Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany Opens Campaign for a Third Term

BERLIN — Angela Merkel began her campaign for re-election on Tuesday with a display of the down-to-earth pragmatism that has helped make her immensely popular among Germans and well positioned to win a third term as chancellor next year.

Wielding two bouquets of bright orange flowers after delegates in her center-right Christian Democratic Union elected her to a seventh term as their party leader with a record 97.9 percent of the votes, Ms. Merkel took the podium and thanked the cheering crowd.

“Those who know me know that I’m overwhelmed and touched,” she said. “And now, let’s get to work. We have a lot to do.”

With overall approval ratings close to 70 percent, Ms. Merkel, a 58-year-old daughter of a Lutheran pastor who grew up in East Germany, is viewed as being at the height of her powers. Surveys show her comfortably ahead of her closest rival, Peer Steinbrück of the center-left Social Democrats, before parliamentary elections next September.

Analysts point to her combination of pragmatism and readiness to compromise the driving force behind her popularity. Nils Diederich, a professor of political science at the Free University of Berlin, said Ms. Merkel had succeeded in shifting her party away from its traditionalist ideology, making it more attractive to mainstream Germans. In addition, she has shepherded her country through Europe’s worst economic crisis in recent history and into a leadership role.

“During Ms. Merkel’s tenure, she has led Germany into a position of greater strength than it has ever known,” Mr. Diederich said. “Ms. Merkel has shown people that we have nothing to hide.”

That confidence was on display in the chancellor’s speech to delegates, who gathered on Tuesday for a two-day congress in the central city of Hanover. She praised her government as the country’s most successful since its postwar reunification in 1990, despite the challenges it faces.

“These are turbulent times, and sometimes we find ourselves in stormy waters,” Ms. Merkel said. She went on to highlight her government’s successes, including low unemployment and economic stability in the face of the economic crisis crippling much of the rest of Europe.

“In such times, no other government could lead the country as successfully as our conservative-liberal coalition,” Ms. Merkel told members.

In spite of the fact that the chancellor is personally popular, her government — an alliance of her own conservative Christian Democratic Union with the sister party for the state of Bavaria, the Christian Social Union, and the pro-business Free Democrats — is not.

Recent months have seen the Free Democrats bleeding support, opening the discussion for other possible alliances, with a so-called grand coalition of Ms. Merkel’s conservatives and the Social Democrats — a combination that Ms. Merkel governed during her first term as chancellor, from 2005 to 2009.

Increasingly the talk has been about whether the country’s traditional conservative party would form an alliance with the more left-leaning and environmentalist Green party, which earned about 15 percent support in a survey released Tuesday by the polling group Insa.

Ms. Merkel’s conservatives earned 35 percent, placing them in the strongest position, but requiring they find a coalition partner, according to the poll published in the Bild newspaper.

For the first time in weeks, the poll showed the Free Democrats earning 5 percent support, enough to secure representation in Parliament, making them available to form a coalition.

Nevertheless, the chancellor is keeping her options open. In a playful dig at her coalition partner, Ms. Merkel drew laughs from the crowd by citing a recent satire as saying, “Perhaps God created the F.D.P. only to test us.”

Compared with all other possible constellations from Germany’s political scene, Ms. Merkel said nevertheless that the current government of conservatives and economic liberals had the most in common.

“We share common values and principles,” she said. “And these are the values and principles that we need to successfully overcome today’s challenges.”

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China goes crazy for iPhone 5: Preorders hit 100,000 units in under 24 hours

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Chiefs' LB mentioned other 'girlfriend' to police

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Police say Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher spent some of his final hours sleeping in his car outside the home of another woman whom he described as his "girlfriend."

Police spokesman Darin Snapp said Tuesday that the woman's apartment complex was about 10 miles from the home where Belcher shot and killed the mother of his 3-month-old daughter, 22-year-old Kasandra Perkins. Belcher then drove to Arrowhead Stadium and killed himself in front of team officials.

Snapp says the officers who found Belcher sleeping in his car around 2:50 a.m. Saturday determined that he didn't have any outstanding warrants. He says Belcher made a phone call and that a woman let him into the building a few minutes later.

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Sign Language Researchers Broaden Science Lexicon

Imagine trying to learn biology without ever using the word “organism.” Or studying to become a botanist when the only way of referring to photosynthesis is to spell the word out, letter by painstaking letter.

