Boeing 787 Completes Test Flight

A Boeing 787 test plane flew for more than two hours on Saturday to gather information about the problems with the batteries that led to a worldwide grounding of the new jets more than three weeks ago.

The flight was the first since the Federal Aviation Administration gave Boeing permission on Thursday to conduct in-flight tests. Federal investigators and the company are trying to determine what caused one of the new lithium-ion batteries to catch fire and how to fix the problems.

The plane took off from Boeing Field in Seattle heading mostly east and then looped around to the south before flying back past the airport to the west. It covered about 900 miles and landed at 2:51 p.m. Pacific time.

Marc R. Birtel, a Boeing spokesman, said the flight was conducted to monitor the performance of the plane’s batteries. He said the crew, which included 13 pilots and test personnel, said the flight was uneventful.

He said special equipment let the crew check status messages involving the batteries and their chargers, as well as data about battery temperature and voltage.

FlightAware, an aviation data provider, said the jet reached 36,000 feet. Its speed ranged from 435 to 626 miles per hour.

All 50 of the 787s delivered so far were grounded after a battery on one of the jets caught fire at a Boston airport on Jan. 7 and another made an emergency landing in Japan with smoke coming from the battery.

The new 787s are the most technically advanced commercial airplanes, and Boeing has a lot riding on their success. Half of the planes’ structural parts are made of lightweight carbon composites to save fuel.

Boeing also decided to switch from conventional nickel cadmium batteries to the lighter lithium-ion ones. But they are more volatile, and federal investigators said Thursday that Boeing had underestimated the risks.

The F.A.A. has set strict operating conditions on the test flights. The flights are expected to resume early this week, Mr. Birtel said.

Battery experts have said it could take weeks for Boeing to fix the problems.

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India Executes Man Tied to 2001 Attack on Parliament

MUMBAI - India on Saturday on Saturday hanged a man who was convicted of an attack on India’s Parliament in 2001 that killed nine people.

The hanging of Afzal Guru, a 43-year-old militant with the group Jaish-e-Mohammad, comes more than a decade after the Dec. 13, 2001, suicide attack on India’s parliament in which five gunmen opened fire, killing nine people, including security officials and one journalist. The execution drew protests from human rights groups concerned about the growing use of capital punishment in such cases.

Mr. Guru was convicted of conspiracy in the plot and sentenced to death by a special court in 2002. In 2004, the Supreme Court of India upheld the call for death sentence.

After the execution, clashes broke out in Mr. Guru’s hometown of Sopore, and police and paramilitary units were called to the scene to restore order.Days before the execution, President Pranab Mukherjee had rejected a mercy plea by Mr. Guru’s wife, according to reports from the Press Trust of India, paving the way for Mr. Guru’s hanging in the Tihar Jail complex, officials said.

Mr. Guru was originally from Sopore, in the northern part of the Kashmir. The clashes following his execution came despite the fact that in the hours following the hanging the Kashmir valley was placed under strict curfew in the anticipation of trouble from separatist leaders, according to reports. Authorities in the Srinagar asked citizens to remain indoors. They also closed the national highway for one day.

Omar Abdullah, the Jammu and Kashmir chief minister, appealed for peace and calm.

“I understand there is certain degree of angst and there are some people who would like to take advantage of the situation,” Mr. Abdullah said. “I appeal to the people to allow us to get through this with peace and not to restore to violent protests.”

Congress Party officials said that the execution was a sign that India would not tolerate acts of terror.

“We have sent a message to the world that we cannot tolerate terrorism at any cost. Anybody committing any acts of terror will be punished,” said Rashid Alvi, a Congress Party spokesman. “People of our country and government have zero tolerance for terrorism.”

But the opposition Bharatiya Janta Party criticized the government’s delay in carrying out the execution.

“The attack on the Indian Parliament happened in 2001, that is 12 years ago, which was an attack on India,” said Ravi Shankar Prasad, the Bharatiya Janta Party spokesman.

On Nov. 21, 2012, India hanged Ajmal Kasab, the sole surviving gunman from the November 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai, ending an eight-year moratorium on the death penalty and drawing criticism from rights groups, which they reiterated Saturday.

“The hanging of Afzal Guru, following closely behind the hanging of Ajmal Kasab in November, shows a very worrying trend by the Indian government,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director for Human Rights Watch. “Human Rights Watch opposes the death penalty in all circumstances as an inherently irreversible, inhumane punishment.”

