Project Seeks to Map and Reduce Ocean Noise Pollution

When a hurricane forced the Nautilus to dive in Jules Verne’s “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,” Captain Nemo took the submarine down to a depth of 25 fathoms, or 150 feet. There, to the amazement of the novel’s protagonist, Prof. Pierre Aronnax, no whisper of the howling turmoil could be heard.

“What quiet, what silence, what peace!” he exclaimed.

That was 1870.

Today — to the dismay of whale lovers and friends of marine mammals, if not divers and submarine captains — the ocean depths have become a noisy place.

The causes are human: the sonar blasts of military exercises, the booms from air guns used in oil and gas exploration, and the whine from fleets of commercial ships that relentlessly crisscross the global seas. Nature has its own undersea noises. But the new ones are loud and ubiquitous.

Marine experts say the rising clamor is particularly dangerous to whales, which depend on their acute hearing to locate food and one another.

To fight the din, the federal government is completing the first phase of what could become one of the world’s largest efforts to curb the noise pollution and return the sprawling ecosystem to a quieter state.

It is no small ambition: the sea covers more than 70 percent of the planet’s surface. But scores of the ocean visualizations have now been made public.

The federal effort seeks to document human-made noises in the ocean and transform the results into the world’s first large sound maps. The ocean visualizations use bright colors to symbolize the sounds radiating out through the oceanic depths, frequently over distances of hundreds of miles. Several of the larger maps present the sound data in annual averages — demonstrating how ages in which humans made virtually no contribution to ocean noise are giving way to civilization’s roar.

The overall purpose is to better understand the cacophony’s nature and its impact on sea mammals as a way to build the case for reductions.

“It’s a first step,” Leila T. Hatch, a marine biologist and one of the project’s two directors, said of the sound maps. “No one’s ever done it on this scale.”

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration began the effort in 2010 at the behest of Jane Lubchenco, a prominent marine biologist who is the first woman to head the agency. Dr. Hatch and her colleagues assembled a team of sound experts, including HLS Research, a consulting firm in La Jolla, Calif. This summer, they unveiled their results on the Web, as did a separate team of specialists that sought to map the whereabouts of populations of whales, dolphins and porpoises.

Michael Jasny, a senior policy analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council, a private group in New York that has sued the Navy to reduce sounds that can harm marine mammals, praised the maps as “magnificent” and their depictions of sound pollution as “incredibly disturbing.”

“We’ve been blind to it,” Mr. Jasny said in an interview. “The maps are enabling scientists, regulators and the public to visualize the problem. Once you see the pictures, the serious risk that ocean noise poses to the very fabric of marine life becomes impossible to ignore.”

Legal experts say the new findings are likely to accelerate efforts both domestically and internationally to deal with the complicated problem through laws, regulations, treaties and voluntary noise reductions.

The government already has some authority to regulate oceanic sound in United States waters through the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act, though exemptions to these laws exist for the military.

The International Maritime Organization, a United Nations body responsible for improving marine safety and reducing ship pollution, also has the authority to set acoustic standards. In the past few years, encouraged by the United States, it began discussing how to achieve voluntary noise reductions.

Since many commercial vessels are registered abroad, and most shipping noises arise in international waters, the organization’s backing is seen as crucial for reductions to be substantial enough to have global repercussions.

“Right now we’re talking about nonbinding guidelines,” said Michael Bahtiarian, an adviser to the United States delegation to the maritime organization and a senior official at Noise Control Engineering, a company outside Boston that specializes in reducing ship noise and vibrations. “At a minimum, the goal is to stop the increases.”

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Singer feared dead in Mexican plane crash

MONTERREY, Mexico (AP) — Mexico's music world mourned Jenni Rivera, the U.S.-born singer presumed killed in a plane crash whose soulful voice and openness about her personal troubles had made her a Mexican-American superstar.

Authorities have not confirmed her death, but Rivera's relatives in the U.S. say they have few doubts that she was on the Learjet 25 that disintegrated on impact Sunday in rugged territory in Nuevo Leon state in northern Mexico.

"My son Lupillo told me that effectively it was Jenni's plane that crashed and that everyone on board died," her father, Pedro Rivera, told dozens of reporters gathered in front of his Los Angeles-area home. "I believe my daughter's body is unrecognizable."