For deaf students, this game of scientific Password has long been the daily classroom and laboratory experience. Words like “organism” and “photosynthesis” — to say nothing of more obscure and harder-to-spell terms — have no single widely accepted equivalent in sign language. This means that deaf students and their teachers and interpreters must improvise, making it that much harder for the students to excel in science and pursue careers in it.

“Often times, it would involve a lot of finger-spelling and a lot of improvisation,” said Matthew Schwerin, a physicist with the Food and Drug Administration who is deaf, of his years in school. “For the majority of scientific terms,” Mr. Schwerin and his interpreter for the day would “try to find a correct sign for the term, and if nothing was pre-existing, we would come up with a sign that was agreeable with both parties.”

Now thanks to the Internet — particularly the boom in online video — resources for deaf students seeking science-related signs are easier to find and share. Crowdsourcing projects in both American Sign Language and British Sign Language are under way at several universities, enabling people who are deaf to coalesce around signs for commonly used terms.

This year, one of those resources, the Scottish Sensory Centre’s British Sign Language Glossary Project, added 116 new signs for physics and engineering terms, including signs for “light-year,”  (hold one hand up and spread the fingers downward for “light,” then bring both hands together in front of your chest and slowly move them apart for “year”), “mass” and “X-ray” (form an X with your index fingers, then, with the index finger on the right hand, point outward). 

The signs were developed by a team of researchers at the center, a division of the University of Edinburgh in Scotland that develops learning tools for students with visual and auditory impairments. The researchers spent more than a year soliciting ideas from deaf science workers, circulating lists of potential signs and ultimately gathering for “an intense weekend” of final voting, said Audrey Cameron, science adviser for the project. (Dr. Cameron is also deaf, and like all non-hearing people interviewed for this article, answered questions via e-mail.)

Whether the Scottish Sensory Centre’s signs will take hold among its audience remains to be seen. “Some will be adopted, and some will probably never be accepted,” Dr. Cameron said. “We’ll have to wait and see what happens.”

Ideally, the standardization of signs will make it easier for deaf students to keep pace with their hearing classmates during lectures. “I can only choose to look at one thing at a time,” said Mr. Schwerin of the F.D.A., recalling his science education, “and it often meant choosing between the interpreter, the blackboard/screen/material, or taking notes. It was like, pick one, and lose out on the others.”

The problem doesn’t end at graduation. In fact, it only intensifies as new discoveries add unfamiliar terms to the scientific lexicon. “I’ve had numerous meetings where I couldn’t participate properly because the interpreters were not able to understand the jargon and they did not know any scientific signs,” Dr. Cameron said.

One general complaint about efforts to standardize signs for technical terms is the idea that, much like spoken language, sign language should be allowed to develop organically rather than be dictated from above.

“Signs that are developed naturally — i.e., that are tested and refined in everyday conversation — are more likely to be accepted quickly by the community,” said Derek Braun, director of the molecular genetics laboratory at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., which he said was the first biological laboratory designed and administered by deaf scientists.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 4, 2012

An earlier version of this article misstated the origin of the ASL-STEM Forum.  It was developed by researchers at the University of Washington, not Gallaudet University.  Researchers at Gallaudet and the National Technical Institute for the Deaf at Rochester Institute of Technology work with the University of Washington to provide content and help the forum grow.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 4, 2012

An earlier version of a correction with this article misstated the name of an institute that works on the ASL-STEM Forum. It is the National Technical Institute for the Deaf at Rochester Institute of Technology not the National Institute for the Deaf. 

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DealBook: UBS Described as Near Deal With U.S. and Britain on Rate Rigging

UBS, the Swiss banking giant, is close to reaching settlements with American and British authorities over the manipulation of interest rates, the latest case in a multiyear investigation that has rattled the financial industry and spurred a public outcry for broad reform.

UBS is expected to pay more than $450 million to settle claims that some employees reported false rates to increase the bank’s profit, according to officials briefed on the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the talks were private.

If the bank agrees to the deals with various authorities, the collective penalties would yield the largest total fines to date related to the rate-rigging inquiry and would increase the likelihood that other financial institutions would face stiff penalties. Authorities dealt their first blow in the rate-rigging case in June when the British bank Barclays agreed to a $450 million settlement.

A spokeswoman for UBS declined to comment. The agencies leading the UBS investigation, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Justice Department and Britain’s Financial Services Authority, also declined to comment.

