How M.I.T. Ensnared a Hacker, Bucking a Freewheeling Culture

Months earlier, the mysterious visitor had used the school’s computer network to begin copying millions of research articles belonging to Jstor, the nonprofit organization that sells subscription access to universities.

The visitor was clever — switching identifications to avoid being blocked by M.I.T.’s security system — but eventually the university believed it had shut down the intrusion, then spent weeks reassuring furious officials at Jstor that the downloading had been stopped.

However, on Jan. 3, 2011, according to internal M.I.T. documents obtained by The New York Times, the university was informed that the intruder was back — this time downloading documents very slowly, with a new method of access, so as not to alert the university’s security experts.

“The user was now not using any of the typical methods to access MITnet to avoid all usual methods of being disabled,” concluded Mike Halsall, a senior security analyst at M.I.T., referring to the university’s computer network.

What the university officials did not know at the time was that the intruder was Aaron Swartz, one of the shining lights of the technology world and a leading advocate for open access to information, with a fellowship down the road at Harvard.

Mr. Swartz’s actions presented M.I.T. with a crucial choice: the university could try to plug the weak spot in its network or it could try to catch the hacker, then unknown.

The decision — to treat the downloading as a continuing crime to be investigated rather than a security threat that had been stopped — led to a two-day cat-and-mouse game with Mr. Swartz and, ultimately, to charges of computer and wire fraud. Mr. Swartz, 26, who faced a potentially lengthy prison term and whose trial was to begin in April, was found dead of an apparent suicide in his Brooklyn apartment on Jan. 11.

Mr. Swartz’s supporters called M.I.T.’s decision a striking step for an institution that prides itself on operating an open computer network and open campus — the home of a freewheeling programming culture. M.I.T.’s defenders viewed the intrusion as a computer crime that needed to be taken seriously.

M.I.T. declined to confirm any of these details or comment on its actions during the investigation. The university’s president, L. Rafael Reif, said last week, “It pains me to think that M.I.T. played any role in a series of events that have ended in tragedy.” He appointed a professor, Hal Abelson, to analyze M.I.T.’s conduct in the investigation. To comment now, a spokeswoman for the university said, would be “to get ahead of that investigation.”

Early on Jan. 4, at 8:08 a.m., according to Mr. Halsall’s detailed internal timeline of the events, a security expert was able to locate that new method of access precisely — the wiring in a network closet in the basement of Building 16, a nondescript rectangular structure full of classrooms and labs that, like many buildings on campus, is kept unlocked.

In the closet, Mr. Halsall wrote, there was a netbook, or small portable computer, “hidden under a box,” connected to an external hard drive that was receiving the downloaded documents.

At 9:44 a.m. the M.I.T. police were called in; by 10:30 a.m., the Cambridge police were en route, and by 11 a.m., Michael Pickett, a Secret Service agent and expert on computer crime, was on the scene. On his recommendation, a surveillance camera was installed in the closet and a second laptop was connected to the network switch to track the traffic.

There may have been a reason for the university’s response. According to the timeline, the tech team detected brief activity from China on the netbook — something that occurs all the time but still represents potential trouble.

E-mails among M.I.T. officials that Tuesday in January 2011 highlight the pressures university officials felt over a problem they thought they had solved. Ann J. Wolpert, the director of libraries, wrote to Ellen Finnie Duranceau, the official who was receiving Jstor’s complaints: “Has there ever been a situation similar to this when we brought in campus police? The magnitude, systematic and careful nature of the abuses could be construed as approaching criminal action. Certainly, that’s how Jstor views it.”

Some of Mr. Swartz’s defenders argue that collecting and providing evidence to the government without a warrant may have violated federal and state wiretapping statutes.

John Schwartz contributed reporting.

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Well: A Check on Physicals

“Go Beyond Your Father’s Annual Physical. Live Longer, Feel Better”

This sales pitch for the Princeton Longevity Center’s “comprehensive exam” promises, for $5,300, to take “your health beyond the annual physical.” But it is far from certain whether this all-day checkup, and others less inclusive, make a meaningful difference to health or merely provide reassurance to the worried well.

Among physicians, researchers and insurers, there is an ongoing debate as to whether regular checkups really reduce the chances of becoming seriously ill or dying of an illness that would have been treatable had it been detected sooner.

No one questions the importance of regular exams for well babies, children and pregnant women, and the protective value of specific exams, like a Pap smear for sexually active women and a colonoscopy for people over 50. But arguments against the annual physical for all adults have been fueled by a growing number of studies that failed to find a medical benefit.

Some experts note that when something seemingly abnormal is picked up during a routine exam, the result is psychological distress for the patient, further testing that may do more harm than good, and increased medical expenses.

“Part of the problem of looking for abnormalities in perfectly well people is that rather a lot of us have them,” Dr. Margaret McCartney, a Scottish physician, wrote in The Daily Mail, a British newspaper. “Most of them won’t do us any harm.”

She cited the medical saga of Brian Mulroney, former prime minister of Canada. A CT scan performed as part of a checkup in 2005 revealed two small lumps in Mr. Mulroney’s lungs. Following surgery, he developed an inflamed pancreas, which landed him in intensive care. He spent six weeks in the hospital, then was readmitted a month later for removal of a cyst on his pancreas caused by the inflammation.

The lumps on his lungs, by the way, were benign. But what if, you may ask, Mr. Mulroney’s lumps had been cancer? Might not the discovery during a routine exam have saved his life?

Logic notwithstanding, the question of benefits versus risks from routine exams can be answered only by well-designed scientific research.

Defining the value of a routine checkup — determining who should get one and how often — is especially important now, because next year the Affordable Care Act will add some 30 million people to the roster of the medically insured, many of whom will be eligible for government-mandated preventive care through an annual exam.

Dr. Ateev Mehrotra of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, who directed a study of annual physicals in 2007, reported that an estimated 44.4 million adults in the United States undergo preventive exams each year. He concluded that if every adult were to receive such an exam, the health care system would be saddled with 145 million more visits every year, consuming 41 percent of all the time primary care doctors spend with patients.

There is already a shortage of such doctors and not nearly enough other health professionals — physician assistants and nurse practitioners — to meet future needs. If you think the wait to see your doctor is too long now, you may want to stock up on some epic novels to keep you occupied in the waiting room in the future.

