Inquiry Into Libya Attack Is Sharply Critical of State Department

WASHINGTON — An independent inquiry into the attack on the United States diplomatic mission in Libya that killed four Americans on Sept. 11 sharply criticized the State Department for a lack of seasoned security personnel and for relying on untested local militias to safeguard the compound, according to a report by the panel made public on Tuesday night.

The investigation into the attack on the diplomatic mission and the C.I.A. annex in Benghazi that resulted in the deaths of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans also faulted State Department officials in Washington for ignoring requests from the American Embassy in Tripoli for more guards for the mission and for failing to make sufficient safety upgrades.

The panel also said American intelligence officials had relied too much on specific warnings of imminent attacks, which they did not have in the case of Benghazi, rather than basing assessments more broadly on a deteriorating security environment. By this spring, Benghazi, a hotbed of militant activity in eastern Libya, had experienced a string of assassinations, an attack on a British envoy’s motorcade and the explosion of a bomb outside the American Mission.

Finally, the report blamed two major State Department bureaus — Diplomatic Security and Near Eastern Affairs — for failing to coordinate and plan adequate security. The panel also determined that a number of officials had shown poor leadership, but they were not identified in the unclassified version of the report that was released.

“Systemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels within two bureaus,” the report said, resulted in security “that was inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place.”

The attack in Benghazi and the Obama administration’s explanation of what happened and who was responsible became politically charged issues in the waning weeks of the presidential campaign, and Republicans have continued to demand explanations since then. Susan E. Rice, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, took herself out of consideration for secretary of state after Republican criticism of comments she made in the aftermath of the lethal attack threatened to become a divisive political battle.

The report affirmed there were no protests of an anti-Islamic video before the attack, contrary to what Ms. Rice had said on several Sunday talk shows days after the attack.

While the report focused on the specific attack in Benghazi, the episode cast into broader relief the larger question of how American diplomats and intelligence officers operate in increasingly unstable environments, like those in the Arab Spring countries across North Africa and the Middle East, without increased security.

In response to the panel’s findings, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a letter to Congress that she was accepting all 29 of the panel’s recommendations, five of which are classified. “To fully honor those we lost, we must better protect those still serving to advance our nation’s vital interests and values overseas,” Mrs. Clinton said in the letter. She is already taking specific steps to correct the problems, according to officials.

They say the State Department is asking permission from Congress to transfer more than $1.3 billion from contingency funds that had been allocated for spending in Iraq. This includes $553 million for hundreds of additional Marine security guards worldwide; $130 million for diplomatic security personnel; and $691 million for improving security at installations abroad.

Noting that the Libyan militias in Benghazi proved unreliable, the report recommended that in the future the United States must be “self-reliant and enterprising.”

In recent weeks, teams of State Department and Pentagon security specialists have been sent to 19 “high threat” diplomatic posts around the world to conduct assessments.

The State Department last month for the first time also appointed a senior official — a deputy assistant secretary of state — to ensure that embassies and consulates in dangerous places get sufficient attention. To that end, the department is revamping deployment procedures to increase the number of experienced and well- trained personnel serving in those posts, and to reduce the high turnover rate that the panel identified as a problem.

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Attackers in Pakistan Kill Anti-Polio Workers

Athar Hussain/Reuters

Relatives of Nasima Bibi, a worker in a polio vaccination drive, at a hospital morgue in Karachi.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Gunmen shot dead five female health workers who were immunizing children against polio on Tuesday, causing the Pakistani government to suspend vaccinations in two cities and dealing a fresh setback to an eradication campaign dogged by Taliban resistance in a country that is one of the disease’s last global strongholds.

“It is a blow, no doubt,” said Shahnaz Wazir Ali, an adviser on polio to Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf. “Never before have female health workers been targeted like this in Pakistan. Clearly there will have to be more and better arrangements for security.”

No group claimed responsibility for the attacks, but most suspicion focused on the Pakistani Taliban, which has previously blocked polio vaccinators and complained that the United States is using the program as a cover for espionage.

The killings were a serious reversal for the multibillion-dollar global polio immunization effort, which over the past quarter century has reduced the number of endemic countries from 120 to just three: Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria.

Nonetheless, United Nations officials insisted that the drive would be revived after a period for investigation and regrouping, as it had been after previous attacks on vaccinators here, in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Pakistan has made solid gains against polio, with 56 new recorded cases of the diseases in 2012, compared with 192 at the same point last year, according to the government. Worldwide, cases of death and paralysis from polio have been reduced to less than 1,000 last year, from 350,000 worldwide in 1988.

