Sony confirms 10 devices will get Jelly Bean upgrade starting in February 2013

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Jets bench Sanchez, will start McElroy vs Chargers

NEW YORK (AP) — Mark Sanchez is no longer the New York Jets' franchise quarterback.

He might not even be the backup.

Rex Ryan decided to bench Sanchez on Tuesday in favor of Greg McElroy after the fourth-year quarterback had another miserable performance in a 14-10 loss at Tennessee on Monday night that eliminated New York from playoff contention.

"I think it's best for our team, and for this game," Ryan said during a conference call.

So, it'll be McElroy under center for his first NFL start when the Jets (6-8) play the San Diego Chargers at home Sunday. Ryan hasn't decided whether Sanchez or Tim Tebow — listed as the No. 2 quarterback — will be the backup.

While Sanchez blew the second chance Ryan gave him a few weeks ago, Tebow was leapfrogged by a third-stringer, fueling speculation that the team has little confidence in him as a quarterback.

"I have to look at what I think is the best for the team and not necessarily the individual," Ryan said. "I'll say this about Tim and I've always said it: I know he wants to help this team be successful in the worst way and there's no doubt about that."

Sanchez threw four interceptions Monday night and wasn't able to handle a low snap with the game on the line, ending the Jets' hopes to get back into the postseason.

Things got worse after the game for Sanchez, who received a series of death threats from one disgruntled fan on Twitter. League spokesman Greg Aiello said the NFL's security staff was aware of the man's threats and was working with the Jets to assist on the matter. The team declined comment through a spokesman.

Ryan said after the loss that he wasn't ready to decide who would start against the Chargers, but told Sanchez he would be making a change at quarterback by going with either McElroy or Tebow.

"He respected my decision," Ryan said. "That's not easy, that's for sure."

After talking to his staff and members of the organization Tuesday, Ryan chose McElroy.

"This is my opinion, and I do believe that it's best for our team that Greg is our quarterback," Ryan insisted. "I'm the guy that's making this decision. Every decision I make is based on what I believe is the best decision for the team."

But Ryan was vague in his answers to why he selected McElroy above Tebow, choosing after being asked several times to not go into detail about what specifically factored into the decision.

"I can answer this question a million ways, frontward, backward, sideways, anything else," Ryan said. "It's my decision and I based it on a gut feeling or whatever."

McElroy, a seventh-round pick last year out of Alabama, helped lead the Jets to a 7-6 win over Arizona on Dec. 2 when Ryan pulled Sanchez from that game late in the third quarter. McElroy had modest numbers — 5 of 7 for 29 yards — but threw for the only touchdown of the game, and nearly led another scoring drive as the Jets ran out the clock.

Ryan decided to stick with Sanchez after that game, saying that the one-time face of the franchise gave the Jets their best chance at winning as they remained in the playoff hunt.

But Sanchez struggled in a 17-10 win over Jacksonville and again even more in the loss to Tennessee. McElroy, who gave the Jets a huge spark in his first NFL action, was inactive for both games. That hurt New York on Monday night when Ryan was unable to turn to McElroy since he was not in uniform for the game. Instead, Ryan went to Tebow for one series — which had been part of the game plan — but it was unproductive and Sanchez came back in for the next offensive possession.

Sanchez leads the league with 24 turnovers, including 17 interceptions, and has turned the ball over 50 times since the start of last season. His future with the team is uncertain because he signed a contract extension with New York in March that included $8.25 million in guaranteed money for next season.

Ryan would not commit to Sanchez beyond this season, and wouldn't discuss what the depth chart will look like.

"We have two games left and that's where my focus is going to be," he said. "What's past that will be determined later."

Sanchez was regularly booed during home games this season, falling out of favor with the fans who were excited when the Jets traded up to take him with the fifth overall pick in the 2009 draft.

"Has he had better days than (Monday night)? Absolutely," Ryan said.

There certainly were some good moments for the former Southern California star, particularly in helping lead New York to the AFC championship game in each of his first two seasons, but he failed to take the next step in his development.

While his frequent mistakes in reading defenses and miscalculating throws are a huge reason for his struggles, Sanchez also wasn't helped by a constantly changing cast around him. Several of the team's top offensive players — Thomas Jones, Leon Washington, Jerricho Cotchery, Brad Smith, LaDainian Tomlinson, Plaxico Burress, Alan Faneca and Damien Woody — have all been released, traded or allowed to become free agents since Sanchez's rookie season. He is also working with his second offensive coordinator in Tony Sparano after an up-and-down three seasons with Brian Schottenheimer.

