Neighbors Kill Neighbors in Kenya as Election Tensions Stir Age-Old Grievances

MALINDI, Kenya — In a room by the stairs, Shukrani Malingi, a Pokomo farmer, writhed on a metal cot, the skin on his back burned off. Down the hall, at a safe distance, Rahema Hageyo, an Orma girl, stared blankly out of a window, a long scar above her thimble-like neck. She was nearly decapitated by a machete chop — and she is only 9 months old.

Jonathan Kalan for The New York Times

Orma men were patrolling their village in the Tana River Delta, fearful of Pokomo attacks. Kenya’s disastrous 2007 vote set off clashes that killed 1,000 people.

Ever since vicious ethnic clashes erupted between the Pokomo and Orma several months ago in a swampy, desolate part of Kenya, the Tawfiq Hospital has instituted a strict policy for the victims who are trundled in: Pokomos on one side, Ormas on the other. The longstanding rivalry, which both sides say has been inflamed by a governor’s race, has become so explosive that the two groups remain segregated even while receiving lifesaving care. When patients leave their rooms to use the restroom, they shuffle guardedly past one another in their bloodstained smocks, sometimes pushing creaky IV stands, not uttering a word.

“There are three reasons for this war,” said Elisha Bwora, a Pokomo elder. “Tribe, land and politics.”

Every five years or so, this stable and typically peaceful country, an oasis of development in a very poor and turbulent region, suffers a frightening transformation in which age-old grievances get stirred up, ethnically based militias are mobilized and neighbors start killing neighbors. The reason is elections, and another huge one — one of the most important in this country’s history and definitely the most complicated — is barreling this way.

In less than two weeks, Kenyans will line up by the millions to pick their leaders for the first time since a disastrous vote in 2007, which set off clashes that killed more than 1,000 people. The country has spent years agonizing over the wounds and has taken some steps to repair itself, most notably passing a new constitution. But justice has been elusive, politics remain ethnically tinged and leaders charged with crimes against humanity have a real chance of winning.

People here tend to vote in ethnic blocs, and during election time Kenyan politicians have a history of stoking these divisions and sometimes even financing murder sprees, according to court documents. This time around, the vitriolic speeches seem more restrained, but in some areas where violence erupted after the last vote the underlying message of us versus them is still abundantly clear.

Now, the country is asking a simple but urgent question: Will history repeat itself?

“This election brings out the worst in us,” read a column last week in The Daily Nation, Kenya’s biggest newspaper. “All the tribal prejudice, all ancient grudges and feuds, all real and imagined slights, all dislikes and hatreds, everything is out walking the streets like hordes of thirsty undeads looking for innocents to devour.”

As the election draws nearer, more alarm bells are ringing. Seven civilians were ambushed and killed in northeastern Kenya on Thursday in what was widely perceived to be a politically motivated attack. The day before, Kenya’s chief justice said that a notorious criminal group had threatened him with “dire consequences” if he ruled against a leading presidential contender. Farmers in the Rift Valley say that cattle rustling is increasing, and they accuse politicians of instigating the raids to stir up intercommunal strife.

Because Kenya is such a bellwether country on the continent, what happens here in the next few weeks may determine whether the years of tenuous power-sharing and political reconciliation — a model used after violently contested elections in Zimbabwe as well — have ultimately paid off.

“The rest of Africa wants to know whether it’s possible to learn from past elections and ensure violence doesn’t flare again,” said Phil Clark, a lecturer at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. “With five years’ warning, is it possible to address the causes of conflict and transfer power peacefully?”

Read More..

McIlroy: Another 1 bites the dust

MARANA, Ariz. (AP) — The snow is gone from the Match Play Championship, and so are Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods.

In a stunning conclusion to what already is a bizarre week on Dove Mountain, Shane Lowry of Ireland made a 4-foot par putt on the 18th hole to eliminate Rory McIlroy in the opening round of golf's most unpredictable tournament.

It was the third time in the last four years the No. 1 seed went home after one round.

Moments later, Charles Howell III finished off a fabulous round in cold conditions by defeating Woods on the 17th hole. Howell, who had not faced Woods in match play since losing to him in the third round of the 1996 U.S. Amateur, played bogey-free on a course that still had patches of snow and ice after being cleared Thursday morning.

The match was all square when Howell hit a wedge that stopped inches from the cup on the 15th hole for a conceded birdie. Then, he holed a 25-foot birdie putt on the 16th and went 2 up when Woods badly missed a 12-foot birdie putt.

"I had nothing to lose," said Howell, who started the year outside the top 100 in the world and hasn't qualified for this World Golf Championship in five years. "In this format, match play is crazy. He's Tiger Woods. I was lucky to hang in there."

The final matches were played in near darkness, and they could have stopped after 15 holes. Woods wanted to play on, even though Howell had the momentum. Woods was 2 under for the day, and neither of them made a bogey.

