construction materials would now be allowed in on a daily basis via the Kerem Shalom crossing on Israel's border with Gaza.

The shipment on Sunday came in addition to 34 trucks of gravel that crossed into Gaza over the weekend from Egypt, which also had Israel's approval. The materials from Egypt were earmarked for housing complexes and other construction projects that the emir of Qatar, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, pledged to pay for when he visited Gaza in October.

The easing of restrictions on imports is a result of continuing talks in Cairo meant to anchor the cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, the Islamic militant group that controls Gaza. Israel is holding the discussions with Egypt and has no direct contact with Hamas, which refuses to recognize Israel's right to exist.

Israel has strictly controlled the entry of building materials. Israeli officials have argued that such materials could otherwise be used by militants for manufacturing weapons or constructing tunnels and bunkers.

In return for loosening the movement of goods, Israeli officials say, Egypt is expected to help prevent the smuggling of weapons into Gaza.

Maj. Guy Inbar, a spokesman for the Israeli authority responsible for the crossings, said that Israel had approved the transfer of materials to the private sector "against the background of the talks with the Egyptians and the quiet that has prevailed" in the past five weeks along the Israel-Gaza border.

Soon after the cease-fire was announced, the fishing zone off the Gaza coast was extended for Palestinian fishermen from three nautical miles to six nautical miles, and Palestinian residents of Gaza were given more access to lands in a buffer zone imposed by Israel along the border.

Taher al-Nounou, a spokesman for the Hamas government in Gaza, said Sunday that the construction materials coming from Egypt would increase to 100 trucks a day and that as part of the cease-fire agreement with Israel, more goods, including cars, would enter Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing.

"Israel is aware now that it will lose a lot financially if it doesn't sell its goods to the consumers in Gaza," Mr. Nounou added.

The last round of hostilities began in mid-November when Israel began an assault on the enclave after militants there stepped up rocket attacks against southern Israel. During eight days of fighting, Israel bombed more than 1,000 targets in Gaza and the militants fired more than 1,500 rockets into Israel, leaving more than 160 Palestinians and 6 Israelis dead.

With the cease-fire, the parties agreed to begin dealing with broader issues like easing restrictions on the movement of people and goods in and out of Gaza. The sides have revealed little detail about the progress of talks in Cairo. Israel has played down the shift in its blockade policy, presumably not wanting to feed the Hamas assertions of victory over Israel in the latest conflict, particularly ahead of Israeli elections on Jan. 22.

But Israeli officials have explained the willingness to ease restrictions in terms of trying to ensure the longevity of the cease-fire. They say that the discussions over the deal have also provided Israel with a welcome channel of communication with the new Egyptian leadership under President Mohamed Morsi, seen here as important for the preservation of the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt.

The election of Mr. Morsi, a former Muslim Brotherhood leader, brought Hamas, a Palestinian offshoot of the Brotherhood, closer to Cairo. The ousted president of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, was hostile to the Islamists and helped Israel impose a tight blockade on Gaza after Hamas took over there in 2007. But Egypt under Mr. Morsi's leadership has also remained cautious, and expectations in Gaza that the border with Egypt would be thrown open have not yet been realized.

Israel began to ease restrictions on many imports into Gaza in 2010, under international pressure after a deadly Israeli raid on a Turkish boat that was trying to breach the naval blockade. Most everyday products were allowed in. But Israel continued to ban cement, steel and other building materials for the private sector and some other products that Israel deemed a security risk. Gaza contractors came to rely on getting construction materials that were smuggled in from Egypt through a vast network of tunnels running under the border.

For that reason, some in Gaza were not particularly impressed by news of building materials arriving from Israel. Majdi Qawalishi, who owns a brick factory in Gaza City, said that the gravel that came through the tunnels from Egypt was significantly cheaper than gravel from Israel, saving him about $300 per day.

"I am not really bothered about the Israeli building materials," he said, "as long as those from Egypt are widely available."

An employee of The New York Times contributed reporting from Gaza.

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Chávez Faces New Complications After Surgery

CARACAS, Venezuela — President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela is facing "new complications" arising from a respiratory infection following cancer surgery in Cuba, Vice President Nicolás Maduro said in a televised statement on Sunday night.

"Nineteen days after the complex surgery, President Chávez's condition continues to be delicate, presenting complications that are being treated, in a process that is not without risks," Mr. Maduro said, speaking from Havana, where he had flown a day earlier to visit the president, who is being treated in a hospital there.

Looking grim, Mr. Maduro said that, after arriving in Havana, "we were told about new complications arising as a consequence of the respiratory infection." Officials previously had said the infection was detected on Dec. 17, almost a week after the surgery.

Mr. Maduro said that he had just come from a visit with Mr. Chávez. He also said that he spoke about national affairs with the president and that Mr. Chávez sent an end-of-the-year greeting to the families of Venezuela.

Mr. Maduro, who has been designated by Mr. Chávez as the one to continue leading his Socialist revolution if he is too ill to govern, said that he planned to remain in Havana for "the coming hours" to monitor the president's condition.

Venezuela has been in deep uncertainty for weeks as a result of Mr. Chávez's sickness and his extended absence. Mr. Chávez, who has been president for nearly 14 years, was re-elected in October, but officials have said that he may not be able to return to Venezuela for the start of his new six-year term on Jan. 10.

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Japan’s New Premier Backs More Nuclear Plants

TOKYO — The newly elected prime minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, said Sunday that he would seek to build nuclear reactors, reversing within a week in office a campaign pledge to move Japan away from nuclear power.

Pool photo by Itsuo Inouye

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant on Saturday. He said Sunday that he wanted more built.

The statement about the reactors came in Mr. Abe's first televised interview since taking office. During his five days as prime minister, he had hinted that he would take a closer look at nuclear power.

"They will be completely different from those at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant," he told the national television network TBS. Multiple meltdowns at the plant after an earthquake last year forced more than 100,000 people to flee their homes.

"With public understanding, we will be building anew," Mr. Abe said.

He did not specify where or when. Building nuclear power plants would depart from the direction of the previous government of Yoshihiko Noda, who had pledged to phase out nuclear power by 2040.

It also appeared to go against a campaign platform adopted by Mr. Abe's Liberal Democratic Party that aims "to establish an economy and society that does not need to rely on nuclear power." The platform also said Japan would put the development of alternative energy sources, like solar and wind, ahead of nuclear power, and made no mention of new nuclear plants.

Though fervent antinuclear protests across the country have kept all but two of Japan's 50 reactors off line, Mr. Abe is betting that Japan's silent majority will condone a return to nuclear to help bolster the economy.

Mr. Abe's pro-business Liberal Democrats won a landslide victory in parliamentary elections this month, campaigning on promises to take bolder measures to kick-start Japan's moribund economy. The nation's biggest business lobby, the Keidanren, has publicly urged the government to restart the nation's reactors.

Signaling what could be rocky relations with Tokyo's neighbors, Mr. Abe, who returned as a prime minister after a yearlong stint in 2006-7, also hinted that he may replace or void apologies from 1993 and 1995 for Japan's having used women as sex slaves during World War II and for past colonial rule and aggression in Asia.

In a separate interview with The Sankei Shimbun, a national daily, he said his previous administration had found no evidence that the women who served as sex slaves to Japan's wartime military had, in fact, been coerced. The Japanese government will seek to communicate that view, the newspaper quoted Mr. Abe as saying.

A perceived lack of remorse by Japan for its colonial and wartime history has been severely criticized, especially by South Korea and China, which bore the brunt of Japan's colonial aggressions.

Japan is already embroiled in territorial spats with the two nations, heightening tensions over the past year.

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Clinton Admitted to Hospital With Blood Clot

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was hospitalized on Sunday with a blood clot stemming from a concussion she suffered earlier this month, a State Department spokesman said.

Mrs. Clinton, who had canceled most of her public events in recent weeks because of the injury, was at a follow-up examination on Sunday when doctors discovered the blood clot, according to Philippe Reines, her longtime spokesman.

"She is being treated with anticoagulants and is at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital so that they can monitor the medication over the next 48 hours," Mr. Reines said in a statement.

"Her doctors will continue to assess her condition, including other issues associated with her concussion," Mr. Reines said. "They will determine if any further action is required."

Aides said that Mrs. Clinton, 65, had become dehydrated this month because of a stomach virus she contracted during a trip to Europe. She fainted and struck her head, causing the concussion.

Among the events she missed because of the injury was a Congressional hearing for the September attack on the United States Mission in Benghazi, Libya.