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Northeast storm disrupts travel for sports teams

Several professional and college sports teams were forced to rearrange their travel plans as a massive storm swept through the Northeast, dumping a few feet of snow in some areas.

The NBA's New York Knicks were stuck in Minnesota after playing the Timberwolves on Friday night, hoping to try to fly home sometime Saturday. The San Antonio Spurs were also staying overnight in Detroit after seeing their 11-game winning streak fall to the Pistons, awaiting word on when they might be able to fly to New York for their game Sunday night at Brooklyn.

"We can't get there tonight — we know that," Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said. "So we're going to stay here tonight and try to get there (Saturday). Hopefully, we will be able to get there, but at this point, we don't know."

Airlines canceled more than 5,300 flights through Saturday, and New York City's three major airports and Boston's Logan Airport closed.

The Brooklyn Nets planned to take a train home instead of flying from Washington D.C. after losing to the Wizards on Friday night.

Knicks coach Mike Woodson said before a 100-94 victory that his team initially planned to fly home after the game, but the flight had already been postponed. New York is scheduled to play the Los Angeles Clippers at Madison Square Garden on Sunday.

The NHL's Boston Bruins pushed back the start of Saturday's game against the Tampa Bay Lightning by six hours because of the blizzard. The game originally slated for 1 p.m. was rescheduled for 7 p.m., but Boston was expected to be one of the cities hit hardest by the storm.

The storm had dumped more than 2 feet of snow on New England by early Saturday and knocked out power to 650,000 customers. The National Weather Service said up to 3 feet of snow is expected in Boston, threatening the city's 2003 record of 27.6 inches.

The Bruins and Lightning each already had road games scheduled for Sunday night.

The New Jersey Devils were still scheduled to host the Pittsburgh Penguins at 1 p.m., while the New York Islanders were slated to play at home against the Buffalo Sabres at 7 p.m.

Two Ivy League men's college basketball games that were scheduled for Saturday night were moved back to Sunday because of treacherous travel conditions.

Dartmouth will play at Cornell at noon on Sunday in Ithaca, N.Y., and Harvard will visit Columbia at 2 p.m. Sunday in New York. Dartmouth played at Columbia on Friday night, and Harvard played at Cornell. Two other Ivy League games were still scheduled to be played Saturday night, with Yale visiting Princeton and Brown playing at Pennsylvania.

Aqueduct also called off Saturday's card because of the storm. The track and Belmont Park were expected to remain open for wagering on out-of-town races, with racing scheduled to resume Sunday.

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In Nigeria, Polio Vaccine Workers Are Killed by Gunmen

At least nine polio immunization workers were shot to death in northern Nigeria on Friday by gunmen who attacked two clinics, officials said.

The killings, with eerie echoes of attacks that killed nine female polio workers in Pakistan in December, represented another serious setback for the global effort to eradicate polio.

Most of the victims were women and were shot in the back of the head, local reports said.

A four-day vaccination drive had just ended in Kano State, where the killings took place, and the vaccinators were in a “mop-up” phase, looking for children who had been missed, said Sarah Crowe, a spokeswoman for the United Nations Children’s Fund, one of the agencies running the eradication campaign.

Dr. Mohammad Ali Pate, Nigeria’s minister of state for health, said in a telephone interview that it was not entirely clear whether the gunmen were specifically targeting polio workers or just attacking the health centers where vaccinators happened to be gathering early in the morning. “Health workers are soft targets,” he said.

No one immediately took responsibility, but suspicion fell on Boko Haram, a militant Islamist group that has attacked police stations, government offices and even a religious leader’s convoy.

Polio, which once paralyzed millions of children, is now down to fewer than 1,000 known cases around the world, and is endemic in only three countries: Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Since September — when a new polio operations center was opened in the capital and Nigeria’s president, Goodluck Jonathan, appointed a special adviser for polio — the country had been improving, said Dr. Bruce Aylward, chief of polio eradication for the World Health Organization. There have been no new cases since Dec. 3.

While vaccinators have not previously been killed in the country, there is a long history of Nigerian Muslims shunning the vaccine.

Ten years ago, immunization was suspended for 11 months as local governors waited for local scientists to investigate rumors that it caused AIDS or was a Western plot to sterilize Muslim girls. That hiatus let cases spread across Africa. The Nigerian strain of the virus even reached Saudi Arabia when a Nigerian child living in hills outside Mecca was paralyzed.