"We both played well," Woods said. "He made a couple of more birdies than I did. He played well, and he's advancing."

McIlroy, the No. 1 player in the world, built a 2-up lead early in the match until Lowry rallied and grabbed the moment by chipping in for birdie on the par-3 12th and then ripping a fairway metal to within a few feet for a conceded eagle on the 13th.

Lowry missed a short par putt on the 14th, only for McIlroy to give away the next hole with a tee shot into the desert and a bunker shot that flew over the 15th green and into a cactus. But the two-time major champion hung tough, coming up with a clutch birdie on the 16th to stay in the game.

McIlroy nearly holed his bunker on the 18th, and Lowry followed with a steady shot out to 4 feet and calmly sank the putt.

"Deep down, I knew I could beat him," Lowry said. "There's a reason I'm here, and this is match play."

For McIlroy, more questions are sure to follow him to Florida for his road to the Masters. He now has played only 54 holes in the first two months of the season, missing the cut in Abu Dhabi and losing in the first round at Dove Mountain.

The Match Play Championship lost its two biggest stars in one day. The only other time the top two seeds lost in the opening round was in 2002, when Woods and Mickelson lost at La Costa.

Luke Donald nearly made it the top three seeds except for a clutch performance. He holed a 10-foot birdie putt to halve the 17th hole and stay tied with Marcel Siem of Germany. Donald then birdied the 18th from 7 feet to win the match.

Louis Oosthuizen, the No. 4 seed, rallied to get past Richie Ramsay of Scotland.

The opening round was halted Wednesday after 3½ hours because of a freak snowstorm that covered Dove Mountain with nearly 2 inches. It continued to snow at times overnight, and it took nearly five hours to clear snow from the golf course for the tournament to resume.

Read More..

Living With Cancer: Arrivals and Departures

After being nursed and handed over, the baby’s wails rise to a tremolo, but I am determined to give my exhausted daughter and son-in-law a respite on this wintry evening. Commiserating with the little guy’s discomfort — gas, indigestion, colic, ontological insecurity — I swaddle, burp, bink, then cradle him in my arms. I begin walking around the house, swinging and swaying while cooing in soothing cadences: “Yes, darling boy, another one bites the dust, another one bites the dust.”

I kid you not! How could such grim phrases spring from my lips into the newborn’s ears? Where did they come from?

I blame his mother and her best friend. They sang along as this song was played repeatedly at the skating rink to which I took them every other Saturday in their tweens. Why would an infatuated grandma croon a mordant lullaby, even if the adorable one happily can’t understand a single word? He’s still whimpering, twisting away from me, and understandably so.

Previously that day, I had called a woman in my cancer support group. I believe that she is dying. I do not know her very well. She has attended only two or three of our get-togethers where she described herself as a widow and a Christian.

On the phone, I did not want to violate the sanctity of her end time, but I did want her to know that she need not be alone, that I and other members of our group can “be there” for her. Her dying seems a rehearsal of my own. We have the same disease.

“How are you doing, Kim?” I asked.

“I’m tired. I sleep all the time,” she sighed, “and I can’t keep anything down.”

“Can you drink … water?” I asked.

“A little, but I tried a smoothie and it wouldn’t set right,” she said.

“I hope you are not in pain.”

“Oh no, but I’m sleeping all the time. And I can’t keep anything down.”

“Would you like a visit? Is there something I can do or bring?” I asked.

“Oh, I don’t think so, no thanks.”

“Well,” I paused before saying goodbye, “be well.”

Be well? I didn’t even add something like, “Be as well as you can be.” I was tongue-tied. This was the failure that troubles me tonight.

Why couldn’t I say that we will miss her, that I am sorry she is dying, that she has coped so well for so long, and that I hope she will now find peace? I could inform an infant in my arms of our inexorable mortality, but I could not speak or even intimate the “D” word to someone on her deathbed.

Although I have tried to communicate to my family how I feel about end-of-life care, can we always know what we will want? Perhaps at the end of my life I will not welcome visitors, either. For departing may require as much concentration as arriving. As I look down at the vulnerable bundle I am holding, I marvel that each and every one of us has managed to come in and will also have to manage to go out. The baby nestles, pursing his mouth around the pacifier. He gazes intently at my face with a sly gaze that drifts toward a lamp, turning speculative before lids lower in tremulous increments.

Slowing my jiggling to his faint sucking, I think that the philosopher Jacques Derrida’s meditation on death pertains to birth as well. Each of these events “names the very irreplaceability of absolute singularity.” Just as “no one can die in my place or in the place of the other,” no one can be born in this particular infant’s place. He embodies his irreplaceable and absolute singularity.

