For Tracy Anderson, Fitness Expert, Always a New Move

Erin Baiano for The New York Times

Tracy Anderson, center, teaching a fitness class at her studio in TriBeCa. Her classes and DVDs have attracted devoted followers — and, she says, mimics.

TRACY ANDERSON, the tiny blond fitness guru perhaps best known as Gwyneth Paltrow’s trainer and business partner, is as bright and sparkly as the Swarovski crystal-encrusted iPhone case she was admiring one recent Thursday.

“I love this!” she squealed, bouncing on the sofa of the Greenwich Hotel. Then she turned the case over and spied a fighting word: Soul, short for SoulCycle, a popular chain of cycling studios in New York and Los Angeles.

She looked as if she had swallowed something sour, and nearly dropped the bejeweled case. Her girlishness disappeared, and she said flatly: “I can get you better legs than them.”

Ms. Anderson, 37, claims that SoulCycle, through a former employee of hers, uses one of her inventions: a system of resistance bands that hangs from the ceiling. (A SoulCycle spokeswoman had no comment.)

The cycling studios are just one target of the combative Ms. Anderson. At least half a dozen of her former employees have released exercise DVDs or have opened their own studios — their clients include Madonna, Anne Hathaway and Kelly Ripa — many peddling workouts she said were derived in “an opportunistic way” from the intense, heart-in-throat dance routines and minimal-weight, high-repetition “muscular structure” moves Ms. Anderson has spent 14 years perfecting.

Her influence can be found in almost any gym featuring the type of jump-heavy cardio dance classes she has popularized or a version of what Ms. Anderson calls her “weird free arms” — essentially waving the arms from every conceivable angle for minutes at a time.

“It makes me sad for humanity, actually, that people would take all my hard work and then pose like they have a method that they have tried and tested,” she said of her former employees, becoming so angry she struggled for words. “They’re not even lip-syncing what I do. They’re, like, karaokeing off my songs.”

She added: “But the nice thing about it is that as a company, Gwyneth and I have been really smart like Coca-Cola and we didn’t teach any of those trainers how or why I move the way I do.”

Ms. Anderson, who was born in Indiana, studied musical theater for two years at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York. She insisted she did not owe anything to Jane Fonda, the original dance aerobics queen, because Ms. Fonda was “a motivator, but she never claimed to have a method.”

Ms. Anderson described her own philosophy as “the method,” and talked passionately about the science behind it, tossing around terms like “proprioception perception,” “strength of synapses” and “muscle confusion.”

“I move across the large muscles in a way like when you were a kid you got an Indian burn, building collective strength between muscle groups,” she explained with a smile.

Ms. Anderson has not sought certification in fields like exercise physiology or teaching, she said, because, “I am so hard on myself with not deviating the amount of time that I have for research and development of the method.”

As for coming up with moves to slim problem areas where women are predisposed to store fat (“disproportionate struggle,” in Ms. Andersonspeak), she painted a vivid picture.

“I’m completely focused on how can I get forces to travel from opposing directions and end up creating a contraction in a muscle that’s going to then pull in,” she said. “And then as we lose the fat the muscular structure will be vibrating so well that it will have the connective tissues pull the skin back to it.”

Richard Cotton, an exercise physiologist and the national director of training for the American College of Sports Medicine in Indianapolis, said there is “a ton of research that disputes the idea of spot-reduction.”

“You can’t choose where the body loses fat,” he said.

Gary Diffee, a professor of kinesiology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who examined some of her claims, said, “Like many things of this type, the science seems to be a mixture of true, kind of true, true but irrelevant to the point she is trying to make, and wrong.”

“The main thing is that she is getting people to move,” Dr. Diffee said.

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At Benghazi Hearing, State Dept. Concedes Errors

WASHINGTON — State Department officials promised on Thursday to carry out quickly the recommendations of a review board to beef up security for the foreign service and urged Congress to provide more money to protect American diplomats.

The promises came during a Senate hearing into the handling of diplomatic security in Benghazi, Libya, before a deadly attack on a diplomatic outpost there that led to the deaths of four Americans, including the American ambassador.

“We have to do better,” Deputy Secretary of State William J. Burns said in prepared testimony to the Foreign Relations Committee. On Tuesday, one department official resigned and three others were relieved of their duties after a scathing report was released by an inquiry panel led by Thomas R. Pickering, a retired diplomat.

In an opening statement, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the committee’s chairman, said that Congress “also bears some responsibility” to provide adequate financing for diplomatic security. He noted that the board’s report called for spending $2.3 billion a year in the coming decade to protect American Embassies and offices abroad.