Tebow, acquired from Denver in March, has had a minor role in the offense after being expected to play a major part. He is recovering from two broken ribs that sidelined him for three games, but returned Monday night and had little impact. It would seem unlikely that Tebow, who helped lead the Broncos to the playoffs last season, will be back next season.

When Tebow arrived in New York, he often said he was "excited to be a Jet," but there's little doubt that he no longer feels that way. He has done his best to hide his frustration throughout the season, especially when the wildcat-style offense was talked up by Ryan and Sparano as a highlight of the offense.

Tebow has instead just been a spare part on an offense that ranks 30th in the NFL. He is 6 of 8 passing for 39 yards, and has run 32 times for 102 yards — playing a more significant role as the personal punt protector on special teams.

"People can speculate anything they want," Ryan said. Obviously, as a football team, we're 6-8 and nobody's happy about that and ultimately, I'm the one accountable."

___

Online: http://pro32.ap.org/poll and http://twitter.com/AP_NFL

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Church Officials Call on Filipinos to Campaign Against Birth Control Law

MANILA — After losing a battle to stop the passage of a contentious birth control law, Roman Catholic Church officials on Tuesday dug in and instructed their millions of followers to campaign against the measure in communities, schools and homes.

“Let us intensify the moral spiritual education of our youth and children so that they can stand strong against the threats to their moral fiber,” Archbishop Socrates Villegas said in a statement. “Let us use all the means within our reach to safeguard the health of expectant mothers in our communities.”

The Philippine Congress passed legislation on Monday to help the country’s poorest women gain access to birth control. Each chamber of the national legislature passed its own version of the measure, and minor differences between the two must be reconciled before the measure goes to President Benigno S. Aquino III for his signature.

The measure had been stalled for more than a decade because of determined opposition from the church in this overwhelmingly Catholic country.

Birth control is legal and widely available in the Philippines for people who can afford it, particularly those living in cities. But condoms, birth control pills and other forms of contraception are sometimes kept out of community health centers and clinics by local government and Catholic Church officials.

The measure passed on Monday would stock government health centers, including those in remote areas, with free or subsidized birth control options for the poor. It would also require sex education in public schools and family-planning training for community health officers.

Archbishop Villegas, the vice president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, on Tuesday encouraged Catholics to resist the measure by disseminating information about natural family planning methods and warning people about “the hazardous effects of contraceptive pills on the health of women.”

“Let us conduct our own sex education of our children insuring that sex is always understood as a gift of God,” Archbishop Villegas stated. “Sex must never be taught separate from God and isolated from marriage.”

Bishop Gabriel V. Reyes, chairman of the conference’s Episcopal Commission on Family and Life, said after the vote Monday that “we need to explain to our fellow believers that they ought to refuse contraceptives even when they are being offered these.”

The Philippines has one of the highest birthrates in Asia, but backers of the legislation, including the Aquino administration, have said repeatedly that its purpose is not to limit population growth. Rather, they say, the bill is meant to offer poor families the same reproductive health options that wealthier people in the country enjoy.

Though lacking the numbers needed to defeat the legislation, lawmakers who opposed the measure sought to delay the vote. In one instance, an opposition senator proposed 35 amendments just before a vote was to take place.

Often the debate took bizarre turns, as when a congressman claimed that the birth control measure was a plot by the Philippine Communist Party to take over the government.

In another instance, a male senator requested removal of the phrase “satisfying sex” from a passage in the bill that referred to “safe and satisfying sex.” Several female senators opposed its removal, and the amendment was debated live on television while social media networks crackled with sarcastic commentary. “I am a Filipina,” Senator Miriam Santiago said in response to the amendment. “I am also a married woman, and I insist whoever is married to me should give me safe and satisfying sex, period.”

During a vote on the measure in the House of Representatives, the boxer and congressman Manny Pacquiao linked the birth control measure to his having been knocked unconscious on Dec. 8 by Juan Manuel Marquez during their W.B.O. world welterweight fight in Las Vegas.

“Some thought I was dead,” Mr. Pacquiao said in a speech explaining his vote against the measure. “What happened in Vegas strengthened my already firm belief in the sanctity of life.” He added: “Manny Pacquiao is pro-life. Manny Pacquiao votes no.”