Perhaps we should gestate during endings, as we do during beginnings. Like hatchings, the dispatchings caused by cancer give people like Kim and me a final trimester, more or less, in which we can labor to forgive and be forgiven, to speak and hear vows of devotion from our intimates, to visit or not be visited by acquaintances.

Maybe we need a doula for dying, I reflect as melodious words surface, telling me what I have to do with the life left to be lived: “To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.”

“Oh little baby,” I then whisper: “Though I cannot tell who you will become and where I will be — you, dear heart, deliver me.”

---

Susan Gubar is a distinguished emerita professor of English at Indiana University and the author of “Memoir of a Debulked Woman,” which explores her experience with ovarian cancer.

Read More..

Citigroup Toughens Executive Bonus Rules

Responding to anger over executive pay, Citigroup is changing the way it calculates the bonuses given to top executives. It announced on Thursday that part of the $11.5 million in compensation awarded to the new chief executive, Michael L. Corbat, would be closely tied to performance. So far, though, the changes are only affecting a small portion of Citigroup’s executive compensation packages without reining in the big bonuses that have become one of the hallmarks of Wall Street.

Citigroup has been a prominent symbol in the debate over the outsize Wall Street compensation. The changes come less than a year after Citi shareholders voted against a $15 million pay package for Vikram S. Pandit, then the chief executive. That vote was the first time shareholders had united to oppose compensation at a giant financial firm.

In April, the bank’s powerful chairman, Michael O’Neill, took the reins of a five-member committee on executive pay. He said in a regulatory filing Thursday that the committee had come to its new formula after meeting with investors who hold more than 30 percent of the bank’s total outstanding shares.

A portion of the pay packages given to Citi’s executive will now be linked to the company’s performance relative to other big banks. “When our shareholders spoke last year about Citi’s compensation structure, we listened,” Mr. O’Neill said in the filing.

Nell Minow, a shareholder advocate at GMI Ratings, said the new approach was “far from perfect, or even good, but it’s less terrible than it used to be.”

Citi’s board members will continue to approve base salaries, cash bonuses and deferred stock given to top Citi executives, the same way they were in the past. But now a new segment of the pay, called performance share units, will be linked to the new metrics. For 2012, Mr. Corbat was awarded $3.1 million in performance share units. That amounts to 27 percent of his total $11.5 million pay package.

The new formula still puts Mr. Corbat at a similar compensation level to his peers. Mr. Corbat is being paid the same amount for 2012 that JPMorgan Chase recently said it was handing to its chief executive, Jamie Dimon. JPMorgan’s board cut Mr. Dimon’s pay from $23 million a year earlier after the bank suffered a multibillion-dollar trading loss. Bank of America announced this week that its chief executive, Brian T. Moynihan, would receive $12.1 million, a raise from 2011.

United States politicians and regulators have chosen not to impose significant new rules on how company’s determine their executive pay, despite widespread public anger about the ballooning bonuses across corporate America in the wake of the financial crisis.

The 2010 Dodd-Frank Act for financial regulation mandated that banks offer shareholders a chance to approve their executive compensation plans. But the votes are not binding.

Last April, 55 percent of Citi’s shareholders voted against the bank’s bonus packages, after compensation experts criticized the bank for leaving the pay up to the discretion of the board. The vote was seen as a stinging rebuke for the bank, which has struggled to recover from the financial crisis.

Citigroup has been steadily working through soured loans, whittling costs and unwinding unprofitable business lines. As part of its stark cost-cutting, the bank also announced in December that it would slash 11,000 jobs worldwide.

Since Citi’s shareholders rejected Mr. Pandit’s compensation, Citi has overhauled its top management. In a move that surprised Wall Street, Mr. O’Neill abruptly unseated Mr. Pandit and his top lieutenant, John P. Havens. Mr. Corbat, who was chosen to take over as chief, has vowed to continue the cost-cutting and refocusing that began under Mr. Pandit.

The company’s filing Thursday laid out the formula that will be used to calculate the new performance share units, incorporating both the performance of the company’s stock compared with similar banks, and the so-called return on assets, a measure of a bank’s profit relative to its overall size.

Anne Simpson, the director of corporate governance for the country’s largest pension fund, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, said she was glad the bank had responded to the shareholder vote. But she said she was concerned that it had not adequately taken into account the amount of risk the bank was taking.

“We’d like to make sure that the incentive structures aren’t focusing on revenues and returns without thinking about risk, because that’s how we got ourselves into the financial crisis,” said Ms. Simpson.

Read More..

Iceland Weighs Exporting the Power Bubbling From Below

Ilvy Njiokiktjien for The New York Times

The Krafla plant is Iceland’s largest geothermal power station, a showcase of renewable energy.