But the campaign here has been deeply shaken by Taliban threats and intimidation, though several officials said Tuesday that they had never seen such a focused and deadly attack before.

Insurgents have long been suspicious of polio vaccinators, seeing them as potential spies. But that greatly intensified after the C.I.A. used a vaccination team headed by a local doctor, Shakil Afridi, to visit Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, reportedly in an attempt to obtain DNA proof that the Bin Laden family was there before an American commando raid on it in May 2011.

In North Waziristan, one prominent warlord has banned polio vaccinations until the United States ceases drone strikes in the area.

Most new infections in Pakistan occur in the tribal belt and adjoining Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province — some of the most remote areas of the country, and also those with the strongest militant presence. People fleeing fighting in those areas have also spread the disease to Karachi, the country’s largest city, where the disease has been making a worrisome comeback in recent years.

After Tuesday’s attacks, witnesses described violence that was both disciplined and well coordinated. Five attacks occurred within an hour in different Karachi neighborhoods. In several cases, the killers traveled in pairs on motorcycle, opening fire on female health workers as they administered polio drops or moved between houses in crowded neighborhoods.

Of the five victims, three were teenagers, and some had been shot in the head, a senior government official said. Two male health workers were also wounded by gunfire; early reports incorrectly stated that one of them had died, the official said.

In Peshawar, the capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, gunmen opened fire on two sisters participating in the polio vaccination program, killing one of them. It was unclear whether that shooting was directly linked to the Karachi attacks.

In remote parts of the northwest, the Taliban threat is exacerbated by the government’s crumbling writ. In Bannu, on the edge of the tribal belt, one polio worker, Noor Khan, said he quit work on Tuesday once news of the attacks in Karachi and Peshawar filtered in.

“We were told to stop immediately,” he said by phone.

Still, the Pakistani government has engaged considerable political and financial capital in fighting polio. President Asif Ali Zardari and his daughter Aseefa have been at the forefront of immunization drives. With the help of international donors, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, they have mounted a huge vaccination campaign aimed at up to 35 million children younger than 5, usually in three-day bursts that can involve 225,000 health workers.

The plan seeks to have every child in Pakistan immunized at least four times per year, although in the hardest-hit areas one child could be reached as many as 12 times in a year.

Declan Walsh reported from Islamabad, and Donald G. McNeil Jr. from New York. Salman Masood contributed reporting from Islamabad, and Zia ur-Rehman from Karachi, Pakistan.

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Attackers in Pakistan Kill Anti-Polio Workers

Athar Hussain/Reuters

Relatives of Nasima Bibi, a worker in a polio vaccination drive, at a hospital morgue in Karachi.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Gunmen shot dead five female health workers who were immunizing children against polio on Tuesday, causing the Pakistani government to suspend vaccinations in two cities and dealing a fresh setback to an eradication campaign dogged by Taliban resistance in a country that is one of the disease’s last global strongholds.

“It is a blow, no doubt,” said Shahnaz Wazir Ali, an adviser on polio to Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf. “Never before have female health workers been targeted like this in Pakistan. Clearly there will have to be more and better arrangements for security.”

No group claimed responsibility for the attacks, but most suspicion focused on the Pakistani Taliban, which has previously blocked polio vaccinators and complained that the United States is using the program as a cover for espionage.

The killings were a serious reversal for the multibillion-dollar global polio immunization effort, which over the past quarter century has reduced the number of endemic countries from 120 to just three: Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria.

Nonetheless, United Nations officials insisted that the drive would be revived after a period for investigation and regrouping, as it had been after previous attacks on vaccinators here, in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Pakistan has made solid gains against polio, with 56 new recorded cases of the diseases in 2012, compared with 192 at the same point last year, according to the government. Worldwide, cases of death and paralysis from polio have been reduced to less than 1,000 last year, from 350,000 worldwide in 1988.

But the campaign here has been deeply shaken by Taliban threats and intimidation, though several officials said Tuesday that they had never seen such a focused and deadly attack before.

Insurgents have long been suspicious of polio vaccinators, seeing them as potential spies. But that greatly intensified after the C.I.A. used a vaccination team headed by a local doctor, Shakil Afridi, to visit Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, reportedly in an attempt to obtain DNA proof that the Bin Laden family was there before an American commando raid on it in May 2011.

In North Waziristan, one prominent warlord has banned polio vaccinations until the United States ceases drone strikes in the area.

Most new infections in Pakistan occur in the tribal belt and adjoining Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province — some of the most remote areas of the country, and also those with the strongest militant presence. People fleeing fighting in those areas have also spread the disease to Karachi, the country’s largest city, where the disease has been making a worrisome comeback in recent years.

