Op-Ed Contributor: Labs, Washed Away

BEDPAN ALLEY is the affectionate name given to a stretch of First Avenue in Manhattan that is packed with more hospitals than many cities possess. This stretch also happened to be right in the flood zone during Hurricane Sandy. Water damage and power failures closed down all three of the New York University teaching hospitals — Bellevue Hospital, Tisch Hospital and the Manhattan V.A. Two months later, they are still not admitting patients, though two are on schedule to begin doing so shortly.

The harrowing evacuation of hundreds of patients made headlines nationwide. The disruption of regular medical care for tens of thousands of outpatients was a clinical nightmare that is finally easing. And the education of hundreds of medical students and residents is being patched back together.

All academic medical centers, however, rest on a tripod — patient care, education and research. The effect of the hurricane on the third leg of that tripod — research — has gotten the least attention, partly because rescuing cell cultures just isn’t as dramatic as carrying an I.C.U. patient on a ventilator down flights of stairs in the dark.

But, of course, there is an incontrovertible link between those cell cultures and that patient. For every medication that a patient takes, someone researched the basic chemistry of the drug, someone designed the clinical trial to test its efficacy, and of course a volunteer stepped forward to be the first to take the pill. Scientific research has engineered the impressive advancements of medical treatment, and every patient is a beneficiary.

When the hospitals were hit by Hurricane Sandy, hundreds of experiments were obliterated by the loss of power. Precious biological samples carefully frozen over years were destroyed. Temperature-sensitive reagents and equipment were ruined. Medications and records for patients in clinical trials were rendered inaccessible. And sadly, many laboratory mice and rats perished (though 600 cages of animals were rescued during the night by staff members who used crowbars on inaccessible doors and carried the cages out through holes cut in the ceiling).

On a slushy, rainy day earlier this month, I sat in on a meeting of N.Y.U.’s research community. Hundreds of scientists packed the chilly lecture hall to discuss what the future might hold. It was clear that the damage to laboratories and samples would not be amenable to easy repair. Some 400 researchers were being relocated to a patchwork of temporary sites so that they could restart their work.

But scientists can’t just walk in to a new space with a lab coat and a notebook; they need centrifuges, deep-freezes, lab animals, electron microscopes, incubators, autoclaves, gamma counters, PET scanners. They come with graduate students, lab techs, post-docs and collaborating investigators. For clinical researchers, there are also the patients enrolled in their clinical trials, with their medications and voluminous records.

Even beyond their eagerness to get back to work, researchers felt a sense of loss, not just in time, money, momentum, samples and grants, but of a part of their lives. Some senior scientists lost decades of archived samples. Others lost irreplaceable mice with genetic mutations for studying how coronary plaques resolve, the role of inflammation in lymphoma and the development of neural networks. At the other end of the spectrum were post-docs whose nascent careers were suddenly up in the air. Some were in tears.

Walking down First Avenue after the meeting, I passed a young researcher pushing a cart laden with cages, transporting lab rats to their new home. There was a blanket over the cages to protect them from the rain, but it kept slipping. She slogged up the wet avenue, one hand pushing the cart, the other struggling to keep the cover over her charges.

The logistical efforts to relocate and reignite such a vast research enterprise are staggeringly complicated. But the administration has cataloged each person’s research needs to match them with available space elsewhere, and hundreds of researchers have successfully rekindled their investigations despite the prodigious challenges.

Bellevue and Tisch are returning to their clinical operations and will be able to admit patients shortly. But even after the hospital wards and clinics are bustling at full capacity, the ribbon won’t feel ready to snip until the researchers are restored to their homes as well. For many patients, the thrum of research within a medical center is invisible. But it is an integral — and very human — part of a hospital. When a hurricane disrupts research, it is a loss that resonates well beyond the laboratories.

Danielle Ofri, an associate professor at New York University School of Medicine, is the editor of the Bellevue Literary Review and the author, most recently, of “Medicine in Translation: Journeys With My Patients.”

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Syria Uses Cluster Bombs to Attack as Many Civilians as Possible

MAREA, Syria — The plane came in from the southeast late in the afternoon, releasing its weapons in a single pass. Within seconds, scores of finned bomblets struck and exploded on the homes and narrow streets of this small Syrian town.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 21, 2012

An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to Scuds. They are ballistic missiles, not cruise missiles.