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DealBook: As Unit Pleads Guilty, UBS Pays $1.5 Billion Over Rate Rigging

UBS, the Swiss banking giant, announced a record settlement with global authorities on Wednesday, agreeing to a combined $1.5 billion in fines for its role in a multiyear scheme to manipulate interest rates.

In a sign that officials are increasingly taking a hard line against financial wrongdoing, the Justice Department also secured a guilty plea from the bank’s Japanese subsidiary, sending a warning shot to other big banks suspected of rate rigging. The UBS subsidiary, which agreed to plead to a single count of wire fraud, is the first unit of a big bank to agree to criminal charges in more than a decade.

The cash penalties represented the largest fines to date related to the rate-rigging inquiry. The fine is also one of the biggest sanctions that American and British authorities have ever levied against a financial institution, falling just short of the $1.9 billion payout that HSBC made last week over money laundering accusations.

The severity of the UBS penalties, authorities said, reflected the extent of the problems. The government complaints laid bare a scheme that spanned from 2005 to 2010, describing how the bank reported false rates to squeeze out extra profits and deflect concerns about its health during the financial crisis.

“The findings we have set out in our notice today do not make for pretty reading,” Tracey McDermott, the enforcement director for the Financial Services Authority of Britain, said in a statement. “The integrity of benchmarks,” she said, “are of fundamental importance to both U.K. and international financial markets. UBS traders and managers ignored this.”

The UBS case reflects a pattern of abuse that authorities have uncovered as part of a multi-year investigation into rate-rigging. The inquiry, which has ensnared more than a dozen big banks, is focused on key benchmarks like the London interbank offered rate, or Libor. Such rates are used to help determine the borrowing rates for trillions of dollars of financial products like corporate loans, mortgages and credit cards.

In the UBS matter, the wrongdoing occurred largely within the Japanese unit, where traders colluded with other banks and brokerage firms to tinker with Yen denominated Libor and bolster their returns. During the 2008 financial crisis, UBS managers also “inappropriately gave guidance to those employees charged with submitting interest rates, the purpose being to positively influence the perception of UBS’s creditworthiness,” according to authorities.

In a series of colorful e-mails and phone calls, traders tried to influence the rate-setting process. “I need you to keep it as low as possible,” one UBS trader said to an employee at another brokerage firm in September 2008, according to the complaint filed by the Financial Services Authority. “If you do that,” the trader promised to pay “whatever you want. I’m a man of my word.”

As the employees carried out the alleged manipulation, they also celebrated the efforts, with one trader referring to a partner in the scheme as “superman.” “Be a hero today,” he urged, according the complaint by regulators.

The British and Swiss authorities released their complaints on Wednesday before the bank’s shares began trading in Switzerland. American authorities are expected to release their own complaints later Wednesday in Washington.

In a statement, UBS highlighted its cooperation with the investigation. The firm previously stated that it made provisions of 897 million Swiss francs ($975 million) to cover potential legal and regulatory fines.

“We discovered behavior of certain employees that is unacceptable,” the chief executive of UBS, Sergio P. Ermotti, said in the statement. “We deeply regret this inappropriate and unethical behavior. No amount of profit is more important than the reputation of this firm, and we are committed to doing business with integrity.”

The UBS case provides a lens to view broader problems in the rate-setting process, which affects how consumers and companies borrow money around the world. In June, authorities scored their first Libor settlement, securing a $450 million payout from Barclays, the big British bank.

The UBS case — the product of cross-border collaboration among regulators and federal prosecutors – is more than triple the earlier fine.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Justice Department leveled about $1.2 billion in combined fines. The Financial Services Authority of Britain fined the bank $260 million. The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority, which does not have the power to fine, recovered $65 million in the bank’s supposed ill-gotten gains.

The Justice Department’s criminal division, which arranged the guilty plea with the Japanese subsidiary, also struck a non-prosecution agreement with the parent company. The exact total of the penalties was unclear, because the department has not yet released its settlement documents.

The Justice Department’s case is also expected to take aim at some of the bank’s traders, including 33-year-old Thomas Hayes. The Justice Department plans to announce charges against Mr. Hayes, the former UBS and Citigroup trader, who featured prominently in the investigation, according to people with knowledge of the matter. He was arrested in London last week and later released on bail. Other UBS employees have been suspended or fired following an internal investigation.