After Tuesday’s attacks, witnesses described violence that was both disciplined and well coordinated. Five attacks occurred within an hour in different Karachi neighborhoods. In several cases, the killers traveled in pairs on motorcycle, opening fire on female health workers as they administered polio drops or moved between houses in crowded neighborhoods.

Of the five victims, three were teenagers, and some had been shot in the head, a senior government official said. Two male health workers were also wounded by gunfire; early reports incorrectly stated that one of them had died, the official said.

In Peshawar, the capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, gunmen opened fire on two sisters participating in the polio vaccination program, killing one of them. It was unclear whether that shooting was directly linked to the Karachi attacks.

In remote parts of the northwest, the Taliban threat is exacerbated by the government’s crumbling writ. In Bannu, on the edge of the tribal belt, one polio worker, Noor Khan, said he quit work on Tuesday once news of the attacks in Karachi and Peshawar filtered in.

“We were told to stop immediately,” he said by phone.

Still, the Pakistani government has engaged considerable political and financial capital in fighting polio. President Asif Ali Zardari and his daughter Aseefa have been at the forefront of immunization drives. With the help of international donors, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, they have mounted a huge vaccination campaign aimed at up to 35 million children younger than 5, usually in three-day bursts that can involve 225,000 health workers.

The plan seeks to have every child in Pakistan immunized at least four times per year, although in the hardest-hit areas one child could be reached as many as 12 times in a year.

Declan Walsh reported from Islamabad, and Donald G. McNeil Jr. from New York. Salman Masood contributed reporting from Islamabad, and Zia ur-Rehman from Karachi, Pakistan.

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President Delivers a New Offer on the Fiscal Crisis to Boehner

Joshua Roberts/Reuters

Speaker John A. Boehner returned to his office on Monday after meeting with President Obama.

WASHINGTON — President Obama delivered to Speaker John A. Boehner a new offer on Monday to resolve the pending fiscal crisis, a deal that would raise revenues by $1.2 trillion over the next decade but keep in place the Bush-era tax rates for any household with earnings below $400,000.

The offer is close to a plan proposed by the speaker on Friday, and both sides expressed confidence that they were closing in on a major deficit-reduction plan that could be passed well before January, when more than a half-trillion dollars in automatic tax increases and spending cuts would kick in.

Senior Republican aides said the speaker was to meet with House Republicans on Tuesday morning to discuss the state of negotiations. But they cautioned that obstacles remained.

“Any movement away from the unrealistic offers the president has made previously is a step in the right direction,” said Brendan Buck, a spokesman for Mr. Boehner. “We hope to continue discussions with the president so we can reach an agreement that is truly balanced and begins to solve our spending problem.”

The two sides are now dickering over price, not philosophical differences, and the numbers are very close.

Mr. Boehner had offered the president a deficit framework that would raise $1 trillion over 10 years, with the details to be settled next year by Congress’s tax-writing committees and the Obama administration. In response, Mr. Obama reduced his proposal to $1.2 trillion from $1.4 trillion on Monday at a 45-minute meeting with the speaker at the White House. That was down from $1.6 trillion initially.

The White House plan would permanently extend Bush-era tax cuts on household incomes below $400,000, meaning that only the top tax bracket, 35 percent, would increase to 39.6 percent. The current cutoff between the top rate and the next highest rate, 33 percent, is $388,350.

On spending, the two sides are also converging.

The White House says the president’s plan would cut spending by $1.22 trillion over 10 years, compared with $1.2 trillion in cuts from the Republicans’ initial offer. Of that, $800 billion is cuts to programs, and $122 billion comes from adopting a new measure of inflation that slows the growth of government benefits, especially Social Security. The White House is also counting on $290 billion in savings from lower interest costs on a reduced national debt.

Of the $800 billion in straight cuts, the president said half would come from federal health care programs; $200 billion from other so-called mandatory programs, like farm price supports, not subject to Congress’s annual spending bills; $100 billion from military spending; and $100 billion from domestic programs under Congress’s annual discretion.

To make all this happen, Mr. Obama proposed fast-track procedures to help Congressional tax writers overhaul the individual and corporate tax code and make changes to other programs.

Senior Republican aides made it clear that differences remain. For instance, they say the president is still pressing for $1.3 trillion in higher taxes because the change in the way inflation is calculated would not only slow the growth of spending but also raise more revenue by slowing the rate at which tax brackets rise each year with the cost of living. That would mean that incomes would probably grow faster than the rise in tax brackets, pushing people more quickly into higher tax rates.

They also disagree with the president over counting lower interest payments on the national debt as savings.