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DealBook: Upstart Exchange in $8.2 Billion Deal for N.Y.S.E.

8:39 a.m. | Updated

The owner of the 220-year-old New York Stock Exchange on Thursday agreed to an $8.2 billion deal that would give control of the longstanding symbol of American capitalism to an upstart competitor.

NYSE Euronext said that it would sell itself to the IntercontinentalExchange for about $33.12 a share in cash and stock. The combined company would have headquarters in both ICE’s home of Atlanta and in New York.

The takeover signals the revival of consolidation in the world of market operators, after a wave of deals dissipated amid concerns over antitrust and nationalist sentiment. ICE had partnered with NYSE Euronext’s main rival, the Nasdaq OMX Group, in an $11 billion hostile bid for the Big Board’s parent, but that offer was blocked by the Justice Department.

And NYSE Euronext had sought to combine with Deutsche Börse, creating a global giant in the trading of derivatives. But that merger was stymied by European antitrust regulators.

Thursday’s deal is expected to run into fewer problems. ICE and NYSE Euronext have little overlap: the former focuses on the trading of commodities like energy products, the latter on stocks and derivatives.

Indeed, while the New York Stock Exchange, with its opening bell and floor traders, has been the public image of a stock market for two centuries, it is NYSE Euronext’s businesses in the over-the-counter trading of derivatives — including the Liffe market in London — that is the main attraction in the merger talks.

As part of the deal, ICE will consider spinning off NYSE Euronext’s European stock market operations.

Shareholders of NYSE Euronext would own about 36 percent of the combined company.

ICE’s chief executive, Jeffrey C. Sprecher, would keep that role in the newly enlarged market operator. NYSE Euronext’s chief, Duncan L. Niederauer, would be president.

Both companies relied on armies of advisers. ICE was advised by Morgan Stanley, BMO Capital Markets, Broadhaven Capital Partners, JPMorgan Chase, Lazard, Société Générale and Wells Fargo. It received legal counsel from Sullivan & Cromwell and Shearman & Sterling.

NYSE Euronext was advised by Perella Weinberg Partners, BNP Paribas, the Blackstone Group, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Moelis & Company. It was counseled by Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz; Slaughter & May; and Stibbe N.V.

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Female Vaccination Workers, Essential in Pakistan, Become Prey

LAHORE, Pakistan — The front-line heroes of Pakistan’s war on polio are its volunteers: young women who tread fearlessly from door to door, in slums and highland villages, administering precious drops of vaccine to children in places where their immunization campaign is often viewed with suspicion.

Now, those workers have become quarry. After militants stalked and killed eight of them over the course of a three-day, nationwide vaccination drive, the United Nations suspended its anti-polio work in Pakistan on Wednesday, and one of Pakistan’s most crucial public health campaigns has been plunged into crisis. A ninth victim died on Thursday, a day after being shot in the northwestern city of Peshawar, The Associated Press reported.

The World Health Organization and Unicef ordered their staff members off the streets, while government officials reported that some polio volunteers — especially women — were afraid to show up for work.

At the ground level, it is those female health workers who are essential, allowed privileged entrance into private homes to meet and help children in situations denied to men because of conservative rural culture. “They are on the front line; they are the backbone,” said Imtiaz Ali Shah, a polio coordinator in Peshawar.

The killings started in the port city of Karachi on Monday, the first day of a vaccination drive aimed at the worst affected areas, with the shooting of a male health worker. On Tuesday four female polio workers were killed, all gunned down by men on motorcycles in what appeared to be closely coordinated attacks.

The hit jobs then moved to Peshawar, the capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, which, along with the adjoining tribal belt, constitutes Pakistan’s main reservoir of new polio infections. The first victim there was one of two sisters who had volunteered as polio vaccinators. Men on motorcycles shadowed them as they walked from house to house. Once the sisters entered a quiet street, the gunmen opened fire. One of the sisters, Farzana, died instantly; the other was uninjured.