The fallout from the UBS case is expected to ratchet up the pressure on some of the world’s largest financial institutions and spur settlement talks across the banking industry.

The Royal Bank of Scotland has said it expects to pay fines before its next earnings statement in February, while Deutsche Bank has set aside an undisclosed amount to cover potential penalties. Some American institutions, including Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase, also remain in regulators’ crosshairs.

The UBS case has exposed the systemic problems with the rate-setting process. Over a 6-year period, UBS traders targeted the major currencies that form the Libor system, including the U.S. dollar denominated rate. The bank was also cited for attempting to manipulate other benchmarks like the Euro Interbank Offered Rate, or Euribor, and the Tokyo Interbank Offered Rate, or Tibor.

Much of the activity took place in the bank’s Japanese unit. Authorities said four UBS traders colluded to manipulate submissions to Yen Libor. The individuals made more than 1,900 requests to brokers and other banks to alter the rate, according to regulatory filings. As part of their efforts, UBS employees made quarterly payments of £15,000 ($24,000) to outside brokers involved in the rate-rigging for at least 18 months for their help, the complaint said.

To avoid arousing suspicion, UBS employees routinely made small changes to submissions, the complaint detailed. The individuals, who communicated with colleagues about the rate-setting through emails and instant messages, also altered rate submissions to benefit traders at other banks.

The Japanese unit’s guilty plea for wire fraud follows frantic last-minute negotiations last week between senior UBS officials and American authorities. The actions detailed in the complaint emboldened the Justice Department to seek the guilty plea from the Japanese unit. By forcing the plea from the firm’s Japanese subsidiary, federal authorities sent a clear message about the level of wrongdoing, but stopped far short of shutting UBS out of the American markets.

Still, the steep sanctions come as a surprise, given the bank’s cooperation with investigators.

Since first announcing that it was the subject of Libor investigations, the Swiss bank has eagerly worked with authorities in a bid for leniency. UBS, for example, had received conditional immunity from the Justice Department’s antitrust unit, a deal that did not apply to the Justice Department’s criminal division.

The case presents the latest setback for UBS.

The Swiss bank already agreed to a $780 million fine in 2009 with American authorities to settle charges that it helped American clients avoid tax. The firm also announced a $2.3 billion loss last year related to illegal trading activity by a former employee, Kweku M. Adoboli. Mr. Adoboli subsequently was sentenced to seven years, and British authorities fined UBS $47.5 million over the scandal.

UBS said it expected to report a net loss of up to $2.7 billion in the fourth quarter of the year because of the costs related to Libor and other legal matters. The figure includes around $2.3 billion of provisions of legal and regulatory costs, as well as $548 million in restructuring charges.

In the wake of the Libor scandal, UBS has been forced to beef up its compliance and rate-setting procedures, according to the Swiss regulator. The bank has also fired individuals connected to the rate-rigging.

“We are pleased that the authorities gave us credit for the important and positive changes we have already made,” the chairman of UBS, Axel Weber, said in a statement. “I have zero tolerance for inappropriate and unethical behavior of any of our staff.”

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This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 19, 2012

An earlier version of this post misstated a loss announced by UBS related to illegal trading activity by a former employee, Kweku M. Adoboli. It was $2.3 billion, not $2.3 million.

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Richard Engel of NBC Is Released in Syria

Richard Engel, the chief foreign correspondent for NBC News, and three of his crew members were freed on Monday after five days in captivity in Syria, the news organization said Tuesday.

The journalists were unharmed. The news organization released a short statement that said, "We are pleased to report they are safely out of the country."

The identities of the kidnappers and their motives were unknown. But their kidnapping once again highlights the perils of reporting from Syria, which is said by the Committee to Protect Journalists to be "the world’s most dangerous place for the press."

NBC declined to specify the number of crew members that were with Mr. Engel but a person with specific knowledge of the situation said there were three. The person did not say whether Mr. Engel was traveling with security

Mr. Engel covertly entered Syria several times this year to report on the insurgency that is fighting President Bashar al-Assad there. He was last seen on television last Thursday in a taped report from Aleppo, Syria’s commercial capital, where he reported that "the Syrian regime appears to be cracking, but the rebels remain outgunned." He and his crew members had apparently moved to a safer location outside the country to transmit their report (two days earlier he had reported live on the "Today" show from Turkey, having just come back from Aleppo) because they were detained on Thursday when they were trying to move back into Syria.