“A proposal that includes $1.3 trillion in revenue for only $930 billion in spending cuts cannot be considered balanced,” said another spokesman for Mr. Boehner, Michael Steel, using the Republicans’ calculation for the president’s offer.

The president is also insisting on some protections for what he has called the “most vulnerable populations,” which Republican aides said they had not been expecting. The new inflation calculations, for instance, would probably not affect wounded veterans and disabled people on Supplemental Security Income.

And Mr. Obama is sticking by his request for additional upfront spending on infrastructure and an extension of expiring unemployment benefits.

He would also secure some tax and policy changes long sought by both parties but unattainable in the context of smaller budget deals. His proposal would permanently extend popular business tax breaks like the credit for corporate research and development, permanently stop the expansion of the alternative minimum tax so it does not affect more of the middle class, and stop a long-planned and deep cut to Medicare health providers, which Congress has never had the stomach to allow to kick in.

To keep the country from returning to fiscal showdowns, Mr. Obama wants the government’s borrowing limit to rise high enough to take the issue off the table for two years, although he said that Congress could periodically weigh in and try to override a presidential lifting of the debt ceiling, should it want to.

Senior Republican aides made it clear on Monday night that the plan was not what the speaker had wanted. He had proposed higher income tax rates on income over $1 million. That revenue would be supplemented by reinstating a provision in the tax code — phased out by the Bush-era tax cuts — that automatically limits tax deductions and credits for the affluent. The speaker was also ready to accept a White House proposal from Mr. Obama’s first days in office that would limit tax deductions to 28 percent, trimming back deductions for charitable giving and other activities from the top rate paid by the giver, 35 percent currently.

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Japan’s Next Leader, Shinzo Abe, Shifts Focus

Yoshikazu Tsuno/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Shinzo Abe, set to be prime minister, said Monday that there would be no negotiation over Japan’s stake in islands that China also claims, but his position is no tougher than the incumbents’.

TOKYO — Shinzo Abe, set to return as Japan’s prime minister after his party’s landslide victory on Sunday, means it when he says he knows what it feels like to hit rock bottom. His last term in office was marred by political financing scandals, a nationalist agenda that seemed off the mark and rumors — later confirmed — that he had resigned over an intestinal ailment, an ignominious exit that prompted snide jokes about his condition.

Mr. Abe’s impending comeback says more about the spectacular failure of the leaders who succeeded him than about a revival on his part. But Mr. Abe, 58, is in many ways a changed man. Though analysts say he remains deeply nationalistic at heart, he has toned down his hawkish language and instead has focused on reviving Japan’s moribund economy.

It is still possible that China, which has been enmeshed in a territorial quarrel with Japan, could prompt Mr. Abe to show his nationalist colors. He said Monday that there would be no negotiation over Japan’s claims to the set of islands in dispute, but he went no further than the incumbent Democrats, who have also asserted Japanese sovereignty over the islands.

So far, Mr. Abe has reserved his tough talk for the economy, promising public spending largess, a far more aggressive stand against deflation and bolder measures to weaken the strong yen, which has stifled Japan’s export-led economy. He peppered his campaign speeches with promises to rebuild a strong country, emphasizing resilience against natural disasters and economic downturns, rather than dwelling on North Korean rockets or the Chinese Navy.

The economic focus helped Mr. Abe lead his party, the Liberal Democrats, to victory while sidestepping difficult issues like nuclear power. The Liberal Democrats promoted nuclear power during their half-century of almost uninterrupted leadership until the Democrats ousted them from power in 2009, less than two years before the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, which killed more than 20,000 people and set off the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

Markets have cheered on Mr. Abe’s economic turn, and rallied on Monday after his party’s decisive victory. The United States dollar reached as high as 84.48 yen on Monday, its highest level against the Japanese currency since April 2011. The Nikkei stock average, which surged 10 percent in the monthlong prelude to Sunday’s elections in anticipation of Mr. Abe’s economic policies, gained an additional 0.94 percent on Monday, rising to 9,828.88.

At a news conference on Monday, Mr. Abe said: “I once fell to rock bottom and was hit with a storm of criticism. Now, I want to prove it’s possible to start over again.”

Mr. Abe’s first stint as prime minister, in 2006-7, began on a high note. The Japanese news media hailed him as the first prime minister born after World War II and the handpicked successor to a popular leader, Junichiro Koizumi.

But Mr. Abe made the mistake of focusing on a drive to instill patriotism in schools and elevate the military’s status, an approach that appeared to be out of touch with a population more concerned about the state of the national pension system and other bread-and-butter issues. Mr. Abe quickly became an object of ridicule in the popular media, an embodiment of an expression popular at the time: “K.Y.,” for “kuuki yomenai,” which literally means “can’t read the air,” or “clueless.”