The UBS case will provide a window into systemic problems in the rate-setting process, which affects how consumers and companies borrow money around the world. After reviewing thousands of internal bank e-mails and interviewing dozens of employees, the authorities have uncovered patterns of abuse at the major banks that help set benchmark interest rates.

Libor Explained

The sprawling investigation is focused on benchmarks like the London interbank offered rate, or Libor. The rate, a measure of how much banks charge each other for loans, is used to determine the costs of trillions of dollars of mortgages, credit card charges and student loans.

The authorities claim that UBS traders colluded with rival banks to influence rates in an effort to bolster their profits, according to officials briefed on the matter. Some traders at UBS were suspended this year over the matter.

Given the scope of the case, the UBS settlement is expected to heighten calls for a reform of the Libor system. Lawmakers are pushing to change the way banks report rates, providing more transparency to consumers, companies and investors that rely on the benchmark.

The reform movement gained momentum after global authorities secured the settlement with Barclays. Regulators had accused Barclays of reporting false rates, a scandal that prompted the resignation of the chief executive and other top officials at the bank.

Global authorities are now moving forward with civil and criminal cases, setting up the potential for major fines and regulatory sanctions. Some banks are in advanced settlement talks, including UBS and the Royal Bank of Scotland. The Royal Bank said it expected to disclose penalties before the firm’s next earnings release in February. Deutsche Bank said last month that it had set aside money to cover potential fines, although it was too early to predict the size.

American authorities are hoping to complete a deal with UBS by the middle of the month, according to officials briefed on the matter. The officials noted that the discussions could spill into next year. The talks could also break down, in which case the authorities would file a lawsuit against the bank.

It is unclear whether global authorities will act in tandem on the UBS case. The bank and the regulators would prefer to strike a deal together, but the agencies are proceeding at different speeds.

Investigators say the broader Libor case could go on for years.

Canadian, Swiss and Asian authorities as well as the Justice Department, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Britain’s Financial Services Authority are investigating the actions of more than a dozen banks. Along with UBS, the futures commission is focused on potential wrongdoing at two American banks, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase, the officials said. HSBC is also under scrutiny.

In addition to the regulatory cases, the Justice Department has identified potential criminal wrongdoing by traders at Barclays and other banks. The banks also face private lawsuits from large investors like local governments, which claim to have suffered losses as a result of interest rate manipulation. The New York attorney general has subpoenaed 16 banks over their role in the scandal, an action that could foreshadow civil lawsuits. Analysts predict the financial industry could face penalties of up to $20 billion.

“The evidence that comes out of any future settlement is likely to be enormously helpful for our claims,” said David E. Kovel, a partner at the law firm Kirby McInerney who is representing clients in a potential class-action suit related to Libor.

For UBS, the Libor case comes at a difficult time.

It has faced a series of legal problems since the financial crisis. In 2009, the bank agreed to pay $780 million to settle accusations by American authorities that it helped wealthy clients avoid taxes.

In 2011, it announced a $2.3 billion loss prompted by a rogue trader, Kweku M. Adoboli, who received a seven-year jail sentence for fraud last month. The firm agreed to pay a $47.5 million penalty to the British authorities in connection with the trading loss.

In the Libor case, UBS has been eager to cooperate. It has already reached a conditional immunity deal with the antitrust arm of the Justice Department, which could protect the bank from criminal prosecution under certain conditions. It is also cooperating with Canadian antitrust authorities by handing over e-mails and other documents implicating other banks.

But it did acknowledge publicly that such deals would not shield the bank from potential penalties from other regulators. The Justice Department’s criminal unit, for instance, could still take action against the bank.

UBS disclosed last year that it was the subject of investigations related to Libor, saying it had received subpoenas from American and Japanese authorities. Swiss and British regulators have joined the UBS investigation, which involves a number of currencies in the Libor system.

The timing of the Libor cases against UBS depends in large part on cooperation among regulators.

The Financial Services Authority in Britain has worked closely with its American counterparts. In total, the British regulator has about 160 people working on its various cases against banks, which are at different stages of development.

As the top watchdog of London’s financial services industry, the British regulator has positioned itself as a conduit for document requests from international regulators regarding Libor, which is set daily by banks in London. The agency also organizes interviews for its American counterparts with London-based bankers involved in the inquiries, according to an official with direct knowledge of the matter.

British regulators had been ready to move against UBS a month after officials announced a settlement with Barclays, the person added. The settlement has been delayed, however, as global authorities have tried to pursue a joint agreement with the bank.