Mr. Engel and the crew members, whose names were not released by NBC, were blindfolded by the kidnappers and "tossed into the back of a truck," NBC’s Web site said. From that point on, NBC had no contact with Mr. Engel or the crew. The network’s Web sitesaid there was "no claim of responsibility, no contact with the captors and no request for ransom during the time the crew was missing,"

The site said the crew members were being moved to a new location on Monday night "when their captors ran into a checkpoint manned by members of the Ahrar al-Sham brigade, a Syrian rebel group. There was a confrontation and a firefight ensued. Two of the captors were killed, while an unknown number of others escaped." The rebels helped escort the crew to the Syrian border.

NBC attempted to keep the crew’s disappearance a secret for several days while it sought to ascertain their whereabouts. Its television competitors and many other major news organizations, including The New York Times, refrained from reporting on the situation, in part out of fears that any reporting could further endanger the crew. A similar arrangement, sometimes called a blackout, was reached after a reporter for The Times, David Rohde, was kidnapped in Afghanistan in 2008. Mr. Rohde and a local reporter escaped after seven months in captivity.

In the case of Mr. Engel, some Web sites reported speculation about his disappearance on Monday. NBC declined to comment until the crew members were safely out of Syria on Tuesday.

Mr. Engel is perhaps the best-known foreign-based correspondent on television in the United States. Hop-scotching from Iraq to Afghanistan to Egypt and other countries in recent years, he has had more airtime than any other such correspondent at NBC, ABC or CBS. Thus the news of his kidnapping and safe release is likely to generate widespread interest from viewers.

Mr. Engel has worked for NBC since May of 2003, two months into the Iraq war. He was promoted to be chief foreign correspondent in 2008. At the time, the NBC News president Steve Capus said, "There aren’t enough superlatives to describe the work that Richard has done in some of the most dangerous places on Earth for NBC News. His reporting, his expertise on the situation in the Middle East, his professionalism and his commitment to telling the story of what is happening there is unparalleled."

The "NBC Nightly News" anchor Brian Williams has been among Mr. Engel’s most ardent fans. Without alluding to his disappearance, Mr. Williams brought up Mr. Engel while being interviewed onstage at a charity fund-raiser in New Jersey on Sunday night. "What I know about Richard Engel is, he’s fearless, but he’s not crazy," Mr. Williams said. When Mr. Engel’s name came up, there was spontaneous applause from the crowd.

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Facebook to launch new Snapchat alternative with self-destructing messages

Title Post: Facebook to launch new Snapchat alternative with self-destructing messages
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Boeheim wins 900th, appeals for action on firearms

SYRACUSE, N.Y. (AP) — With his wife, Juli, looking on at the postgame press conference and his young children close by, Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim's final remarks were not about his milestone 900th career victory.

Instead, he was thinking about two 6-year-old boys who were buried Monday, victims along with 18 other children and six adults in a shooting massacre last week at an elementary school in Connecticut.

"If we cannot get the people who represent us to do something about firearms, we are a sad, sad society," Boeheim said Monday night. "If one person in this world, the NRA president, anybody, can tell me why we need assault weapons with 30 shots — this is our fault if we don't go out there and do something about this. If we can't get this thing done, I don't know what kind of country we have."

It was a sobering end to what was a memorable evening for Syracuse basketball. The third-ranked Orange's 72-68 victory over Detroit in the Gotham Classic made Boeheim just the third Division I men's coach to reach 900 wins.

Boeheim, 68 and in his 37th year at his alma mater, is 900-304 and joined an elite fraternity. Mike Krzyzewski (936) and Bob Knight (902) are the only other men's Division I coaches to win that many games.

"To me, it's just a number," said Boeheim, whose first victory was against Harvard in 1976. "If I get 900, have I got to get more? That's why maybe it's just not that important to me because to me it's just a number, and the only number that matters is how this team does."

So far, it's done OK.

James Southerland had 22 points for Syracuse (10-0), which increased its home winning streak to 30 games, longest in the nation. Detroit (6-5), which lost 77-74 at St. John's in the second game of the season and 74-61 at Pitt earlier this month, had its four-game winning streak snapped.

Dave Bing, Boeheim's college roommate, teammate and fellow Hall of Famer, and Roosevelt Bouie, a star on Boeheim's first team in 1976-77, were in the Carrier Dome crowd of 17,902.

Bing was standing tall in the locker room after the game.