Mr. Abe’s cabinet was weakened by gaffes and a series of money and pension-related scandals that led four of his ministers to resign and a fifth to commit suicide. Overseas, he was criticized for denying that Japan’s wartime army had forced women into sexual slavery, despite historical documents and testimony. The controversy prompted United States lawmakers to pass a bill calling for an apology. And 10 months into his term, Mr. Abe’s governing party suffered a humiliating defeat in elections for Parliament’s upper house; two months later, he was gone.

With upper house elections expected this summer, Mr. Abe is determined not to make the same mistakes, analysts say. He will be especially cautious, they say, because his mandate is not as rock solid as the Liberal Democrats’ supermajority in the lower house might suggest. The party won just 40 percent of the vote in the country’s electoral districts, but benefited from a splintering of the opposition. If the opposition regroups or the Liberal Democrats stumble, the tables could quickly turn against them.

“In the beginning, he will keep a moderate tone,” said Yoshiaki Kobayashi, a professor of political science at Keio University in Tokyo. “He will avoid making waves by staying close to the United States. He knows he must focus on the economy first, for the upper house elections.”

Martin Fackler contributed reporting from Tokyo.

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As Europe Presses Google on Antitrust, U.S. Backs Away

BRUSSELS — Google seems on its way to coming through a major antitrust investigation in the United States essentially unscathed. But the outlook is not as bright for Google here, as the European Union’s top antitrust regulator prepares to meet on Tuesday with Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s executive chairman.

In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission appears to be ready to back off what had been the centerpiece of its antitrust pursuit of Google: the complaint that the company’s dominant search engine favors the company’s commerce and other services in search queries, thwarting competition.

Yet in a statement last spring, Joaquín Almunia, the competition commissioner of the European Union, placed the contentions about search bias at the top of his list of concerns about Google. And in a private meeting this month, Mr. Almunia told Jon Leibowitz, chairman of the F.T.C., that European antitrust officials remain focused on that issue, according to two people told of the meeting, who asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak about it.

Mr. Almunia’s tougher bargaining stance, antitrust experts say, is not merely a personal preference.

European antitrust doctrine, they say, applies a somewhat different standard than United States law does. In America, dominant companies are given great leeway, if their conduct can be justified in the name of efficiency, thus consumer benefit. Google has consistently maintained that it offers a neutral, best-for-the-customer result.

In Europe, antitrust experts say, the law prohibits the “abuse of a dominant position,” with the victims of the supposed abuse often being competitors. “The Europeans tend to use competition law to level the playing field more than is the case in the United States,” said Herbert Hovenkamp, an antitrust expert and law professor at the University of Iowa. (Mr. Hovenkamp advised Google on one project, but no longer has any financial connection to the company.)

The European rationale, legal experts say, is that shielding competitors to some degree preserves competition and enhances consumer welfare in the long run.

“Europe has a stronger hand to play with Google because of its standards,” said Keith N. Hylton, a professor at the Boston University School of Law.

The European antitrust regulators, like their American counterparts, have been in negotiations with Google for several months. The F.T.C. is expected to announce its decision within days, while the European timetable seems not as tight and is likely to go into next year.

The investigations in the United States and Europe really started with accusations of search bias. Rivals complain that the search giant gives more prominent placement and display for its online shopping and travel services, for example, than to competitors. The potential antitrust concern is that such specialized, or “vertical,” search services — like Yelp or Nextag — are partial substitutes for Google’s search engine because they also allow people to find information.

In his public statement in May, Mr. Almunia identified four areas of concern in Europe’s antitrust investigation of Google. The first concern he cited was search bias.

“Google displays links to its own vertical search services differently than it does for links to competitors,” Mr. Almunia said in a statement then. “We are concerned that this may result in preferential treatment compared to those of competing services, which may be hurt as a consequence.”

His other three concerns are ones that Google is preparing to address with a set of voluntary commitments in the United States, according to two people briefed on Google’s talks with the F.T.C., who declined to give their names because they were not authorized to speak about them.

Google, according to the people, has agreed to refrain from copying summaries of product and restaurant reviews from other Web sites and including them in Google search results, a practice known as screen scraping.

James Kanter reported from Brussels and Steve Lohr from New York. Claire Cain Miller contributed reporting from San Francisco.

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N.I.H. to Start Initiatives to Raise Number of Minority Scientists

Few blacks enter biomedical research, and those who do often encounter obstacles in their career paths.

A study published last year found that a black scientist was markedly less likely to obtain research money from the National Institutes of Health than a white one — even when differences of education and stature were taken into account.