Heidi Larson, an anthropologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who tracks vaccine issues, said the newest killings “are kind of mimicking what’s going on in Pakistan, and I feel it’s very much prompted by that.”

In a roundabout way, the C.I.A. has been blamed for the Pakistan killings. In its effort to track Osama bin Laden, the agency paid a Pakistani doctor to seek entry to Bin Laden’s compound on the pretext of vaccinating the children — presumably to get DNA samples as evidence that it was the right family. That enraged some Taliban factions in Pakistan, which outlawed vaccination in their areas and threatened vaccinators.

Nigerian police officials said the first shootings were of eight workers early in the morning at a clinic in the Tarauni neighborhood of Kano, the state capital; two or three died. A survivor said the two gunmen then set fire to a curtain, locked the doors and left.

“We summoned our courage and broke the door because we realized they wanted to burn us alive,” the survivor said from her bed at Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital.

About an hour later, six men on three-wheeled motorcycles stormed a clinic in the Haye neighborhood, a few miles away. They killed seven women waiting to collect vaccine.

Ten years ago, Dr. Larson said, she joined a door-to-door vaccination drive in northern Nigeria as a Unicef communications officer, “and even then we were trying to calm rumors that the C.I.A. was involved,” she said. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars had convinced poor Muslims in many countries that Americans hated them, and some believed the American-made vaccine was a plot by Western drug companies and intelligence agencies.

Since the vaccine ruse in Pakistan, she said, “Frankly, now, I can’t go to them and say, ‘The C.I.A. isn’t involved.’ ”

Dr. Pate said the attack would not stop the newly reinvigorated eradication drive, adding, “This isn’t going to deter us from getting everyone vaccinated to save the lives of our children.”

Aminu Abubakar contributed reported from Kano, Nigeria.

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John E. Karlin, 1918-2013: John E. Karlin, Who Led the Way to All-Digit Dialing, Dies at 94

Courtesy of Alcatel-Lucent USA

John E. Karlin, a researcher at Bell Labs, studied ways to make the telephone easier to use.

A generation ago, when the poetry of PEnnsylvania and BUtterfield was about to give way to telephone numbers in unpoetic strings, a critical question arose: Would people be able to remember all seven digits long enough to dial them?

And when, not long afterward, the dial gave way to push buttons, new questions arose: round buttons, or square? How big should they be? Most crucially, how should they be arrayed? In a circle? A rectangle? An arc?

For decades after World War II, these questions were studied by a group of social scientists and engineers in New Jersey led by one man, a Bell Labs industrial psychologist named John E. Karlin.

By all accounts a modest man despite his variegated accomplishments (he had a doctorate in mathematical psychology, was trained in electrical engineering and had been a professional violinist), Mr. Karlin, who died on Jan. 28, at 94, was virtually unknown to the general public.

But his research, along with that of his subordinates, quietly yet emphatically defined the experience of using the telephone in the mid-20th century and afterward, from ushering in all-digit dialing to casting the shape of the keypad on touch-tone phones. And that keypad, in turn, would inform the design of a spate of other everyday objects.

It is not so much that Mr. Karlin trained midcentury Americans how to use the telephone. It is, rather, that by studying the psychological capabilities and limitations of ordinary people, he trained the telephone, then a rapidly proliferating but still fairly novel technology, to assume optimal form for use by midcentury Americans.

“He was the one who introduced the notion that behavioral sciences could answer some questions about telephone design,” Ed Israelski, an engineer who worked under Mr. Karlin at Bell Labs in the 1970s, said in a telephone interview on Wednesday.

In 2013, the 50th anniversary of the introduction of the touch-tone phone, the answers to those questions remain palpable at the press of a button. The rectangular design of the keypad, the shape of its buttons and the position of the numbers — with “1-2-3” on the top row instead of the bottom, as on a calculator — all sprang from empirical research conducted or overseen by Mr. Karlin.

The legacy of that research now extends far beyond the telephone: the keypad design Mr. Karlin shepherded into being has become the international standard on objects as diverse as A.T.M.’s, gas pumps, door locks, vending machines and medical equipment.

Mr. Karlin, associated from 1945 until his retirement in 1977 with Bell Labs, headquartered in Murray Hill, N.J., was widely considered the father of human-factors engineering in American industry.