State Department officials had said that Mrs. Clinton fainted when she was at home alone in Washington but added that the concussion was not diagnosed immediately.

She canceled a planned trip to Morocco, and Victoria Nuland, a State Department spokeswoman, gave a mixed picture about the severity of her illness, describing her as having a "very uncomfortable stomach virus" and then saying she was "under the weather."

An expert not involved in Mrs. Clinton's care said that clots are most common in the leg or in a large vein in the head. Dr. David Langer, a brain surgeon and associate professor at Hofstra-North Shore-Long Island Jewish School of Medicine, said that prompt treatment usually dissolves the clots, but that untreated clots in the head can become more worrisome and even lead to a hemorrhage inside the brain.

Blood-thinning drugs can dissolve the clots, he said, and patients may need to stay on them for weeks or months to make sure the problem does not recur.

Mrs. Clinton, who will step down from her post in January, did not attend the announcement this month that Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, would be nominated to succeed her as secretary of state. She issued a statement praising Mr. Kerry.

Mrs. Clinton is widely considered to be a leading candidate for the Democratic nomination for president in 2016, should she decide to seek the office once held by her husband.

One of the most popular members of President Obama's cabinet, Mrs. Clinton, a former senator from New York, has not said publicly whether she will pursue the nomination a second time after losing the 2008 presidential primary.

But aides close to her have not ruled it out.

Denise Grady contributed reporting.

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What to Expect in New York in 2013

Stephen Kroninger for The New York Times

If the phrase "annus horribilis" had not already worked its way into the language — thank you, Queen Elizabeth II — some New Yorker thinking deep, year-end thoughts would surely have coined it for 2012.

Not that everything went wrong, of course.

Fans were happy when Brooklyn got a new sports and entertainment center, not to mention a basketball team.

Subway passengers were happy when an underground connection opened between the No. 6 line at Bleecker Street and the B, D, F and M lines at the Broadway-Lafayette stop. It doesn't take much.

Mitik, a baby walrus orphaned in Alaska, was happy when he brought his William Howard Taft good looks to the New York Aquarium. What, you don't see the resemblance?

"Jersey Shore" was canceled. Enough said.

So what about 2013? In this feature, reporters from The Times's Metro desk summarize the developments they expect to cover next year.

Predictions are as chancy as New Year's resolutions, but some things are certain.

The subway fare will go up. (In March, to $2.50 a ride.) Large sugary sodas will disappear. (Also in March, unless a judge blocks the mayor's ban.) Bike sharing will begin. (In May, unless the program is delayed yet again.) The Taxi of Tomorrow will go into service. (In December, unless it, too, takes the slow lane.)

In Albany, four men in a room will be making the decisions, not the customary three, because suddenly the State Senate will squeeze two leaders alongside Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver.

And the old year will cast a long shadow over the new.

Our memories of the twin calamities of 2012 — the school shootings in Newtown, Conn., and Hurricane Sandy — may fade, as memories do. But gun control is sure to be debated in 2013. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is promising to go nationwide with his crusade against illegal guns, spending his own millions to counter the gun lobby.

And low-lying neighborhoods will be rebuilt by hard-pressed homeowners, while task forces and commissions debate how to keep the city safe from the next monster storm.

Mayoral politics will dominate the local headlines. Mr. Bloomberg's many would-be successors will not have the personal fortune he spent to win office ($174 per vote in 2009). Which of them will end up on the November ballot: Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker? Joseph J. Lhota, who is leaving the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to look into running as a Republican? Raymond W. Kelly, the police commissioner?

It is enough to make you think about buying a crystal ball. One smaller than the Wicked Witch of the West's costs $1,000 at a shop on Centre Street in Chinatown, close enough to City Hall and Wall Street for policy makers and traders alike to stroll by at lunchtime.

If they did, the clerk behind the counter would tell them that a crystal ball feels fatigue from the energy that goes into predictions. You have to bring it back from time to time for something that, in a year like 2012, sounds singularly appropriate. "Deep cleaning," she called it.

— JAMES BARRON

Stephen Kroninger for The New York Times

When lawmakers return to the New York State Capitol in January, the first order of business for Albany's three men in a room will be finding an extra chair.

For years, just three people — the governor, the Assembly speaker and the Senate majority leader — have made most major decisions in Albany, controlling the state budget and negotiating all major legislation. But in an unprecedented development, the Senate in the coming year is to be led by two men. So Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo; the speaker, Sheldon Silver, a Democrat; and the Republican Senate leader, Dean G. Skelos, will be joined by Jeffrey D. Klein, the leader of a schismatic group of dissident Senate Democrats who have pledged to share decision-making with the Republicans despite their ideological differences.

The leaders will confront a host of familiar issues, including a debate over whether to raise the minimum wage, a push to overhaul campaign-finance laws and a proposal to expand casino gambling.

But lawmakers also face two new problems, caused by recent crises. Hurricane Sandy severely damaged infrastructure in New York City and on Long Island, and its economic toll could further strain the state's shaky finances. And this month, the mass shooting in Newtown, Conn., has brought the issue of gun control to the forefront.

Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, is planning to propose a package of new gun laws in his State of the State address in January. His proposals are likely to provide the first major test of the new Senate leadership arrangement, as Republicans in the chamber have traditionally resisted gun-control measures.

— THOMAS KAPLAN

Après Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who?

That is the big question as Mr. Bloomberg concludes his 12th and final year at City Hall, though voters will have other choices to make in 2013, as well. Openings are likely for a new comptroller, a new public advocate, four new borough presidents and about two dozen new City Council members, thanks to term limits or bids for other offices.

In the mayor's race, the strong favorite two years ago was Representative Anthony D. Weiner. But a "sexting" scandal prompted Mr. Weiner to resign. Then the city comptroller, John C. Liu, emerged as a dark-horse pick. But a campaign fund-raising scandal damaged his prospects. Then came a flurry of rumors involving everyone from Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly to former Gov. Eliot Spitzer to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, back to Mr. Weiner again.

Such speculation hints at a general unease among some political insiders regarding the current slate of expected candidates. After all, the next mayor will face knotty issues in finance, labor, education and other areas.

Among Democrats, the likely leading candidates are Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker, whose base includes pro-Bloomberg Democrats; William C. Thompson Jr., a former comptroller, whose base includes African-Americans; and Bill de Blasio, the public advocate, whose base includes labor groups. (Mr. Liu is also likely to run.)

Among Republicans, the front-runner could be Joseph J. Lhota, who is stepping down as chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to explore a bid. Others running or considering running include Adolfo Carrión Jr., a former Bronx borough president; John A. Catsimatidis, who owns the Gristedes supermarket chain; Tom Allon, a newspaper publisher; and George T. McDonald, the president of the Doe Fund.

For now, at least.

— DAVID W. CHEN

The Congressional delegations from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut face at least one daunting challenge. So far, the governors from these storm-battered states have identified about $82 billion in damage resulting from Hurricane Sandy. As the new year approaches, the region's lawmakers in Washington have been focused on trying to pass a $60.4 billion aid package and getting the money flowing.

The concern among the senators and representatives is that as the storm fades from memory, Congress will feel less compelled to confront its consequences fully. This means that New York, New Jersey and Connecticut could end up being shortchanged, with Washington ultimately providing far less than the states say they need to rebuild and prepare for future storms.

The coming year will also offer plenty of political intrigue — at least for members of New Jersey's Congressional delegation. Fellow Democrats from New Jersey to Washington have increasingly wondered whether Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, 88, will retire at the end of his current term. Several prominent New Jersey Democrats — including Mayor Cory A. Booker of Newark and Representative Frank Pallone Jr., a 13-term congressman from Monmouth County — have expressed clear interest in running for his seat in 2014. But at the same time, no one wants to do anything to antagonize Mr. Lautenberg, a proud and strong-willed man who some Democrats believe may try to hold on to his seat if he believes he is being pushed out before he is ready to go.

— RAYMOND HERNANDEZ

Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney, is up for re-election for the first time, in 2013. His first term saw a lot of attention focused on two difficult cases: the dropped prosecution of Dominique Strauss-Kahn and the acquittal of two city police officers on rape charges. But Mr. Vance was given credit in The New York Law Journal for significantly increasing the office's felony conviction rate since taking the job. He has also ramped up his office's attempts to prosecute white-collar crime, a category dominated by federal prosecutors. He is running unopposed so far in an office that has historically granted tremendous electoral benefits to the incumbent.