He said that his son would fly to Monterrey Monday.

Messages of condolence poured in from fellow musicians and celebrities.

Mexican songstress and actress Lucero wrote on her Twitter account: "What terrible news! Rest in peace ... My deepest condolences for her family and friends." Rivera's colleague on the Mexican show "The Voice of Mexico," pop star Paulina Rubio, said on her Twitter account: "My friend! Why? There is no consolation. God, please help me!"

Born in Long Beach, California, Rivera was at the peak of her career as perhaps the most successful female singer in grupero, a male-dominated regional style influenced by the norteno, cumbia and ranchero styles.

A 43-year-old mother of five children and grandmother of two, the woman known as the "Diva de la Banda" was known for her frank talk about her struggles to give a good life to her children despite a series of setbacks.

She was recently divorced from her third husband, was once detained at a Mexico City airport with tens of thousands of dollars in cash, and she publicly apologized after her brother assaulted a drunken fan who verbally attacked her in 2011.

Her openness about her personal troubles endeared her to millions in the U.S. and Mexico.

"I am the same as the public, as my fans," she told The Associated Press in an interview last March.

Rivera sold 15 million records, and recently won two Billboard Mexican Music Awards: Female Artist of the Year and Banda Album of the Year for "Joyas prestadas: Banda." She was nominated for Latin Grammys in 2002, 2008 and 2011.

Transportation and Communications Minister Gerardo Ruiz Esparza said "everything points toward" the wreckage belonging to the plane carrying Rivera and six other people to Toluca, outside Mexico City, from Monterrey, where the singer had just given a concert.

"There is nothing recognizable, neither material nor human" in the wreckage found in the state of Nuevo Leon, Ruiz Esparza said. The impact was so powerful that the remains of the plane "are scattered over an area of 250 to 300 meters. It is almost unrecognizable."

A mangled California driver's license with Rivera's name and picture was found in the crash site debris.

No cause was given for the plane's crash, but its wreckage was found near the town of Iturbide in Mexico's Sierra Madre Oriental, where the terrain is very rough.

The Learjet 25, number N345MC, took off from Monterrey at 3:30 a.m. local time and was reported missing about 10 minutes later. It was registered to Starwood Management of Las Vegas, Nevada, according to FAA records. It was built in 1969 and had a current registration through 2015.

Also believed aboard the plane were her publicist, Arturo Rivera, her lawyer, makeup artist and the flight crew.

Though drug trafficking was the theme of some of her songs, she was not considered a singer of "narco corridos," or ballads glorifying drug lords like other groups, such as Los Tigres del Norte. She was better known for singing about her troubles in love and disdain for men.

Her parents were Mexicans who had migrated to the United States. Two of her five brothers, Lupillo and Juan Rivera, are also well-known singers of grupero music.

She studied business administration and formally debuted on the music scene in 1995 with the release of her album "Chacalosa". Due to its success, she recorded two more independent albums, "We Are Rivera" and "Farewell to Selena," a tribute album to slain singer Selena that helped expand her following.

At the end of the 1990s, Rivera was signed by Sony Music and released two more albums. But widespread success came for her when she joined Fonovisa and released her 2005 album titled "Partier, Rebellious and Daring."

Besides being a singer, she is also a businesswoman and actress, appearing in the indie film Filly Brown, which was shown at the Sundance Film Festival, as the incarcerated mother of Filly Brown.

She was filming the third season of "I love Jenni," which followed her as she shared special moments with her children and as she toured through Mexico and the United States. She also has the reality shows: "Jenni Rivera Presents: Chiquis and Raq-C" and her daughter's "Chiquis 'n Control."

In 2009, she was detained at the Mexico City airport when she declared $20,000 in cash but was really carrying $52,167. She was taken into custody. She said it was an innocent mistake and authorities gave her the benefit of the doubt and released her.

In 2011, her brother Juan assaulted a drunken fan at a popular fair in Guanajuato. In the face of heavy criticism among her fans and on social networks, Rivera publicly apologized for the incident during a concert in Mexico City, telling her fans: "Thank you for accepting me as I am, with my virtues and defects."

On Saturday night, Rivera had given a concert before thousands of fans in Monterrey. After the concert she gave a press conference during which she spoke of her emotional state following her recent divorce from former Major League Baseball pitcher Esteban Loaiza, who played for teams including the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers.