The institute has now announced initiatives aimed at helping blacks and other ethnic and racial groups who have been unrepresented among medical researchers, including a pilot program that will test a grant review process in which all identifying information about the applicant is removed.

The initiatives take a step further than addressing the problem identified in the study — the goal is to entice more minorities into the field.

“It needed to go well beyond that,” said Francis S. Collins, director of the N.I.H., “because even if we fixed that, it would still be the case that there would be a very distressingly low number of individuals from underrepresented groups who are part of what we’re trying to do in science.”

The N.I.H. program will provide research opportunities for undergraduate students, financial support for undergraduate and graduate students, and set up a mentoring program to help students and researchers beginning their careers.

When the program ramps up, it will cost about $50 million a year and support about 600 students.

The N.I.H. formed a group of 16 scientists to study the causes of the problem, and the group presented its recommendations in June. At a meeting this month of his advisory committee, Dr. Collins and other officials discussed how to implement the recommendations.

At the meeting, Dr. Reed Tuckson, an executive vice president and the chief of medical affairs for UnitedHealth Group, who was one of the group’s co-chairman, acknowledged the controversies that would inevitably accompany the effort, especially as the N.I.H., like the rest of the federal government, could soon face sizable cuts in its budget.

“This is a heavy, laden issue which no matter which way you turn, someone is going to be irritated,” he said.

Dr. Tuckson, who is black, urged his colleagues to support the efforts. “A lot of people put themselves on the line,” he said.

The study last year, published in the journal Science, reviewed 83,000 grant applications between 2000 and 2006. For every 100 applications submitted by white scientists, 29 were awarded grants. For every 100 applications from black scientists, only 16 were financed.

After statistical adjustments to ensure a more apples-to-apples comparison, the gap narrowed but persisted.

That raised the uncomfortable possibility that the scientists reviewing the applications were discriminating against black scientists, possibly reflecting an unconscious bias. Members of other races and ethnic groups, including Hispanics, do not appear to run into the same difficulties, the study said.

Only about 500 doctoral degrees in a year in biological sciences go to underrepresented minorities, like blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans.

To persuade more students to pursue this as a career, the N.I.H. aims to provide more summer research opportunities for undergraduates.

“That is the single strongest predictor of somebody deciding that that’s the career they want to pursue,” Dr. Collins said of mentored research.”

The program will also provide money to professors so that they can have more time to mentor students or train new mentors.

“They’re talking about a multipronged approach, which I think is a smart approach,” said Dr. Raynard S. Kington, president of Grinnell College in Iowa and a former deputy director of N.I.H. who was a co-author of the Science paper. “If they had just said, ‘We’re going to focus on review,’ I would have been deeply disappointed.”

Donna K. Ginther, an economics professor at the University of Kansas who led the Science study, has taken a closer look at a subset of 2,400 proposals included in the original study. It turns out, she said, that the black applicants published fewer papers and have fewer co-authors than other scientists.

That helps explain the financing gap, but also suggests that the professional networks of black scientists are smaller. “The hypothesis being that professionally, they’re not as integrated,” Dr. Ginther said, “and that’s why I think the mentoring network is such a good idea.”

Read More..

N.I.H. to Start Initiatives to Raise Number of Minority Scientists

Few blacks enter biomedical research, and those who do often encounter obstacles in their career paths.

A study published last year found that a black scientist was markedly less likely to obtain research money from the National Institutes of Health than a white one — even when differences of education and stature were taken into account.

The institute has now announced initiatives aimed at helping blacks and other ethnic and racial groups who have been unrepresented among medical researchers, including a pilot program that will test a grant review process in which all identifying information about the applicant is removed.

The initiatives take a step further than addressing the problem identified in the study — the goal is to entice more minorities into the field.

“It needed to go well beyond that,” said Francis S. Collins, director of the N.I.H., “because even if we fixed that, it would still be the case that there would be a very distressingly low number of individuals from underrepresented groups who are part of what we’re trying to do in science.”

The N.I.H. program will provide research opportunities for undergraduate students, financial support for undergraduate and graduate students, and set up a mentoring program to help students and researchers beginning their careers.

When the program ramps up, it will cost about $50 million a year and support about 600 students.

The N.I.H. formed a group of 16 scientists to study the causes of the problem, and the group presented its recommendations in June. At a meeting this month of his advisory committee, Dr. Collins and other officials discussed how to implement the recommendations.

At the meeting, Dr. Reed Tuckson, an executive vice president and the chief of medical affairs for UnitedHealth Group, who was one of the group’s co-chairman, acknowledged the controversies that would inevitably accompany the effort, especially as the N.I.H., like the rest of the federal government, could soon face sizable cuts in its budget.