Mr. Kerry and Mr. Burns said it was important to find ways for diplomats to get out among the people, even in dangerous countries.

“We do not want to concertina-wire America off from the world,” Mr. Kerry said.

Mr. Burns said that “diplomacy, by its very nature, must sometimes be practiced in dangerous places.”

“Chris Stevens understood that as well as anyone,” he said, referring to the ambassador to Libya who was killed along with the three others in the Sept. 11 attack. “Chris also knew that every chief of mission has the responsibility to ensure the best possible security and support for our people.”

Mr. Burns and Thomas R. Nides, another deputy secretary of state, told the committee in prepared testimony that the department had “already begun to fix” the “serious, systemic problems” identified in the Pickering report. The two men testified in place of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is recovering from a concussion.

Mr. Nides said the department accepted “every one” of the report’s 29 specific recommendations. He mentioned, for example, the addition of hundreds of Marines to protect foreign missions. His office is leading an effort to put them into effect “quickly and completely — and to pursue steps above and beyond the board’s report,” he said.

Dozens of specific actions are already under way, several will be completed within weeks, and all will be in motion “by the time the next secretary of state takes office,” he said.

Mr. Kerry is the leading candidate to be replace Mrs. Clinton as secretary of state, after the withdrawal from consideration of Susan E. Rice, the ambassador to the United Nations, after criticisms of statements she made following the attack on the Benghazi outpost.

Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee, was skeptical about claims of progress, saying that rarely are the recommendations of review boards like the Pickering panel fully implemented.

“The culture of the State Department is one that needs to be reformed,” he said.

But Senator Bob Menendez, a Democrat of New Jersey, said one reason for weak security was that Congress had not provided as much money as the administration has sought and the Pickering panel recommended.

Pleas for more money come as Congress and the administration face broad spending cuts next year, whether or not a resolution is reached soon in the continuing fiscal impasse.

At a second hearing on Thursday afternoon, Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, the chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, scoffed at the calls for additional spending, saying that poor decisions rather than a lack of money were the problem in Benghazi.

“If the State Department intends to blame its long string of failures on inadequate funding, then perhaps it should take a closer look at the money that is being lavished on global climate change, culinary diplomacy programs and other favored projects,” she said. “This money could have been used for providing diplomatic security, including hiring additional personnel and providing them with adequate equipment and training.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 20, 2012

An earlier version of this article misstated the number of State Department officials who resigned after the release of a report investigating the attacks in Benghazi, Libya. One official resigned, not three.

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Acer will beat Google to market with its own $99 tablet

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Michael Phelps voted AP male athlete of year

Now that he's away from the pool, Michael Phelps can reflect — really reflect — on what he accomplished.

Pretty amazing stuff.

"It's kind of nuts to think about everything I've gone through," Phelps said. "I've finally had time to myself, to sit back and say, '... that really happened?' It's kind of shocking at times."

Not that his career needed a capper, but Phelps added one more honor to his staggering list of accomplishments Thursday — The Associated Press male athlete of the year.

Phelps edged out LeBron James to win the award for the second time, not only a fitting payoff for another brilliant Olympics (four gold medals and two silvers in swimming at the London Games) but recognition for one of the greatest careers in any sport.

Phelps finished with 40 votes in balloting by U.S. editors and broadcasters, while James was next with 37. Track star Usain Bolt, who won three gold medals in London, was third with 23.

Carl Lewis is the only other Olympic-related star to be named AP male athlete of the year more than once, taking the award for his track and field exploits in 1983 and '84. The only men honored more than twice are golf's Tiger Woods and cyclist Lance Armstrong (four times each), and basketball's Michael Jordan (three times).

"Obviously, it's a big accomplishment," Phelps said. "There's so many amazing male athletes all over the world and all over our country. To be able to win this is something that just sort of tops off my career."

Phelps retired at age 27 as soon as he finished his final race in London, having won more gold medals (18) and overall medals (22) than any other Olympian.

No one else is even close.

"That's what I wanted to do," Phelps said. "Now that it's over, it's something I can look back on and say, 'That was a pretty amazing ride.'"

The current ride isn't so bad either.

Set for life financially, he has turned his fierce competitive drive to golf, working on his links game with renowned coach Hank Haney as part of a television series on the Golf Channel. In fact, after being informed of winning the AP award, Phelps called in from the famed El Dorado Golf & Beach Club in Los Cabos, Mexico, where he was heading out with Haney to play a few more holes before nightfall.