On Wednesday, a man working on the polio campaign was shot dead as he made a chalk mark on the door of a house in a suburb of Peshawar. Later, a female health supervisor in Charsadda, 15 miles to the north, was shot dead in a car she shared with her cousin.

Yet again, Pakistani militants are making a point of attacking women who stand for something larger. In October, it was Malala Yousafzai, a schoolgirl advocate for education who was gunned down by a Pakistani Taliban attacker in the Swat Valley. She was grievously wounded, and the militants vowed they would try again until they had killed her. The result was a tidal wave of public anger that clearly unsettled the Pakistani Taliban.

In singling out the core workers in one of Pakistan’s most crucial public health initiatives, militants seem to have resolved to harden their stance against immunization drives, and declared anew that they consider women to be legitimate targets. Until this week, vaccinators had never been targeted with such violence in such numbers.

Government officials in Peshawar said that they believe a Taliban faction in Mohmand, a tribal area near Peshawar, was behind at least some of the shootings. Still, the Pakistani Taliban have been uncharacteristically silent about the attacks, with no official claims of responsibility. In staying quiet, the militants may be trying to blunt any public backlash like the huge demonstrations over the attack on Ms. Yousafzai.

Female polio workers here are easy targets. They wear no uniforms but are readily recognizable, with clipboards and refrigerated vaccine boxes, walking door to door. They work in pairs — including at least one woman — and are paid just over $2.50 a day. Most days one team can vaccinate 150 to 200 children.

Faced with suspicious or recalcitrant parents, their only weapon is reassurance: a gentle pat on the hand, a shared cup of tea, an offer to seek religious assurances from a pro-vaccine cleric. “The whole program is dependent on them,” said Mr. Shah, in Peshawar. “If they do good work, and talk well to the parents, then they will vaccinate the children.”

That has happened with increasing frequency in Pakistan over the past year. A concerted immunization drive, involving up to 225,000 vaccination workers, drove the number of newly infected polio victims down to 52. Several high-profile groups shouldered the program forward — at the global level, donors like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the United Nations and Rotary International; and at the national level, President Asif Ali Zardari and his daughter Aseefa, who have made polio eradication a “personal mission.”

On a global scale, setbacks are not unusual in polio vaccination campaigns, which, by dint of their massive scale and need to reach deep inside conservative societies, end up grappling with more than just medical challenges. In other campaigns in Africa and South Asia, vaccinators have grappled with natural disaster, virulent opposition from conservative clerics and sudden outbreaks of mysterious strains of the disease.

Declan Walsh reported from Lahore, and Donald G. McNeil Jr. from New York. Ismail Khan contributed reporting from Peshawar, Pakistan.

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Female Vaccination Workers, Essential in Pakistan, Become Prey

LAHORE, Pakistan — The front-line heroes of Pakistan’s war on polio are its volunteers: young women who tread fearlessly from door to door, in slums and highland villages, administering precious drops of vaccine to children in places where their immunization campaign is often viewed with suspicion.

Now, those workers have become quarry. After militants stalked and killed eight of them over the course of a three-day, nationwide vaccination drive, the United Nations suspended its anti-polio work in Pakistan on Wednesday, and one of Pakistan’s most crucial public health campaigns has been plunged into crisis. A ninth victim died on Thursday, a day after being shot in the northwestern city of Peshawar, The Associated Press reported.

The World Health Organization and Unicef ordered their staff members off the streets, while government officials reported that some polio volunteers — especially women — were afraid to show up for work.

At the ground level, it is those female health workers who are essential, allowed privileged entrance into private homes to meet and help children in situations denied to men because of conservative rural culture. “They are on the front line; they are the backbone,” said Imtiaz Ali Shah, a polio coordinator in Peshawar.

The killings started in the port city of Karachi on Monday, the first day of a vaccination drive aimed at the worst affected areas, with the shooting of a male health worker. On Tuesday four female polio workers were killed, all gunned down by men on motorcycles in what appeared to be closely coordinated attacks.

The hit jobs then moved to Peshawar, the capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, which, along with the adjoining tribal belt, constitutes Pakistan’s main reservoir of new polio infections. The first victim there was one of two sisters who had volunteered as polio vaccinators. Men on motorcycles shadowed them as they walked from house to house. Once the sisters entered a quiet street, the gunmen opened fire. One of the sisters, Farzana, died instantly; the other was uninjured.