“This is a heavy, laden issue which no matter which way you turn, someone is going to be irritated,” he said.

Dr. Tuckson, who is black, urged his colleagues to support the efforts. “A lot of people put themselves on the line,” he said.

The study last year, published in the journal Science, reviewed 83,000 grant applications between 2000 and 2006. For every 100 applications submitted by white scientists, 29 were awarded grants. For every 100 applications from black scientists, only 16 were financed.

After statistical adjustments to ensure a more apples-to-apples comparison, the gap narrowed but persisted.

That raised the uncomfortable possibility that the scientists reviewing the applications were discriminating against black scientists, possibly reflecting an unconscious bias. Members of other races and ethnic groups, including Hispanics, do not appear to run into the same difficulties, the study said.

Only about 500 doctoral degrees in a year in biological sciences go to underrepresented minorities, like blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans.

To persuade more students to pursue this as a career, the N.I.H. aims to provide more summer research opportunities for undergraduates.

“That is the single strongest predictor of somebody deciding that that’s the career they want to pursue,” Dr. Collins said of mentored research.”

The program will also provide money to professors so that they can have more time to mentor students or train new mentors.

“They’re talking about a multipronged approach, which I think is a smart approach,” said Dr. Raynard S. Kington, president of Grinnell College in Iowa and a former deputy director of N.I.H. who was a co-author of the Science paper. “If they had just said, ‘We’re going to focus on review,’ I would have been deeply disappointed.”

Donna K. Ginther, an economics professor at the University of Kansas who led the Science study, has taken a closer look at a subset of 2,400 proposals included in the original study. It turns out, she said, that the black applicants published fewer papers and have fewer co-authors than other scientists.

That helps explain the financing gap, but also suggests that the professional networks of black scientists are smaller. “The hypothesis being that professionally, they’re not as integrated,” Dr. Ginther said, “and that’s why I think the mentoring network is such a good idea.”

Read More..

In Spain, Having a Job No Longer Guarantees a Paycheck

Samuel Aranda for The New York Times

Raul, a truck driver in Castellón, Spain, hoped last month to be paid from a government fund. Courts are jammed with requests.

VALENCIA, Spain — Over the past two years, Ana María Molina Cuevas, 36, has worked five shifts a week in a ceramics factory on the outskirts of this city, hand-rolling paint onto tiles. But at the end of the month, she often went unpaid.

Still, she kept showing up, trying to keep her frustration under control. If she quit, she reasoned, she might never get her money. And besides, where was she going to find another job? Last month, she was down to about $130 in her bank account with a mortgage payment due.

“On the days you get paid,” she said at home with her disabled husband and young daughter, “it is like the sun has risen three times. It is a day of joy.”

Mrs. Molina, who is owed about $13,000 by the factory, is hardly alone. Being paid for the work you do is no longer something that can be counted on in Spain, as this country struggles through its fourth year of an economic crisis.

With the regional and municipal governments deeply in debt, even workers like bus drivers and health care attendants, dependent on government financing for their salaries, are not always paid.

But few workers in this situation believe they have any choice but to stick it out, and none wanted to name their employers, to protect both the companies and their jobs. They try to manage their lives with occasional checks and partial payments on random dates — never sure whether they will get what they are owed in the end. Spain’s unemployment rate is the highest in the euro zone at more than 25 percent, and despite the government’s labor reforms, the rate has continued to rise month after month.

“Before the crisis, a worker might let one month go by, and then move on to another job,” said José Francisco Perez, a lawyer who represents unpaid workers in the Valencia area. “Now that just isn’t an option. People now have nowhere to go, and they are scared. They are afraid even to complain.”

No one is keeping track of workers like Mrs. Molina. But one indication of their number can be seen in the courts, which have become jammed with people trying to get back pay from a government insurance fund, aimed at giving workers something when a company does not pay them.

In Valencia, Spain’s third-largest city, the unemployment rate is 28.1 percent and the courts are so overwhelmed that processing claims, which used to take three to six months, now takes three to four years.

Since the start of the crisis in 2008, the insurance fund has paid nearly a million workers nationally back pay or severance. In 2007, it paid 70,000 workers. It is on track to pay more than 250,000 this year, and experts say the figures would be much higher if not for the logjam in the courts.

Often the unpaid workers, like Mrs. Molina, whose company is now in bankruptcy proceedings, hope their labor will keep a struggling operation afloat over the long run. Unemployment benefits last only two years, they point out, and they wonder what they would do after that. But in the meantime, they cannot even claim unemployment benefits. And no amount of budgeting can cover no payment at all.