"I can't really complain," Phelps quipped over the phone.

Certainly, he has no complaints about his swimming career, which helped turn a sport that most Americans only paid attention to every four years into more of a mainstream pursuit.

More kids took up swimming. More advertisers jumped on board. More viewers tuned in to watch.

While swimming is unlikely to ever match the appeal of football or baseball, it has carved out a nice little niche for itself amid all the other athletic options in the United States — largely due to Phelps' amazing accomplishments and aw-shucks appeal.

Just the fact that he won over James shows just how much pull Phelps still has. James had an amazing year by any measure: The league MVP won his first NBA title with the Miami Heat, picking up finals MVP honors along the way, and then starred on the gold medal-winning U.S. basketball team in London.

Phelps already had won the AP award in 2008 after his eight gold medals in Beijing, which broke Mark Spitz's record. Phelps got it again with a performance that didn't quite match up to the Great Haul of China, but was amazing in its own right.

After the embarrassment of being photographed taking a hit from a marijuana pipe and questioning whether he still had the desire to go on, Phelps returned with a vengeance as the London Games approached. Never mind that he was already the winningest Olympian ever. Never mind that he could've eclipsed the record for overall medals just by swimming on the relays.

He wanted to be one of those rare athletes who went out on top.

"That's just who he is," said Bob Bowman, his longtime coach. "He just couldn't live with himself if knew he didn't go out there and give it good shot and really know he's competitive. He doesn't know anything else but to give that kind of effort and have those kind of expectations."

Phelps got off to a rocky start in London, finishing fourth in the 400-meter individual medley, blown out of the water by his friend and rival, Ryan Lochte. It was only the second time that Phelps had not at least finished in the top three of an Olympic race, the first coming way back in 2000 when he was fifth in his only event of the Sydney Games as a 15-year-old.

To everyone looking in, Lochte seemed poised to become the new Phelps — while the real Phelps appeared all washed up.

But he wasn't going out like that.

No way.

Phelps rebounded to become the biggest star at the pool, edging Lochte in the 200 IM, contributing to a pair of relay victories, and winning his final individual race, the 100 butterfly. There were two silvers, as well, leaving Phelps with a staggering resume that will be awfully difficult for anyone to eclipse.

His 18 golds are twice as many as anyone else in Olympic history. His 22 medals are four clear of Larisa Latynina, a Soviet-era gymnast, and seven more than the next athlete on the list. Heck, if Phelps was a nation, he'd be 58th in the medal standings, just one behind India (population: 1.2 billion).

"When I'm flying all over the place, I write a lot in my journal," Phelps said. "I kind of relive all the memories, all the moments I had throughout my career. That's pretty special. I've never done that before. It's amazing when you see it all on paper."

Four months into retirement, Phelps has no desire to get back in the pool. Oh, he'll swim every now and then for relaxation, using the water to unwind rather than putting in one of his famously grueling practices. Golf is his passion at the moment, but he's also found time to cheer on his hometown NFL team, the Baltimore Ravens, and start looking around for a racehorse that he and Bowman can buy together.

Phelps hasn't turned his back on swimming, either. He's got his name attached to a line of schools that he wants to take worldwide. He's also devoting more time to his foundation, which is dedicated to teaching kids to swim and funding programs that will grow the sport even more.

He's already done so much.

"His contribution to the way the world thinks about swimming is so powerful," Bowman said. "I don't think any other athlete has transformed his sport the way he's transformed swimming."

Phelps still receives regular texts from old friends and teammates, asking when he's going to give up on this retirement thing and come back the pool as a competitor.

He scoffs at the notion, sounding more sure of himself now than he did in London.

And if there's anything we've learned: Don't doubt Michael Phelps when he sets his mind on something.

"Sure, I could come back in another four years. But why?" he asked, not waiting for an answer. "I've done everything I wanted to do. There's no point in coming back."

___

Follow Paul Newberry on Twitter at www.twitter.com/pnewberry1963

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The Lede Blog: Aleppo's History Under Threat

As my colleagues Chris Chivers, Tyler Hicks and Ben Solomon report in text, photographs and video, civilians are suffering from shortages of food and medicine, among other hardships, in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, which is being torn apart in urban warfare between rebels and forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad.

But the city is also one of the Middle East’s most culturally and historically significant. Aleppo has been designated a World Heritage site since 1986, recognized for its ancient market, citadel and mosques, and the United Nations in recent months has called several times for its protection while emphasizing the tremendous toll the war has taken on civilians.