On Wednesday, a man working on the polio campaign was shot dead as he made a chalk mark on the door of a house in a suburb of Peshawar. Later, a female health supervisor in Charsadda, 15 miles to the north, was shot dead in a car she shared with her cousin.

Yet again, Pakistani militants are making a point of attacking women who stand for something larger. In October, it was Malala Yousafzai, a schoolgirl advocate for education who was gunned down by a Pakistani Taliban attacker in the Swat Valley. She was grievously wounded, and the militants vowed they would try again until they had killed her. The result was a tidal wave of public anger that clearly unsettled the Pakistani Taliban.

In singling out the core workers in one of Pakistan’s most crucial public health initiatives, militants seem to have resolved to harden their stance against immunization drives, and declared anew that they consider women to be legitimate targets. Until this week, vaccinators had never been targeted with such violence in such numbers.

Government officials in Peshawar said that they believe a Taliban faction in Mohmand, a tribal area near Peshawar, was behind at least some of the shootings. Still, the Pakistani Taliban have been uncharacteristically silent about the attacks, with no official claims of responsibility. In staying quiet, the militants may be trying to blunt any public backlash like the huge demonstrations over the attack on Ms. Yousafzai.

Female polio workers here are easy targets. They wear no uniforms but are readily recognizable, with clipboards and refrigerated vaccine boxes, walking door to door. They work in pairs — including at least one woman — and are paid just over $2.50 a day. Most days one team can vaccinate 150 to 200 children.

Faced with suspicious or recalcitrant parents, their only weapon is reassurance: a gentle pat on the hand, a shared cup of tea, an offer to seek religious assurances from a pro-vaccine cleric. “The whole program is dependent on them,” said Mr. Shah, in Peshawar. “If they do good work, and talk well to the parents, then they will vaccinate the children.”

That has happened with increasing frequency in Pakistan over the past year. A concerted immunization drive, involving up to 225,000 vaccination workers, drove the number of newly infected polio victims down to 52. Several high-profile groups shouldered the program forward — at the global level, donors like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the United Nations and Rotary International; and at the national level, President Asif Ali Zardari and his daughter Aseefa, who have made polio eradication a “personal mission.”

On a global scale, setbacks are not unusual in polio vaccination campaigns, which, by dint of their massive scale and need to reach deep inside conservative societies, end up grappling with more than just medical challenges. In other campaigns in Africa and South Asia, vaccinators have grappled with natural disaster, virulent opposition from conservative clerics and sudden outbreaks of mysterious strains of the disease.

Declan Walsh reported from Lahore, and Donald G. McNeil Jr. from New York. Ismail Khan contributed reporting from Peshawar, Pakistan.

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F.T.C. Opens an Inquiry Into Data Brokers

It’s getting tougher to be a data broker.

Companies that collect, analyze and sell billions of details about the activities of consumers for marketing purposes have increasingly found themselves under government scrutiny this year.

The latest salvo comes from the Federal Trade Commission, which said on Tuesday that it had opened an inquiry into the practices of nine companies that collect and resell or analyze consumer data.

The agency issued 15-page administrative subpoenas to the information resellers. The orders require each company to provide extensive details about how it collects consumer data and how it uses, stores, analyzes and shares that data. The agency also asked for information about whether the company allows consumers to see and correct the records held about them.

After it reviews this information, the agency plans to issue a report to advise lawmakers on whether more regulation is needed; data brokers are currently largely unregulated.

The F.T.C.’s inquiry seeks far more comprehensive details than similar investigations this year in Congress. And executives at the companies may be more forthcoming about their practices with regulators because, unlike Congressional inquiries that often make their results public, the F.T.C. keeps the specifics it gathers confidential.

The subpoenas went to, among other companies, Acxiom of Little Rock, Ark., one of the world’s largest information resellers, which manages customer databases for major banks, automakers and retailers; eBureau, a company in St. Cloud, Minn., which, on behalf of clients like credit card companies, lenders, insurers and educational institutions, evaluates and scores online consumers in the market for those companies’ products; Intelius, a company in Bellevue, Wash., which offers people-search look-up services and background checks; and Peek-You, a company that analyzes social media sentiment.