Few would challenge the axiom that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Lacking incontrovertible evidence for the annual physical, this logic has long been used to justify it:

¶ If a thorough exam and conversation about your well-being alerts your doctor to a health problem that is best addressed sooner rather than later, isn’t that better than waiting until the problem becomes too troublesome to ignore?

¶ What if you have a potentially fatal ailment, like heart disease or cancer, that may otherwise be undetected until it is well advanced or incurable?

¶ And wouldn’t it help to uncover risk factors like elevated blood sugar or high cholesterol that could prevent an incipient ailment if they are reversed before causing irreparable damage?

Even if there is no direct medical benefit, many doctors say that having their patients visit once a year helps to maintain a meaningful relationship and alert doctors to changes in patients’ lives that could affect health. It is also an opportunity to give patients needed immunizations and to remind them to get their eyes, teeth and skin checked.

But the long-sacrosanct recommendation that everyone should have an annual physical was challenged yet again recently by researchers at the Nordic Cochrane Center in Copenhagen.

The research team, led by Dr. Lasse T. Krogsboll, analyzed the findings of 14 scientifically designed clinical trials of routine checkups that followed participants for up to 22 years. The team found no benefit to the risk of death or serious illness among seemingly healthy people who had general checkups, compared with people who did not. Their findings were published in November in BMJ (formerly The British Medical Journal).

In introducing their analysis, the Danish team noted that routine exams consist of “combinations of screening tests, few of which have been adequately studied in randomized trials.” Among possible harms from health checks, they listed “overdiagnosis, overtreatment, distress or injury from invasive follow-up tests, distress due to false positive test results, false reassurance due to false negative test results, adverse psychosocial effects due to labeling, and difficulties with getting insurance.”

Furthermore, they wrote, “general health checks are likely to be expensive and may result in lost opportunities to improve other areas of health care.”

In summarizing their results, the team said, “We did not find an effect on total or cause-specific mortality from general health checks in adult populations unselected for risk factors or disease. For the causes of death most likely to be influenced by health checks, cardiovascular mortality and cancer mortality, there were no reductions either.”

What, then, should people do to monitor their health?

Whenever you see your doctor, for any reason, make sure your blood pressure is checked. If a year or more has elapsed since your last blood test, get a new one.

Keep immunizations up to date, and get the screening tests specifically recommended based on your age, gender and known risk factors, including your family and personal medical history.

And if you develop a symptom, like unexplained pain, shortness of breath, digestive problems, a lump, a skin lesion that doesn’t heal, or unusual fatigue or depression, consult your doctor without delay. Seek further help if the initial diagnosis and treatment fails to bring relief.

Read More..

Well: A Check on Physicals

“Go Beyond Your Father’s Annual Physical. Live Longer, Feel Better”

This sales pitch for the Princeton Longevity Center’s “comprehensive exam” promises, for $5,300, to take “your health beyond the annual physical.” But it is far from certain whether this all-day checkup, and others less inclusive, make a meaningful difference to health or merely provide reassurance to the worried well.

Among physicians, researchers and insurers, there is an ongoing debate as to whether regular checkups really reduce the chances of becoming seriously ill or dying of an illness that would have been treatable had it been detected sooner.

No one questions the importance of regular exams for well babies, children and pregnant women, and the protective value of specific exams, like a Pap smear for sexually active women and a colonoscopy for people over 50. But arguments against the annual physical for all adults have been fueled by a growing number of studies that failed to find a medical benefit.

Some experts note that when something seemingly abnormal is picked up during a routine exam, the result is psychological distress for the patient, further testing that may do more harm than good, and increased medical expenses.

“Part of the problem of looking for abnormalities in perfectly well people is that rather a lot of us have them,” Dr. Margaret McCartney, a Scottish physician, wrote in The Daily Mail, a British newspaper. “Most of them won’t do us any harm.”

She cited the medical saga of Brian Mulroney, former prime minister of Canada. A CT scan performed as part of a checkup in 2005 revealed two small lumps in Mr. Mulroney’s lungs. Following surgery, he developed an inflamed pancreas, which landed him in intensive care. He spent six weeks in the hospital, then was readmitted a month later for removal of a cyst on his pancreas caused by the inflammation.

The lumps on his lungs, by the way, were benign. But what if, you may ask, Mr. Mulroney’s lumps had been cancer? Might not the discovery during a routine exam have saved his life?

Logic notwithstanding, the question of benefits versus risks from routine exams can be answered only by well-designed scientific research.

Defining the value of a routine checkup — determining who should get one and how often — is especially important now, because next year the Affordable Care Act will add some 30 million people to the roster of the medically insured, many of whom will be eligible for government-mandated preventive care through an annual exam.

Dr. Ateev Mehrotra of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, who directed a study of annual physicals in 2007, reported that an estimated 44.4 million adults in the United States undergo preventive exams each year. He concluded that if every adult were to receive such an exam, the health care system would be saddled with 145 million more visits every year, consuming 41 percent of all the time primary care doctors spend with patients.

There is already a shortage of such doctors and not nearly enough other health professionals — physician assistants and nurse practitioners — to meet future needs. If you think the wait to see your doctor is too long now, you may want to stock up on some epic novels to keep you occupied in the waiting room in the future.

Few would challenge the axiom that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Lacking incontrovertible evidence for the annual physical, this logic has long been used to justify it:

¶ If a thorough exam and conversation about your well-being alerts your doctor to a health problem that is best addressed sooner rather than later, isn’t that better than waiting until the problem becomes too troublesome to ignore?

¶ What if you have a potentially fatal ailment, like heart disease or cancer, that may otherwise be undetected until it is well advanced or incurable?

¶ And wouldn’t it help to uncover risk factors like elevated blood sugar or high cholesterol that could prevent an incipient ailment if they are reversed before causing irreparable damage?

Even if there is no direct medical benefit, many doctors say that having their patients visit once a year helps to maintain a meaningful relationship and alert doctors to changes in patients’ lives that could affect health. It is also an opportunity to give patients needed immunizations and to remind them to get their eyes, teeth and skin checked.

But the long-sacrosanct recommendation that everyone should have an annual physical was challenged yet again recently by researchers at the Nordic Cochrane Center in Copenhagen.