Many of Aleppo’s historical sites stand damaged by the fighting, perhaps irreparably, including the 17th-century market, or souk, in the Old City, which was engulfed by fire in September.

The contrast between the beauty of the city in more peaceful times and the damage that the fighting has wrought can be seen clearly on YouTube, in video of the souk before and after it became a battlefield.

Video of the Aleppo souk before it was ravaged by fighting.

Video of Aleppo’s souk in flames in late September.

By early October, as my colleague Anne Barnard reported, much of Aleppo’s historic center was in smoking ruins. Ancient stone walls had collapsed. The 12th-century citadel at the heart of the medieval city appeared to be damaged and government soldiers had taken up positions in the Umayyad Mosque, with snipers on the minaret.

After the fire swept through the ancient souk, Irina Bokova, the Unesco director-general, said in a statement:

The human suffering caused by this situation is already extreme. That the fighting is now destroying cultural heritage that bears witness to the country’s millenary history — valued and admired the world over — makes it even more tragic. The Aleppo souks have been a thriving part of Syria’s economic and social life since the city’s beginnings. They stand as testimony to Aleppo’s importance as a cultural crossroads since the second millennium B.C.

She made her remarks in October, deploring the damage to the Citadel, the Umayyad mosque and the “extreme human suffering” caused by the fighting.

Until the peaceful uprising spiraled into violence, Aleppo was a city for tourists, featured in The New York Times’s travel section in 2010. Tourism was up then, and the travel writer Lionel Beehner spoke glowingly about the mosques, the souk and the best reason to visit the Citadel: to take in the view of Aleppo’s minaret-dotted skyline.

Many have tried to capture what it means to a people to see their heritage destroyed. In one such attempt this month, Amal Hanano, a Syrian writer from Aleppo, also used the Citadel as an example, but this time of a city’s lost past, saying it was no longer a stage for impressing visitors but rather it had reclaimed its original purpose as a fortress.

Noting the deaths of more than 40,000 Syrians in less than two years of war, she wrote in a December article in Foreign Policy magazine:

But the death of a city is different. It is slow — each neighborhood’s death is documented bomb by bomb, shell by shell, stone by fallen stone. Witnessing the deaths of your cities is unbearable. Unlike the news of dead people — which arrives too late, always after the fact — the death of a city seems as if it can be halted, that the city can be saved from the clutches of destruction. But it is an illusion: The once-vibrant cities cannot be saved, so you watch, helpless, as they become ruins.

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Wii U finally gets Nintendo’s TVii service on December 20th

After a month-long delay, Nintendo (NTDOY) will launch its Nintendo TVii service for the Wii U on December 20th in the U.S. and Canada. Nintendo TVii is the company’s take on organizing all of the various video streaming and DVR services a user might subscribe to and then displaying them in an easy-to-navigate touchscreen-based interface on the Wii U GamePad. With Nintendo TVii, Nintendo hopes to make content discovery an easier task, rather than a chore. At the same time, Nintendo TVii will offer new “second-screen” experiences (similar to Xbox SmartGlass) with built-in social sharing options to Facebook (FB), Twitter and the Wii U console’s Miiverse.

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[More from BGR: LG’s woeful comeback attempt]

Nintendo TVii will support Amazon (AMZN) Instant Video, Hulu Plus and cable and satellite providers on Thursday, but Netflix (NFLX) and TiVo (TIVO) support won’t hit the U.S. until “early 2013.” Nintendo didn’t state when TVii support for the latter two will hit Canada.

For the consumer’s sake, we hope the download for Nintendo TVii doesn’t take as long as past system updates.

Nintendo’s press release follows below.

Nintendo Makes TV Smart and Social – Nintendo TVii Launches Dec. 20

New Wii U Service Gives Every Member of the Family His or Her Own Personalized, Easy-to-Use Second-Screen Viewing Experience

REDMOND, Wash.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–The company that changed how we play is about to change how we watch. On Dec. 20, Nintendo will introduce Nintendo TVii, a free, integrated service for the recently launched Wii U console that combines what you watch and how you watch into one seamless, second-screen experience on the revolutionary new Wii U GamePad controller.

The rapid increase in both the quality and availability of video entertainment content – hundreds of satellite and cable channels, a seemingly endless amount of video-on-demand options – has made finding something to watch a complex and occasionally frustrating process. The solution to this problem is coming from perhaps an unexpected place: a video game console.