In Brooklyn, meanwhile, Charles J. Hynes, the district attorney, will face at least two opponents in the Democratic primary in the new year. Kenneth P. Thompson, a prominent trial lawyer and former federal prosecutor, and Abe George, a former assistant district attorney in Manhattan, have announced they are challenging him. Mr. Hynes has been in office more than 20 years, but he has recently come under fire for failing to investigate sexual abuse claims in ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities and for his office's mishandling of cases that sent innocent people to prison.

The city's courts will see many high-profile trials, including Mr. Vance's prosecution of Pedro Hernandez in the killing of Etan Patz, the 6-year-old boy who disappeared on his way to a SoHo bus stop in 1979.

After decades during which other suspects were investigated, Mr. Hernandez made a surprise confession to prosecutors and the police last spring. But his lawyer said the confession was the byproduct of mental illness, and Mr. Hernandez has recanted. It appears no other evidence has emerged, so the trial could hinge on whether a jury believes the videotaped confession.

Robert Stolarik for The New York Times

In May, New York City police investigated a building in Soho connected with a man who confessed to murdering Etan Patz.

There could be a rare death-penalty trial in Federal District Court in Brooklyn this coming year. Ronell Wilson was convicted of killing two undercover police officers and sentenced to death in 2007. But an appellate court tossed out the sentence — though not the conviction — because of a prosecutor's error. Now the federal government is bringing another case arguing for Mr. Wilson's death; it will revisit the gruesome details that shocked the city several years ago, unless a judge rules that Mr. Wilson is mentally disabled and not subject to capital punishment.

Manhattan's Federal District Court will also see prosecutions in political corruption and terrorism cases.

Two allies of John C. Liu, the city comptroller, are scheduled for trial in February in what prosecutors say was an illegal campaign-finance scheme. The defendants, Jia Hou, Mr. Liu's former campaign treasurer, and Xing Wu Pan, a fund-raiser, have pleaded not guilty. Mr. Liu, a Democrat, has not been charged with wrongdoing.

Larry B. Seabrook, a former councilman, is to be sentenced in January for orchestrating a scheme to use a network of nonprofit groups to funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars in city money to relatives, friends and a girlfriend.

Three defendants extradited from Britain face trial in terrorism cases later in the year. Mostafa Kamel Mostafa, an Islamic preacher, has been charged with conspiring in a 1998 kidnapping of American and other tourists in Yemen; and two other men are charged with conspiring in Al Qaeda's 1998 bombings of two United States Embassies in East Africa, attacks that killed more than 200 people. All three have pleaded not guilty.

In another widely watched case, Mansour J. Arbabsiar, an Iranian-American who pleaded guilty in a plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to the United States, is scheduled to be sentenced in February.

And then there is the bizarre case of Gilberto Valle, a New York City police officer who faces trial next month in a plot to kidnap, cook and eat women; he has pleaded not guilty.

— MOSI SECRET, BENJAMIN WEISER and RUSS BUETTNER

Will 2013 be the year that some of the city's most prominent corporations decide to relocate, prompting the development of new skyscrapers in Midtown and downtown Manhattan?

The Durst Organization and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey are still hunting for tenants for 1 World Trade Center, and the developer Larry Silverstein will be forced to stop construction on 3 World Trade Center unless he comes up with a tenant soon. His other tower at the site, 4 World Trade Center, could be finished by the end of the year.

The Related Companies is also looking for a major corporate tenant for Hudson Yards, for its second big office tower. That would allow the company to begin building a platform over the rail yard, a shopping mall, a cultural institution and several residential towers. The No. 7 subway extension may have a long-promised ribbon-cutting ceremony in December, but the public probably won't be able to travel through it until the following spring.

In Brooklyn, the first of 15 residential towers is under construction at Atlantic Yards. In Queens, the Related Companies and Monadnock Construction are expected to break ground shortly on Hunters Point South, which promises to be the largest affordable-housing complex nationally in more than three decades.

The city is rushing to complete the "Midtown East" rezoning while Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg remains in office, which would allow developers to build skyscrapers near Grand Central Terminal. The administration is also trying to revamp plans for Willets Point, Queens, to allow a major shopping mall next to CitiField, rather than the "next great neighborhood" that the mayor once promised.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo will have to be much more specific in the new year about his plans for bringing full-scale casino resorts to New York if he wants to continue to get approval by the State Legislature. One of the big questions is whether a casino will be permitted in Manhattan, a dream for Las Vegas gambling operators. Expect tens of millions to be spent on lobbying campaigns for and against.

— CHARLES V. BAGLI

Even before Hurricane Sandy blew through, it was clear that the next year would be about rebuilding.

The metropolitan area's economy has not recovered fully from the long recession. Construction has not resumed its old pace. And the big banks on Wall Street have been cutting thousands of jobs as they restructure for a period of slow growth.

Now, the region is waiting for tens of billions of dollars in aid from the federal government to repair the damage that the storm caused to transit lines, bridges and boardwalks. The sooner Congress approves that financing, the sooner it will set off a burst of activity and create hundreds, and possibly thousands, of new jobs.

The stimulative effect could be enough to shake the local economy out of the doldrums that it slipped into in the second half of 2012. After outperforming the rest of the nation in the bounce-back from the recession, New York City has seen its recovery start to sputter.

By November, the annual growth rate of private-sector jobs in the city had slowed to 2 percent, just a little higher than the national rate, 1.8 percent. Wall Street has been no help: the securities industry, which has traditionally pulled New York out of recessions by hiring and paying big bonuses, shrank slightly in 2012.

And sometime in 2013, the city's stature as the world's capital of finance is due to take another blow when a company based in Atlanta, Intercontinental Exchange, completes its takeover of the New York Stock Exchange.

— PATRICK McGEEHAN

The Bloomberg administration has one more year to remake the city's school system.

Undoubtedly among the goals: working to get new charter schools approved; closing and reopening as many poorly performing schools as possible; and trying to see a new teacher-evaluation system approved and put in place. Much of the work will hinge on relations with the New York City teachers' union.

As the 2013 mayoral race comes to a boil, Exhibit A in any candidate's case for educational clout will be the endorsement of the union's president, Michael Mulgrew. The United Federation of Teachers stayed mum in the last two mayoral contests and is feuding with City Hall over several issues, including teacher performance and charter schools. But events are queued up for a natural pairing this time, maybe even ahead of the Democratic primary: the union has no contract, and would-be successors to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg thirst for the financial and electoral support of its 200,000 members.

Michael Appleton for The New York Times

Michael Mulgrew, center right, at a rally to support New York City's public schools in March. John C. Liu, the comptroller, stands center left.

Teachers, parents and others can expect Hurricane Sandy's impact to reach into 2013, with damaged schools, displaced students and school days to make up — three full days scheduled in February and a half-day in June. How storm-related absences affect pupils' grades is just one factor, along with new curriculum standards called Common Core, which many expect will be a drag on test results for students in the third through eighth grades, who will sit for the state's standardized math and English exams in the spring.

And as officials push remaining bits of the Bloomberg administration's education agenda, observers will be on the lookout for top administrators at the Education Department to begin peeling off for the private sector.

— AL BAKER

After more than four years of increasingly polarizing debate, New York is poised to decide whether to allow drilling for natural gas in the Marcellus Shale using the extraction process known as fracking. That decision had been expected in 2012 but was postponed pending further study of the potential impact of drilling on the environment and public health. State regulators are now scheduled to complete their environmental review and proposed regulations by February. Then Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, considering both environmental concerns and the jobs that the gas industry would provide, is expected to say whether New York will approve fracking, and under what conditions. (A decision to go forward would surely set off litigation from environmental groups, which could mean further delays.)

In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, state and city officials have convened commissions and task forces to plan for future storms. These groups will consider measures like strengthening the building code and installing sea gates to block storm surges. Also under study is an overhaul of storm response and preparation by the state's power utility companies, and toughening the city's aging transportation infrastructure.

Efforts to contain the harmful effects of climate change may also gather urgency. New York is one of nine Northeastern and mid-Atlantic states in the cap-and-trade system known as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which participants say has succeeded in lowering emissions and funneling millions of dollars to energy-efficiency programs. A crucial decision facing the states in 2013 is whether to set a stricter ceiling on carbon dioxide emissions from electric power providers.