KRAFLA, Iceland — Soon after work began here on a power plant to harness some of the vast reserves of energy stored at the earth’s crust, the ground moved and, along a six-mile-long fissure, began belching red-hot lava. The eruptions continued for nine years, prompting the construction of a stone and soil barrier to make sure that molten rock did not incinerate Iceland’s first geothermal power station.

While the menacing lava flow has long since stopped and Krafla is today a showcase of Iceland’s peerless mastery of renewable energy sources, another problem that has dogged its energy calculations for decades still remains: what to do with all the electricity that the country — which literally bubbles with steam, hot mud and the occasional cloud of volcanic ash — is capable of producing.

In a nation with only 320,000 people, the state-owned power company, Landsvirkjun, which operates the Krafla facility, sells just 17 percent of its electricity to households and local industry. The rest goes mostly to aluminum smelters owned by the American giant Alcoa and other foreign companies that have been lured to this remote North Atlantic nation by its abundant supply of cheap energy.

Now a huge and potentially far more lucrative market beckons — if only Iceland can find a way to transmit electricity across the more than 1,000 miles of frigid sea that separate it from the 500 million consumers of the European Union. “Prices are so low in Iceland that it is normal that we should want to sell to Europe and get a better price,” said Stein Agust Steinsson, the manager of the Krafla plant. “It is not good to put all our eggs in one basket.”

What Landsvirkjun charges aluminum smelters exactly is a secret, but in 2011 it received on average less than $30 per megawatt/hour — less than half the going rate in the European Union and barely a quarter of what, according to the Renewable Energies Federation, a Brussels-based research unit, is the average tariff, once tax breaks and subsidies are factored in, for “renewable” electricity in the European Union. Iceland would not easily get this top “renewable” rate, which is not a market price, but it still stands to earn far more from its electricity than it does now.

Eager to reach these better paying customers, the power company has conducted extensive research into the possibility of a massive extension cord — or a “submarine interconnector,” in the jargon of the trade — to plug Iceland into Europe’s electricity grid. Such a cable would probably go first to the northern tip of Scotland, which, about 700 miles away, is relatively close, and then all the way to continental Europe, nearly 1,200 miles away. That is more than three times longer than a link between Norway and the Netherlands, which is currently the world’s longest.

Laying an underwater cable from the North Atlantic would probably cost more than $2 billion, and the idea is not popular with those who worry about Iceland — a country that takes pride in living by its own means in harsh isolation — becoming an ice-covered version of Middle East nations addicted to easy money from energy exports.

Backers of the cable “are looking for easy money, but who is going to pay in the end?” said Lara Hanna Einarsdottir, an Icelandic blogger who has written extensively on the potential risks involved in geothermal energy. “We will all pay.”

Iceland, Ms. Einarsdottir said, should use its energy sources to “supply ourselves and coming generations” and not gamble with Iceland’s unique heritage by “building more and more plants so that we can provide electricity to towns in Scotland.”

The idea of somehow exporting electricity to Europe has been around for decades and has been “technically doable for some time,” said Hordur Arnarson, the power company’s chief executive, “but it was not seen as economically feasible until recently.” The change is largely because of a push by the European Union to reduce the use of oil and coal and promote green energy, a move that has put a premium on electricity generated by wind, water and geothermal sources. The union’s 27 member states agreed in 2009 to a mandatory target of deriving at least 20 percent of its energy from “renewable sources” by 2020.

A connection to Europe would not only allow Iceland to tap the export market but also to import electricity from Europe in the event of a crisis, a backup that would allow it to stop keeping large emergency reserves, as it does now.

“This is a very promising project,” Mr. Arnarson said. “We have a lot of electricity for the very few people who live here.” Compared with the rest of the world, he said, Iceland produces “more energy per capita by far, and it is very natural to consider connecting ourselves to other markets.”

Read More..

Police add more confusion to Oscar Pistorius case

PRETORIA, South Africa (AP) — The prosecution case against Oscar Pistorius began to unravel Wednesday with revelations of a series of police blunders and the lead investigator's admission that authorities have no evidence challenging the double-amputee Olympian's claim he killed his girlfriend accidentally.

Detective Hilton Botha's often confused testimony left prosecutors rubbing their heads in frustration as he misjudged distances and said testosterone — banned for professional athletes in some cases — was found at the scene, only to be later contradicted by the prosecutor's office.

The second day of what was supposed to be a mere bail hearing almost resembled a full-blown trial for the 26-year-old runner, with his lawyer, Barry Roux, tearing into Botha's testimony step by step during cross examination.

Police, Botha acknowledged, left a 9 mm slug from the barrage that killed Reeva Steenkamp inside a toilet and lost track of illegal ammunition found inside the house. And the detective himself walked through the crime scene without wearing protective shoe covers, potentially contaminating the area.

Authorities, Roux asserted, were selectively taking "every piece of evidence to try to extract the most possibly negative connotation and present it to the court."