“After Dec. 20, you’ll never look at your TV the same way again,” said Nintendo of America President and COO Reggie Fils-Aime. “Wii U owners have already experienced the transformative effect that the GamePad has on game play and social interaction. Nintendo TVii shows how the integrated second screen of the GamePad can also transform and enhance the TV viewing experience. Welcome to the new world of TVii.”

Nintendo TVii maximizes Wii U owners’ current cable, satellite and video-on-demand services by pulling all of their available content sources – such as a Comcast cable package or Hulu Plus subscription – into one place. This empowers Wii U owners to focus on whatthey want to watch and not how they want to watch. And once users find the show, sporting event or movie they want, they press an icon and Nintendo TVii does the rest.

In addition to greatly simplifying finding and watching video content, Nintendo TVii also includes a series of social features that enable Wii U owners to share experiences and exciting moments with friends as they are happening on live TV. People can engage with others by commenting and sharing on Miiverse, Facebook and Twitter. Or they can comment, post or tweet about an incredible touchdown, a remarkable performance or a shocking plot twist, all using the personal screen of the Wii U GamePad.

Nintendo TVii requires no additional equipment and can be enjoyed with very little setup, demonstrating what’s possible when the second screen is truly integrated with the TV. Wii U owners can also discover more information about what they’re watching by easily accessing information on the GamePad via an Internet connection, including cast details, movie reviews from Rotten Tomatoes and sports data such as live stats and scores.

Nintendo TVii launches in the United States and Canada on Dec. 20. At launch, the service will support cable and satellite providers in both regions, as well as direct integration with Amazon Instant Video and Hulu Plus subscriptions in the United States. Further integration with Netflix subscriptions and TiVo are expected in early 2013 in the United States. Wii U owners with a Netflix subscription can still access the Netflix application from the Wii U system’s main menu and enjoy their favorite content accordingly.

All elements of the Nintendo TVii service are included in the purchase price of the Wii U system. Users will define which services they currently subscribe to – including the channel lineup in their cable package and video-on-demand service subscriptions – as part of the setup process.

Nintendo TVii observes the Wii U system parental controls, and additional options specific to the Nintendo TVii features can be chosen in the Nintendo TVii settings. Every member of the family can create a different viewing profile. For more information about this and other features, visit http://www.nintendo.com/wiiu.

This article was originally published by BGR

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Penn State voted AP sports story of year again

NEW YORK (AP) — The Penn State child sex abuse scandal was selected as the sports story of the year by U.S. editors and news directors in an annual vote conducted by The Associated Press.

The news broke in November 2011, with a grand jury report outlining charges against Jerry Sandusky, and the outrage that followed led to the firing of Hall of Fame coach Joe Paterno. But the aftershocks were felt long into 2012: Sandusky was convicted in June of assaulting 10 boys, and the NCAA handed down brutal sanctions in July.

In both years, the scandal was picked as the top sports story, the first time since the AP began conducting its annual vote in 1990 that the same story was selected twice in a row. The results of this year's tally were announced Wednesday.

Even before the Sandusky trial, the State College community had absorbed another huge blow as Paterno died Jan. 22 at age 85 of lung cancer.

The year ended with a small step to normalcy — joy on the football field. Under new coach Bill O'Brien, the Nittany Lions won eight of their last 10 games to finish 8-4, capped by an overtime victory at home over Wisconsin.

There were 157 ballots submitted from U.S. news organizations. The voters were asked to rank the top 10 sports stories of the year, with the first-place story getting 10 points, the second-place story receiving nine points, and so on.

The Penn State saga received 1,420 points and 109 first-place votes. The No. 2 sports story, Lance Armstrong stripped of his seven Tour de France titles, had 10 first-place votes and 1,008 points.

Football's popularity, college and pro, was unmistakable with seven of the top 10 stories. But only two of them involved the action on the field.

Here are 2012's top 10 stories:

1. PENN STATE: Sandusky, the former defensive coordinator whose crimes led to such devastation for his victims and for his former employer, was found guilty on 45 of 48 counts. In October, the 68-year-old was sentenced to 30 to 60 years in prison. His conviction provided some closure, but a messy aftermath remained. Former FBI Director Louis Freeh released the results of his investigation July 12, saying Paterno and other top school officials covered up allegations against Sandusky. The NCAA used that report as a basis for its sanctions announced later that month, which included a $60 million fine, a four-year bowl ban and scholarship reductions.