"I can't get caught up in the negative because that destroys you. Perhaps trying to move away from my problems and focus on the positive is the best I can do. I am a woman like any other and ugly things happen to me like any other woman," she said Saturday night. "The number of times I have fallen down is the number of times I have gotten up."

Rivera had announced in October that she was divorcing Loaiza after two years of marriage.

There have been several high-profile crashes involving Learjets, known as swift, longer-distance passenger aircraft popular with corporate executives, entertainers and government officials.

A Learjet carrying pro-golfer Payne Stewart and five others crashed in northeastern South Dakota in 1999. Investigators said the plane lost cabin pressure and all on board died after losing consciousness for lack of oxygen. The aircraft flew for several hours on autopilot before running out of fuel and crashing in a corn field.

Former Blink 182 drummer Travis Barker was severely injured in a 2008 Learjet crash in South Carolina that killed four people.

That same year, a Learjet slammed into rush-hour traffic in a posh Mexico City neighborhood, killing Mexico's No. 2 government official, Interior Secretary Juan Camilo Mourino, and eight others on the plane, plus five people on the ground.

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Associated Press Writer Galia Garcia-Palafox and Olga R. Rodriguez contributed to this report from Mexico City.

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Doping at U.S. Tracks Affects Europe’s Taste for Horse Meat

PARIS — For decades, American horses, many of them retired or damaged racehorses, have been shipped to Canada and Mexico, where it is legal to slaughter horses, and then processed and sold for consumption in Europe and beyond.

Christinne Muschi for The New York Times

A slaughterhouse in Saint-André-Avellin, Quebec, where meat is processed for sale in Europe.

Lately, however, European food safety officials have notified Mexican and Canadian slaughterhouses of a growing concern: The meat of American racehorses may be too toxic to eat safely because the horses have been injected repeatedly with drugs.

Despite the fact that racehorses make up only a fraction of the trade in horse meat, the European officials have indicated that they may nonetheless require lifetime medication records for slaughter-bound horses from Canada and Mexico, and perhaps require them to be held on feedlots or some other holding area for six months before they are slaughtered.

In October, Stephan Giguere, the general manager of a major slaughterhouse in Quebec, said he turned away truckloads of horses coming from the United States because his clients were worried about potential drug issues. Mr. Giguere said he told his buyers to stay away from horses coming from American racetracks.

“We don’t want them,” he said. “It’s too risky.”

The action is just the latest indication of the troubled state of American racing and its problems with the doping of horses. Some prominent trainers have been disciplined for using legal and illegal drugs, and horses loaded with painkillers have been breaking down in arresting numbers. Congress has called for reform, and state regulators have begun imposing stricter rules.

But for pure emotional effect, the alarm raised in the international horse-meat marketplace packs a distinctive punch.

Some 138,000 horses were sent to Canada or Mexico in 2010 alone to be turned into meat for Europe and other parts of the world, according to a Government Accountability Office report. Organizations concerned about the welfare of retired racehorses have estimated that anywhere from 10 to 15 percent of the population sent for slaughter may have performed on racetracks in the United States.

“Racehorses are walking pharmacies,” said Dr. Nicholas Dodman, a veterinarian on the faculty of Tufts University and a co-author of a 2010 article that sought to raise concerns about the health risks posed by American racehorses. He said it was reckless to want any of the drugs routinely administered to horses “in your food chain.”

Horses being shipped to Mexico and Canada are by law required to have been free of certain drugs for six months before being slaughtered, and those involved in their shipping must have affidavits proving that. But European Commission officials say the affidavits are easily falsified. As a result, American racehorses often show up in Canada within weeks — sometimes days — of their leaving the racetrack and their steady diets of drugs.

In October, the European Commission’s Directorate General for Health and Consumers found serious problems while auditing the operations of equine slaughter facilities in Mexico, where 80 percent of the horses arrive from the United States. The commission’s report said Mexican officials were not allowed to question the “authenticity or reliability of the sworn statements” about the ostensibly drug-free horses, and thus had no way of verifying whether the horses were tainted by drugs.

“The systems in place for identification, the food-chain information and in particular the affidavits concerning the nontreatment for six months with certain medical substances, both for the horses imported from the U.S. as well as for the Mexican horses, are insufficient to guarantee that standards equivalent to those provided for by E.U. legislation are applied,” the report said.