“We are going to get a huge amount of data,” David C. Vladeck, the director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection at the F.T.C., said in a phone interview on Tuesday. “We are going to get answers.”

In an e-mail, Jennifer Barrett Glasgow, the chief privacy officer of Acxiom, said the company had not yet received the F.T.C.’s letter, but was looking forward to cooperating with the inquiry. “We consider this request as an avenue to promote a better understanding of why what we do is vital for the American economy as it creates enormous value for people and businesses while respecting and protecting consumers’ interests,” she wrote.

Gordon Meyer, the chief executive of eBureau, wrote in an e-mail that the consumer scoring company “welcomes the opportunity to describe, to the F.T.C., its practices and the benefits we provide to businesses as well as consumers.”

Representatives of other companies did not return e-mails seeking comment.

Companies and organizations in the United States spend more than $2 billion a year on third-party data about individuals, according to a report last year on personal identity management from Forrester Research, a market research firm. That figure does not include spending on market research and customer data analytics, the report said.

Industry representatives argue that their practices benefit consumers. Data brokers, they say, collect information about individuals’ purchasing histories, estimated salaries, property ownership, family size, leisure pursuits — and sometimes also their race or ethnicity, age, gender, health concerns, online browsing history and social networks — to help marketers tailor pitches to a person’s demonstrated tastes. When these bespoke ad systems work properly, the companies argue, marketers can identify male Southern Californians who surf and show them ads for board shorts even as they avoid sending coupons for ski vacations to people who prefer Alaskan cruises.

But, as consumers conduct more of their personal and commercial lives online, that type of data collection has been steadily increasing, fueled by new online surveillance techniques and more sophisticated analytics. Some companies, for example, have compiled several thousand different pieces of information on a majority of adults in the United States. Regulators say they are concerned that such comprehensive data collection could be used to profile, score or segment consumers, with the potential to unfairly limit the kinds of financial, insurance, health, education or other marketing offers certain consumers receive.

Mr. Vladeck of the F.T.C. offered one possibility he worried about: a hypothetical consumer who buys a deep-fat fryer online may get typecast by data broker systems as a health risk, and then is passed over for marketing pitches for insurance or other services.

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French Court Refuses to Dismiss Strauss-Kahn Sex Investigation

PARIS — A French appeals court on Wednesday rejected a demand from Dominique Strauss-Kahn to dismiss an investigation of him in connection with a ring that recruited prostitutes for sex parties from Paris to Washington.

His appeal was an effort to end the last of the legal problems that forced him to resign as head managing director of the International Monetary Fund and ruined his ambition to seek the French presidency. Mr. Strauss-Kahn, 63, and his lawyers vowed to challenge the ruling from the court of appeal of Douai in northern France, which announced the decision without an explanation.

In the case, nine people in the northern city of Lille are under investigation for procurement of prostitutes, and in some cases, fraud. Mr. Strauss-Kahn has insisted that he was unaware that prostitutes were involved in the parties.

“This is not a victory for rights,” Frédérique Baulieu, a lawyer for Mr. Strauss-Kahn, said outside the courthouse in Douai. Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers had questioned the impartiality of judges, citing the leak of transcripts of his testimony when he was questioned by investigators and offered an explanation for his libertine lifestyle.

In October, the prosecutor’s office in Lille dropped sexual assault charges against Mr. Strauss-Kahn after an “escort girl” withdrew her complaint about an incident that took place in Washington in December 2010, saying it was simply sex play.

Mr. Strauss-Kahn and his lawyers in the United States negotiated a confidential settlement earlier this month with Nafissatou Diallo, the hotel housekeeper who in 2011 accused him of sexual assault in a New York hotel room, charges that were dropped by the prosecutor because of doubts about Ms. Diallo’s credibility.

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BBC Inquiry Blames Rigid Management for Mishandling Sex Abuse Scandal

LONDON — A report into the sexual abuse crisis that has shaken the British Broadcasting Corporation was strongly critical on Wednesday of the editorial and management decisions that led to the cancellation of a broadcast last year that would have exposed decades of sexual abuse, some of it on BBC premises, by Jimmy Savile, who had been one of Britain’s best-known television personalities.