The case has riveted South Africa, with journalists and the curious crowding into the brick-walled courtroom where Pistorius, dubbed the Blade Runner for his prosthetic legs, faces a charge of premeditated murder in the Valentine's Day slaying.

Pistorius says he mistook Steenkamp for an intruder and shot her out of fear, while prosecutors say he planned the killing and attacked her as she cowered behind a locked bathroom door.

The day seemed to start out well for the prosecution, with Botha offering new details of the shooting that appeared to call into question Pistorius' account of the moments leading up to the 29-year-old model's death.

Ballistic evidence, he said, showed the bullets that killed her had been fired from a height, supporting the prosecution's assertion that Pistorius was wearing prosthetic legs when he took aim at the bathroom door. The athlete has maintained he was standing only on his stumps, and felt vulnerable and frightened as he opened fire from a low position.

Projecting a diagram of the bedroom and bathroom, prosecutor Gerrie Nel said it showed Pistorius had to walk past his bed to get to bathroom and could not have done so without seeing that Steenkamp was not asleep there.

"There's no other way of getting there," Nel said in disputing Pistorius' claim that he had no idea Steenkamp was no longer in bed when he pumped four bullets into the bathroom door, striking her with three.

Botha backed the prosecutor up, saying the holster for Pistorius' 9 mm pistol was found under the left side of the bed, where Steenkamp slept, and it would have been impossible for Pistorius to get the gun without checking to see if she was there.

"I believe that he knew that Reeva was in the bathroom and he shot four shots through the door," the detective said.

Botha described how bullets struck Steenkamp in the head and shattered her right arm and hip, eliciting sobs from Pistorius, who held his head in hands.

However, when asked if Steenkamp's body showed "any pattern of defensive wounds" or bruising from an assault, Botha said "no." He again responded "no" when asked if investigators found anything inconsistent with Pistorius' version of events, though he later said nothing contradicted the police version either.

Testimony began with the prosecutor telling the court that before the shooting, a neighbor heard "nonstop" shouting between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. at Pistorius' upscale home in a gated community in the capital, Pretoria.

However, Botha later said under cross examination that the witness was in a house 600 yards (meters) away, possibly out of earshot. He cut that estimate in half when questioned again by the prosecutor, as confusion reigned for much of his testimony.

At one point, Botha told the court that police found syringes and two boxes of testosterone in Pistorius' bedroom — testimony the prosecution later withdrew, saying it was too early to identify the substance, which was still being tested.

"It is not certain (what it is) until the forensics" are completed, Medupe Simasiku, a spokesman for South Africa's National Prosecution Agency, told The Associated Press. It's not clear if it was "a legal or an illegal medication for now."

The defense also disputed the claim. "It is an herbal remedy," Roux said. "It is not ... a banned substance."

Still, Botha offered potentially damaging details about Pistorius' past, saying the athlete was once involved in an accidental shooting at a restaurant in Johannesburg and asked someone else "to take the wrap."

The runner also threatened men on two separate occasions, Botha said, allegedly telling one he'd "break his legs."

The detective said police found two iPhones in Pistorius' bathroom and two BlackBerrys in his bedroom, and none had been used to phone for help. Guards at the gated community did call the athlete, Botha said, and all he said was: "I'm all right," as he wept uncontrollably.

Roux later suggested that a fifth phone, not collected by the police, was used by Pistorius to call for help.

The question now is whether Botha's troubled testimony will be enough to convince Chief Magistrate Desmond Nair to keep Pistorius in prison until trial. While Pistorius faces the harshest bail requirements under South African law, the magistrate has said he would consider loosening them based on testimony in the hearing. Final arguments were scheduled for Thursday.

___

Gerald Imray reported from Johannesburg. Associated Press writer Michelle Faul in Johannesburg contributed to this report.

___

Jon Gambrell can be reached at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP. Gerald Imray can be reached at www.twitter.com/geraldimrayAP.

Read More..

Well: Caffeine Linked to Lower Birth Weight Babies

New research suggests that drinking caffeinated drinks during pregnancy raises the risk of having a low birth weight baby.

Caffeine has long been linked to adverse effects in pregnant women, prompting many expectant mothers to give up coffee and tea. But for those who cannot do without their morning coffee, health officials over the years have offered conflicting guidelines on safe amounts during pregnancy.

The World Health Organization recommends a limit of 300 milligrams of caffeine a day, equivalent to about three eight-ounce cups of regular brewed coffee. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists stated in 2010 that pregnant women could consume up to 200 milligrams a day without increasing their risk of miscarriage or preterm birth.

In the latest study, published in the journal BMC Medicine, researchers collected data on almost 60,000 pregnancies over a 10-year period. After excluding women with potentially problematic medical conditions, they found no link between caffeine consumption – from food or drinks – and the risk of preterm birth. But there was an association with low birth weight.