The authorities in the United States and Canada acknowledge that oversight of the slaughter business is lax. On July 9, the United States Food and Drug Administration sent a warning letter to an Ohio feedlot operator who sells horses for slaughter. The operator, Ronald Andio, was reprimanded for selling a drug-tainted thoroughbred horse to a Canadian slaughterhouse.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency had tested the carcass of the horse the previous August and found the anti-inflammatory drug phenylbutazone in the muscle and kidney tissues. It also discovered clenbuterol, a widely abused medication for breathing problems that can build muscle by mimicking anabolic steroids.

Because horses are not a traditional food source in the United States, the Food and Drug Administration does not require human food safety information as it considers what drugs can be used legally on horses. Patricia El-Hinnawy, a spokeswoman for the agency, said agency-approved drugs intended for use in horses carried the warning “Do not use in horses intended for human consumption.”

She also said the case against Mr. Andio remained open.

“On the warning letter, the case remains open and no further information can be provided at this time,” Ms. El-Hinnawy said.

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The Media Equation: For Wall Street Journal, Leadership at a Crossroads

Betting against Rupert Murdoch hasn’t gone very well for many people, including me. When he bought The Wall Street Journal in 2007 and brought in a trusted associate, Robert Thomson from The Times of London, I said that he might ruin one of the country’s most important newspapers.

That did not happen. Mr. Thomson’s version of The Journal, with a stronger focus on general news, a beefed-up Saturday edition and a luxury magazine, has been a hit with readers. It may not have the literary majesty of its previous incarnation, but the new bosses made it clear that was hardly a priority.

The Journal has added subscribers to become the largest newspaper in the United States by circulation and has reached a new group of advertisers outside the narrow confines of business. The financial results are tougher to know, but they won’t remain opaque for long. Early next year, News Corporation will split into two companies, with the entertainment assets bundled into the Fox Group and the publishing assets separated into a division that will retain the News Corporation name.

Mr. Murdoch will be able to invest in print without riling investors, but the publishing operation will no longer be connected to billions in revenue from hits like “Avatar,” “American Idol” and Fox News, making the challenge of running it a steep one.

That challenge will fall to Mr. Thomson, an entrepreneurial editor, but not someone who has overseen a sprawling publishing operation that includes broadcast properties in Australia along with newspapers there and in Britain as well as The New York Post, Dow Jones Newswires, and, of course, The Journal.

Making a splash in the slow-growth print businesses will be tough — the publishing arm of News Corporation is estimated to account for 24 percent of the revenue, but only 11 percent of the profits.

Which brings us to whom and what Mr. Thomson is leaving behind at The Journal and Dow Jones, the linchpin of the publishing division.

Mr. Thomson’s promotion will put the newspaper in the hands of Gerard Baker, his deputy who will succeed him as managing editor, and Lex Fenwick, the publisher of The Journal and chief executive of Dow Jones. The celebration of the next era was commemorated in a video that was posted online minutes after it happened last Monday. In it, Mr. Murdoch and Mr. Baker are seen popping the cork on a bottle of Champagne, which Mr. Murdoch promptly poured on Mr. Baker’s head as Mr. Thomson looked on. (Mr. Baker, who is Catholic, made the sign of the cross after his bubbly baptism.)

The celebration clanked a bit — Champagne in the newsroom is usually reserved for Pulitzer victories, something that hasn’t happened in five years on the news side at The Journal. But it clanked for another reason. Many people, including the dozen or so current and former employees I spoke with (who did not want to be identified criticizing their bosses, past or present), worry over Mr. Thomson’s departure because they think Mr. Baker and Mr. Fenwick are not up to their roles.

With a background as a neoconservative columnist from Britain, Mr. Baker shares Mr. Thomson’s politics, but little of his managerial experience or his history of reinventing newsrooms. Mr. Baker was a columnist at The Times of London and its United States editor and also worked as the Washington bureau chief of The Financial Times. His antipathy for the current administration was memorialized in an appearance on Fox News during which he satirized the president as a false messiah.

After three years as a deputy managing editor of The Journal, Mr. Baker has no initiatives to call his own and little constituency in the newsroom. On Tuesday, the day after he was appointed, he walked the halls of the newspaper and for the reporters I spoke with, seeing him out and about was a startling sight.