— MIREYA NAVARRO

It may seem as if Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's soda ban has already begun, because the debate has been so noisy. But restrictions on the sale of sugary drinks of more than 16 ounces in movie theaters, restaurants, stadiums and other places will actually go into effect in March, barring a successful legal challenge. The city's health department will then be able to study whether forcing people to drink smaller portions will bear out the theories of Dr. Thomas A. Farley, the health commissioner, who believes that changing the environment is the best way to change behavior.

The four New York City hospitals that were hit hardest by Hurricane Sandy — Bellevue Hospital Center, the country's oldest public hospital; Coney Island Hospital, also a public hospital with a mission to serve the poor; NYU Langone Medical Center, a prominent academic medical center; and the Manhattan hospital operated by the Department of Veterans Affairs — will be phasing in full services, if all goes according to plan. And residents affected by the storm will continue to worry about the consequences to their health, both mental and physical.

The September 11th Victim Compensation Fund will begin making awards. And the Affordable Care Act will continue to kick in, with consequences for New Yorkers. The law's newly created insurance exchanges, state markets that are supposed to make it easier for individuals and small businesses to afford health insurance, will begin enrollment in the fall. Hospitals expect to benefit from an increase in patients covered by insurance, which may help to buoy some faltering institutions.

— ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS

For many New Yorkers who live in Flood Zone A — areas like the edges of Staten Island, the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens and Coney Island and Red Hook in Brooklyn — life will continue to be defined by Hurricane Sandy well into 2013.

Residents will find that rebuilding is far more than a matter of picking up hammers and nails. They will have to grapple with enormous questions of how to rebuild — quickly or with an eye to a future storm — and for many that decision will be dictated by outside factors. Homeowners may find themselves stymied by banks reluctant to give loans for homes situated in harm's way, and by soon-to-be redrawn flood maps, which may make it too costly, or even impossible, to get insurance in some areas.

Even as they address the physical challenge of rebuilding storm-damaged homes, schools and streets, many will also be weighing a monumental question: Should they stay or go? The year ahead may bear witness to demographic changes in areas affected by the storm as some people give up and others — smelling opportunity — swoop in.

— SARAH MASLIN NIR

In the realm of immigration, New York City has often appeared to be dancing to its own tune. As other parts of the country have clamped down on immigrant populations, the city's elected officials, led by a pro-immigrant mayor, have thrown open the door even wider to the foreign-born, regardless of immigration status.

Immigrants make up more than one-third of the city's population, and their numbers will continue to grow. The city will continue to offer an extraordinarily wide array of immigrant services intended to help ease assimilation. And more of the country may start to follow New York's lead.

After President Obama won 71 percent of the Latino vote, he said he would make the comprehensive overhaul of the nation's immigration system — in particular, a bill to legalize 11 million illegal immigrants — one of the first items on his agenda in the coming year. Since the election, Republicans leaders have urged their party to adopt a new posture toward immigrants and to support some sort of legislation to fix illegal immigration. There is no telling whether they will achieve their goals. But as this debate gathers momentum in the new year, New York will find itself with plenty of new company on the dance floor.

— KIRK SEMPLE

Democrats had been spoiling for a heavyweight fight: Booker vs. Christie. But even with Cory A. Booker, the mayor of Newark, out of the ring, Gov. Chris Christie's re-election bid will still be the state's big story in the new year.

New Jersey is one of only two states to have regular elections for governor in 2013. Mr. Christie's popularity soared, even among Democrats, after Hurricane Sandy. And as Mr. Booker weighed his options, Mr. Christie was able to win a big labor endorsement — even after cutting public union benefits soon after he came into office.

But Democrats note that the share of voters who said they would re-elect Mr. Christie topped out at 53 percent after the storm, and was below 50 percent before his fleece became famous. The state has roughly 700,000 more Democrats than Republicans. And Mr. Christie oversees a grim economy: the unemployment rate, at 9.6 percent, is still about 2 points higher than it is nationally, and it is among the country's highest.

Rating agencies have warned that the governor's budget is structurally unsound: He bet on 8.4 percent economic growth for the current fiscal year, but even before the storm, it was coming in at about 0.1 percent, with especially sluggish income- and sales-tax revenues. That will force ugly, midcycle budget cuts starting in January, as the sunny governor set aside relatively little in the state's rainy-day fund.

The question is which Democrats dare challenge him. Raising the money to run is daunting. Mr. Christie will be able to pull in donations from national Republicans, who are not likely to sit idly while one of their most promising presidential contenders fights for his political future.

— KATE ZERNIKE

The city's parks will continue their recovery from Hurricane Sandy, which caused them an estimated $540 million in damage. Particularly devastated were the beaches in the Rockaways in Queens, where two-thirds of the five-mile Boardwalk was torn from its concrete stanchions.

But the new year will also see several long-awaited openings.

In Prospect Park in Brooklyn, the $74 million Lakeside project will finally open in late fall. It will feature two ice rinks and a cafe overlooking the park's scenic lake. In the summer, one rink will double as a water playground, while the other will become a roller rink.

In Brooklyn Bridge Park, Pier 2 opens later in the year with courts for basketball, handball and bocce. In addition, there will be a full in-line skating rink, a swing set, concessions and bathrooms.

Also in Brooklyn, a historic Coney Island carousel, the only survivor of two dozen wooden carousels that once whirled there, will reopen by summer. The 1919 B&B Carousell, which the city acquired in 2005, has been undergoing a restoration for years in Ohio. It will be placed in a newly constructed pavilion building under the Parachute Jump in Steeplechase Plaza.

In Central Park, Tavern on the Green, which closed three years ago after 75 years in business, is expected to reopen in the fall. The city is restoring the building, at Central Park West and 67th Street, to its smaller, historic footprint. Two restaurateurs from Philadelphia will operate the new place, which will be more casual than the old Tavern, catering to parkgoers and neighborhood residents. But it will serve up serious fare by the chef Katy Sparks, whose résumé includes Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill, Quilty's and the Quilted Giraffe.

— LISA W. FODERARO

Coming off a year of historic lows in the city's murder rate and undeniable highs in his job-approval ratings among residents, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly will be a hot topic in 2013: Will he stay or go once a new mayor is crowned? And if he goes, who will step in to replace him? One name that will almost certainly resurface is that of former Police Commissioner William J. Bratton, who is now chairman of Kroll, a security consulting firm.

Regardless of whether 2013 is his final year as commissioner, Mr. Kelly will seek to cement his legacy as an aggressive crime fighter who made New York City safer. To do so, he must continue to drive down violent crime in 2013, or at least hold the line on 2012's murder rate. So Mr. Kelly is not likely to pull back on the department's "stop, question and frisk" practices or hot-spot policing strategies like Operation Impact, in which rookie officers, paired with veterans, are deployed strategically to neighborhoods seeing surges in crime. That will mean more news articles detailing friction between Mr. Kelly and civil rights leaders who believe officers unfairly target black and Latino residents for street stops.

Readers should also look for articles examining the balance between privacy and public safety as the Police Department continues to harness new technology to combat global terrorism, drug and weapons trafficking, and sex crimes. It is a good bet that 2013 will be peppered with news about how cybersleuthing solved or thwarted crimes.

— WENDY RUDERMAN

What may be the most anticipated development in the city's transit system in 2013 was supposed to have happened in 2012. In May, the Transportation Department says, the city's long-awaited bike-share program will finally begin. Originally planned for July 2012, the program was delayed: first by software problems, and then by flood damage to its equipment during Hurricane Sandy. When the bikes do start rolling, look for renewed debate over the viability of cycling as a public-transportation option in the city — a linchpin of the Bloomberg administration's curbside legacy.

Another Bloomberg initiative, a near-uniform cab fleet filled with so-called Taxis of Tomorrow, is also slated to begin before the mayor leaves office. The vehicle, a Nissan NV200, is expected to be phased in over three to five years starting in late 2013, supplying riders with phone chargers, transparent roof panels and "lower annoyance" horns, the city said. The vehicle has been criticized for not being a hybrid, or wheelchair-accessible without modifications.

For subway, bus and railroad riders, the nation's largest transportation network will begin 2013 without a long-term leader, as Joseph J. Lhota, the chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, steps down to explore a run for New York City mayor. His replacement will face a spate of difficult decisions in 2013, particularly concerning how to rebuild the system in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. Officials have said to expect regular train service to the Rockaways in Queens to return by the spring. But it would be a surprise if the South Ferry station in Lower Manhattan reopened in 2013.

— MATT FLEGENHEIMER

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Russia Says Bashar al-Assad Won’t Leave Syria

Sergei Karpukhin/Reuters

Russia's foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, right, spoke Saturday at a news conference with Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations and Arab League envoy on Syria.