“We’ve been going at the pace of the slowest regulator,” the official said.

A version of this article appeared in print on 12/03/2012, on page A1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Ubs Is Reported To Be Near Deal On Rate Rigging.

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Obama Is Taking Himself and #My2K to Twitter This Afternoon

What a day for Twitter! First the Pope, then the Royal Baby, and now President Obama will come online to answer questions about the fiscal cliff. A @WhiteHouse tweet with the distincitive “-bo” signature, announced not long ago that the big guy himself will be taking questions online, starting at 2:00 p.m. ET.

Good to see lots of folks on twitter speaking out on extending middle class tax cuts. I’ll answer some Qs on that at 2ET. Ask w/ #My2k –bo

— The White House (@whitehouse) December 3, 2012

Unfortunately, he’s sticking with the troublesome #My2K hashtag that conservatives have already seized upon in a back-and-forth battle for messaging. Trying to mobilize your supporters through social media is all well and good, but the problem with any genuinely open town hall, is that anyone can invite themselves—even those who disagree with you and might be louder than your friends. (Plus, any reasonably popular hashtag moves much to fast for anyone to follow it or have an actual conversation on Twitter anyway.)

RELATED: Don’t Expect Too Much From Social Media Town Halls

But ask away! Maybe you’ll get luck and get RT’d by the President himself. And then find yourself becoming the next conservative meme as soon as the hashtag-averse pundits start making fun of your question. Should be a fun afternoon.

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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A-Rod needs hip surgery, will miss season's start

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Alex Rodriguez will have surgery on his left hip and will miss the start of the season and possibly the entire first half.

Rodriguez has a torn labrum, bone impingement and a cyst, the Yankees said Monday. The third baseman will need to follow a pre-surgery program over the next four-to-six weeks, and the team anticipates he will be sidelined four-to-six months after the operation. That timetable projects to a return between the start of May and mid-July.

A-Rod had right hip surgery on March 9, 2009, and returned that May 8. The Yankees said this operation will be "similar but not identical."

Rodriguez, who turns 38 in July, complained of pain in his right hip the night Raul Ibanez pinch hit for him — and hit a tying ninth-inning home run — against Baltimore during the AL division series in October. He went to a hospital and was checked out then.

His left hip injury was detected last month during an exam by Dr. Marc Philippon, who operated on Rodriguez three years ago. A-Rod then got a second opinion from Dr. Bryan Kelly, who will repair the latest injury at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York.

"Both doctors believe that there is a very strong possibility that Rodriguez's hip condition may have had a negative effect on his performance during the latter stages of the season and the playoffs," the Yankees said.

Rodriguez was benched in three of nine postseason games and pinch hit for in three others. He hit .120 (3 for 25) with no RBIs in the playoffs, including 0 for 18 with 12 strikeouts against right-handed pitchers.

A-Rod broke his left hand when he was hit by a pitch from Seattle's Felix Hernandez on July 24. He returned Sept. 3 and hit .195 with two homers and six RBIs over the final month of the regular season.

This will be Rodriguez's sixth trip to the disabled list in six seasons. He had a strained quadriceps in 2008, the hip surgery in 2009, a strained calf in 2010, knee surgery in 2011 and the broken hand this year.

Signed to a record $275 million, 10-year contract after the 2007 season, Rodriguez is owed $114 million by New York over the next five years.

Fifth on the career list with 647 home runs, he had just 34 the last two seasons.

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Software Programs Help Doctors Diagnose, but Can’t Replace Them

SAN FRANCISCO — The man on stage had his audience of 600 mesmerized. Over the course of 45 minutes, the tension grew. Finally, the moment of truth arrived, and the room was silent with anticipation.

At last he spoke. “Lymphoma with secondary hemophagocytic syndrome,” he said. The crowd erupted in applause.

Professionals in every field revere their superstars, and in medicine the best diagnosticians are held in particularly high esteem. Dr. Gurpreet Dhaliwal, 39, a self-effacing associate professor clinical medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, is considered one of the most skillful clinical diagnosticians in practice.

The case Dr. Dhaliwal was presented, at a medical  conference last year, began with information that could have described hundreds of diseases: the patient had intermittent fevers, joint pain, and weight and appetite loss.