The research team, led by Dr. Lasse T. Krogsboll, analyzed the findings of 14 scientifically designed clinical trials of routine checkups that followed participants for up to 22 years. The team found no benefit to the risk of death or serious illness among seemingly healthy people who had general checkups, compared with people who did not. Their findings were published in November in BMJ (formerly The British Medical Journal).

In introducing their analysis, the Danish team noted that routine exams consist of “combinations of screening tests, few of which have been adequately studied in randomized trials.” Among possible harms from health checks, they listed “overdiagnosis, overtreatment, distress or injury from invasive follow-up tests, distress due to false positive test results, false reassurance due to false negative test results, adverse psychosocial effects due to labeling, and difficulties with getting insurance.”

Furthermore, they wrote, “general health checks are likely to be expensive and may result in lost opportunities to improve other areas of health care.”

In summarizing their results, the team said, “We did not find an effect on total or cause-specific mortality from general health checks in adult populations unselected for risk factors or disease. For the causes of death most likely to be influenced by health checks, cardiovascular mortality and cancer mortality, there were no reductions either.”

What, then, should people do to monitor their health?

Whenever you see your doctor, for any reason, make sure your blood pressure is checked. If a year or more has elapsed since your last blood test, get a new one.

Keep immunizations up to date, and get the screening tests specifically recommended based on your age, gender and known risk factors, including your family and personal medical history.

And if you develop a symptom, like unexplained pain, shortness of breath, digestive problems, a lump, a skin lesion that doesn’t heal, or unusual fatigue or depression, consult your doctor without delay. Seek further help if the initial diagnosis and treatment fails to bring relief.

Read More..

Hollywood Makes Its Case for ‘Zero Dark Thirty’

LOS ANGELES — Hollywood is pushing back, at least a little, against the Washington power players and others who have put the squeeze on “Zero Dark Thirty.”

In the last week, Mark Boal, who is a producer of the film and wrote the screenplay, hired Jeffrey H. Smith, a prominent lawyer who specializes in domestic security and First Amendment issues, Mr. Smith confirmed on Friday. His mission is to represent Mr. Boal with regard to any approach from Congress or the executive branch in connection with their inquiries into the film’s depiction of torture in the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

Meanwhile, Christopher J. Dodd, the president of the Motion Picture Association of America, raised a warning on Friday for those who are calling for investigations into the film.

“There could, in my view, be a chilling effect if, in the end of all this, you have a screenwriter or a director called before an investigating committee,” Mr. Dodd said. He stressed that he was speaking for himself rather than for the association’s member studios, including Sony Pictures, which released “Zero Dark Thirty.”

Mr. Dodd, who served five terms in the Senate before retiring in 2010, said he could not recall another movie being so heavily scrutinized by the government. He expressed concern that the military or other government agencies that have routinely helped filmmakers might withhold future cooperation rather than risk similar pressure.

“ ‘JFK’ and ‘All the President’s Men’ were controversial,” Mr. Dodd said, noting that neither of those films seemed to draw the same level of attention from lawmakers.

Three senators — Dianne Feinstein of California, Carl Levin of Michigan and John McCain of Arizona — have publicly criticized “Zero Dark Thirty” because they believe it sent a message that torture was an effective tool in the hunt for Bin Laden. In a Dec. 19 letter to Michael Lynton, the chairman and chief executive of Sony Pictures, they asked the studio to act to change that impression, without specifying what they expected it to do. (The film had a limited theatrical run late last month, and was released more broadly on Jan. 11.)

In two letters sent in December to Michael Morell, the acting director of the Central Intelligence Agency, the senators, citing their affiliation with the Select Committee on Intelligence, asked that the agency provide information and documents about its contact with the filmmakers.

On Friday, Mr. Dodd said he initially screened “Zero Dark Thirty” at the Motion Picture Association’s Washington headquarters for Ms. Feinstein, whom he described as a close friend. “She had problems with it,” he said.

Ms. Feinstein’s objections have centered on what she has said is a portrayal of the efficacy of torture that is at odds with accounts that have been provided to Congress in the past by intelligence operatives.

In the meantime, Mr. Smith, a former general counsel of the C.I.A. who has represented Henry Kissinger, Robert McNamara and other former government officials in security-related matters, confirmed in an e-mail that he represents Mr. Boal.

The government inquiries “raise serious questions about the nature of the cooperation between the government and those who seek to make films about sensitive and important issues,” Mr. Smith said in a brief statement.

To date, he said, Mr. Boal has not been contacted in connection with the inquiries.

Last week Kathryn Bigelow, the film’s director, made her strongest public statement to date about the torture controversy.

“Those of us who work in the arts know that depiction is not endorsement,” she said in a statement published in The Los Angeles Times. “If it was, no artists would be able to paint inhumane practices, no author could write about them and no filmmaker could delve into the thorny subjects of our time.”

Torture, she added, “is a part of the story we could not ignore.”

The criticism of “Zero Dark Thirty” has extended beyond Washington and included members of the film industry. Last weekend, as Hollywood gathered for the Golden Globe Awards, the actors David Clennon, Edward Asner and Martin Sheen — all members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences — were organizing a public condemnation of the film for what they have called its “tolerance” of torture.

That push prompted a public response by Amy Pascal, the co-chairwoman of Sony Pictures, who called it “reprehensible.” Jessica Chastain, the film’s star, was honored as the year’s best dramatic actress at the Golden Globes, and the movie has received five Oscar nominations from the academy, including one for best picture. Ms. Bigelow was not nominated for a directing Oscar, leading to speculation that the torture controversy had worked against her selection.

After the Golden Globes, Mr. Boal flew to Europe to promote “Zero Dark Thirty” as it opened in Britain and France.

In a series of e-mails, Mr. Boal said he found the reception to the movie there to be “much smoother” than in the United States.

European interviewers appeared to regard the torture controversy more as a reckoning among Americans than as something that directly involved them, he said.

And in France, he said, a number of interviewers compared the film’s airing of the torture issue “favorably to France’s allergy to and even censorship of” movies about its role in Algeria’s war for independence.

“We might bicker,” Mr. Boal said, “but at least we face the past in my country. Sorta.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 20, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the title of Michael Lynton at Sony Pictures. He is the chairman and chief executive, not the co-chairman.