When he moved to The Journal in 2009, Mr. Baker was, by dint of interest and skill set, a columnist and pundit and, as I have written here in the past, he hasn’t been shy about imposing his political and religious views on news coverage. (This tendency remains strong, according to current employees.)

The irony of bemoaning the replacement of Mr. Thomson, a man they once feared, was not lost on many of the people I talked to. Mr. Baker’s succession became clear when Alan Murray, a longtime Journal editor whom many considered to be in the running for the job, said in November that he was leaving to become president of the Pew Research Center. Mr. Murdoch and Mr. Thomson obviously trust Mr. Baker, but he has little experience in running a big news enterprise full of many kingdoms and has yet to impress a deeply skeptical newsroom.

Mr. Fenwick has certainly played in the big leagues before, when he ran Bloomberg L.P. A flamboyant and hard-driving executive from the “Glengarry Glen Ross” school of management, he is feared by the executives who work for him, at least the ones who remain after a purge that made room for loyalists he brought over from his 25-year tenure at Bloomberg.

After arriving at the beginning of the year to replace Les Hinton, who had become embroiled in the hacking scandal in Britain, he dismantled the executive suite, ordering that managers leave their offices for an open floor plan that mirrored the environment at Bloomberg. Unfortunately for his new employer, he has also replicated a management approach that came to be seen as counterproductive. In his final years there, his portfolio was diminished, and in 2008, he lost his role as chief executive of the entire organization and was put in charge of Bloomberg Ventures.

He is leading the effort to make Dow Jones a player in the financial data business by developing a proprietary Web product to compete with Reuters and Bloomberg, instead of having the company’s information carried on those competitors’ terminals. Although deferential to Mr. Thomson, he habitually berates and bullies people who work for him in very public settings, according to other senior executives who have witnessed the tirades. An expansive Reuters article in October suggested that Mr. Fenwick was erratic, profane and hard to work for, and many of the people I’ve spoken with at The Journal say the account was all too accurate. And he is now in the indelicate position of reporting to Mr. Thomson, who had reported to him.

Mr. Murdoch’s choices for his new company pose a risk for The Journal, its employees and readers, like me, who still treasure the paper. And these are the men Mr. Murdoch has picked. Would I bet against them? Perhaps, but that would just be speculation. Mr. Murdoch has already bet his company on them.

E-mail: carr@nytimes.com;

twitter.com/carr2n

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'Skyfall,' 'Guardians' duel for box-office win

LOS ANGELES (AP) — James Bond is in a box-office photo finish with Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny over what looks to be the last slow weekend of the holidays.

According to studio estimates Sunday, Sony's Bond tale "Skyfall" took in $11 million to move back to No. 1 in its fifth weekend.

That put it narrowly ahead of Paramount's "Rise of the Guardians," the animated adventure of Santa, the Easter Bunny and other mythological heroes that pulled in $10.5 million.

The two movies inched ahead of Summit Entertainment's "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 2," which had been tops for three-straight weekends. The "Twilight" finale earned $9.2 million, slipping into a tight race for No. 3 with Disney's "Lincoln," which was close behind with $9.1 million.

The top movies were bunched up so closely that rankings could change once final weekend revenues are released Monday.

The weekend's only new wide release, Gerard Butler's romantic comedy "Playing for Keeps," flopped with $6 million, coming in at No. 6.

"Skyfall" raised its domestic total to $261.6 million and added $20.3 million overseas to bring its international income to $656.6 million. At $918 million worldwide, "Skyfall" has the best cash haul ever for the Bond franchise and surpassed "Spider-Man 3" at $890 million to become Sony's top-grossing hit.

The "Twilight" finale also is a franchise record-breaker, surpassing the $710 million worldwide haul of last year's "Breaking Dawn — Part 1." The finale's domestic total now stands at $268.7 million.

It was another traditionally quiet post-Thanksgiving weekend, with big November releases continuing to dominate in the lull before a pre-Christmas onslaught of movies.

The box office is expected to soar next weekend with the arrival of part one of "The Hobbit," Peter Jackson's "The Lord of the Rings" prelude. After that comes a steady rush of action, comedy and drama through year's end, including Tom Cruise's "Jack Reacher," Quentin Tarantino and Jamie Foxx's "Django Unchained," Seth Rogen's "The Guilt Trip" and Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe's "Les Miserables."