MOSCOW — Russia's foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, said Saturday that there was "no possibility" of persuading President Bashar al-Assad to leave Syria, leaving little hope for a breakthrough in the standoff. He also said that the opposition leaders' insistence on Mr. Assad's departure as a precondition for peace talks would come at the cost of "more and more lives of Syrian citizens" in a conflict that has already killed tens of thousands.

Moscow has made a muscular push for a political solution in recent days, sending signals that the Kremlin, one of Mr. Assad's most important allies, sees a pressing need for political change. As an international consensus forms around the notion of a transitional government, it has been snagged on the thorny question of what role, if any, Mr. Assad would occupy in it.

But after talks in Moscow on Saturday with Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations and Arab League envoy on Syria, Mr. Lavrov said that Russia could not press Mr. Assad to give up power. Mr. Lavrov has said that Russia "isn't in the business of regime change," but his characterization of Mr. Assad's stance on Saturday sounded more definitive.

"He has repeatedly said, both publicly and privately, including during his meeting with Lakhdar Brahimi not long ago, that he has no plans to go anywhere, that he will stay in his post until the end, that he will, as he says, protect the Syrian people, Syrian sovereignty and so forth," Mr. Lavrov said. "There is no possibility of changing this position."

There have been evident changes in the standoff over Syria in recent weeks, as Russia acknowledged that government forces were losing territory and distanced itself from Mr. Assad. In televised remarks, President Vladimir V. Putin said that Russian leaders "are not preoccupied by the fate of Assad's regime" and that after 40 years of rule by one family, "undoubtedly there is a call for change."

But Moscow has watched the recent Arab uprisings with mounting worry, arguing that the West was unleashing dangerous turbulence by supporting popular rebellions, and it has vehemently opposed any international intervention in Syria as a matter of principle.

Developments on the battlefield have accelerated the pace of diplomacy.

Anti-Assad activists on Saturday reported fierce fighting and large numbers of casualties in the central city of Homs, where they said government troops were completely surrounding the Deir Ba'alba neighborhood after storming the area on Friday. An activist reached by telephone, who said he was less than a mile from the neighborhood on Saturday night, said he heard gunfire and saw houses in flames. Communications to the area had been cut, and civilians and rebel fighters who had managed to flee were "traumatized," he said.

Mr. Brahimi, an Algerian statesman who is viewed sympathetically in Moscow, recommended last week that a transitional government be established, perhaps within months, and that it should rule Syria until elections could be held.

Like Russia, Mr. Brahimi hopes to arrange a political settlement on the basis of an international agreement reached this summer in Geneva, which envisages a transitional government and a peacekeeping force. But the Geneva document does not address Mr. Assad's fate, nor does it invoke tough sanctions against the Syrian government under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, which authorizes economic measures and, if necessary, military action.

On Saturday, Mr. Brahimi said that it might be necessary to "make some small changes to the Geneva agreement."

"Nonetheless," he added, "I consider that it is a wonderful basis for the continuation of the political process." He warned that if a political solution was not possible, Syria would be overrun by violence, like Somalia. He also said his recent visit to Damascus had convinced him that continued fighting in the country could turn into "something horrible," and he envisioned the flight of a million people across Syria's borders into Jordan and Lebanon.

"The problem could grow to such proportions that it could have a substantial effect on our future, and we cannot ignore this," Mr. Brahimi said.

Russia has set the stage for forward momentum, announcing a gathering in mid-January between the United States, Russia and Mr. Brahimi to discuss Syria.

Moscow may see these talks as a chance to rebuild its prestige in the Arab world, where Russia's historically strong alliances have been badly damaged by the standoff over Syria. Mr. Lavrov bridled on Saturday when a reporter from an Arabic news channel asked him to comment on criticism that Russia was "a participant in the Syrian conflict" because it continued to fulfill weapons contracts with Damascus after the outbreak of violence.

The accusation, Mr. Lavrov said, "is so far from the truth that there's no way to comment on it." He said that Russia did not supply the government with offensive weapons, and that much of Syria's arsenal dated to the Soviet era. He also said the opposition was receiving a far more deadly flow of weapons and aid.

The leader of the main opposition coalition, Sheik Ahmad Moaz al-Khatib, responded coolly to an overture on Friday from Russia, saying Moscow should publicly apologize for its pro-government position. He also refused to meet with Russian leaders in Moscow, saying a meeting was possible only in an Arab country.

Mr. Lavrov said Saturday that he would agree to such a meeting, but he responded to Mr. Khatib's remarks with an equally chilly response.

"I know that Mr. Khatib is probably not very experienced in politics," he said. "If he aspires to the role of a serious politician, he will nonetheless understand that it is in his own interests to hear our analysis directly from us."

Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Beirut, Lebanon.

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News Analysis: Weak Response of India Government in Rape Case Stokes Rage

Anupam Nath/Associated Press

Students in Guwahati, India, mourned the death of a rape victim on Saturday with a silent vigil; elsewhere, anger seethed.

NEW DELHI — India often seems to careen from crisis to crisis, with protests regularly spilling onto the streets over the latest outrage or scandal, a nation seemingly always on the boil. But when things settle, as they inevitably do, little seems to change. Public anger usually cools to a simmer.

Now, though, the heat has turned up again, as the death early on Saturday of a young woman savagely assaulted and raped here in the national capital has mushroomed into a new and volatile moment of crisis that has touched a deep chord of discontent. Protests that began more than a week ago as anguished cries against sexual violence in Indian society have broadened into angry condemnations of a government whose response has seemed tone deaf and, at times, incompetent.

On Saturday, hours after the rape victim died at a hospital in Singapore, several thousand people gathered at Jantar Mantar, the designated protest spot in the center of the capital, to express their anguish and rage. The latest demonstrations followed a week that saw the authorities clash with protesters and cordon off the political center of the city with a huge display of force.

"What the government is doing is politically stupid," said Jayati Ghosh, a professor of economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, speaking during a protest last week. "This will cause public disaffection, because people are seeing the government as inflexible and intolerant. If the government listened, they would find that people are trying to find solutions.

"The problem," she added, "is the government is not even listening."

For much of last week, as some protesters complained that the Indian state was more interested in protecting itself than its citizens, especially women, the symbolism has been stark: the authorities invoked emergency policing laws, closing off the governmental center of the capital, blockading roads and even shutting down subway stations — a democratic government temporarily encircling itself with a moat. At one point, fire hoses were turned on college students.

Those restrictions were eased by Dec. 25, even as New Delhi remained consumed by an anxious vigil as the young woman remained in critical condition. Doctors gave daily, televised updates on her condition until Wednesday evening, when the authorities unexpectedly flew her by special airplane to a hospital in Singapore, where her condition deteriorated before she died of organ failure.

It is the graphic horror of the attack that set off the outrage: the victim was a 23-year-old woman, her identity still withheld, whose evening at the movies with a male friend on Dec. 16 turned nightmarish. The police say a group of drunken men waved the pair onto a private bus, promising a ride home, but instead assaulted them with an iron rod and raped the woman as the bus moved through the city.

College students, mostly women, led the early protests. Sexual violence has become a national scandal in India, amid regular reports of gang rapes and other assaults against infants, teenagers and other women. But women also spoke of a more pervasive form of harassment: of being groped in public; of fearing to ride buses or subways alone; of victims, not attackers, being shamed and blamed.

"Rape happens everywhere," Urvashi Butalia, a feminist writer, wrote in The Hindu, a national English-language newspaper. "It happens inside homes, in families, in neighborhoods, in police stations, in towns and cities, in villages, and its incidence increases, as is happening in India, as society goes through change, as women's roles begin to change, as economies slow down and the slice of the pie becomes smaller."

Analysts say that India's coalition national government, led by the Indian National Congress Party, had an early opportunity to defuse the anger by embracing the protests and providing comfort and reassurance. Yet that moment, analysts agree, was missed, as top leaders misjudged how quickly public anger would escalate, especially among the young. It was a generational divide between young urbanites, often communicating by social media, and a government unable to find a way to win public trust.

Reassurances offered by Sonia Gandhi, president of the Congress Party, came off as unconvincing. Her son Rahul Gandhi, the party's heir apparent, has barely been visible.

Niharika Mandhana and Sruthi Gottipati contributed reporting.