The 200-page report by Nick Pollard, a former head of the Sky News channel who began his broadcast career as a BBC reporter, traced in detail what it described as “a chain of events that was to prove disastrous for the BBC.” Among other things, Mr. Pollard blamed a “rigid management system” that had “proved completely incapable of dealing with” the crisis that followed the program’s cancellation.

While much of the report centered on the interplay between journalists and their superiors as the allegations against Mr. Savile were investigated, its central conclusion appeared to be that confusion and mismanagement, not a cover-up, lay at the heart of the decision to drop the Savile program. Mr. Savile died at 84 in October 2011, weeks before the “Newsnight” program was scheduled to be broadcast.

“The efforts to get to the truth behind the Savile story proved beyond the combined efforts of the senior management, legal department, corporate communications team and anyone else for well over a month” after the crisis broke, precipitated by a program earlier this year on ITV, Britain’s leading commercial broadcaster, the report said. “Leadership and organization seemed to be in short supply.”

Mr. Pollard dismissed one theory that was widely circulated in recent months, that BBC News executives or their superiors, reluctant to have the BBC reveal a dark passage in its past, pressured the “Newsnight” team to cancel the Savile segment. Critics who took this views have played down the reason Peter Rippon, the program’s editor, cited to his staff. Mr. Rippon said he considered the team’s conclusions about Mr. Savile had not been adequately substantiated.

“While there clearly were discussions about the Savile story between Mr. Rippon and his managers,” Mr. Pollard said, he did not believe that they had exerted “undue pressure on him.”

The report was strongly critical of several news executives who were directly involved in the decision to cancel the Savile exposé, including Mr. Rippon and the two top executives in the BBC’s news division to whom he reported, Helen Boaden and Stephen Mitchell, all three of whom were suspended from their posts during the nine-week Pollard inquiry.

But it adopted a largely sparing tone in its review of the role played by the broadcaster’s former director general, Mark Thompson, who stepped down after eight years in the job in September and became president and chief executive of The New York Times Company last month.

The report’s criticism appeared to be aimed mainly at the broadcaster’s complex management systems, not on the actions — or absence of them — by Mr. Thompson and other top executives who presided over the BBC, its $6 billion annual budget and its 23,000 employees.

Mr. Thompson has said that he was not briefed about the “Newsnight” investigation before its cancellation, was not involved in canceling it, and did not know about the allegations of sexual abuse against Mr. Savile until the report about the cancellation appeared on ITV, a commercial competitor of the BBC.

The report does not dispute Mr. Thompson’s public statements that he did not know about the Savile investigation until it had been killed.

It cited, without criticism, Mr. Thompson’s account of an episode when he was asked about the “Newsnight” cancellation by a BBC reporter at a social gathering. The report quoted Mr. Thompson as having testified that he subsequently asked BBC News executives about the matter and “received reassurances” that the program had been killed for “editorial or journalistic reasons.” After that, Mr. Thompson said, according to the report, he “crossed it off my list and went off to worry about something else.”

While the scuttled program became the subject of media stories in London beginning in January — some of which, BBC officials have said, were included in press summaries prepared for Mr. Thompson — Mr. Pollard concluded: “Mr. Thompson told me that the various press stories which followed passed him by. I have no reason to doubt what he told me.”

Matthew Purdy contributed reporting from New York.

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Russia Votes to Ban All Adoptions by Americans

MOSCOW — The Russian Parliament voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday in favor of a measure that would prohibit the adoption of Russian children by American citizens in retaliation for a law signed by President Obama last week that seeks to punish Russian citizens who are accused of violating human rights.

The vote was 400 to 4, with 2 abstentions, and it showed a rare split opening at the highest levels of the Russian government. Several senior officials had spoken out against the adoption ban, including some, like the foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, who are known as hawks in dealing with the United States.

Ultimately, the decision rests with President Vladimir V. Putin who has said that Russia must respond to the American law but has not yet expressed his view on banning adoptions outright. Mr. Putin not only must sign the bill into law but will have huge sway over the final version of it that emerges from Parliament.