For a child expected to weigh about eight pounds at birth, the child lost between three-quarters of an ounce to an ounce in birth weight for each 100 milligrams of average daily caffeine intake from all sources by the mother. Even after the researchers excluded from their analysis smokers, a group that is at higher risk for complications and also includes many coffee drinkers, the link remained.

One study author, Dr. Verena Sengpiel of the Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Sweden, said the findings were not definitive because the study was observational, and correlation does not equal causation. But they do suggest that women might put their caffeine consumption “on pause” while pregnant, she said, or at least stay below two cups of coffee per day.

---

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 20, 2013

An earlier version of this article described incorrectly the relationship between the amount of caffeine a pregnant woman drank and birth weight. For a child expected to weigh about eight pounds at birth, the child lost between three-quarters of an ounce to an ounce in birth weight for each 100 milligrams of average daily caffeine intake by the mother, not for each day that she consumed 100 milligrams of caffeine.

Read More..

With PlayStation 4, Sony Aims for Return to Glory

For the Sony Corporation, a tech industry also-ran, the moment of reckoning is here.

The first three generations of PlayStation sold more than 300 million units, pioneered a new style of serious video games and produced hefty profits. PlayStation 4, introduced by Sony Wednesday evening, is a bold bid to recapture those glory days of innovation and success.

The first new PlayStation in seven years was promoted by Sony as being like a “supercharged PC.” It has a souped-up eight-core processor to juggle more complex tasks simultaneously, enhanced graphics, the ability to play games even as they are being downloaded, and a new controller designed in tandem with a stereo camera that can sense the depth of the environment in front of it.

All of that should make for more compelling play for the hard-core gamers at the heart of the PlayStation market. The blood effects in Killzone: Shadow Fall, shown to a preview audience of 1,200 at the Hammerstein at Manhattan Center Wednesday night, looked chillingly real.

The console itself was never shown during the two-hour presentation. No release date was given, although before the Christmas holidays is a good possibility. No price was mentioned.

With PlayStation 4, serious games are about to become much more social. A player can broadcast his game play in real time, and his friend can peek into his game and hop in to help. Also, players will now be able to upload recordings of themselves playing and send them to their friends.

These and other new features cannot hide the fact that PlayStation 4 is still a console, a way of playing games on compact discs that was cool when cellphones were not smart.

Much of the excitement in video games has shifted to the Web and mobile devices, which is cheap, easy and fast. Nintendo’s new Wii, introduced in November, has been a disappointment. Microsoft’s Xbox, the third major console, is racing to become a home entertainment center as fast as it can.

“Today marks a moment of truth and a bold step forward for PlayStation,” Andrew House, chief executive of Sony Computer Entertainment, told the crowd. He said the new device “represents a significant shift of thinking of PlayStation as merely a box or console to thinking as a leading authority on play.”

But the new PlayStation will have a difficult time, like the character in Killzone who was shooting at the people in the helicopter while hanging from the helicopter. Sales of consoles from all makers peaked in 2008, when about 55 million units were sold, according to the research firm I.D.C. By last year, that was down to 34 million.

For 2014, Lewis Ward, I.D.C.’s research manager for video games, forecast a recovery to about 44.5 million.

“From peak to peak, we’ll be down about 10 million,” he said. “There was attrition to alternative gaming platforms like tablets, but the trough was exacerbated by the 2008-9 recession. It did not permit as many people to buy who under normal economic conditions would have bought a console.”

That was reflected in Sony’s miserable financial results. The company has lost money for the last three years, hampered not only by slower console sales but also by a range of unexciting electronic products, a strong yen and the 2011 tsunami that struck Japan.

Analysts have made dire remarks about the one-time powerhouse’s viability. But Sony seems to have bottomed out, helped by a yen that has now weakened. Sony executives said this month that they expected a profit in 2013.

Sony’s new chief executive, Kazuo Hirai, has a longtime personal connection to the PlayStation franchise and is making it one of the core elements of a more tightly focused company. Mr. Hirai became known for some of his more confident statements about the PlayStation, particularly a 2006 swipe at Microsoft: “The next generation doesn’t start until we say it does.”

These days, the next generation is playing games on the Web. Console makers typically sell their consoles for a loss and generate profit through sales of games. In 2012, American consumers spent $14.8 billion on game content, including computer and video games, down from $16.34 billion in the previous year, according to the NDP Group, a research firm.

Instead of buying traditional games, which typically cost $50 or more, many consumers are being drawn to the cheaper, sometimes free games available for their smartphones and tablets, analysts say.

PlayStation 4 games can be streamed to the PlayStation Vita, Sony’s portable game device, among other features.

“The architecture is like a PC in many ways, but supercharged to bring out its full potential as a gaming platform,” said Mark Cerny, Sony’s lead system architect.