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Priest Is Planning to Defy the Vatican’s Orders to Stay Quiet

Jekaterina Saveljeva for The New York Times

The Rev. Tony Flannery, an Irish priest, was suspended by the Vatican last year. “I refuse to be terrified into submission,” he said.

DUBLIN — A well-known Irish Catholic priest plans to defy Vatican authorities on Sunday by breaking his silence about what he says is a campaign against him by the church over his advocacy of more open discussion on church teachings.

The Rev. Tony Flannery, 66, who was suspended by the Vatican last year, said he was told by the Vatican that he would be allowed to return to ministry only if he agreed to write, sign and publish a statement agreeing, among other things, that women should never be ordained as priests and that he would adhere to church orthodoxy on matters like contraception and homosexuality.

“How can I put my name to such a document when it goes against everything I believe in,” he said in an interview on Wednesday. “If I signed this, it would be a betrayal not only of myself but of my fellow priests and lay Catholics who want change. I refuse to be terrified into submission.”

Father Flannery, a regular contributor to religious publications, said he planned to make his case public at a news conference here on Sunday.

The Vatican’s doctrinal office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, wrote to Father Flannery’s religious superior, the Rev. Michael Brehl, last year instructing him to remove Father Flannery from his ministry in County Galway, to ensure he did not publish any more articles in religious or other publications, and to tell him not to give interviews to the news media.

In the letter, the Vatican objected in particular to an article published in 2010 in Reality, an Irish religious magazine. In the article, Father Flannery, a Redemptorist priest, wrote that he no longer believed that “the priesthood as we currently have it in the church originated with Jesus” or that he designated “a special group of his followers as priests.”

Instead, he wrote, “It is more likely that some time after Jesus, a select and privileged group within the community who had abrogated power and authority to themselves, interpreted the occasion of the Last Supper in a manner that suited their own agenda.”

Father Flannery said the Vatican wanted him specifically to recant the statement, and affirm that Christ instituted the church with a permanent hierarchical structure and that bishops are divinely established successors to the apostles.

He believes the church’s treatment of him, which he described as a “Spanish Inquisition-style campaign,” is symptomatic of a definite conservative shift under Pope Benedict XVI.

“I have been writing thought-provoking articles and books for decades without hindrance,” he said. “This campaign is being orchestrated by a secretive body that refuses to meet me. Surely I should at least be allowed to explain my views to my accusers.”

His superior was also told to order Father Flannery to withdraw from his leadership role in the Association of Catholic Priests, a group formed in 2009 to articulate the views of rank-and-file members of the clergy.

In reply to an association statement expressing solidarity with Father Flannery, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith denied it was acting in a secretive manner, pointed out that Father Flannery’s views could be construed as “heresy” under church law, and threatened “canonical penalties,” including excommunication, if he did not change his views.

This month, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith wrote to an American priest, Roy Bourgeois, notifying him of his laicization, following his excommunication in 2008 over his support for the ordination of women.

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Jeffrey Sprecher’s Improbable Path to Buying the N.Y.S.E.

WHEN nearly all else had failed, Jeffrey C. Sprecher flew to New York City and crashed at his sisters’ apartment, a cramped walk-up on the Upper West Side, one flight above a noisy bar.

It was January 2000, and Mr. Sprecher had been cold-calling Wall Street for weeks. He was searching desperately for someone to back his small company in Atlanta, a business that was eating up his money and years of his life.

That’s when a black limousine pulled up in front of the bar, Jake’s Dilemma. The limo had been sent by the mighty Goldman Sachs to fetch Mr. Sprecher, and as he sank into the back seat that winter day, he set off on an improbable journey that has since taken him to the pinnacle of American finance.

Today Mr. Sprecher, a man virtually unknown outside of financial circles, is poised to buy the New York Stock Exchange. Not one of the 2,300 or so stocks traded on the New York Stock Exchange (combined value of those shares: about $20.1 trillion). No, Jeff Sprecher is buying the entire New York Stock Exchange.

It sounds preposterous. A businessman from Atlanta blows into New York and walks off with the colonnaded high temple of American capitalism. But if all goes according to plan, his $8.2 billion acquisition, announced a few days before Christmas, will close later this year. And with that, 221 years of Wall Street history will come to an end. No more will New York be the master of the New York Stock Exchange. Instead, from its bland headquarters 750 miles from Wall Street, Mr. Sprecher’s young company, IntercontinentalExchange, will run the largest stock exchange in the nation and the world.

Mr. Sprecher, 57, certainly plays the role of a wily upstart. He may wear power suits and a Patek Philippe watch, but he comes across as unusually casual and self-deprecating for a man in his position. He pokes fun at himself for his shortcomings — “I don’t know how to manage people,” he says — and his love of obscure documentaries.

How the New York Stock Exchange fell into Mr. Sprecher’s hands is, at heart, a story of the disruptive power of innovation. ICE, as IntercontinentalExchange is known, did not even exist 13 years ago. It has no cavernous trading floor, no gilded halls, no sweaty brokers braying for money on the financial markets. What it has is technology.

Like many young companies that are upending the old order in business, ICE has used computer power to do things faster and cheaper, if not always better, than people can. Its rapid ascent reflects a new Wall Street where high-speed computers now dominate trading, sometimes with alarming consequences. New, electronic trading systems have greatly reduced the cost of buying and selling stocks, thus saving mutual funds — and, by extension, ordinary investors — countless millions. But they have also helped usher in a period of hair-raising volatility.

Mr. Sprecher (pronounced SPRECK-er) has probably done more than anyone else to dismantle the trading floors of old and replace human brokers with machines. Along the way, he and ICE have traced an arc through some of the defining business stories of our time — from the rise and fall of Enron, to the transformation of old-school investment banks into vast trading operations, to the Wall Street excesses that not long ago helped derail the entire economy. Now, after a series of bold acquisitions, he is about to become the big boss of the Big Board.

Does it really matter who owns the New York Stock Exchange and its parent company, NYSE Euronext? For most people, stock exchanges are probably a bit like plumbing. Most of us don’t think much about them — until something goes wrong. But lately, some things have gone spectacularly wrong.

One sign of trouble came in 2010, when an errant trade ricocheted through computer networks and touched off one of the most harrowing moments in stock market history. The Dow Jones industrial average plunged 900 points in a matter of minutes, and a new phrase entered the lexicon: flash crash.