"The last couple of weeks of the year are some of the strongest every year," said Paul Dergarabedian, an analyst for box-office tracker Hollywood.com. "We are on the cusp of some really huge box office. There's a lot of money still left in the year despite this slow period right now."

Hollywood's domestic revenues have topped $10 billion so far this year, with the industry expected to finish 2012 ahead of the all-time high of $10.6 billion set in 2009.

Trashed savagely by critics, FilmDistrict's "Playing for Keeps" stars Butler as a washed-up soccer star trying to reconnect with his ex-wife (Jessica Biel) and young son. The all-star cast includes Catherine Zeta-Jones and Uma Thurman as soccer moms with the hots for Butler.

In limited release, Bill Murray's Franklin Roosevelt drama "Hyde Park on Hudson" opened solidly with $83,280 in four theaters, averaging a healthy $20,820 a cinema. By comparison, "Playing for Keeps" averaged $2,115 in 2,837 theaters.

Released by Focus Features, "Hyde Park on Hudson" stars Murray as Roosevelt, whose intimate relations with a distant cousin (Laura Linney) become both a source of strength and distraction as the president plays host to the king and queen of England on the eve of World War II.

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Hollywood.com. Where available, latest international numbers are also included. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.

1. "Skyfall," $11 million ($20.3 million).

2. "Rise of the Guardians," $10.5 million ($26 million international).

3. "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 2," $9.2 million.

4. "Lincoln," $9.1 million.

5. "Life of Pi," $8.3 million.

6. "Playing for Keeps," $6 million.

7. "Wreck-It Ralph," $4.9 million ($5.8 million international).

8. "Red Dawn," $4.3 million.

9. "Flight," $3.1 million.

10. "Killing Them Softly," $2.7 million.

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Online:

http://www.hollywood.com

http://www.rentrak.com

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Universal and Focus are owned by NBC Universal, a unit of Comcast Corp.; Sony, Columbia, Sony Screen Gems and Sony Pictures Classics are units of Sony Corp.; Paramount is owned by Viacom Inc.; Disney, Pixar and Marvel are owned by The Walt Disney Co.; Miramax is owned by Filmyard Holdings LLC; 20th Century Fox and Fox Searchlight are owned by News Corp.; Warner Bros. and New Line are units of Time Warner Inc.; MGM is owned by a group of former creditors including Highland Capital, Anchorage Advisors and Carl Icahn; Lionsgate is owned by Lions Gate Entertainment Corp.; IFC is owned by AMC Networks Inc.; Rogue is owned by Relativity Media LLC.

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Obama Team Outlines Four Corporate Donor Packages for Inauguration

WASHINGTON — President Obama’s finance team is offering corporations and other institutions that contribute $1 million exclusive access to an array of inaugural festivities, including tickets to a “benefactors reception,” a children’s concert, a candlelight celebration at the National Building Museum, two reserved parade bleacher seats and four tickets to the president’s official inaugural ball.

The offerings are detailed in an online inaugural fund-raising solicitation provided to The New York Times by an Obama fund-raiser; the document describes four packages that Mr. Obama’s finance team can sell, with differing levels of access depending on the level of contribution. Individuals who contribute $250,000 will receive the same package as million-dollar “institutional donors,” which could include corporations, philanthropies, foundations and unions.

The financing arrangements are a departure from Mr. Obama’s policy in 2009, when he refused corporate donations altogether and capped individual contributions at $50,000. As in 2009, Mr. Obama will not be accepting money from lobbyists or political action committees.

While taxpayers pay for inaugural events at the Capitol — the swearing-in ceremony and inaugural luncheon — the president must raise money from private donors for everything else, including the inaugural parade, ball and concerts. In 2009, Mr. Obama raised $53 million.

The online solicitation, sent to donors by e-mail on Friday, described the different inaugural packages, each named for a former president: Washington ($1 million from institutions and $250,000 from individuals); Adams ($500,000 from institutions and $150,000 from individuals); Jefferson ($250,000 from institutions and $75,000 from individuals); and Madison ($100,000 from institutions and $10,000 from individuals).