2. LANCE ARMSTRONG: In February, federal prosecutors closed an investigation into whether the star cyclist doped. That turned out to be only a temporary reprieve for a once-revered figure. In June, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency accused him of using performance-enhancing drugs, and in August, when he dropped his fight against the charges, USADA ordered his record seven Tour titles wiped out. A report released in October laid out vivid details of the evidence. The year ends with Armstrong dropped by many of the companies he endorsed and no longer formally involved with the cancer charity he founded, Livestrong.

3. NFL BOUNTIES: This much is clear: Saints coach Sean Payton was suspended for the entire season and New Orleans started 0-4 to quickly fall out of playoff contention. Much else about the bounty scandal remains in dispute. Players deny the NFL's assertions of a pay-for-injury program. On Dec. 11, former Commissioner Paul Tagliabue overturned his successor's suspensions of four players but endorsed the findings of the investigation under Roger Goodell.

4. FOOTBALL CONCUSSIONS: The deaths of NFL greats Alex Karras — who suffered from dementia — and Junior Seau — who committed suicide — were grim reminders of the angst over head injuries in the sport and their possible consequences. Thousands of retired players have sued the league, alleging the NFL failed to protect them from the dangers of concussions.

5. LONDON OLYMPICS: Michael Phelps retired from swimming after setting an Olympic record with his 22nd medal at a Summer Games bursting with memorable performances. Usain Bolt became the first man to successfully defend both the 100- and 200-meter dash titles. And the host country racked up 65 medals in an Olympics so successful for Britain that it barely even rained.

6. COLLEGE FOOTBALL PLAYOFFS: Instead of complaining about the BCS, soon we can moan about the selection committee. After years of carping, fans finally got a playoff system, which will debut after the 2014 season. The four-team bracket will feature semifinals and a title game to determine a national champion.

7. REPLACEMENT OFFICIALS: Fans and pundits predicted a blown call would decide a critical game when the NFL started the season with replacement officials. Sure enough, in Week 3, on the national stage of "Monday Night Football," a missed offensive pass interference penalty and a questionable touchdown catch handed the Seattle Seahawks a win over the Green Bay Packers. Two days later, the league resolved its labor dispute with the regular refs.

8. SUPER GIANTS: A team that had been 7-7 upset the top-seeded Green Bay Packers on the road in the playoffs, needed overtime to beat the San Francisco 49ers in the NFC title game, then came from behind to defeat the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl, 21-17, an outcome strangely similar to their matchup four years earlier. Eli Manning won his second Super Bowl MVP award.

9. SUMMITT RETIRES: Pat Summitt, the winningest coach in NCAA basketball history, retired from the Tennessee bench in April at age 59, less than eight months after revealing she had early-onset dementia. Longtime assistant Holly Warlick took over the Lady Vols. Summitt was 1,098-208 with eight national titles in 38 seasons.

10. MANNING'S RESURGENCE: Peyton Manning was released from the Indianapolis Colts in March after missing last season because of neck surgery, the future uncertain for the four-time MVP. John Elway and the Broncos gambled that he still had some championship play left in that right arm, and so far it's looking like a brilliant move as Denver won the AFC West.

___

AP Projects Editor Brooke Lansdale contributed to this report.

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Lawyer Says Ritual Circumcision Is Protected Activity

A lawyer for Orthodox Jewish groups asked a federal judge on Tuesday to throw out a New York City regulation requiring parents to sign a consent form before their infant sons undergo a form of Jewish ritual circumcision in which the circumciser uses his mouth to remove blood from the incision.

The lawyer, Shay Dvoretzky, said the practice, which is prevalent in parts of the ultra-Orthodox community, is a constitutionally protected religious activity. He said that requiring ritual circumcisers, known collectively as mohelim, to be involved in conveying the city’s perspective on the procedure would infringe upon their rights of free speech.

“That lies at the heart of First Amendment protection,” Mr. Dvoretzky said.

But a lawyer for the city argued that the regulation was necessary and that the practice most likely caused 11 herpes infections in infants between 2004 and 2011. Two of the infected babies died; at least two others suffered brain damage.

“The health department is not looking at the religion in determining what to do about this conduct,” said Michelle L. Goldberg-Cahn, a lawyer for the city. “The city is looking at the conduct.”

The Orthodox groups, including Agudath Israel of America and the Central Rabbinical Congress, sued the city in October to block the regulation, which was approved by the New York City Board of Health in September but is suspended until a ruling is issued in this case. The groups say that the procedure is safe and that the city has not definitively linked infections to the practice.