A branch of industrial psychology that combines experimentation, engineering and product design, human-factors engineering is concerned with easing the awkward, often ill-considered marriage between man and machine. In seeking to design and improve technology based on what its users are mentally capable of, the discipline is the cognitive counterpart of ergonomics.

“Human-factors studies are different from market research and other kinds of studies in that we observe people’s behavior and record it, systematically and without bias,” Mr. Israelski said. “The hallmark of human-factors studies is they involve the actual observation of people doing things.”

Among the issues Mr. Karlin examined as the head of Bell Labs’ Human Factors Engineering department — the first department of its kind at an American company — were the optimal length for a phone cord (a study that involved gentle, successful sabotage) and the means by which rotary calls could be made efficiently after the numbers were moved from inside the finger holes, where they had nestled companionably for years, to the rim outside the dial.

John Elias Karlin was born in Johannesburg on Feb. 28, 1918, and reared nearby in Germiston, where his parents owned a grocery store and tearoom.

He earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy, psychology and music, and a master’s degree in psychology, both from the University of Cape Town. Throughout his studies he was a violinist in the Cape Town Symphony Orchestra and the Cape Town String Quartet.

Moving to the United States, Mr. Karlin earned a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1942. Afterward, he became a research associate at Harvard; he also studied electrical engineering there and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

At Harvard, Mr. Karlin did research for the United States military on problems in psychoacoustics that were vital to the war effort — studying the ways, for instance, in which a bomber’s engine noise might distract its crew from their duties.

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Tunisians Prepare for Burial of Slain Opposition Leader

TUNIS — In a country quieted by the largest labor strike in decades, thousands of people started to gather early Friday for the funeral of Chokri Belaid, a leading opposition figure assassinated by unknown gunmen two days ago. 

The killing of Mr. Belaid, a human rights activist who had been a harsh critic of the ruling Islamist-led party, has led to fears that polarization and growing political violence will imperil Tunisia’s transition, often held up as a model in the region.

“We are steadfast, like mountains,” mourners chanted in the Jebel Jalloud neighborhood, where they gathered the rain in preparing to march to the city’s largest cemetery.  “We do not fear assassination.”

A steady stream of supporters also traveled to Mr. Belaid’s home, where a circle of flowers and other mementos marked the spot where he was killed, raising fears of a broader conflagration.

  “I’m afraid the country will descend into chaos,” said Nuzha ben Yayha, a mourner who came to pay her respects.

The country’s labor federation called the first general strike in more than three decades for Friday to coincide with the burial, adding to a combustible mix of passions just two years after the overthrow of President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali in early 2011 signaled the beginning of the Arab revolts sweeping the region.

The official TAP news agency said the national Army had been ordered to “secure” Mr. Belaid’s funeral “and ensure the protection of participants” while the trade union federation had called for a “peaceful” general strike “in order not to serve the objectives of Tunisia’s enemies who had planned Chokri Belaid’s assassination.”

The embassy of France, the former colonial power, said on its Web site that it would close its schools in the capital on Friday and Saturday for fear of renewed outbursts of violence.

On Thursday, protesters clashed with riot police officers in several cities. In Tunis, shuttered stores, tear gas and running street battles recreated the atmosphere of that uprising against former President Ben Ali but with none of the hope. Instead, many worried about a growing instability following the killing.

Adding to the uncertainties, Tunisia’s governing Islamist-led party on Thursday rejected a proposal by the prime minister to form a national unity government.

The announcement by the party, Ennahda, revealed growing strains within a movement that has promoted its blend of Islamist politics and pluralism as a model for the region. As it rejected the proposal by the prime minister, Hamadi Jebali, a member of Ennahda, the group also publicly rebuked one of its most senior leaders and rejected his efforts to calm the political crisis.

“The prime minister did not ask the opinion of his party,” Abdelhamid Jelassi, Ennahda’s vice president, said in a statement reported on the party’s Web site that rejected the proposal to replace the government with technocrats not affiliated with any party. “We in Ennahda believe Tunisia needs a political government now. We will continue discussions with other parties about forming a coalition government.”

The troubles in Tunisia unsettled the region and endangered a country that was credited with avoiding the chaos plaguing some its neighbors. In the same way some had held up Tunisia’s transition as an example, politicians in the region studied Mr. Belaid’s assassination and saw a broader warning.