Beatriz Morales García, 31, said she could not remember the last time she went shopping for herself. A few years ago, she and her husband, Daniel Chiva, 34, thought that they had settled into a comfortable life, he as a bus driver and she as a therapist in a rehabilitation center for people with mental disabilities. His job is financed by the City of Valencia, and hers by the regional government of Valencia.

They never expected any big money. But it seemed reasonable to expect a reliable salary, to take on a mortgage and think about children. In the past year, however, both of them have had trouble being paid. She is owed 6,000 euros, nearly $8,000. They have cut back on everything they can think of. They have given up their landline and their Internet connection. They no long park their car in a garage or pay for extra health insurance coverage. Mr. Chiva even forgoes the coffee he used to drink in a cafe before his night shifts. Still, the anxiety is constant.

“There are nights when we cannot sleep,” he said. “Moments when you talk out loud to yourself in the street. It has been terrible, terrible.”

Mrs. Morales said it was particularly hard to watch other mothers in the park with their children while she must leave her own toddler to go to work, unsure she will ever get paid.

“We are working eight hours, and we’re suffering more than people who are not working,” she said.

The couple’s pay has been so irregular that they are having a hard time even keeping track of how much they are owed, because small payments show up sporadically in their account.

Rachel Chaundler contributed reporting.

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Chávez Party Wins Vote Amid Uncertainty

CARACAS, Venezuela — With President Hugo Chávez cancer-stricken and potentially unable to continue in office, Venezuelans showed overwhelming support for his party in elections for governor on Sunday, giving it control over almost all of the nation’s 23 states.

But voters also delivered an important victory to Mr. Chávez’s main rival, re-electing Henrique Capriles Radonski as governor of one of the most populous states and cementing his position as the opposition’s standard-bearer.

Candidates loyal to Mr. Chávez won in at least 19 states. The opposition, which started the day with governors in eight states, won only two and was leading in a third. In one other state, Bolívar, results were not complete Sunday night.

“This has been an immense victory,” said Jorge Rodríguez, the campaign chief for Mr. Chávez’s United Socialist Party.

Most attention going into the election focused on Mr. Capriles’s state of Miranda, which includes part of Caracas and surrounding areas, and where he faced a difficult race for re-election against an all-out government effort to defeat him.

Mr. Capriles was the candidate of a unified opposition in the presidential race in October, when he ran a strong but losing campaign against Mr. Chávez. He received 6.5 million votes, 44 percent of the total, the best showing by an opposition candidate since Mr. Chávez was first elected in 1998. Mr. Capriles, 40, crisscrossed the nation during his campaign, energizing voters unhappy with the status quo and even finding support in areas that had long been strongholds for Mr. Chávez.

“It’s hard to come here and smile,” Mr. Capriles said on Sunday, referring to the widespread opposition losses. But he added: “This dream we have, I know that it’s around the corner. We will achieve it.”

After the election in October, Mr. Capriles took the politically risky decision to run for re-election in his home state. That made him a target for Mr. Chávez’s government, which saw a chance to weaken him as a serious contender and sow disarray within the opposition.

Mr. Chávez dispatched a former vice president, Elías Jaua, to run against Mr. Capriles, and the government and the United Socialist Party dedicated vast resources to defeat Mr. Capriles.

Mr. Chávez, 58, is in Cuba recovering from what officials have called a complex and difficult cancer operation. If he is not able to begin his new six-year term on Jan. 10, or if he is forced to leave office soon because of poor health, the Constitution says that new elections will have to be called.

If that happens, Mr. Chávez, who has been president for nearly 14 years, has said that Vice President Nicolás Maduro should lead in his place and be his party’s candidate. His blessing is likely to go a long way to shore up support for Mr. Maduro.

But the opposition has never been able to beat Mr. Chávez in a head-to-head race, and running against Mr. Maduro would give it its best chance in years, something that opposition voters had in mind on Sunday.

“This was a trial by fire for him, to show his leadership,” Rubén Colmenares, 24, a university student, said of Mr. Capriles, predicting he could go on to beat Mr. Maduro if a special election was called.

Yet the losses in many other states, especially the large state of Zulia, left the opposition reeling. Supporters of Mr. Chávez in Miranda said they did not think that Mr. Capriles would be able to defeat Mr. Maduro in a special election. “Maduro beats Capriles, the revolution continues — it’s that simple,” said Carlos Bolívar, 40, a street vendor, after voting in Petare, a sprawling Caracas slum. “If Capriles wins, the whole process goes backward 20 years if not 200 years.”

Andrew Rosati contributed reporting.

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