Since returning to the presidency in May, Mr. Putin has used populist, even reactionary, legislation out of the State Duma, the lower house of Parliament, to drive much his agenda and to suppress political dissent. And the proposed adoption ban now presents a huge test.

If Mr. Putin allows it to go forward, it would be the most forceful anti-American action of his new term, undoing a bilateral agreement on international adoptions ratified just this year and crushing the aspirations of thousands of Americans hoping to become parents of Russian orphans. More than 45,000 such adoptions have taken place since 1999.

But if Mr. Putin maneuvers to block the measure, it would put him at odds with United Russia, the party that nominated him for president and has dutifully carried out his legislative juggernaut.

The Kremlin on Wednesday sought to portray the Duma’s efforts as reflecting the anger of rank-and-file lawmakers. “This harsh and emotional reaction of Russian members of Parliament is well understandable,” Mr. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told Russian news agencies. “Certainly the executive branch’s policy is more restrained but taking into account the well-known anti-Russian manifestations, Russian President Vladimir Putin understands the Russian lawmakers’ position.”

The State Department did not immediately respond to the action by the Duma, but a spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, noted the prior cooperation on the issue of international adoptions. “We have worked hard with Russia to address past problems through our new adoption agreement, which the Duma has approved,” Ms. Nuland said. “Hundreds of Russian orphans have found safe, loving homes in the United States, as have children from around the world.”

Russian officials have also expressed anger that other Western countries, including Canada and Britain are considering their own version of the Magnitsky legislation. The Duma’s bill would apply the adoption ban to any other country that enacts such a law.

Lawmakers showed no hesitation in approving the adoption ban on Wednesday, despite the words of caution from senior officials, not just Mr. Lavrov, but the education minister, Dmitri Livanov, and even the speaker of the Federation Council, the upper chamber of Parliament, which must also approve the ban before it becomes law.

The speaker, Valentina Matviyenko, who is the highest-ranking woman in the Russian government, said on Wednesday that such a major step requires careful consideration. “One should not be guided by emotions,” Ms. Matviyenko said, according to the Interfax news agency. “The issue is very important and requires careful study. All the pros and cons should be weighed and the decision made in a cool state of mind without emotions.”

She added, however, that the majority of Federation Council members are in favor of responding forcefully to the new American law.

That law, which Mr. Obama signed on Friday, is named for Sergei L. Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who died in prison in 2009 after trying to expose a huge government tax fraud and allegedly after being denied proper medical care.

The law requires the administration to develop a list of Russian citizens accused of abusing human rights, including officials involved in Mr. Magnitsky’s case, and bar them from traveling to the United States and from owning real estate or other financial assets there.

Andrew Roth contributed reporting.

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DealBook: Massachusetts Fines Morgan Stanley Over Facebook I.P.O.

10:48 a.m. | Updated Morgan Stanley is paying for its role in the troubled stock market debut of Facebook.

On Monday, Massachusetts’s top financial authority fined the bank $5 million for violating securities laws, the first major regulatory action tied to Facebook’s initial public stock offering.

William F. Galvin, the secretary of the commonwealth of Massachusetts, accused the bank of improperly influencing the stock offering process. The regulator’s consent order asserts that a senior Morgan Stanley banker coached Facebook on how to share information with stock analysts who cover the social media company, a potential violation of a landmark legal settlement with Wall Street. While the banker never contacted the analysts directly, his actions, Mr. Galvin said, put ordinary investors at a disadvantage because they lacked access to the same research.

“The broader message here is we are going to use any means possible to enforce the strict code in place about giving out information,” Mr. Galvin said in an interview. “We want to get the message across that if Wall Street wants to get confidence back, they can’t disadvantage Main Street.”

The consent order did not name the Morgan Stanley banker, referring to him as a “senior investment banker.” But information in the regulator’s order indicated that it was Michael Grimes, one of the nation’s most influential technology bankers.

“Morgan Stanley is committed to robust compliance with both the letter and the spirit of all applicable regulations and laws,” a Morgan Stanley spokeswoman, Mary Claire Delaney, said. Morgan Stanley, in settling the case, neither admitted nor denied guilt.