"Nobody would have thought when we came here 50 years ago that either one of us would have had the kind of success we've had," said Bing, today the mayor of Detroit. "I'm so pleased and proud of him because he stuck with it. He's proven that he's one of the best coaches ever in college basketball, and he'll be No. 2 shortly."

After a victory that nearly was short-circuited, Boeheim was presented a jersey encased in glass with 900 emblazoned on it.

"I'm happy. I've stayed around long enough. I was a little nervous," Boeheim said at center court. "I'm proud to be here. To win this game is more pressure than I've felt in a long time. I wasn't thinking about losing until the end. That wouldn't have been a good thing to happen, but it very well could have."

Indeed.

Midway through the second half with Syracuse dominating, fans were given placards featuring cardboard cutouts of Boeheim's face with 900 wins printed on the back to wave in celebration. But when the public address announcer in the Carrier Dome invited fans to stick around for the postgame ceremony, the Titans roared back.

Juwan Howard Jr., who finished with 18 points, scored 14 over the last 6 minutes to key a 16-0 run, his two free throws pulling Detroit within 67-63 with 55.1 seconds left after the Titans had trailed by 20 with 6:09 to play.

"You know what, I didn't hear it, but the players probably heard because they sure came alive," Detroit coach Ray McCallum said. "This is a big stage. Guys sitting around the hotel watching television getting ready to play the No. 3 team in the country and they're talking about going for 900 wins, coach Boeheim. That's a lot for a young man to digest."

Michael Carter-Williams hit three of four free throws in the final seconds to secure the win.

"Michael made big-time free throws you've got to make. If he misses a couple, it's a new game. That was the difference," Boeheim said. "We have not been in that situation. Hopefully, we'll learn from that."

Carter-Williams finished with 10 assists and 12 points, his sixth straight double-double.

"It was great to be part of this," Carter-Williams said. "It's a part of history."

Doug Anderson scored 18 points and Nick Minnerath had 13 for Detroit. Ray McCallum Jr., the coach's son and Detroit's leading scorer at 19.4 points per game, finished with nine, while Jason Calliste had seven.

Southerland scored a career-high 35 points, matching a school record with nine 3-pointers, in a win at Arkansas in late November and, after an 0-for-10 slump over three games, found his range again Saturday night with three 3s in a win over Canisius. He finished 5 of 8 from behind the arc against the Titans.

One of the keys to breaking Syracuse's 2-3 zone is hitting the long ball, and Detroit struck out in the first half. The Titans were 0 for 10 and the lone 3 they did make — by McCallum with just over 6 minutes left — was negated by a shot-clock violation.

Detroit could only lament what might have been if a couple had gone in.

"We never gave up. That's a tribute to our team," Howard said. "We had the right attitude. We played a tough opponent. You usually don't want a moral victory, but we can take some positives from this game."

Syracuse plays again Saturday against Temple in Madison Square Garden, and the Orange faithful are likely to be out in numbers as they usually are when the team plays there.

Boeheim was effusive in praise of the support the team has received during his long tenure. Syracuse has had 71 crowds of over 30,000 since the Carrier Dome opened in 1980 and holds the NCAA on-campus record of 34,616, set nearly three years ago against Villanova.

"The support of fans cannot be overestimated," he said. "You have to have that kind of support in your building to bring recruits in, to help you play better. We've had a tremendous loyal fan base. That's why I always felt this was a great place to coach and why I never really thought about going anywhere else. The support from the fans is the No. 1 thing you have to have."

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Mind: A Misguided Focus on Mental Illness in Gun Control Debate

The gunman, Adam Lanza, 20, has been described as a loner who was intelligent and socially awkward. And while no official diagnosis has been made public, armchair diagnosticians have been quick to assert that keeping guns from getting into the hands of people with mental illness would help solve the problem of gun homicides.

Arguing against stricter gun-control measures, Representative Mike Rogers, Republican of Michigan and a former F.B.I. agent, said, “What the more realistic discussion is, ‘How do we target people with mental illness who use firearms?’ ”

Robert A. Levy, chairman of the Cato Institute, told The New York Times: “To reduce the risk of multivictim violence, we would be better advised to focus on early detection and treatment of mental illness.”

But there is overwhelming epidemiological evidence that the vast majority of people with psychiatric disorders do not commit violent acts. Only about 4 percent of violence in the United States can be attributed to people with mental illness.