Mr. Belaid’s death was seen as a blow to the country’s turbulent transition, raising the possibility that the political violence in Tunisia had reached a dangerous new level.

In the southern mining city of Gafsa, riots broke out and the police fired tear gas at demonstrators who threw stones, a local radio station reported. The city is known as a powerful base of support for Mr. Belaid, who was a fierce advocate for the miners.

A regional headquarters of Ennahda was burned down in the town of Siliana, according to local news media, one of more than a dozen party offices attacked by protesters in the last two days.

In one of the most disturbing aspects of the situation, Mr. Belaid had himself warned just before his death about Tunisia’s troubling turn toward violence and called for a national dialogue to combat it. He took special aim at Ennahda, accusing the Islamist group of turning a blind eye to crimes perpetrated by hard-line Islamists known as Salafis, including attacking Sufi shrines and liquor stores.

There have been no arrests in the killing, and no suspect has been identified. The governing party has condemned the assassination. Anxiety about the assassination reverberated in Egypt, where political feuds have been eclipsed by street clashes between protesters and the riot police. Security officials said plainclothes guards had been assigned to guard the homes of prominent opponents of Egypt’s Islamist-dominated government. The worries were amplified because of a fatwa issued by a hard-line Egyptian cleric saying that opponents of President Mohamed Morsi should be killed. The fatwa specifically mentioned Mohamed ElBaradei, a former United Nations diplomat and leader of Egypt’s largest secular-leaning opposition bloc, which led him to request the protection.

“Regime silent as another fatwa gives license to kill opposition in the name of Islam,” Mr. ElBaradei wrote in a Twitter message. “Religion yet again used and abused.”

On Thursday, Mr. Morsi addressed the issue in a speech, saying that political violence “has become one of the most important challenges that face the Arab Spring revolutions.”

In what seemed to be a direct challenge to religious hard-liners — as well as an attempt to avoid the criticism directed at Ennahda — he condemned those “who claim to speak for religion” and who “permit killing based on political differences.”

“This is terrorism itself,” he said.

Kareem Fahim reported from Tunis, David D. Kirkpatrick from Antakya, Turkey, and Alan Cowell from Paris. Monica Marks contributed reporting from Tunis, and Rick Gladstone from New York.

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Illini buzzer-beater upsets No. 1 Hoosiers, 74-72

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. (AP) — At this rate, no one will want to be No. 1.

Indiana became the fifth straight top-ranked men's college basketball team to lose, falling to unranked Illinois 74-72 on a buzzer-beater by Tyler Griffey on Thursday night.

The senior forward took an inbounds pass with 0.9 seconds to play and made a wide-open layup. And, just like that, the Hoosiers — who moved into the top spot by beating then-No. 1 Michigan just a few days ago — went down.

Indiana coach Tom Crean, whose team has been No. 1 for a total of seven weeks this season after opening there, doesn't know why the top spot is suddenly so hard to hang on to.

"I can't answer that. I'm not sure," Crean said. "I just know that these games are 40-minute games. We played at a high level for most of the game."

The Hoosiers (20-3, 8-2 Big Ten) were in charge until the final 3 1/2 minutes when the Illini (16-8, 3-7 Big Ten) finally put together a run to take and then retake the lead.

"I know this: When we turn the ball over, we're not very good," Crean said. "And the biggest difference tonight was 28 points off turnovers to our 16."

Hoosiers guard Jordan Hulls said flatly that the top rank had nothing to do with Thursday's loss, even for a team that some worried might be looking past unranked, slumping Illinois to a meeting Sunday with No. 10 Ohio State.

"We just didn't execute when we needed to," he said.

If Indiana falls from No. 1 on Monday, No. 2 Florida might not be a candidate to replace the Hoosiers after the Gators' loss this week to Arkansas. That could put No. 3 Michigan back on top if they can make it to Monday without a loss.

For the Hoosiers, nothing could have been worse than the way Thursday's game ended.

With 0.9 seconds, Griffey left defenders Cody Zeller and Christian Watford behind on an inbounds play from the baseline, took the pass from Brandon Paul and delivered the uncontested buzzer-beater.

The shot sent hundreds of students onto the court, though they waited as officials checked the replay to make sure the clock hadn't beaten Griffey. Once the basket was upheld, Paul and fellow guard D.J. Richardson hugged and teared up in relief.

Illinois had endured an awful run since starting 12-0. The Illini had since lost eight of 11 and fallen to 10th in the 12-team Big Ten.