Financing arrangements like these are typical for presidential inaugurals; to help pay for President George W. Bush’s 2005 inaugural, dozens of companies, including Home Depot and Bank of America, contributed $250,000 apiece.

But Mr. Obama’s decision has drawn sharp criticism from good-government advocates, who accuse him of abandoning his pledge to keep big money out of politics.

John Wonderlich, policy director of the Sunlight Foundation, which advocates for openness in government, wrote on the group’s blog that the decision “prioritizes a lavish celebration over the integrity of the office,” and that Mr. Obama was “turning away from a principled approach to money in politics.”

The president’s inaugural planners, however, have defended the decision, saying that museums, philanthropic organizations and service groups, like the Red Cross, all accept corporate money. And with Democratic donors feeling tapped out from an expensive presidential campaign, the planners concluded they needed to expand their fund-raising methods.

The 2013 inaugural festivities will be smaller in scope than the huge celebration of 2009, which drew an estimated 1.8 million people to the capital. The inaugural committee has not announced a schedule for the 2013 events. However, donors were told on a conference call on Friday that this time there would be only three official inaugural balls that the president and his wife would attend, according to one person who listened. In 2009, they attended 10 of them.

And because Jan. 20, the constitutionally mandated date for the presidential swearing-in, falls on a Sunday this year, Mr. Obama will take his oath in private at the White House, and the public swearing-in ceremony and other events will be held on Monday, Jan. 21.

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Rolling Stones hit NY for 50th anniversary gig

NEW YORK (AP) — "Time Waits for No One," the Rolling Stones sang in 1974, but lately it's seemed like that grizzled quartet does indeed have some sort of exemption from the ravages of time.

At an average age of 68-plus years, the British rockers are clearly in fighting form, sounding tight, focused and truly ready for the spotlight at a rapturously received pair of London concerts last month.

On Saturday, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Ronnie Wood and Charlie Watts hit New York for the first of three U.S. shows on their "50 and Counting" mini-tour, marking a mind-boggling half-century since the band first began playing its unique brand of blues-tinged rock.

And the three shows — Saturday's at the new Barclays Center in Brooklyn, then two in Newark, N.J., on Dec. 13 and 15 — aren't the only big dates on the agenda. Next week the Stones join a veritable who's who of British rock royalty and U.S. superstars at the blockbuster 12-12-12 Sandy benefit concert at Madison Square Garden. Also scheduled to perform: Paul McCartney, the Who, Eric Clapton, Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, Alicia Keys, Kanye West, Eddie Vedder, Billy Joel, Roger Waters and Chris Martin.

The Stones' three U.S. shows promise to have their own special guests, too. Mary J. Blige will be at the Brooklyn gig, as well as guitarist Gary Clark Jr., the band has announced. (Blige performed a searing "Gimme Shelter" with frontman Jagger in London.) Rumors are swirling of huge names at the Dec. 15 show, which also will be on pay-per-view.

In a flurry of anniversary activity, the band also released a hits compilation last month with two new songs, "Doom and Gloom" and "One More Shot," and HBO premiered a new documentary on their formative years, "Crossfire Hurricane."

The Stones formed in London in 1962 to play Chicago blues, led at the time by the late Brian Jones and pianist Ian Stewart, along with Jagger and Richards, who'd met on a train platform a year earlier. Bassist Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts were quick additions.

Wyman, who left the band in 1992, was a guest at the London shows last month, as was Mick Taylor, the celebrated former Stones guitarist who left in 1974 — to be replaced by Wood, the newest Stone and the youngster at 65.

The inevitable questions have been swirling about the next step for the Stones: another huge global tour, on the scale of their last one, "A Bigger Bang," which earned more than $550 million between 2005 and 2007? Something a bit smaller? Or is this mini-tour, in the words of their new song, really "One Last Shot"?

The Stones won't say. But in an interview last month, they made clear they felt the 50th anniversary was something to be marked.

"I thought it would be kind of churlish not to do something," Jagger told The Associated Press. "Otherwise, the BBC would have done a rather dull film about the Rolling Stones."

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Associated Press writer David Bauder contributed to this report.