Since then, flash crashes in individual stocks have been remarkably common, as the centuries-old system of central exchanges has given way to a field of competing electronic systems.

ICE wasn’t involved in any of these problems. In fact, it has been praised as one of the first exchanges to put limits on lightning-quick, high-frequency trading. This points to Mr. Sprecher’s deftness in piloting his company through periods of regulation, deregulation and now re-regulation.

While many banking executives have clashed with Washington, Mr. Sprecher has sensed the changing winds and tacked accordingly. He also stays close — some say too close — to the powerful Wall Street firms that are his customers.

It is perhaps unsurprising that some of the people who make their living on the Big Board’s floor are a bit nervous about the exchange’s new boss. But Mr. Sprecher says they have nothing to fear. His friends and business associates say he could actually turn out to be the best hope for restoring trust in the stock market. After all, he has beaten the odds before.

“There were a number of times when the odds were long, but he wasn’t deterred from stepping in,” says James Newsome, who was Mr. Sprecher’s regulator at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission before becoming his competitor as chief executive of the New York Mercantile Exchange. “A lot of people, if they don’t think they will win, they won’t participate. Jeff doesn’t operate like that.”

For now, Mr. Sprecher is still spending much of his time at ICE’s headquarters in suburban Atlanta. The contrast with the New York Stock Exchange is striking. Behind its neoclassical face, the Big Board is a sprawling labyrinth of historic oil paintings, gilded leather chairs, stained wood and elegant dining rooms — all set amid crowds of gawking tourists.

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Well: Holly the Cat's Incredible Journey

Nobody knows how it happened: an indoor housecat who got lost on a family excursion managing, after two months and about 200 miles, to return to her hometown.

Even scientists are baffled by how Holly, a 4-year-old tortoiseshell who in early November became separated from Jacob and Bonnie Richter at an R.V. rally in Daytona Beach, Fla., appeared on New Year’s Eve — staggering, weak and emaciated — in a backyard about a mile from the Richter’s house in West Palm Beach.

“Are you sure it’s the same cat?” wondered John Bradshaw, director of the University of Bristol’s Anthrozoology Institute. In other cases, he has suspected, “the cats are just strays, and the people have got kind of a mental justification for expecting it to be the same cat.”

But Holly not only had distinctive black-and-brown harlequin patterns on her fur, but also an implanted microchip to identify her.

“I really believe these stories, but they’re just hard to explain,” said Marc Bekoff, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Colorado. “Maybe being street-smart, maybe reading animal cues, maybe being able to read cars, maybe being a good hunter. I have no data for this.”

There is, in fact, little scientific dogma on cat navigation. Migratory animals like birds, turtles and insects have been studied more closely, and use magnetic fields, olfactory cues, or orientation by the sun.

Scientists say it is more common, although still rare, to hear of dogs returning home, perhaps suggesting, Dr. Bradshaw said, that they have inherited wolves’ ability to navigate using magnetic clues. But it’s also possible that dogs get taken on more family trips, and that lost dogs are more easily noticed or helped by people along the way.

Cats navigate well around familiar landscapes, memorizing locations by sight and smell, and easily figuring out shortcuts, Dr. Bradshaw said.

Strange, faraway locations would seem problematic, although he and Patrick Bateson, a behavioral biologist at Cambridge University, say that cats can sense smells across long distances. “Let’s say they associate the smell of pine with wind coming from the north, so they move in a southerly direction,” Dr. Bateson said.

Peter Borchelt, a New York animal behaviorist, wondered if Holly followed the Florida coast by sight or sound, tracking Interstate 95 and deciding to “keep that to the right and keep the ocean to the left.”

But, he said, “nobody’s going to do an experiment and take a bunch of cats in different directions and see which ones get home.”

The closest, said Roger Tabor, a British cat biologist, may have been a 1954 study in Germany which cats placed in a covered circular maze with exits every 15 degrees most often exited in the direction of their homes, but more reliably if their homes were less than five kilometers away.

New research by the National Geographic and University of Georgia’s Kitty Cams Project, using video footage from 55 pet cats wearing video cameras on their collars, suggests cat behavior is exceedingly complex.

For example, the Kitty Cams study found that four of the cats were two-timing their owners, visiting other homes for food and affection. Not every cat, it seems, shares Holly’s loyalty.

KittyCams also showed most of the cats engaging in risky behavior, including crossing roads and “eating and drinking substances away from home,” risks Holly undoubtedly experienced and seems lucky to have survived.

But there have been other cats who made unexpected comebacks.

“It’s actually happened to me,” said Jackson Galaxy, a cat behaviorist who hosts “My Cat From Hell” on Animal Planet. While living in Boulder, Colo., he moved across town, whereupon his indoor cat, Rabbi, fled and appeared 10 days later at the previous house, “walking five miles through an area he had never been before,” Mr. Galaxy said.

Professor Tabor cited longer-distance reports he considered credible: Murka, a tortoiseshell in Russia, traveling about 325 miles home to Moscow from her owner’s mother’s house in Voronezh in 1989; Ninja, who returned to Farmington, Utah, in 1997, a year after her family moved from there to Mill Creek, Wash.; and Howie, an indoor Persian cat in Australia who in 1978 ran away from relatives his vacationing family left him with and eventually traveled 1,000 miles to his family’s home.

Professor Tabor also said a Siamese in the English village of Black Notley repeatedly hopped a train, disembarked at White Notley, and walked several miles back to Black Notley.

Still, explaining such journeys is not black and white.

In the Florida case, one glimpse through the factual fog comes on the little cat’s feet. While Dr. Bradshaw speculated Holly might have gotten a lift, perhaps sneaking under the hood of a truck heading down I-95, her paws suggest she was not driven all the way, nor did Holly go lightly.

“Her pads on her feet were bleeding,” Ms. Richter said. “Her claws are worn weird. The front ones are really sharp, the back ones worn down to nothing.”

Scientists say that is consistent with a long walk, since back feet provide propulsion, while front claws engage in activities like tearing. The Richters also said Holly had gone from 13.5 to 7 pounds.

Holly hardly seemed an adventurous wanderer, though her background might have given her a genetic advantage. Her mother was a feral cat roaming the Richters’ mobile home park, and Holly was born inside somebody’s air-conditioner, Ms. Richter said. When, at about six weeks old, Holly padded into their carport and jumped into the lap of Mr. Richter’s mother, there were “scars on her belly from when the air conditioner was turned on,” Ms. Richter said.