This does not mean that mental illness is not a risk factor for violence. It is, but the risk is actually small. Only certain serious psychiatric illnesses are linked to an increased risk of violence.

One of the largest studies, the National Institute of Mental Health’s Epidemiologic Catchment Area study, which followed nearly 18,000 subjects, found that the lifetime prevalence of violence among people with serious mental illness — like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder — was 16 percent, compared with 7 percent among people without any mental disorder. Anxiety disorders, in contrast, do not seem to increase the risk at all.

Alcohol and drug abuse are far more likely to result in violent behavior than mental illness by itself. In the National Institute of Mental Health’s E.C.A. study, for example, people with no mental disorder who abused alcohol or drugs were nearly seven times as likely as those without substance abuse to commit violent acts.

It’s possible that preventing people with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and other serious mental illnesses from getting guns might decrease the risk of mass killings. Even the Supreme Court, which in 2008 strongly affirmed a broad right to bear arms, at the same time endorsed prohibitions on gun ownership “by felons and the mentally ill.”

But mass killings are very rare events, and because people with mentally illness contribute so little to overall violence, these measures would have little impact on everyday firearm-related killings. Consider that between 2001 and 2010, there were nearly 120,000 gun-related homicides, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. Few were perpetrated by people with mental illness.

Perhaps more significant, we are not very good at predicting who is likely to be dangerous in the future. According to Dr. Michael Stone, professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia and an expert on mass murderers, “Most of these killers are young men who are not floridly psychotic. They tend to be paranoid loners who hold a grudge and are full of rage.”

Even though we know from large-scale epidemiologic studies like the E.C.A. study that a young psychotic male who is intoxicated with alcohol and has a history of involuntary commitment is at a high risk of violence, most individuals who fit this profile are harmless.

Jeffery Swanson, a professor of psychiatry at Duke University and a leading expert in the epidemiology of violence, said in an e-mail, “Can we reliably predict violence?  ‘No’ is the short answer. Psychiatrists, using clinical judgment, are not much better than chance at predicting which individual patients will do something violent and which will not.”

It would be even harder to predict a mass shooting, Dr. Swanson said, “You can profile the perpetrators after the fact and you’ll get a description of troubled young men, which also matches the description of thousands of other troubled young men who would never do something like this.”

Even if clinicians could predict violence perfectly, keeping guns from people with mental illness is easier said than done. Nearly five years after Congress enacted the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, only about half of the states have submitted more than a tiny proportion of their mental health records.

How effective are laws that prohibit people with mental illness from obtaining guns? According to Dr. Swanson’s recent research, these measures may prevent some violent crime. But, he added, “there are a lot of people who are undeterred by these laws.”

Adam Lanza was prohibited from purchasing a gun, because he was too young. Yet he managed to get his hands on guns — his mother’s — anyway. If we really want to stop young men like him from becoming mass murderers, and prevent the small amount of violence attributable to mental illness, we should invest our resources in better screening for, and treatment of, psychiatric illness in young people.

All the focus on the small number of people with mental illness who are violent serves to make us feel safer by displacing and limiting the threat of violence to a small, well-defined group. But the sad and frightening truth is that the vast majority of homicides are carried out by outwardly normal people in the grip of all too ordinary human aggression to whom we provide nearly unfettered access to deadly force.

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A Quest for Speedier and Smarter Airport Security

As 15 million people in the United States head to airports this holiday season — slightly fewer than last year — some travelers will find welcome changes to security screening procedures.

Michael Reynolds/European Pressphoto Agency

Travelers on Thanksgiving eve at Reagan National; quicker screening under PreCheck has been expanded.

The Transportation Security Administration has expanded its PreCheck trusted traveler program to 35 airports, allowing members who have been deemed low risk to keep shoes, jackets and belts on. Children 12 and under and passengers 75 and older also receive expedited screening at any checkpoint; pilots, flight attendants, members of the military and people with top secret security clearances qualify at some airports.

John S. Pistole, administrator of the T.S.A., said in an interview that the agency’s priority this year had been to move toward a risk-based approach to screening, recognizing that a large majority of travelers are not potential terrorists.

“When the agency was set up, it was focused almost exclusively on the security mission and not as much on the passenger experience,” Mr. Pistole said. “It became an adversarial relationship, so what we’re trying to do through all these initiatives is change that paradigm and make this a partnership.”