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The Human Price: Bangladesh Fire Exposes Safety Gap in Supply Chain

ASHULIA, Bangladesh — The fire alarm shattered the monotony of the Tazreen Fashions factory. Hundreds of seamstresses looked up from their machines, startled. On the third floor, Shima Akhter Pakhi had been stitching hoods onto fleece jackets. Now she ran to a staircase.

Khaled Hasan for The New York Times

Hashinur Rahman, who worked on the sixth floor, managed to flee the building, but then helped many others to get out. More Photos »

But two managers were blocking the way. Ignore the alarm, they ordered. It was just a test. Back to work. A few women laughed nervously. Ms. Pakhi and other workers returned to their sewing tables. She could stitch a hood to a jacket in about 90 seconds. She arranged the fabric under her machine. Ninety seconds. Again. Ninety more seconds. She sewed six pieces, maybe seven.

Then she looked up.

Smoke was filtering up through the three staircases. Screams rose from below. The two managers had vanished. Power suddenly went out throughout the eight-story building. There was nowhere to escape. The staircases led down into the fire. Iron grilles blocked the windows. A man cowering in a fifth-floor bathroom called his mother to tell her he was about to die.

“We all panicked,” Ms. Pakhi said. “It spread so quickly. And there was no electricity. It was totally dark.”

Tazreen Fashions Ltd. operated at the beginning of the global supply chain that delivers clothes made in Bangladesh to stores in Europe and the United States. By any measure, the factory was not a safe place to work. Fire safety preparations were woefully inadequate. The building itself was under construction — even as sewing work continued inside — and mounds of flammable yarn and fabric were illegally stored on the ground floor near electrical generators.

Yet Tazreen was making clothing destined for some of the world’s top retailers. On the third floor, where firefighters later recovered 69 bodies, Ms. Pakhi was stitching sweater jackets for C&A, a European chain. On the fifth floor, workers were making Faded Glory shorts for Walmart. Ten bodies were recovered there. On the sixth floor, a man named Hashinur Rahman put down his work making True Desire lingerie for Sears and eventually helped save scores of others. Inside one factory office, labor activists found order forms and drawings for a licensee of the United States Marine Corps that makes commercial apparel with the Marines’ logo.

In all, 112 workers were killed in a blaze last month that has exposed a glaring disconnect among global clothing brands, the monitoring system used to protect workers and the factories actually filling the orders. After the fire, Walmart, Sears and other retailers made the same startling admission: They say they did not know that Tazreen Fashions was making their clothing.

But who, then, is ultimately responsible when things go so wrong?

The global apparel industry aspires to operate with accountability that extends from distant factories to retail stores. Big brands demand that factories be inspected by accredited auditing firms so that the brands can control quality and understand how, where and by whom their goods are made. If a factory does not pass muster, it is not supposed to get orders from Western customers.

Tazreen Fashions was one of many clothing factories that exist on the margins of this system. Factory bosses had been faulted for violations during inspections conducted on behalf of Walmart and at the behest of the Business Social Compliance Initiative, a European organization.

Yet Tazreen Fashions received orders anyway, slipping through the gaps in the system by delivering the low costs and quick turnarounds that buyers — and consumers — demand. C&A, the European retailer, has confirmed ordering 220,000 sweaters from the factory. But much of the factory’s business came through opaque networks of subcontracts with suppliers or local buying houses. Labor activists, combing the site of the disaster, found labels, order forms, design drawings and articles of clothing from many global brands.

Walmart and Sears have since said they fired the suppliers that subcontracted work to Tazreen Fashions. Yet some critics have questioned how a company like Walmart, one of the two biggest buyers in Bangladesh and renowned for its sophisticated global supply system, could have been unaware of the connection.

Julfikar Ali Manik contributed reporting from Ashulia, and Steven Greenhouse from New York.

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Rolling Stones added to Sandy benefit concert

NEW YORK (AP) — The Rolling Stones have been added to the list of artists performing at the Superstorm Sandy benefit concert next week in New York City.

Next Wednesday's bill had already included Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, The Who, Alicia Keys, Kanye West and others.

Producers of the show said Friday they had already raised $30 million that will be distributed to storm victims in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut through the Robin Hood Foundation.

The show is sold out.

Producers also said they had no estimate of how many tickets had been bought by ticket brokers. They urged fans not to buy scalped tickets because the money won't go to storm relief.

The concert is dubbed "12-12-12." It will be held at Madison Square Garden.

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