James L. McQuivey, a Forrester analyst, said that for the PlayStation 4 to succeed, Sony needed to think beyond games. The console will have to provide other types of content and services, like video conferencing, third-party apps and a TV service to create a deeper, long-term relationship with the customer.

By comparison, Apple, the world’s leading consumer electronics maker, does not just sell hardware. It also has a universe of digital content including apps, music, movies and e-books to make people come back for more Apple gear every year. Apple generally takes an enviable 30 percent cut of all media it sells. Microsoft, Google and Amazon are making similar moves to create such a product array.

“Then and only then can Sony hope to learn enough about its users to overcome its own bias toward preferring to design products in response to engineering principles rather than customer needs,” Mr. McQuivey said.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 20, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the number of consecutive years in which Sony has lost money. It is three years, not four.

Read More..

Afghans Arrest a Pakistani Taliban Leader

KABUL, Afghanistan — The Afghanistan authorities have captured a senior member of the Pakistan Taliban in a stretch of mountains near the frontier between the two countries, Afghan and Pakistani officials said on Tuesday. One Afghan official said the militant, Maulvi Faqir Muhammad, had been arrested after American airstrikes, some carried out via drones, had flushed him out of a more remote haven.

Although Mr. Muhammad, picked up over the weekend, had lost much of his standing in the Pakistan Taliban over the past few years, his arrest was likely to please Pakistani officials and further improve the already warming relations between Kabul and Islamabad. “This is big news,” a senior Pakistani security official said.

Afghan officials, including members of the intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security, said its agents, aided by Afghan army special forces, had captured Mr. Muhammad on Sunday along with four other militants in the Mohmand Dara District of Nangarhar Province in eastern Afghanistan. The district borders Pakistan.

A member of the Pakistan Taliban, formally known as the Tehrik-i-Taliban, also said he had heard of Mr. Muhammad’s capture, and that the news was spreading quickly among the many militant factions that make up the Islamist movement.

Shukrullah Durani, the governor of Mohmand Dara, said the five men had been carrying an AK-47 assault rifle, hand grenades, a pistol and a radio when caught about 4:30 p.m. They were driving a white Toyota Corolla — one of Afghanistan’s most common cars, and thus a low-profile way to travel — and were passing through the village of Hazarnaw, he said, adding that authorities had been tracking the men for some time. Except for the district governor, Afghan and Pakistani officials spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the case.

Pakistani officials have in the past year often complained that Afghan and American authorities were doing little to capture the wanted militant leader. To the dismay of Washington, they repeatedly sought to draw equivalence between his case and longstanding accusations that Islamabad let the Afghan Taliban use Pakistan as a rear base.

Mr. Muhammad, believed to be in his 40s, fled to Afghanistan in 2010 after an offensive by Pakistan’s military on his stronghold in the Bajaur tribal agency. He was at the time a deputy leader of the Pakistan Taliban, an offshoot of the Afghan Taliban movement.

Mr. Muhammad continued to attack Pakistani forces in Bajaur after taking refuge in the isolated valleys of Kunar and Nuristan Provinces in northeastern Afghanistan, prompting Pakistani complaints of American and Afghan inaction.

At the same time, though, he fell out with the leadership of the Pakistan Taliban after trying to open peace talks. But in recent months, as the Pakistan Taliban have made limited overtures toward holding such talks, colleagues have appeared to welcome Mr. Muhammad back.

Afghan officials have long denied that Mr. Muhammad operated from their territory. Intelligence officials in Kabul said that he had been caught on Sunday while crossing into Afghanistan, and they suggested that he had lacked a base of operations on this side of the border.

But another official, an intelligence agent who works in northeastern Afghanistan, said Mr. Muhammad’s trail had been picked up in recent days because he had been trying to flee Kunar Province. Mr. Muhammad felt there were too many airstrikes by the American-led coalition there, the intelligence official said. Many were carried out by drones, and Mr. Muhammad, knowing the effectiveness of drone attacks targeting Islamist militants in Pakistan’s border areas, feared that the Americans had been hunting him.

American officials offered no comment on Mr. Muhammad’s capture, referring questions to the Afghanistan government.

Ismail Khan contributed reporting from Peshawar, Pakistan; Sharifullah Sahak from Kabul; and an employee of The New York Times from Asadabad, Afghanistan.

Read More..

Pistorius: Lover caught in tragedy or killer?

PRETORIA, South Africa (AP) — Oscar Pistorius portrayed himself as a lover caught in tragedy, wielding a pistol and frightened as he stood only on his stumps, then killed his girlfriend after mistaking her for an intruder on Valentine's Day.

Prosecutors, however, said the double-amputee Olympian committed premeditated murder, planning the slaying, then firing at Reeva Steenkamp as she cowered behind his locked bathroom door with no hope of escape.