Even with these changes, the agency is under pressure to refine its strategy further in 2013. Its operations have been scrutinized by independent researchers, travel industry committees and government officials charged with oversight, and their ideas for reform are coalescing around a consistent theme.

“I use this acronym SEE,” said Stephen M. Lord, director of homeland security and justice issues for the Government Accountability Office, which has issued many lengthy reports about the T.S.A. “They need to make the process more selective, more effective and more efficient.”

More selective means “shrinking the haystack and really focusing on the dangerous people,” Mr. Lord said. While PreCheck and other expedited screening options are a step in that direction, only 7 percent of passengers qualify for these programs, a number Mr. Pistole said the agency was working to expand.

One option being tested is to use dogs that sniff for explosives in tandem with behavior detection officers to divert more people to PreCheck lanes. That process was used at Indianapolis International Airport the day before Thanksgiving, allowing nearly a third of passengers to have expedited screening.

Regarding effectiveness, Mr. Lord said, the T.S.A. needs to improve the technology it relies on — primarily expensive body scanners that may not detect explosives reliably. Although the test results are classified, lawmakers briefed on them have called them disappointing. The agency has acknowledged problems with the slow pace of its X-ray body scanners, removing many of the machines from larger airports in favor of millimeter wave scanners. These now number 655 units in use, in contrast to 170 X-ray machines.

Finally, becoming more efficient means addressing the time passengers spend waiting to get through security — a factor that the T.S.A. does not measure consistently or make public, but one of growing concern to the travel industry as passenger volume has stagnated.

“You can’t focus exclusively on security,” Mr. Lord said. “You’ve got to be mindful of customer service.”

It is difficult to assess how travelers truly feel about airport security. Still, a G.A.O. report released in November found that the T.S.A. did a poor job of tracking and handling customer complaints, a process Mr. Lord described as allowing officials to “essentially investigate themselves.” A separate G.A.O. study called for better performance assessments, particularly as a way to gauge whether airports that use private companies to handle screening, under federal supervision, score higher than airports that use T.S.A. employees.

Mr. Pistole said the agency was working to improve its relationship with passengers. It is training officers and supervisors to defuse escalating situations at checkpoints, appointing customer service staff at some airports and creating a way to send complaints that are not resolved locally to an ombudsman.

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Car Bomb Kills at Least 17 in Pakistan Tribal Region

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A powerful car bomb exploded near government offices in a town in the northwestern tribal belt on Monday, killing at least 17 people and wounding dozens, local officials said.

The car bomb attack in the Khyber tribal agency followed a Taliban assault on nearby Peshawar international airport over the weekend that left at least 15 people dead, 10 of them militants, underlining the continued potency of Islamist fighters in the area.

In Monday’s attack, officials said that a vehicle loaded with an estimated 90 pounds of explosives was detonated by remote control in Jamrud town, close to Peshawar, which borders the tribal belt.

Although the blast occurred near the offices of a senior government official, its immediate force ripped through the women’s waiting area of a bus stop, said Jahangir Azim, a senior official in the Khyber agency. The dead included four Afghan woman and three children, he said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast, which damaged shops and vehicles across a wide radius. The dead and an estimated 44 wounded people were rushed to local hospitals.

Khyber is home to several Islamist militant groups, some of which are affiliated with the Pakistani Taliban, while others are fighting both the Taliban and the government.

Officials said they were unsure whether Monday’s attack was aimed at the government offices or at members of the Zakakhel sub-tribe, which has recently sided with the government against the Taliban. One bus stop in the vicinity of the blast is used by the Zakakhel to travel to their home area of Tirah Valley, which has recently seen fighting between members of a government-sponsored tribal militia and two rival Islamist groups.

“At the moment we are not in position to allege someone for the blast or to tell exactly what was the motive behind the attack by the perpetrators,” said Asmatullah Wazir, a local government official, by telephone.

The Taliban attack against the Peshawar airport saw five militants die during a failed attempt to break through the airport perimeter wall on Saturday night, while another five died during a shootout with security forces at a nearby house on Sunday morning.

At least five other people, including three civilians and two police, died in the attack, which marked the first concerted attack on the Peshawar airport. Although the Taliban claimed responsibility for that attack, officials identified several of the attackers as Uzbeks, suggesting that Al Qaeda-linked elements had also participated.

Together, the two attacks killed at least 32 people and wounded more than 80, highlighting the challenges facing the security forces in the run-up to general elections that are due in the next six months.

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