To observe him at work is like watching Steven Spielberg tackle a script or Rory McIlroy a golf course. He was given new information bit by bit — lab, imaging and biopsy results. Over the course of the session, he drew on an encyclopedic familiarity with thousands of syndromes. He deftly dismissed red herrings while picking up on clues that others might ignore, gradually homing in on the accurate diagnosis.

Just how special is Dr. Dhaliwal’s talent? More to the point, what can he do that a computer cannot? Will a computer ever successfully stand in for a skill that is based not simply on a vast fund of knowledge but also on more intangible factors like intuition?

The history of computer-assisted diagnostics is long and rich. In the 1970s, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh developed software to diagnose complex problems in general internal medicine; the project eventually resulted in a commercial program called Quick Medical Reference. Since the 1980s, Massachusetts General Hospital has been developing and refining DXplain, a program that provides a ranked list of clinical diagnoses from a set of symptoms and laboratory data.

And I.B.M., on the heels of its triumph last year with Watson, the Jeopardy-playing computer, is working on Watson for Healthcare.

In some ways, Dr. Dhaliwal’s diagnostic method is similar to that of another I.B.M. project: the Deep Blue chess program, which in 1996 trounced Garry Kasparov, the world’s best player at the time, to claim an unambiguous victory in the computer’s relentless march into the human domain.

Although lacking consciousness and a human’s intuition, Deep Blue had millions of moves memorized and could analyze as many each second. Dr. Dhaliwal does the diagnostic equivalent, though at human speed.

Since medical school, he has been an insatiable reader of case reports in medical journals, and case conferences from other hospitals. At work he occasionally uses a diagnostic checklist program called Isabel, just to make certain he hasn’t forgotten something. But the program has yet to offer a diagnosis that Dr. Dhaliwal missed.

Dr. Dhaliwal regularly receives cases from physicians who are stumped by a set of symptoms. At medical conferences, he is presented with one vexingly difficult case and is given 45 minutes to solve it. It is a medical high-wire act; doctors in the audience squirm as the set of facts gets more obscure and all the diagnoses they were considering are ruled out. After absorbing and processing scores of details, Dr. Dhaliwal must commit to a diagnosis. More often than not, he is right.

When working on a difficult case in front of an audience, Dr. Dhaliwal puts his entire thought process on display, with the goal of “elevating the stature of thinking,” he said. He believes this is becoming more important because physicians are being assessed on whether they gave the right medicine to a patient, or remembered to order a certain test.

Without such emphasis, physicians and training programs might forget the importance of having smart, thoughtful doctors. “Because in medicine,” Dr. Dhaliwal said, “thinking is our most important procedure.”

He added: “Getting better at diagnosis isn’t about figuring out if someone has one rare disease versus another. Getting better at diagnosis is as important to patient quality and safety as reducing medication errors, or eliminating wrong site surgery.”

Clinical Precision

Dr. Dhaliwal does half his clinical work on the wards of the San Francisco V. A. Medical Center, and the other half in its emergency department, where he often puzzles through multiple mysteries at a time.

One recent afternoon in the E.R., he was treating a 66-year-old man who was mentally unstable and uncooperative. He complained of hip pain, but routine lab work revealed that his kidneys weren’t working and his potassium was rising to a dangerous level, putting him in danger of an arrhythmia that could kill him — perhaps within hours. An ultrasound showed that his bladder was blocked.

There was work to be done: drain the bladder, correct the potassium level. It would have been easy to dismiss the hip pain as a distraction; it didn’t easily fit the picture. But Dr. Dhaliwal’s instinct is to hew to the ancient rule that physicians should try to come to a unifying diagnosis. In the end, everything — including the hip pain — was traced to metastatic prostate cancer.

“Things can shift very quickly in the emergency room,” Dr. Dhaliwal said. “One challenge of this, whether you use a computer or your brain, is deciding what’s signal and what’s noise.” Much of the time, it is his intuition that helps figure out which is which.

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DealBook: UBS Described as Near Deal With U.S. and Britain on Rate Rigging

UBS, the Swiss banking giant, is close to reaching settlements with American and British authorities over the manipulation of interest rates, the latest case in a multiyear investigation that has rattled the financial industry and spurred a public outcry for broad reform.

UBS is expected to pay more than $450 million to settle claims that some employees reported false rates to increase the bank’s profit, according to officials briefed on the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the talks were private.

If the bank agrees to the deals with various authorities, the collective penalties would yield the largest total fines to date related to the rate-rigging inquiry and would increase the likelihood that other financial institutions would face stiff penalties. Authorities dealt their first blow in the rate-rigging case in June when the British bank Barclays agreed to a $450 million settlement.