Griffey, who had struggled as bad as any Illini player, seemed surprised at how easily the winning shot came.

"I just made a simple curl cut and left two guys behind me, and Brandon got off a heck of a pass," he said. "Zeller and Watford were both right in front of me and just kind of stayed there."

Crean said the play was a lot like the other breakdowns in the Hoosiers' game that let Illinois climb back from a 12-point halftime deficit.

"We didn't communicate," he said.

Indiana's loss drops them into a three-way tie for first in the Big Ten with Michigan and Michigan State. The win moves the Illini up into a ninth-place tie with Iowa but, more importantly, provides a potential lifeline ahead of a meeting Sunday at No. 18 Minnesota.

"It was good to get back to having that toughness and togetherness and trust that we needed," Illinois coach John Groce said.

Illinois also added a plank to what may be one of the oddest resumes of any team in the country trying to make the NCAA tournament. Illinois has lost to Purdue, Northwestern and twice to Wisconsin. But coming into Thursday night, the Illini had already beaten three teams now in the top 15: No. 6 Gonzaga, No. 10 Ohio State and No. 14 Butler.

Before Thursday, Illinois hadn't beaten a No. 1 team since a win over Wake Forest in 2004.

Richardson had 23 points for Illinois, Paul had 21 and Griffey finished with 14 points and eight rebounds.

Zeller led Indiana with 14 points, while Will Sheehey had 13, Watford 12 and Hulls 11.

Indiana shot 50 percent from the field (25 of 50), 52.9 percent from 3-point range (9 of 17) and 93 percent from the free throw line (13 of 14). The Hoosiers led by an eight- to 10-point margin for most of the second half.

When 6-foot-11 Nnanna Egwu fouled out with just under 5 minutes to play, Indiana appeared in control. Watford made both free throws and, at 69-59, the Illini looked done.

But Richardson went on a one-man run, first burying back-to-back 3-pointers and then hitting a midrange jumper on the run to tie it at 70 with 1:17 to play.

With the clock under 30 seconds and the game tied at 72, Indiana had the ball for what would have been a last shot but Victor Oladipo coughed up the ball. Richardson picked it up and tried a breakaway layup that Oladipo just swatted out of bounds to set up the final play.

Groce credited Richardson for providing a spark.

"I thought he was absolutely terrific on both ends of the floor," Groce said. "He battled, he fought."

Griffey was benched several weeks ago after a blowout loss at Wisconsin. On a team that had lost its shooting touch, the senior forward had especially struggled. And, though one of Illinois' bigger players at 6-9, he wasn't adding much to the inside presence the Illini desperately needed.

Groce said that, even after he benched Griffey, he never gave up on him.

"I just have told him numerous times here I believe in him," the first-year Illinois coach said. "I do."

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Well: Old Age and Motorcycles Are a Dangerous Mix

If you’re over 40 and planning to hop on a motorcycle, take care. Compared with younger riders, the odds of being seriously injured are high.

That is the message of a new study, published this week in the journal Injury Prevention, which found that older bikers are three times as likely to be severely injured in a crash as younger riders.

The percentage of older bikers on the road is quickly rising, and their involvement in accidents is a growing concern. Nationwide, from 1990 to 2003, the percentage of motorcyclists over age 50 soared from roughly 1 in 10 to about 1 in 4. At the same time, the average age of riders involved in motorcycle crashes has also been climbing. Injury rates among those 65 and older jumped 145 percent from 2000 to 2006 alone.

Because of the increase in motorcycle ridership among older Americans, the researchers, led by Tracy Jackson, a graduate student in the epidemiology department at Brown University, wanted a closer look at their injury patterns. So she and her colleagues combed through a federal database of motorcycle crashes that were serious enough to require emergency medical care. That yielded about 1.5 million incidents involving motorcyclists 20 or older from 2001 to 2008.

The researchers then split them into groups: those in their 20s and 30s, another group between 40 and 59, and those 60 and older.

Over all, the study showed that injury rates for all three groups were on the rise. But the rise was steepest for the oldest riders. Compared with the youngest motorcyclists, those who were 60 and older were two and a half times as likely to end up with serious injuries, and three times as likely to be admitted to a hospital. The riders who were middle age were twice as likely as their younger counterparts to be hospitalized.