Infectious disease experts, several of whom filed briefs in support of the regulation, widely agree that the oral contact, known in Hebrew as metzitzah b’peh, creates a risk of transmission of herpes that can be deadly to infants because of their underdeveloped immune systems.

On Tuesday, Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald, of Federal District Court in Manhattan, heard oral arguments in the case, one that pits the sanctity of ancient religious rituals against the rigors of both modern medicine and secular government regulation. She said her decision would come within a few weeks.

Her sharpest inquiries were directed at Mr. Dvoretzky, the lawyer for the Orthodox groups.

She raised a hypothetical situation in which a single religious group amputates left pinkie fingers at birth, and asked Mr. Dvoretzky whether the city would have the authority to regulate the activity. He said it would depend upon whether the practice caused immediate, serious harm.

Judge Buchwald also said there was a direct comparison to consent requirements placed on physicians when they perform a circumcision.

Mr. Dvoretzky called that an “apples and oranges” comparison, because a physician would not perform a metzitzah b’peh.

“Wait a second,” Judge Buchwald interrupted. “They can’t perform any circumcision without consent. It’s a surgery.”

Mr. Dvoretzky said the city should undertake a broad education campaign, to prevent all infant herpes infections.

But Judge Buchwald said such a campaign would have little impact, because the risk of infections is medically well-known.

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F.T.C. Broadens Rules for Online Privacy of Children

In a move intended to give parents greater control over data collected about their children online, federal regulators on Wednesday broadened longstanding privacy safeguards covering children’s apps and Web sites.

Daniel Rosenbaum for The New York Times

Senator John D. Rockefeller of West Virginia, left, and Jon Leibowitz, the chairman of the F.T.C., at a news conference announcing rules to better protect children online.

Members of the Federal Trade Commission said they had updated the provisions to keep pace with the growing use of mobile phones and tablets among children. The regulations also reflect innovations like voice recognition technology, global positioning systems and behavior-based online advertising — that is, ads tailored to an Internet user’s habits.

Regulators had not significantly changed the original rule, based on the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998, or Coppa, since its inception. That rule required operators of Web sites directed at children to notify parents and obtain their permission before collecting or sharing personal information — like first and last names, phone numbers, home addresses or e-mail addresses — from children under 13.

Legislators who enacted that law said the intent was to give parents control over entities seeking to collect information about their children so that parents could, among other things, prevent unwanted contact by strangers.

The new rule, unveiled at a news conference in Washington, significantly expands the types of companies required to obtain parental permission before knowingly collecting personal details from children, as well as the types of information that will require parental consent to collect.

Jon D. Leibowitz, the chairman of the F.T.C., described the rule revision as a major advance for children’s privacy.

“Congress enacted Coppa in the desktop era and we live in an era of smartphones and mobile marketing,” Mr. Leibowitz said. “This is a landmark update of a seminal piece of legislation.”

In an era of widespread photo sharing, video chatting and location-based apps, the revised rule makes clear that online operators must obtain parental consent before collecting certain details that could be used to identify, contact or locate a child. These include photos, videos and audio recordings as well as the location of a child’s mobile device.

While the new rule strengthens such safeguards, it could also disrupt online advertising. Web sites and online advertising networks often use persistent identification systems — like a customer code number in a cookie in a person’s browser — to collect information about a user’s online activities and tailor ads for that person.

But the new rule expands the definition of personal information to include persistent IDs — such as a customer code number, the unique serial number on a mobile phone, or the I.P. address of a browser — if they are used to show a child behavior-based ads. It also requires third parties like ad networks and social networks that know they are operating on children’s sites or apps to notify and obtain consent from parents before collecting such personal information. And it makes children’s sites or apps responsible for notifying parents about data collection by third parties integrated into their services.

Collecting data to show children contextual ads based on the content of a site or app, however, will not require parental consent.

“The only limit we place is on behavioral advertising,” Mr. Leibowitz said. “Until and unless you get parental consent, you may not track children to create massive profiles” for behavior-based ads.

Stuart P. Ingis, a lawyer representing several marketing associations, said that reputable online marketers did not knowingly profile children to show them behavior-based ads. He added that industry guidelines prohibited the practice.

He agreed with regulators that privacy protections for children online needed to keep pace with new technologies. But he said he was concerned that the restrictions on cookie-based identifiers might cause some children’s sites to reduce their use of outside services to avoid notifying parents about data collection by those services.