A spokeswoman for UBS declined to comment. The agencies leading the UBS investigation, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Justice Department and Britain’s Financial Services Authority, also declined to comment.

The UBS case will provide a window into systemic problems in the rate-setting process, which affects how consumers and companies borrow money around the world. After reviewing thousands of internal bank e-mails and interviewing dozens of employees, the authorities have uncovered patterns of abuse at the major banks that help set benchmark interest rates.

Libor Explained

The sprawling investigation is focused on benchmarks like the London interbank offered rate, or Libor. The rate, a measure of how much banks charge each other for loans, is used to determine the costs of trillions of dollars of mortgages, credit card charges and student loans.

The authorities claim that UBS traders colluded with rival banks to influence rates in an effort to bolster their profits, according to officials briefed on the matter. Some traders at UBS were suspended this year over the matter.

Given the scope of the case, the UBS settlement is expected to heighten calls for a reform of the Libor system. Lawmakers are pushing to change the way banks report rates, providing more transparency to consumers, companies and investors that rely on the benchmark.

The reform movement gained momentum after global authorities secured the settlement with Barclays. Regulators had accused Barclays of reporting false rates, a scandal that prompted the resignation of the chief executive and other top officials at the bank.

Global authorities are now moving forward with civil and criminal cases, setting up the potential for major fines and regulatory sanctions. Some banks are in advanced settlement talks, including UBS and the Royal Bank of Scotland. The Royal Bank said it expected to disclose penalties before the firm’s next earnings release in February. Deutsche Bank said last month that it had set aside money to cover potential fines, although it was too early to predict the size.

American authorities are hoping to complete a deal with UBS by the middle of the month, according to officials briefed on the matter. The officials noted that the discussions could spill into next year. The talks could also break down, in which case the authorities would file a lawsuit against the bank.

It is unclear whether global authorities will act in tandem on the UBS case. The bank and the regulators would prefer to strike a deal together, but the agencies are proceeding at different speeds.

Investigators say the broader Libor case could go on for years.

Canadian, Swiss and Asian authorities as well as the Justice Department, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Britain’s Financial Services Authority are investigating the actions of more than a dozen banks. Along with UBS, the futures commission is focused on potential wrongdoing at two American banks, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase, the officials said. HSBC is also under scrutiny.

In addition to the regulatory cases, the Justice Department has identified potential criminal wrongdoing by traders at Barclays and other banks. The banks also face private lawsuits from large investors like local governments, which claim to have suffered losses as a result of interest rate manipulation. The New York attorney general has subpoenaed 16 banks over their role in the scandal, an action that could foreshadow civil lawsuits. Analysts predict the financial industry could face penalties of up to $20 billion.

“The evidence that comes out of any future settlement is likely to be enormously helpful for our claims,” said David E. Kovel, a partner at the law firm Kirby McInerney who is representing clients in a potential class-action suit related to Libor.

For UBS, the Libor case comes at a difficult time.

It has faced a series of legal problems since the financial crisis. In 2009, the bank agreed to pay $780 million to settle accusations by American authorities that it helped wealthy clients avoid taxes.

In 2011, it announced a $2.3 billion loss prompted by a rogue trader, Kweku M. Adoboli, who received a seven-year jail sentence for fraud last month. The firm agreed to pay a $47.5 million penalty to the British authorities in connection with the trading loss.

In the Libor case, UBS has been eager to cooperate. It has already reached a conditional immunity deal with the antitrust arm of the Justice Department, which could protect the bank from criminal prosecution under certain conditions. It is also cooperating with Canadian antitrust authorities by handing over e-mails and other documents implicating other banks.

But it did acknowledge publicly that such deals would not shield the bank from potential penalties from other regulators. The Justice Department’s criminal unit, for instance, could still take action against the bank.

UBS disclosed last year that it was the subject of investigations related to Libor, saying it had received subpoenas from American and Japanese authorities. Swiss and British regulators have joined the UBS investigation, which involves a number of currencies in the Libor system.

The timing of the Libor cases against UBS depends in large part on cooperation among regulators.

The Financial Services Authority in Britain has worked closely with its American counterparts. In total, the British regulator has about 160 people working on its various cases against banks, which are at different stages of development.