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Unboxed: Big Data Is Great, but Don’t Forget Intuition

Andrew McAfee, principal research scientist at the M.I.T. Center for Digital Business, led off the conference by saying that Big Data would be "the next big chapter of our business history." Next on stage was Erik Brynjolfsson, a professor and director of the M.I.T. center and a co-author of the article with Dr. McAfee. Big Data, said Professor Brynjolfsson, will "replace ideas, paradigms, organizations and ways of thinking about the world."

These drumroll claims rest on the premise that data like Web-browsing trails, sensor signals, GPS tracking, and social network messages will open the door to measuring and monitoring people and machines as never before. And by setting clever computer algorithms loose on the data troves, you can predict behavior of all kinds: shopping, dating and voting, for example.

The results, according to technologists and business executives, will be a smarter world, with more efficient companies, better-served consumers and superior decisions guided by data and analysis.

I've written about what is now being called Big Data a fair bit over the years, and I think it's a powerful tool and an unstoppable trend. But a year-end column, I thought, might be a time for reflection, questions and qualms about this technology.

The quest to draw useful insights from business measurements is nothing new. Big Data is a descendant of Frederick Winslow Taylor's "scientific management" of more than a century ago. Taylor's instrument of measurement was the stopwatch, timing and monitoring a worker's every movement. Taylor and his acolytes used these time-and-motion studies to redesign work for maximum efficiency. The excesses of this approach would become satirical grist for Charlie Chaplin's "Modern Times." The enthusiasm for quantitative methods has waxed and waned ever since.

Big Data proponents point to the Internet for examples of triumphant data businesses, notably Google. But many of the Big Data techniques of math modeling, predictive algorithms and artificial intelligence software were first widely applied on Wall Street.

At the M.I.T. conference, a panel was asked to cite examples of big failures in Big Data. No one could really think of any. Soon after, though, Roberto Rigobon could barely contain himself as he took to the stage. Mr. Rigobon, a professor at M.I.T.'s Sloan School of Management, said that the financial crisis certainly humbled the data hounds. "Hedge funds failed all over the world," he said.

THE problem is that a math model, like a metaphor, is a simplification. This type of modeling came out of the sciences, where the behavior of particles in a fluid, for example, is predictable according to the laws of physics.

In so many Big Data applications, a math model attaches a crisp number to human behavior, interests and preferences. The peril of that approach, as in finance, was the subject of a recent book by Emanuel Derman, a former quant at Goldman Sachs and now a professor at Columbia University. Its title is "Models. Behaving. Badly."

Claudia Perlich, chief scientist at Media6Degrees, an online ad-targeting start-up in New York, puts the problem this way: "You can fool yourself with data like you can't with anything else. I fear a Big Data bubble."

The bubble that concerns Ms. Perlich is not so much a surge of investment, with new companies forming and then failing in large numbers. That's capitalism, she says. She is worried about a rush of people calling themselves "data scientists," doing poor work and giving the field a bad name.

Indeed, Big Data does seem to be facing a work-force bottleneck.

"We can't grow the skills fast enough," says Ms. Perlich, who formerly worked for I.B.M. Watson Labs and is an adjunct professor at the Stern School of Business at New York University.

A report last year by the McKinsey Global Institute, the research arm of the consulting firm, projected that the United States needed 140,000 to 190,000 more workers with "deep analytical" expertise and 1.5 million more data-literate managers, whether retrained or hired.

Thomas H. Davenport, a visiting professor at the Harvard Business School, is writing a book called "Keeping Up With the Quants" to help managers cope with the Big Data challenge. A major part of managing Big Data projects, he says, is asking the right questions: How do you define the problem? What data do you need? Where does it come from? What are the assumptions behind the model that the data is fed into? How is the model different from reality?

Society might be well served if the model makers pondered the ethical dimensions of their work as well as studying the math, according to Rachel Schutt, a senior statistician at Google Research.

"Models do not just predict, but they can make things happen," says Ms. Schutt, who taught a data science course this year at Columbia. "That's not discussed generally in our field."

Models can create what data scientists call a behavioral loop. A person feeds in data, which is collected by an algorithm that then presents the user with choices, thus steering behavior.

Consider Facebook. You put personal data on your Facebook page, and Facebook's software tracks your clicks and your searches on the site. Then, algorithms sift through that data to present you with "friend" suggestions.

Understandably, the increasing use of software that microscopically tracks and monitors online behavior has raised privacy worries. Will Big Data usher in a digital surveillance state, mainly serving corporate interests?

Personally, my bigger concern is that the algorithms that are shaping my digital world are too simple-minded, rather than too smart. That was a theme of a book by Eli Pariser, titled "The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding From You."

It's encouraging that thoughtful data scientists like Ms. Perlich and Ms. Schutt recognize the limits and shortcomings of the Big Data technology that they are building. Listening to the data is important, they say, but so is experience and intuition. After all, what is intuition at its best but large amounts of data of all kinds filtered through a human brain rather than a math model?

At the M.I.T. conference, Ms. Schutt was asked what makes a good data scientist. Obviously, she replied, the requirements include computer science and math skills, but you also want someone who has a deep, wide-ranging curiosity, is innovative and is guided by experience as well as data.

"I don't worship the machine," she said.

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Senate Leaders Racing to Beat Fiscal Deadline

WASHINGTON — Senate leaders and their aides spent Saturday searching for a formula to extend tax cuts for most Americans that could win bipartisan support in the Senate and final approval in the fractious House by the new year, hoping to prevent large tax increases and budget cuts that could threaten the fragile economy.

As part of the last-minute negotiations, the lawmakers were haggling over unemployment benefits, cuts in Medicare payments to doctors, taxes on large inheritances and how to limit the impact of the alternative minimum tax, a parallel income tax system that is intended to ensure the rich pay a fair share but that is increasingly encroaching on the middle class.

President Obama said that if talks between the Senate leaders broke down, he wanted the Senate to schedule an up-or-down vote on a narrower measure that would extend only the middle-class tax breaks and unemployment benefits. The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, said he would schedule such a vote on Monday absent a deal.

If Congress is unable to act before the new year, Washington will effectively usher in a series of automatic tax increases and a program of drastic spending cuts that economists say could pitch the country back into recession.

The president and lawmakers put those spending cuts in place this year as draconian incentives that would force them to confront the nation's growing debt. Now, lawmakers are trying to keep them from happening, though it seemed most likely on Saturday that the cuts, known as sequestration, would be left for the next Congress, to be sworn in this week.

"We just can't afford a politically self-inflicted wound to our economy," Mr. Obama said Saturday in his weekly address. "The housing market is healing, but that could stall if folks are seeing smaller paychecks. The unemployment rate is the lowest it's been since 2008, but already families and businesses are starting to hold back because of the dysfunction they see in Washington."

The fear of another painful economic slowdown appears to have accelerated deal-making on Capitol Hill with just 48 hours left before the so-called fiscal cliff arrives. Weeks of public sniping between Mr. Reid, the Democratic leader, and Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, ebbed on Friday evening with pledges of cooperation and optimism from both.

On Saturday, though, that sentiment was put to the test as 98 senators waited for word whether their leaders had come up with a proposal that might pass muster with members of both parties. The first votes in the Senate, if needed, are scheduled for Sunday afternoon.

"It's a little like playing Russian roulette with the economy," said Senator Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia. "The consequences could be enormous."

Members of Congress were mostly absent from the Capitol on Saturday, after two days of Senate votes on other matters and a day before both chambers were to reconvene. However, senior aides were working on proposals in their offices or at their homes.

Speaker John A. Boehner stopped by the Capitol briefly to see his chief of staff on Saturday afternoon. Mr. McConnell spent much of the day in his office.

Aides to Mr. Reid were expecting to receive offers from Mr. McConnell's staff, but no progress was reported by midday. Even if the talks took a positive turn, Senate aides said, no announcement was expected before the leaders briefed their caucuses on Sunday.

The chief sticking point among lawmakers and the president continued to be how to set tax rates for the next decade and beyond. With the Bush-era tax cuts expiring, Mr. Obama and Democrats have said they want tax rates to rise on income over $250,000 a year, while Republicans want a higher threshold, perhaps at $400,000.

Democrats and Republicans are also divided on the tax on inherited estates, which currently hits inheritances over $5 million at 35 percent. On Jan. 1, it is scheduled to rise to 55 percent beginning with inheritances exceeding $1 million.

The political drama in Washington over the weekend was given greater urgency by the fear that the economic gains of the past two years could be lost if no deal is reached.