Mr. Grimes, through Ms. Delaney, declined to comment. Although the banker was referred to in the order, Mr. Grimes has not been personally accused of any wrongdoing.

The fine is a small dent in the firm’s overall profit from the Facebook public offering. Morgan Stanley received approximately $68 million in underwriting fees for the IPO, according to data provider Thomson Reuters.

Still, the costs associated with the botched I.P.O. are rising. In addition to Mr. Galvin’s fine, the firm agreed to compensate some customers who overpaid when they bought Facebook shares because of a technical glitch at the Nasdaq.

The Facebook public offering was one of the most highly anticipated debuts of the last decade. In the run-up to the offering, investor interest was robust, prompting the company to increase the size of the offering and raise the share price to $38.

But the I.P.O. quickly turned into a debacle. The first day of trading was plagued with problems. The shares quickly fell below their offering price. The stock closed on Monday at $26.75.

Since the offering, Mr. Galvin and other regulators have opened wide-ranging investigations into Facebook and the banks that handled its debut. The continuing inquiries by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority are examining how the banks disseminated nonpublic information to big investors — and whether it conflicted with Facebook’s public disclosures.

Regulators are also looking into Nasdaq, the exchange where Facebook trades. They are questioning whether the exchange failed to properly test its trading systems, which faltered during the stock offering.

The Massachusetts regulator is focused on Morgan Stanley’s communications with analysts.

Shortly before the Facebook offering, analysts at several banks lowered their growth estimates for the social network. The move came after Facebook issued an amended prospectus, detailing a potential slowdown in revenue.

A Facebook executive, whose name was not given in the order but who was referred to as the treasurer, also reached out to analysts. Mr. Galvin’s order asserted that the executive, in private conversations with analysts, had provided additional information on the revenue. The order indicated that Mr. Grimes was personally involved in the decision to file the new prospectus and to have Facebook communicate with analysts.

“Morgan Stanley’s senior investment banker did everything but make the phone calls himself,” the Massachusetts regulator said in a statement, referring to Mr. Grimes. “He not only rehearsed with Facebook’s treasurer who placed the calls to the research analysts, but he also drafted the majority of the script Facebook’s treasurer utilized.”

Just 12 minutes after filing the amended prospectus with regulators on May 9, the Facebook treasurer phoned Wall Street research analysts from her hotel, according to the order. She had a 15-minute conversation with Morgan Stanley analysts, and then spoke with JPMorgan Chase and other banks.

The calls provided the analysts with additional information that did not appear in the amended prospectus, the order said. The conversations, for example, included “quantitative information regarding Facebook’s” second-quarter 2012 projections.

This behavior, Mr. Galvin said, crossed the line, violating the regulatory settlement on stock research that Morgan Stanley and other companies signed in 2003. The agreement limits the communication between bankers and research analysts and bans companies from influencing stock reports to try to bolster banking operations.

The Morgan Stanley case falls into a curious gray area.

Bankers spend months preparing companies to go public, a role that includes providing guidance on research analysts. In this instance, Mr. Grimes did not personally place the calls, which would have been a clear violation of securities laws.

In his testimony before the Massachusetts regulator’s staff, Mr. Grimes indicated that the bank had pushed for Facebook to file publicly an amended prospectus to avoid “the appearance” that the company was sharing information with a select group of clients rather than broadly with investors. Mr. Grimes, the order noted, consulted with Morgan Stanley and Facebook lawyers. Ultimately, Facebook’s chief financial officer, David A. Ebersman, e-mailed the company’s board to say that the new filing would “help us to continue to deliver accurate” information without “someone claiming we are providing any selective disclosure.”

Mr. Grimes, in testimony with the regulator, further defended his role. While the Facebook treasurer was making the calls, he noted that “I was far down the hall so I wouldn’t hear anything.”

Even so, Mr. Grimes, according to the consent order, e-mailed Mr. Ebersman to say that the Facebook treasurer “was a champ in the hotel tonight,” after the treasurer wrapped up the calls.

A version of this article appeared in print on 12/18/2012, on page B1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Morgan Stanley Is Fined Over Facebook I.P.O. Role.

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