For older riders, the consequences of a collision were also especially alarming. Older and middle-aged bikers were more likely to sustain fractures and dislocations, and they had a far greater chance of ending up with injuries to internal organs, including brain damage.

The researchers speculated that it was very likely that a number of factors played a role in older riders’ higher injury rates. For one, declines in vision and reaction time may make older riders more prone to mistakes that end up in collisions. Another theory is that older riders tend to ride bigger bikes, “which may be more likely to roll or turn over,” Ms. Jackson said.

Then there is the greater fragility that comes with age. Older riders may be involved in the same types of accidents as younger riders, Ms. Jackson said, but in some cases, a collision that a 20-year-old would walk away from might send a 65-year-old to the hospital.

“Your bones become more brittle, and you lose muscle mass as you get older,” she said. “It could just be a matter of aging and the body being less durable.”

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European Leaders Struggle to Bridge Budget Gaps

BRUSSELS — European Union leaders on Friday morning edged closer to agreeing a budget worth nearly €1 trillion, or $1.3 trillion, to support farming, transportation and other infrastructure, as well as big research projects for the 27-nation bloc.

But after 15 hours of talks, the leaders were still seeking unanimity while also attempting to satisfy the wide array of national interests demanding attention.

The budget is negotiated every seven years and involves furious horse-trading as leaders focus on getting the best deal for their own countries’ citizens, rather than emphasizing pan-European considerations.

The marathon session was the second attempt to reach a deal on the funding package, which should run from 2014 to 2020, after the first attempt collapsed in November.

Another failure to strike a deal on a sum of money that represents only about 1 percent of the Union’s Gross Domestic Product would be a severe embarrassment for the leaders, who already have spent years bickering over how to save the euro.

The European Commission, the bloc’s policymaking arm, had sought an increase in the overall budget of around 5 percent to more than €1 trillion.

Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council, which represents E.U. leaders, pruned that sum to about €973 billion at the previous summit in November.

On Friday morning, Mr. Van Rompuy presented further revisions lowering the overall sum to about €960 billion but holding down the amount of cash governments pay up-front to around €908 billion.

That formula was designed, in part, to satisfy countries like Britain and the Netherlands that pay more into the budget than they receive, while also accommodating the demands of countries like France and Italy that want to maintain generous payments for agriculture and infrastructure.

Some of the deepest cuts would be made to pan-European projects to improve transport, energy, and digital services that are overseen by the commission. About €1 billion in cuts would be made to the part of the budget used to employ 55,000 people, including 6,000 translators, most of them in Brussels, who run the Union’s day-to-day affairs.

Expert national advisors were reviewing the proposals on Friday morning, and leaders were expected to reconvene for further talks.

Leaders also were wrestling over demands by some countries to renew a system of rebates that raises the costs for other countries.

One of the complications in the current round of negotiations has been the call for budgetary rigor from leaders like David Cameron, the British prime minister, who says the Union should tighten its belt at a time when many European governments have been compelled to impose stringent budget cuts.

Mr. Cameron, in particular, has earned the enmity of some European leaders by demanding a renegotiation of Britain’s treaty with the Union and promised a referendum on his nation’s membership in 2017.

Reflecting growing irritation with Britain among a number of European leaders, Martin Schulz, the president of the European Parliament, told a news conference late on Thursday night that leaders should not go out of their way to appease Mr. Cameron.

Because Britain could be outside the bloc by later this decade, there was little need to make concessions to Mr. Cameron that potentially jeopardized “the security of our financial planning,” Mr. Schulz suggested.

Mr. Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council, had intended to start the session during the mid-afternoon on Thursday to force leaders to make their complaints clear in a roundtable session rather than being allowed to break into small groups.

But his plan was derailed, and the first roundtable session was delayed until late in the evening, as leaders formed the kind of pre-summit huddles that he seemingly wanted to avoid.

President François Hollande of France was an hour late to a meeting during the afternoon with Mr. Cameron, Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, and Mr. Van Rompuy.

Mr. Hollande’s lateness was a sign of French displeasure with British demands that included strict limits on agriculture spending cherished by French farmers, according to an E.U. diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks.

Even if leaders eventually agree to a deal, it faces still more hurdles before it becomes law at the European Parliament, which has the power to veto the budget.

Some of the most influential figures in Parliament have already signaled that they are prepared to reject a budget that foresees spending less on Europe in the years ahead.