Some of the consequences of Congressional inaction would be felt almost at once on Tuesday, in employee paychecks, doctors' offices and financial markets. Analysts said the effect would be cumulative, building over time.

An early barometer would probably be the financial markets, where skittish investors, as they have during previous Congressional cliffhangers, could send the stock market lower on fears of another prolonged period of economic distress.

In 2011, the political battles over whether to raise the nation's borrowing limit prompted Standard & Poor's to downgrade its rating of American debt, suggesting a higher risk of default. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 635 points in a volatile day of trading after the downgrade.

This month, traders have again nervously watched the political maneuvering in Washington, and the markets have jumped or dropped at tidbits of news from the negotiations. Two weeks ago, Ben S. Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, predicted that if lawmakers failed to reach a deal, "the economy will, I think, go off the cliff."

Immediately — regardless of whether a deal is reached — every working American's taxes will go up because neither party is fighting to extend a Social Security payroll tax cut that has been in place for two years.

Robert Pear and Jennifer Steinhauer contributed reporting.

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Nets 103, Cavaliers 100: Nets Talk Over Lunch and Win After Dinner

A Russian billionaire and a coaching lifer from Scranton, Pa., walked into a Greek restaurant, providing the setup for a corny punch line or perhaps an agenda for the future of the Nets. Or maybe it was just a lunch.

Either way, P. J. Carlesimo, the Nets' newly installed interim coach, had his first extensive meeting Saturday with Mikhail D. Prokhorov, the Nets' owner, who is contemplating his next move after firing Coach Avery Johnson last week.

They met for two hours Saturday at Milos, in Midtown Manhattan — along with General Manager Billy King and Dmitry Razumov, Prokhorov's chief liaison to the team — and discussed a variety of topics over a large platter of Mediterranean fare.

"We talked about the team, and we talked about the food and restaurants and stuff," Carlesimo said Saturday night before the Nets scratched out a tense 103-100 victory over the Cleveland Cavaliers at Barclays Center.

Carlesimo was guarded about the conversation, particularly as it pertained to his status and the Nets' coaching search. But he said he left with a firm sense of Prokhorov's priorities.

"That he wants to win a championship," Carlesimo said. "That he's willing to do whatever it takes to win a championship. That he's got a good understanding of our team and the N.B.A.

"I think if we would keep winning games, that would be good," Carlesimo added, deadpan. "Definitely prefers winning."

The Nets are preparing to make a determined run at Phil Jackson, by far the best coach on the market and their only target for the moment, people monitoring the process have said. There has been no contact yet between the parties, although a conversation is expected sometime after New Year's Day. Jackson is open to meeting with Prokhorov, but his interest in the job — or a return to coaching, period — is far from certain, according to friends.

For now, Carlesimo has the burden of reviving the Nets after a tailspin that cost Johnson his job. The Nets (16-14) took another positive step with Saturday's victory, although it was unnecessarily suspenseful. The Nets took an early 15-point lead, squandered most of it and had to fight off the lowly Cavaliers (7-25) until the end. The victory was not secured until Kyrie Irving missed a 3-pointer at the buzzer.

Brook Lopez again powered the Nets' offense, scoring a season-high 35 points, going 13 for 20 from the field and adding 11 rebounds. Deron Williams had 15 points and 7 assists.

The Nets were outscored over the final three quarters, but they never lost the lead after going ahead by double digits in the first. C. J. Miles kept the Cavaliers in the game with his 3-point shooting, converting a career-high 8 of 10 attempts and finishing with 33 points.

The Nets depart Sunday for a tough three-game trip that begins with stops in San Antonio and in Oklahoma City. But the schedule is easier from there, giving Carlesimo the chance to put the Nets on a winning track.

If Prokhorov fails to land Jackson, it is conceivable that he could keep Carlesimo for the rest of the season. The field of candidates beyond Jackson is not particularly compelling, and all of them will probably still be available after the season.

So unless Jackson takes the job, there may be no urgency to make a change until the off-season.

"I think it's available," Carlesimo said of the job. "I think we need to win. And there's also coaches that are available. And that's not something I have any control over."

Of course, a signature from Jackson would change everything.

Jackson would have to be convinced that the Nets have championship potential. Even then, he might be hesitant to take the job midseason, without the benefit of a training camp to start teaching the triangle offense, the system he has used through 11 championship runs. The offense is complicated and can take several months for a team to assimilate. It would be nearly impossible to install now, with the Nets fighting just to stay in the playoff hunt.

It is therefore possible that Jackson could give Prokhorov a mixed answer: not no and not yes, but simply "not yet."

REBOUNDS

Josh Childress was waived Saturday night at his request. Childress, 29, never established a regular role after signing with the Nets last summer. He appeared in five games this month and concluded that he would be better off elsewhere. He met with Billy King before the game to ask for his release. Childress had a nonguaranteed contract that would have become fully guaranteed had he remained on the roster Jan. 10. Waiving Childress leaves the Nets with 14 players, one short of the maximum. They could look to pick up a free agent once teams start cutting players in advance of the Jan. 10 guarantee deadline. ...Kris Humphries missed his fourth straight game because of a mild abdominal strain. He is unlikely to play Monday in San Antonio, but he might return to practice Tuesday.

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Jean S. Harris, 1923-2012: Jean S. Harris, Killer of Scarsdale Diet Doctor, Dies at 89

Joyce Dopkeen/The New York Times

Jean S. Harris, center, leaving the Westchester County Courthouse with one of her attorneys, Bonnie Steingart, in White Plains, N.Y., in 1981.

Jean S. Harris, the private-school headmistress whose 1981 trial for the murder of a prominent Scarsdale, N.Y., physician galvanized a nation with its story of vengeance by a woman scorned, died on Sunday at an assisted-living center in New Haven. She was 89.

Her death was confirmed by her son James.

For more than a year — from her arrest on March 10, 1980, to her sentencing for second-degree murder on March 20, 1981 — Mrs. Harris's case was front-page news.

The trial provided the fascination of a love triangle involving the cultivated headmistress of an exclusive girls' school, a wealthy cardiologist whose book, "The Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet," had been a best seller, and an attractive younger rival for his affection. If Mrs. Harris was to be believed, it was the story of an attempted suicide by a jilted woman that turned into the unintentional shooting of the man who had rejected her.

But there was an underlying social debate that drew commentary from writers, sociologists and feminists and antifeminists alike. Mrs. Harris's passionate defenders saw her plight as epitomizing the fragile position of an aging but fiercely independent woman who, because of limited options, was dependent on a man who mistreated her. Her detractors, who were just as ardent, suggested that such reasoning made it seem that it was the physician, Dr. Herman Tarnower, who was on trial.

Mrs. Harris was sentenced to 15 years to life, and spent 12 of those years at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in Westchester County, N.Y. But she managed to salvage that seemingly wasted period through a remarkable prison life. She counseled fellow female prisoners on how to take care of their children, and she set up a center where infants born to inmates can spend a year near their mothers. Then, after her release in 1993 following a grant of clemency by Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, she set up a foundation that raised millions of dollars for scholarships for children of women in prison in New York State.

She also lectured about her often incongruous experiences with inmates.

"They looked at me as a rich white woman, even though some of the call girls earned six times what I did as a headmistress," she told an interviewer.

At the center of the murder case was Jean Struven Harris, a slight, blue-eyed blonde, then 56, who was a product of comfortable suburban homes and a Smith College education. Headstrong, articulate and ambitious, she was the headmistress of the Madeira School, a boarding school for affluent girls on a sprawling wooded campus in Virginia.

At 10:56 on the night of March 10, 1980, the White Plains police received a telephone call from Dr. Tarnower's secluded glass-and-brick house on a 6.8-acre estate in Purchase, N.Y. Lying in an upstairs bedroom dying of four bullet wounds was Dr. Tarnower, the 69-year-old founder of the Scarsdale Medical Group, whose diet book had sold three million copies.

When the police arrived at the driveway, they came across Mrs. Harris, wearing tan slacks and a mink jacket, driving away. She contended that she was going to look for a phone booth to call the police. But officers found a .32-caliber gun in the glove compartment, and a detective later testified that she told him: "I did it. ... I've been through so much hell with him. He slept with every woman he could."

Dr. Tarnower and Mrs. Harris, the divorced mother of two grown sons and 13 years his junior, had been lovers for 14 years. But in the years before the shooting, the doctor had begun appearing at dinner parties and taking vacations with his office assistant, Lynne Tryforos, a divorced woman who was then 37. For years Dr. Tarnower, a lifelong bachelor, had refused to marry Mrs. Harris. Now, as a wealthy man, he could dally with the even younger Mrs. Tryforos.