Scientists say that such early experience was too brief to explain how Holly might have been comfortable in the wild — after all, she spent most of her life as an indoor cat, except for occasionally running outside to chase lizards. But it might imply innate personality traits like nimbleness or toughness.

“You’ve got these real variations in temperament,” Dr. Bekoff said. “Fish can by shy or bold; there seem to be shy and bold spiders. This cat, it could be she has the personality of a survivor.”

He said being an indoor cat would not extinguish survivalist behaviors, like hunting mice or being aware of the sun’s orientation.

The Richters — Bonnie, 63, a retired nurse, and Jacob, 70, a retired airline mechanics’ supervisor and accomplished bowler — began traveling with Holly only last year, and she easily tolerated a hotel, a cabin or the R.V.

But during the Good Sam R.V. Rally in Daytona, when they were camping near the speedway with 3,000 other motor homes, Holly bolted when Ms. Richter’s mother opened the door one night. Fireworks the next day may have further spooked her, and, after searching for days, alerting animal agencies and posting fliers, the Richters returned home catless.

Two weeks later, an animal rescue worker called the Richters to say a cat resembling Holly had been spotted eating behind the Daytona franchise of Hooters, where employees put out food for feral cats.

Then, on New Year’s Eve, Barb Mazzola, a 52-year-old university executive assistant, noticed a cat “barely standing” in her backyard in West Palm Beach, struggling even to meow. Over six days, Ms. Mazzola and her children cared for the cat, putting out food, including special milk for cats, and eventually the cat came inside.

They named her Cosette after the orphan in Les Misérables, and took her to a veterinarian, Dr. Sara Beg at Paws2Help. Dr. Beg said the cat was underweight and dehydrated, had “back claws and nail beds worn down, probably from all that walking on pavement,” but was “bright and alert” and had no parasites, heartworm or viruses. “She was hesitant and scared around people she didn’t know, so I don’t think she went up to people and got a lift,” Dr. Beg said. “I think she made the journey on her own.”

At Paws2Help, Ms. Mazzola said, “I almost didn’t want to ask, because I wanted to keep her, but I said, ‘Just check and make sure she doesn’t have a microchip.’” When told the cat did, “I just cried.”

The Richters cried, too upon seeing Holly, who instantly relaxed when placed on Mr. Richter’s shoulder. Re-entry is proceeding well, but the mystery persists.

“We haven’t the slightest idea how they do this,” Mr. Galaxy said. “Anybody who says they do is lying, and, if you find it, please God, tell me what it is.”

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Well: Holly the Cat's Incredible Journey

Nobody knows how it happened: an indoor housecat who got lost on a family excursion managing, after two months and about 200 miles, to return to her hometown.

Even scientists are baffled by how Holly, a 4-year-old tortoiseshell who in early November became separated from Jacob and Bonnie Richter at an R.V. rally in Daytona Beach, Fla., appeared on New Year’s Eve — staggering, weak and emaciated — in a backyard about a mile from the Richter’s house in West Palm Beach.

“Are you sure it’s the same cat?” wondered John Bradshaw, director of the University of Bristol’s Anthrozoology Institute. In other cases, he has suspected, “the cats are just strays, and the people have got kind of a mental justification for expecting it to be the same cat.”

But Holly not only had distinctive black-and-brown harlequin patterns on her fur, but also an implanted microchip to identify her.

“I really believe these stories, but they’re just hard to explain,” said Marc Bekoff, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Colorado. “Maybe being street-smart, maybe reading animal cues, maybe being able to read cars, maybe being a good hunter. I have no data for this.”

There is, in fact, little scientific dogma on cat navigation. Migratory animals like birds, turtles and insects have been studied more closely, and use magnetic fields, olfactory cues, or orientation by the sun.

Scientists say it is more common, although still rare, to hear of dogs returning home, perhaps suggesting, Dr. Bradshaw said, that they have inherited wolves’ ability to navigate using magnetic clues. But it’s also possible that dogs get taken on more family trips, and that lost dogs are more easily noticed or helped by people along the way.

Cats navigate well around familiar landscapes, memorizing locations by sight and smell, and easily figuring out shortcuts, Dr. Bradshaw said.

Strange, faraway locations would seem problematic, although he and Patrick Bateson, a behavioral biologist at Cambridge University, say that cats can sense smells across long distances. “Let’s say they associate the smell of pine with wind coming from the north, so they move in a southerly direction,” Dr. Bateson said.

Peter Borchelt, a New York animal behaviorist, wondered if Holly followed the Florida coast by sight or sound, tracking Interstate 95 and deciding to “keep that to the right and keep the ocean to the left.”

But, he said, “nobody’s going to do an experiment and take a bunch of cats in different directions and see which ones get home.”

The closest, said Roger Tabor, a British cat biologist, may have been a 1954 study in Germany which cats placed in a covered circular maze with exits every 15 degrees most often exited in the direction of their homes, but more reliably if their homes were less than five kilometers away.

New research by the National Geographic and University of Georgia’s Kitty Cams Project, using video footage from 55 pet cats wearing video cameras on their collars, suggests cat behavior is exceedingly complex.

For example, the Kitty Cams study found that four of the cats were two-timing their owners, visiting other homes for food and affection. Not every cat, it seems, shares Holly’s loyalty.

KittyCams also showed most of the cats engaging in risky behavior, including crossing roads and “eating and drinking substances away from home,” risks Holly undoubtedly experienced and seems lucky to have survived.

But there have been other cats who made unexpected comebacks.

“It’s actually happened to me,” said Jackson Galaxy, a cat behaviorist who hosts “My Cat From Hell” on Animal Planet. While living in Boulder, Colo., he moved across town, whereupon his indoor cat, Rabbi, fled and appeared 10 days later at the previous house, “walking five miles through an area he had never been before,” Mr. Galaxy said.

Professor Tabor cited longer-distance reports he considered credible: Murka, a tortoiseshell in Russia, traveling about 325 miles home to Moscow from her owner’s mother’s house in Voronezh in 1989; Ninja, who returned to Farmington, Utah, in 1997, a year after her family moved from there to Mill Creek, Wash.; and Howie, an indoor Persian cat in Australia who in 1978 ran away from relatives his vacationing family left him with and eventually traveled 1,000 miles to his family’s home.