"She couldn't go anywhere," Prosecutor Gerrie Nel told a packed courtroom Tuesday. "It must have been horrific."

Weeping uncontrollably, Pistorius listened as his words were read out in court by his attorney during the opening of a two-day bail hearing, his first public account of the events surrounding the shooting death of Steenkamp, a 29-year-old model and reality TV star who had spoken out against violence against women.

"I fail to understand how I could be charged with murder, let alone premeditated murder, as I had no intention to kill my girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp," Pistorius said in the sworn affidavit. "I deny the aforesaid allegation in the strongest terms."

It was the first time that the prosecution and Pistorius provided details of their radically divergent accounts of the killing, which has shocked South Africans and fans worldwide, who idolized the 26-year-old track star known as the Blade Runner for overcoming his disability to compete in last summer's London Olympics.

Nel said Pistorius committed premeditated murder when he rose from his bed after a fight with Steenkamp, pulled on his prosthetic legs and walked about 20 feet from his bedroom to the locked toilet door and pumped it with four bullets, three of which hit the model.

That contradicted the runner's statement, read aloud by defense attorney Barry Roux, who described how the couple spent a quiet night together in the athlete's upscale home in a gated community in the capital of Pretoria, then went to sleep around 10 p.m.

Sometime before dawn, Pistorius said he awoke, and walking only on his stumps, pulled a fan in from an open balcony and closed it. That's when he said he heard a noise and became alarmed because the bathroom window, which had no security bars, was open and workers had left ladders nearby.

"It filled me with horror and fear," Pistorius said in the statement.

"I am acutely aware of violent crime being committed by intruders entering homes," he said. "I have received death threats before. I have also been a victim of violence and of burglaries before. For that reason I kept my firearm, a 9 mm Parabellum, underneath my bed when I went to bed at night."

Too frightened to turn on a light, Pistorius said, he pulled out his pistol and headed for the bathroom, believing Steenkamp was still asleep "in the pitch dark" of the bedroom.

"As I did not have my prosthetic legs on and felt extremely vulnerable, I knew I had to protect Reeva and myself," he said, adding that he shouted to Steenkamp to call the police as he fired at the closed toilet door.

It was then, Pistorius said, that he realized Steenkamp was not in bed.

He said he pulled on his prosthetic legs and tried to kick down the toilet door before finally giving up and bashing it in with a cricket bat. Inside, he said he found Steenkamp, slumped over but still alive. He said he lifted her bloodied body and carried her downstairs to seek medical help.

But it was too late. "She died in my arms," Pistorius said.

"We were deeply in love and I could not be happier," the athlete said. "I know she felt the same way. She had given me a present for Valentine's Day but asked me only to open it the next day."

Pistorius broke down in sobs repeatedly as his account was read, prompting Chief Magistrate Desmond Nair to call a recess at one point.

"Maintain your composure," the magistrate said. "You need to apply your mind here."

"Yes, my lordship," Pistorius replied, his voice quivering.

Nair adjourned the case until Wednesday without ruling on whether Pistorius would be granted bail. However, he said the gravity of the charge — which carries a mandatory life sentence — meant the athlete's lawyers must offer "exceptional" reasons for bail to be granted, making his release unlikely.

Roux, the defense attorney, said there was no evidence to substantiate a murder charge. "We submit it is not even murder. There is no concession this is a murder," he said.

The prosecutor disagreed.

"It is our respectful argument that 'pre-planning' or premeditation do not require months of planning," Nel said. "If ... I ready myself and walk a distance with the intention to kill someone, it is premeditated."

Hundreds of miles from the Magistrate's Court, a memorial service was held for Steenkamp in the south coast city of Port Elizabeth. Six pallbearers carried her coffin, draped with a white cloth and covered in white flowers, into the church for the private service and cremation.

Relatives recalled how the model with a law degree had campaigned against domestic violence and had planned to don black for a "Black Friday" protest in honor of a 17-year-old girl who was recently gang-raped and mutilated.

What "she stood for, and the abuse against women, unfortunately it's gone right around, and I think the Lord knows that statement is more powerful now," said her uncle, Mike Steenkamp.

South Africa has some of the world's worst rates of violence against women and the highest rate in the world of women killed by an intimate partner, according to a study by the Medical Research Council, which said at least three women are killed by a partner every day in the country of 50 million.

Since the shooting, several of Pistorius' sponsors have dropped him. On Tuesday, Clarins Group, which owns Thierry Mugler Perfumes, said it would withdraw all advertising featuring the Olympian. A cologne line with the company, called A(asterisk)Men, bears his image.

___

Associated Press writer Michelle Faul in Johannesburg and AP photographer Schalk van Zuydam in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, contributed to this report.

___

Jon Gambrell can be reached at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP. Gerald Imray can be reached at www.twitter.com/geraldimrayAP.

Read More..