In her eight days on the witness stand, Mrs. Harris was able to describe her betrayal with an arch wit that charmed the courtroom. She recalled how she once discovered a birthday greeting from Mrs. Tryforos to Dr. Tarnower in a small advertisement on the front page of The New York Times, and how she responded: "Herman, why don't you use the Goodyear blimp next time? I think it's available."

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Senate Leaders Set to Work on a Last-Minute Tax Agreement

Luke Sharrett for The New York Times

In a televised statement at the White House after meeting with Congressional leaders on Friday, President Obama said he was "modestly optimistic" that an agreement could be reached.

WASHINGTON — At the urging of President Obama, the Democratic and Republican leaders of the Senate set to work Friday night to assemble a last-minute tax deal that could pass both chambers of Congress and avert large tax increases and budget cuts next year, or at least stop the worst of the economic punch from landing beginning Jan. 1.

After weeks of fruitless negotiations between the president and Speaker John A. Boehner, Mr. Obama turned to Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, and Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader — two men who have been fighting for dominance of the Senate for years — to find a solution. The speaker, once seen as the linchpin for any agreement, essentially ceded final control to the Senate and said the House would act on whatever the Senate could produce.

"The hour for immediate action is here. It is now," Mr. Obama said in the White House briefing room after an hourlong meeting with the two Senate leaders, Mr. Boehner and Representative Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader. He added, "The American people are not going to have any patience for a politically self-inflicted wound to our economy, not right now."

Senate Democrats want Mr. McConnell to propose an alternative to Mr. Obama's final offer and present it to them in time for a compromise bill to reach the Senate floor on Monday and be sent to the House. Absent a bipartisan deal, Mr. Reid said Friday night that he would accede to the president's request to put to a vote on Monday Mr. Obama's plan to extend tax cuts for all income below $250,000 a year and to renew expiring unemployment compensation for as many as two million people, essentially daring Republicans to block it and allow taxes to rise for most Americans.

Bipartisan agreement still hinged on the Senate leaders finding an income level above which taxes will rise on Jan. 1, most likely higher than Mr. Obama's level of $250,000. Quiet negotiations between Senate and White House officials were already drifting up toward around $400,000 before Friday's White House meeting. The two sides were also apart on where to set taxes on inherited estates.

But senators broke from a long huddle on the Senate floor with Mr. McConnell on Friday night to say they were more optimistic that a deal was within reach. Mr. McConnell, White House aides and Mr. Reid were to continue talks on Saturday, aiming for a breakthrough as soon as Sunday.

"We're working with the White House, and hopefully we'll come up with something we can recommend to our respective caucuses," said Mr. McConnell, who has played a central role in cutting similar bipartisan deals in the past.

The emerging path to a possible resolution, at least on Friday, appeared to mirror the end of the protracted stalemate over the payroll tax last year. In that conflict, House Republicans refused to go along with a short-term extension of the cut, but Mr. McConnell reached an agreement that permitted such a measure to get through the Senate, and the House speaker essentially forced members to accept it from afar, after they had left forChristmas recess.

This time, the consequences are more significant, with more than a half-trillion dollars in tax increases and across-the-board spending cuts just days from going into force, an event most economists warn would send the economy back into recession if not quickly mitigated. With the House set to return to the Capitol on Sunday night, Mr. Boehner has said he would place any Senate bill before his chamber and let the vote proceed and the chips fall. The House could also change the legislation and return it to the Senate.

If the Senate is able to produce a bill that is largely bipartisan, there is a strong belief among House Republicans that the same measure would easily pass the House, with a large number of Republicans. While Mr. Boehner was unable to muster enough votes for his alternative bill that would have protected tax cuts for income under $1 million, that was because the measure lacked Democratic support, and was roughly a few dozen votes shy of passage with Republicans alone.

Helene Cooper and Ron Nixon contributed reporting.

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414 Homicides Is a Record Low for New York

Murders in New York have dropped to their lowest level in over 40 years, city officials announced on Friday, even as overall crimes increased slightly because of a rise in thefts — a phenomenon based solely on robberies of iPhones and other Apple devices.

There were 414 recorded homicides so far in 2012, compared with 515 for the same period in 2011, city officials said. That is a striking decline from murder totals in the low-2,000s that were common in the early 1990s, and is also below the record low: 471, set in 2009.

"The essence of civilization is that you can walk down the street without having to look over your shoulder," Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said.

Mr. Bloomberg acclaimed the accomplishment during a graduation ceremony for more than 1,000 new police officers at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. He attributed the low murder rate to the department's controversial practice of "stop, question and frisk," in which people are stopped on the street and questioned by officers, and aggressive hot-spot policing, in which officers are deployed to areas with crime spikes. Shootings are also down for the year so far. The number of murders is the lowest since 1963, when improvements in the recording of data were made.

The Police Department said thefts of Apple products had risen by 3,890, which was more than the overall increase in "major crimes."

In the last two decades, trumpeting declines in crime trends has become an annual end-of-the-year event, even when the numbers inched up.

But figures alone do not tell the whole story, and several homicides this year stood out as particularly disturbing, given the age of the victims and the manner of death. Detectives described the stabbing deaths of two children at the hands of their nanny inside the bathroom of their Manhattan apartment in October as among the most horrific crimes they could recall.

"I think those images get embedded in the minds of detectives more than other crime scenes," said Michael Palladino, president of the Detectives' Endowment Association, the union that represents detectives, adding, "It certainly makes you rethink the things that you take for granted, which is the safety of children."

So far this year, the police said, 20 children — ages 9 and younger — were murdered, up from 16 in 2011. Among the victims was a 4-year-old boy, Lloyd Morgan Jr., who was shot in the head on a Bronx playground during a basketball tournament.

There were also several anomalies in the 2012 homicide tally, including a serial killer who murdered three shopkeepers in Brooklyn.

Perhaps the most well-known murder put on the books in 2012 actually may have occurred in 1979. That is when Etan Patz, a 6-year-old boy, disappeared as he walked to a bus stop in SoHo. For more than three decades, Etan was officially listed as "missing." When an arrest was made this year and the suspect, Pedro Hernandez, was charged with murder, the haunting crime was added to the 2012 homicide tally.

This has been a leap year. And indeed, on Feb. 29, a Bronx teenager was fatally stabbed.

In one of several recent high-profile killings, a man was shot outside the Empire State Building by an ex-colleague.

But overall killings have dropped to such a low level that more New Yorkers now commit suicide than are the victims of homicides. About 475 New Yorkers kill themselves each year, according to the city's health department.

Mr. Bloomberg praised Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, saying the 19 percent drop in homicides compared with 2011 was achieved despite a shrinking police force and an increasing population. Mr. Kelly said he believed that relatively new policing strategies, including adding more police officers dedicated to curbing domestic violence, and monitoring social media to thwart gang-related murders, were working.

"We're preventing crimes before someone is killed and before someone else has to go to prison," the commissioner said.

Six precincts recorded no murders as of Friday afternoon: The 7th on the Lower East Side; the 19th on the Upper East Side; the 112th in the Forest Hills and Rego Park neighborhoods of Queens; the 94th in Greenpoint, Brooklyn; the 76th in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn; and Central Park, according to the police.

Of the 414 murders, 14 deaths from previous years were counted as homicides for the first time, like in the Patz case. In many of these cases, victims of long-ago shootings died of sepsis in hospitals, the police said.

Of the 400 murders in 2012, 223 were gunshot victims, 84 victims were stabbed to death, 43 died of blunt trauma and 11 died of asphyxiation. The majority of the 400 homicides occurred on a Saturday, followed by early Sunday morning. Most occurred at 2 a.m. People were more likely to be killed outside than in. Nearly 70 percent of the victims had prior criminal arrests, the police said.

Domestic-related homicides dropped to 68, from 94 in 2011.

The likelihood of being killed by a stranger was slight. The vast majority of the homicides, Mr. Kelly said, grew out of "disputes" between a victim and killer who knew each other.

The series of Apple-product thefts has been challenging the police for several years, but this is the first time they have been seen as significantly skewing the crime statistics. "If you just took away the jump in Apple, we'd be down for the year," Mr. Bloomberg's press secretary, Marc La Vorgna, said.

Mr. Kelly said the thefts of non-Apple devices had declined.

Michael M. Grynbaum contributed reporting.

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