As the top watchdog of London’s financial services industry, the British regulator has positioned itself as a conduit for document requests from international regulators regarding Libor, which is set daily by banks in London. The agency also organizes interviews for its American counterparts with London-based bankers involved in the inquiries, according to an official with direct knowledge of the matter.

British regulators had been ready to move against UBS a month after officials announced a settlement with Barclays, the person added. The settlement has been delayed, however, as global authorities have tried to pursue a joint agreement with the bank.

“We’ve been going at the pace of the slowest regulator,” the official said.

A version of this article appeared in print on 12/03/2012, on page A1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Ubs Is Reported To Be Near Deal On Rate Rigging.

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In Damascus, Tense Anticipation of Strongest Push Yet by Rebels

Joseph Eid/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Distant explosions have awakened a sense of foreboding even in the tranquil Old City.

BEIRUT, Lebanon — As Syrian rebels and government forces clashed on the outskirts of Damascus on Saturday, with explosions rumbling in the distance and warplanes screeching overhead, the rebels appeared to be making their strongest push toward the city since the government repelled an offensive there in July.

A quiet tension prevailed downtown. But security checkpoints were proliferating, and there were reports that President Bashar al-Assad was preparing loyal divisions to defend the city, the capital and heart of his power.

Military analysts warned that it was impossible to know whether a decisive battle for Damascus was beginning, especially as Syrians lost access to the Internet for 53 hours, limiting the flow of information, before it was restored on Saturday. But they said that a government fight to defend its core could be the fiercest and most destructive phase yet of the 20-month conflict.

“We’re waiting for the big battle to begin,” said Emile Hokayem, an analyst based in Bahrain for the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

For decades, the Assad family has settled loyal military families, many from its minority Alawite sect, in the western outskirts of Damascus, where the presidential palace sits on a plateau overlooking the city. The current fighting suggested that the government was trying to insulate those areas, along with the city center and airport, from the semicircle of urban sprawl curving from northeast to southwest, where rebels have strengthened their position in recent days, overrunning a string of small bases.

Analysts say that Mr. Assad, knowing that losing Damascus could be a decisive blow, has been conserving his best and most loyal troops and much of his artillery for a battle there.

“We’re not yet at a point where the regime is in total panic mode and can no longer make rational — however nasty — decisions about military strategy,” Mr. Hokayem said. “He has to decide which cities around Damascus to destroy and which cities to keep in hand.”

When Damascus was threatened in July, the government pulled forces from parts of northern and southern Syria — allowing rebels to consolidate gains in the north — and there were reports that something similar was happening now. An activist in Damascus said Saturday that elements of the army’s feared Fourth Division, led by Maher al-Assad, the president’s brother, were at the Aqraba military airport near the Damascus airport. There were unconfirmed reports that other top divisions and special forces were headed for the city, said Joseph Holliday, an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, in Washington.

“When the rebels score victories in Damascus, it forces the regime to contract more quickly” in the areas that it contests elsewhere, he said.

To some extent that has already happened, said one diplomat, Nasser Judeh, the foreign minister of Jordan. “There are large areas of Syria that are beyond the control of the regime now,” he said Saturday in Washington. “The opposition and the rebel forces are making serious advances. Things are moving in a different direction compared to what they were a few weeks ago.”

Analysts said rebels were unlikely to quickly overrun the government’s positions in the capital. The government has defended chosen strong points, including its most important helicopter base, in the northern province of Idlib, and a base on the road between Damascus and the commercial hub of Aleppo. Rebels have besieged both for months without taking them.

But the encroachment on Damascus has a profound psychological effect that could hasten the crumbling of Mr. Assad’s support — or deepen it among those who fear their fates are tied to his. In July, when rebels briefly held the southern Damascus neighborhood of Midan and bombed a military headquarters downtown, killing four top officials, some government supporters fled to Lebanon and coastal Alawite strongholds, analysts said.

Last month, rebel bombings in Mezze 86, a neighborhood of Alawite military families near the palace, unsettled government supporters amid suspicions of an inside job. In recent weeks, officials have expressed fear of commuting home to the suburbs, worrying that Sunni Muslim conscript soldiers at checkpoints will turn on them, shifting allegiance to the mostly Sunni uprising, said analysts, activists and a foreign reporter recently in Damascus.

Reporting was contributed by Neil MacFarquhar and Hania Mourtada from Beirut; Thomas Erdbrink from Tehran; Hala Droubi from Dubai, United Arab Emirates; and Elisabeth Bumiller from Washington.

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