Professor Tabor also said a Siamese in the English village of Black Notley repeatedly hopped a train, disembarked at White Notley, and walked several miles back to Black Notley.

Still, explaining such journeys is not black and white.

In the Florida case, one glimpse through the factual fog comes on the little cat’s feet. While Dr. Bradshaw speculated Holly might have gotten a lift, perhaps sneaking under the hood of a truck heading down I-95, her paws suggest she was not driven all the way, nor did Holly go lightly.

“Her pads on her feet were bleeding,” Ms. Richter said. “Her claws are worn weird. The front ones are really sharp, the back ones worn down to nothing.”

Scientists say that is consistent with a long walk, since back feet provide propulsion, while front claws engage in activities like tearing. The Richters also said Holly had gone from 13.5 to 7 pounds.

Holly hardly seemed an adventurous wanderer, though her background might have given her a genetic advantage. Her mother was a feral cat roaming the Richters’ mobile home park, and Holly was born inside somebody’s air-conditioner, Ms. Richter said. When, at about six weeks old, Holly padded into their carport and jumped into the lap of Mr. Richter’s mother, there were “scars on her belly from when the air conditioner was turned on,” Ms. Richter said.

Scientists say that such early experience was too brief to explain how Holly might have been comfortable in the wild — after all, she spent most of her life as an indoor cat, except for occasionally running outside to chase lizards. But it might imply innate personality traits like nimbleness or toughness.

“You’ve got these real variations in temperament,” Dr. Bekoff said. “Fish can by shy or bold; there seem to be shy and bold spiders. This cat, it could be she has the personality of a survivor.”

He said being an indoor cat would not extinguish survivalist behaviors, like hunting mice or being aware of the sun’s orientation.

The Richters — Bonnie, 63, a retired nurse, and Jacob, 70, a retired airline mechanics’ supervisor and accomplished bowler — began traveling with Holly only last year, and she easily tolerated a hotel, a cabin or the R.V.

But during the Good Sam R.V. Rally in Daytona, when they were camping near the speedway with 3,000 other motor homes, Holly bolted when Ms. Richter’s mother opened the door one night. Fireworks the next day may have further spooked her, and, after searching for days, alerting animal agencies and posting fliers, the Richters returned home catless.

Two weeks later, an animal rescue worker called the Richters to say a cat resembling Holly had been spotted eating behind the Daytona franchise of Hooters, where employees put out food for feral cats.

Then, on New Year’s Eve, Barb Mazzola, a 52-year-old university executive assistant, noticed a cat “barely standing” in her backyard in West Palm Beach, struggling even to meow. Over six days, Ms. Mazzola and her children cared for the cat, putting out food, including special milk for cats, and eventually the cat came inside.

They named her Cosette after the orphan in Les Misérables, and took her to a veterinarian, Dr. Sara Beg at Paws2Help. Dr. Beg said the cat was underweight and dehydrated, had “back claws and nail beds worn down, probably from all that walking on pavement,” but was “bright and alert” and had no parasites, heartworm or viruses. “She was hesitant and scared around people she didn’t know, so I don’t think she went up to people and got a lift,” Dr. Beg said. “I think she made the journey on her own.”

At Paws2Help, Ms. Mazzola said, “I almost didn’t want to ask, because I wanted to keep her, but I said, ‘Just check and make sure she doesn’t have a microchip.’” When told the cat did, “I just cried.”

The Richters cried, too upon seeing Holly, who instantly relaxed when placed on Mr. Richter’s shoulder. Re-entry is proceeding well, but the mystery persists.

“We haven’t the slightest idea how they do this,” Mr. Galaxy said. “Anybody who says they do is lying, and, if you find it, please God, tell me what it is.”

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Analysis: Amid Tears Lance Armstrong Leaves Unanswered Questions in Oprah Winfrey Interview

In an extensive interview with Oprah Winfrey that was shown over two nights, Lance Armstrong admitted publicly for the first time that he doped throughout his cycling career. He revealed that all seven of his Tour de France victories were fueled by doping, that he never felt bad about cheating, and that he had covered up a positive drug test at the 1999 Tour with a backdated doctor’s prescription for banned cortisone.

Armstrong, the once defiant cyclist, also became choked up when he discussed how he told his oldest child that the rumors about Armstrong’s doping were true.

Even with all that, the interview will most likely be remembered for what it was missing.

Armstrong had not subjected himself to questioning from anyone in the news media since United States antidoping officials laid out their case against him in October. He chose not to appeal their ruling, leaving him with a lifetime ban from Olympic sports.

He personally chose Winfrey for his big reveal, and it went predictably. Winfrey allowed him to share his thoughts and elicited emotions from him, but she consistently failed to ask critical follow-up questions that would have addressed the most vexing aspects of Armstrong’s deception.

She did not press him on who helped him dope or cover up his drug use for more than a decade. Nor did she ask him why he chose to take banned performance-enhancing substances even after cancer had threatened his life.

Winfrey also did not push him to answer whether he had admitted to doctors in an Indianapolis hospital in 1996 that he had used performance-enhancing drugs, a confession a former teammate and his wife claimed they overheard that day. To get to the bottom of his deceit, antidoping officials said, Armstrong has to be willing to provide more details.

“He spoke to a talk-show host,” David Howman, the director general of the World Anti-Doping Agency, said from Montreal on Friday. “I don’t think any of it amounted to assistance to the antidoping community, let alone substantial assistance. You bundle it all up and say, ‘So what?’

Jeffrey M. Tillotson, the lawyer for an insurance company that unsuccessfully withheld a $5 million bonus from Armstrong on the basis that he had cheated to win the Tour de France in 2004, said his client would make a decision over the weekend about whether to sue Armstrong. If it proceeds, the company, SCA Promotions, will seek $12 million, the total it paid Armstrong in bonuses and legal fees.

“It seemed to us that he was more sorry that he had been caught than for what he had done,” Tillotson said. “If he’s serious about rehabbing himself, he needs to start making amends to the people he bullied and vilified, and he needs to start paying money back.”