“The F.T.C. is saying that it is the obligation of first parties not to allow third-party ad networks or social network plug-ins on their site,” said Mr. Ingis, who represents the Direct Marketing Association and the Association of National Advertisers. “There might be overreaction that would limit just general third-party collection of data, which is very useful to businesses and consumers.”

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Sasol Betting Big on Gas-to-Liquid Plant in U.S.

Oryx

The Oryx natural gas processing plant in Qatar, where Sasol is converting natural gas to diesel fuel.

RAS LAFFAN INDUSTRIAL CITY, Qatar — The compact assembly of towers, tubes and tanks that make up the Oryx natural gas processing plant is almost lost in a vast petrochemical complex that rises here like a hazy mirage from a vast ocean of sand.

A blog about energy and the environment.

ORYX GTL

The Sasol plant in Qatar makes 32,000 barrels of liquid fuels daily. Experts say the economics of the process are challenged.

But what is occurring at Oryx is a particular kind of alchemy that has tantalized scientists for nearly a century with prospects of transforming the energy landscape. Sasol, a chemical and synthetic fuels company based in South Africa, is converting natural gas to diesel fuel using a variation of a technology developed by German scientists in the 1920s.

Performing such chemical wizardry is exceedingly costly. But executives at Sasol and a partner, Qatar’s state-owned oil company, are betting that natural gas, which is abundant here, will become the dominant global fuel source over the next 50 years, oil will become scarcer and more expensive and global demand for transport fuels will grow.

Sasol executives say the company believes so strongly in the promise of this technology that this month, it announced plans to spend up to $14 billion to build the first gas-to-liquids plant in the United States, in Louisiana, supported by more than $2 billion in state incentives. A shale drilling boom in that region in the last five years has produced a glut of cheap gas, and the executives say Sasol can tap that supply to make diesel and other refined products at competitive prices.

Marjo Louw, president of Sasol Qatar, says that his company can produce diesel fuel that burns cleaner, costs less and creates less greenhouse gas pollution than fuel derived from crude oil.

“We believe the planets are aligned for G.T.L.,” Mr. Louw said during a recent tour of the Oryx plant. “Other players — much bigger players — will follow.”

Perhaps. So far, however, the record for converting gas to liquids is spotty.

The newest and largest plant in operation, Royal Dutch Shell’s giant Pearl plant, also in Qatar, cost the leviathan sum of $19 billion, more than three times its original projected cost, and has been plagued with unexpected maintenance problems. BP and ConocoPhillips built and briefly operated demonstration plants in Alaska and Oklahoma, but stopped short of full development of the technology. Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips announced plans to build giant plants in Qatar, but backed out, putting their capital instead into terminals to export liquefied natural gas.

Today only a handful of gas-to-liquids plants operate commercially, in Malaysia, South Africa and Qatar. Together they produce only a bit more than 200,000 barrels of fuels and lubricants a day — equivalent to less than 1 percent of global diesel demand.

“The reason you see so few G.T.L. plants is the economics are challenged at best,” said William M. Colton, Exxon Mobil’s vice president of corporate strategic planning. “We do not see it being a relevant source of fuels over the next 20 years.”

Many analysts and industry insiders say the technology makes sense only when oil and gas supplies and prices are far out of balance, as they are today in Qatar and the United States. When oil and gas come into alignment, gas-to-liquids ventures will become white elephants, these skeptics say. Environmentalists also say that the huge energy inputs required to transform natural gas into diesel or other fuels negate any greenhouse gas benefits.

Until recently, the method used to convert natural gas or coal to liquid fuel — known as the Fischer-Tropsch process after the Germans who invented it — had been used only by pariah nations desperate for transportation fuels when they had little or no oil available. For decades, South Africa defended its system of apartheid from international oil embargoes by producing synthetic oil from its rich coal resources. Nazi Germany did the same to fuel its military machine in World War II.

But with North Africa and the Middle East chronically unstable and natural gas cheap and plentiful in the United States, some say the technology is now an enticing option to produce various fuels without importing a drop of oil.

Shell may soon announce a tentative site for a gas-to-liquids plant on the Gulf Coast of the United States. Given what the company learned from its Qatar plant, executives say it would reduce costs in any new one by using different types of valves and alloys.

But Ken Lawrence, Shell’s vice president for investor relations in North America, said the company was still two years away from a final decision on an American plant.

That leaves Sasol in the forefront of the gas-to-liquids effort.

John M. Broder reported from Ras Laffan Industrial City, Qatar, and Clifford Krauss from Houston.

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