Guy Verhofstadt, the head of the alliance of liberals in the Parliament, called on Thursday for a full-revision clause to be inserted into the budget, so that it could be increased after three years if economic conditions improved.

Mr. Schulz, the president of the Parliament, said on Thursday that he would not approve a budget that ended up widening the overall gap between the amount of cash paid up-front by governments and the somewhat higher amounts known as commitments, which make up the overall budget.

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Dominant Tunisian Party Rejects Move to Contain Assassination Fallout

Anis Mili/Reuters

Tunisian protesters clashed with the riot police during a demonstration after the death of Mr. Belaid outside the Interior ministry in Tunis on Wednesday.

TUNIS — Tunisian officials moved quickly Wednesday to contain the fallout after a leading opposition figure was assassinated outside his home. They announced that they would restructure the Islamist-led government and form a national unity cabinet as thousands took to the streets in protests that security forces beat back with tear gas.

But Reuters reported on Thursday that the country’s dominant Ennahda party had rejected the plan to to dissolve the government, as proposed Wednesday by Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali.

“The prime minister did not ask the opinion of his party," Abdelhamid Jelassi, Ennahda’s vice-president was quoted as saying. “We in Ennahda believe Tunisia needs a political government now. We will continue discussions with others parties about forming a coalition government.”

The reported rejection — which was not immediately confirmed — appeared to inject a new element of political uncertainty into an already fraught situation.

The killing of the politician, Chokri Belaid, one of Tunisia’s best-known human rights defenders and a fierce critic of the ruling Islamist party, placed dangerous new strains on a society struggling to reconcile its identity as a long-vaunted bastion of Arab secularism with its new role as a proving ground for one of the region’s ascendant Islamist parties.

The explosion of popular anger, which led to the death of a police officer in the capital, posed a severe challenge to Ennahda, which came to power promising a model government that blended Islamist principles with tolerant pluralism.

Mr. Belaid was shot and killed outside his home in an upscale Tunis neighborhood as he was getting into his car on Wednesday morning. The interior minister, citing witnesses, said that two unidentified gunmen had fired on Mr. Belaid, striking him with four bullets.

The killing, which analysts said was the first confirmed political assassination here since the overthrow of the autocratic leader, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, was a dark turn for the country that was the birthplace of the Arab uprisings of two years ago. It resonated in countries like Egypt and Libya that are struggling to contain political violence while looking to Tunisia’s turbulent but hopeful transition as a reassuring example.

“Confronting violence, radicalism and the forces of darkness is the main priority for societies if they want freedom and democracy,” Amr Hamzawy, a member of Egypt’s main secular opposition coalition, wrote on Twitter on Wednesday. “Assassinating Chokri Belaid is warning bell in Tunisia, and in Egypt too.”

The response by Tunisian officials was being closely watched. President Moncef Marzouki cut short an overseas trip to deal with the crisis. Mr. Jebali, the prime minister, called the killing a “heinous crime against the Tunisian people, against the principles of the revolution and the values of tolerance and acceptance of the other.”

Bowing to the outrage, he said cabinet ministers would be replaced with technocrats not tied to any party until elections can be held.

The announcement, which had been expected for months, held out the promise that Tunisia might continue to avoid the political chaos that has plagued its neighbors. Since the uprising, the country has held successful elections, leading to a coalition government merging Ennahda and two center-left parties. An assembly writing the country’s constitution has circumscribed the role of Islamic law, allowing Tunisia to avoid the arguments over basic legal matters that have led to protracted unrest in Egypt.

The struggle over identity here has taken a different form, as hard-line Islamists have pressured Ennhada to take a more conservative path. Secular groups have faulted Ennahda for failing to confront the hard-liners, or for secretly supporting them. The restructuring does not completely loosen Ennahda’s hold on political power.

The killing remained a mystery on Wednesday. The authorities did not announce any arrests, saying only that witnesses said the gunmen had appeared to be no more than 30 years old. Among Mr. Belaid’s colleagues and relatives, suspicions immediately fell on the hard-line Islamists known as Salafists, some of whom have marred the transition with acts of violence, including attacks on liquor stores and Sufi mausoleums.

Monica Marks reported from Tunis, and Kareem Fahim from Cairo. Reporting was contributed by Alan Cowell from Paris, Gerry Mullany from Hong Kong, Mayy El Sheikh from Cairo, David D. Kirkpatrick from Antakya, Turkey, and Brian Knowlton from Washington.

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