Armstrong, who said he once believed himself to be invincible, explained in the portion of the interview broadcast Friday night that he started to take steps toward redemption last month. Then, after dozens of questions had already been lobbed his way, he became emotional when he described how he told his 13-year-old son, Luke, that yes, his father had cheated by doping. That talk happened last month over the holidays, Armstrong said as he fought back tears.

“I said, listen, there’s been a lot of questions about your dad, my career, whether I doped or did not dope, and I’ve always denied, I’ve always been ruthless and defiant about that, which is probably why you trusted me, which makes it even sicker,” Armstrong said he told his son, the oldest of his five children. “I want you to know it’s true.”

At times, Winfrey’s interview seemed more like a therapy session than an inquisition, with Armstrong admitting that he was narcissistic and had been in therapy — and that he should be in therapy regularly because his life was so complicated.

In the end, the interview most likely accomplished what Armstrong had hoped: it was the vehicle through which he admitted to the public that he had cheated by doping, which he had lied about for more than a decade. But his answers were just the first step to clawing back his once stellar reputation.

On Friday, Armstrong appeared more contrite than he had during the part of the interview that was shown Thursday, yet he still insisted that he was clean when he made his comeback to cycling in 2009 after a brief retirement, an assertion the United States Anti-Doping Agency said was untrue. He also implied that his lifetime ban from all Olympic sports was unfair because some of his former teammates who testified about their doping and the doping on Armstrong’s teams received only six-month bans.

Richard Pound, the founding chairman of WADA and a member of the International Olympic Committee, said he was unmoved by Armstrong’s televised mea culpa.

“If what he’s looking for is some kind of reconstruction of his image, instead of providing entertainment with Oprah Winfrey, he’s got a long way to go,” Pound said Friday from his Montreal office.

Armstrong acknowledged to Winfrey during Friday’s broadcast that he has a long way to go before winning back the public’s trust. He said he understood why people recently turned on him because they felt angry and betrayed.

“I lied to you and I’m sorry,” he said before acknowledging that he might have lost many of his supporters for good. “I am committed to spending as long as I have to to make amends, knowing full well that I won’t get very many back.”

Armstrong also said that the scandal has cost him $75 million in lost sponsors, all of whom abandoned him last fall after Usada made public 1,000 pages of evidence that Armstrong had doped.

“In a way, I just assumed we would get to that point,” he said of his sponsors’ leaving. “The story was getting out of control.”

In closing her interview, Winfrey asked Armstrong a question that left him perplexed.

“Will you rise again?” she said.

Armstrong said: “I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know what’s out there.”

Then, as the interview drew to a close, Armstrong said: “The ultimate crime is the betrayal of these people that supported me and believed in me.”

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New Northern Ireland Violence May Be About More Than the British Flag

Peter Muhly/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Police officers in Belfast, Northern Ireland, remained with their armored vehicles as a car burned after violence between unionists and loyalists on Jan. 12.

BELFAST, Northern Ireland — For more than six weeks, it has been a dismal case of back-to-the-future, a crudely sectarian upheaval that has defied all attempts at peacemaking.

Paul Faith/Press Association, via Associated Press

Loyalist protests began in Belfast after the City Council voted to reduce the number of days a year the British flag was flown in public, to 18 from 365.

The scenes recall the sectarian bitterness that infused the 30 years of virtual civil war known as the Troubles: night after night of street protests marshaled by balaclava-wearing militants, who have updated their tactics by using social media to rally mobs; death threats to prominent politicians, some of whom have fled their homes and hidden under police guard; firebombs, flagstones and rocks hurled at churches, police cars and lawmakers’ offices; protesters joined by rock-throwing boys of 8 and 9; neighborhoods sealed off for hours by the police or protesters’ barricades.

Many had hoped that the old hatreds between Northern Ireland’s two main groups — the mainly Protestant, pro-British unionists, and the mainly Roman Catholic republicans, with their commitment to a united Ireland — would recede permanently under the auspices of the Good Friday agreement. That accord was reached 15 years ago as a blueprint for the power-sharing government that now rules the province.

But the fragility of those hopes has been powerfully demonstrated by more than 40 days and nights of violence that were triggered by a decision to cut back on the flying of the Union Jack, Britain’s red, white and blue national flag, over the grandly pillared, neo-Classical pile City Council building in central Belfast.

By the latest count, more than 100 police officers have been injured, along with dozens of protesters and bystanders. At times, the violence has expanded to other cities, including Londonderry. Business has slumped. Police commanders, their forces overwhelmed, have assigned dozens of officers to scan hundreds of hours of closed-circuit video, looking for ringleaders.

The crisis began modestly enough. The Belfast council, its pro-British members outvoted by a coalition of republicans and a small liberal bloc, decided in early December to limit the flag flying to 18 days a year, as specified by London for all of Britain. Through the decades when the council was dominated by Protestant unionists, committed to links with Britain, the flag flew from the pinnacle of the building every day of the year.

Incongruously, perhaps, most of those 18 days do not represent landmarks in Britain’s history — Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar, say, or Germany’s surrender in the Second World War — but the birthdays of Queen Elizabeth II and her family members, including the former Kate Middleton, now the Duchess of Cambridge, on whose 31st birthday, Jan. 9, the Belfast flag fluttered for the first time since it came down in early December. Under Britain’s strict rules about flying the national standard on public and private buildings, not even the Parliament buildings in London fly it on any but government-designated days. But the hauling down of the Belfast flag provoked a furious reaction, the most protracted period of unrest in many years in Northern Ireland.

Among pro-British loyalists, the episode was seen as part of the step-by-step erosion of the British presence, a stripping of what many of them call their identity. Other examples they invoke have also been symbolic, including moves to delete the word Ulster — an ancient designation for the northern Irish provinces commonly used by Protestants but mostly shunned by republicans — from the formal names of the province’s police force and its military reservists, and to remove the British crown emblem from the cap and shoulder badges of prison guards and other public officials.

But many of the province’s political commentators see the flag dispute as a token of something more profound and ultimately more threatening to the hopes for a permanent peace here.

They say the council’s decision on the flag, made possible by the fact that nationalists now hold 24 seats on the council, compared with 21 for the unionists, reflects the rapid growth of the Catholic population in the years since the Good Friday agreement, unsettling the long-held assumption among unionists that Protestants would constitute a permanent majority in the province.

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