More Than 60,000 Have Died in Syrian Conflict, U.N. Says

Muhammad Najdet Qadour/Shaam News Network, via Reuters

Buildings said to have been damaged by a Syrian Air Force fighter jet in Binsh, Syria, near Idlib, on Wednesday.

GENEVA — More than 60,000 people have died in Syria’s 22-month-old civil war, the United Nations’ human rights chief, Navi Pillay, said on Wednesday, expressing dismay at the findings of an analysis that far exceeds previous estimates of casualties.

“The number of casualties is much higher than we expected, and is truly shocking,” Ms. Pillay, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, said in a statement that condemned the government of President Bashar al-Assad for the scale of the carnage and sharply admonished the United Nations Security Council for failing to act.

"The failure of the international community, in particular the Security Council, to take concrete actions to stop the bloodletting, shames us all,” she said.

An “exhaustive analysis” of casualties in Syria documented 59,648 killings between mid-March 2011 and the end of November, Ms. Pillay reported. “Given there has been no letup in the conflict since the end of November, we can assume that more than 60,000 people have been killed by the beginning of 2013,” she added.

Ms. Pillay’s comments coincided with reports that an airstrike on a gas station in Damascus, the Syrian capital, on Wednesday may have killed dozens and injured many more, while heavy fighting around the northern city of Aleppo had forced closure of its international airport.

The analysis of deaths in Syria, described by Ms. Pillay as the most detailed and wide ranging to date, was based on a study of seven data sets, including one from the Syrian government, conducted on behalf of the United Nations human rights office by Benetech, a nonprofit technology company whose three earlier analyses of Syrian casualties used fewer data sets.

The analysis, which took five months to complete, drew from a combined list of 147,349 reported killings. Duplicate listings were excluded, as was any report that did not include at least the first and last name of the victim and the date and location of the death. In the end, the analysts came up with a unique record of 59,648 conflict-related deaths as of Nov. 30, 2012. Given that the total excluded reports with insufficient detail, the true toll could easily be higher.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a rebel group that tracks the war and is based in Britain, reported two days earlier that more than 45,000 people, mostly civilians, had been killed. The United Nations said its data could not distinguish between civilians and combatants, but, like the observatory, it concluded that the rate of killings had accelerated. The death toll had climbed from around 1,000 a month in the summer of 2011 to more than 5,000 a month since July, the report for the United Nations said.

“This massive loss of life could have been avoided if the Syrian government had chosen to take a different path than one of ruthless suppression of what were initially peaceful and legitimate protests by unarmed civilians,” Ms. Pillay said.

Most of the killings occurred in Homs (12,560), Damascus and its environs (10,862) and Idlib (7,686), with those three areas accounting for about half the total, followed by Aleppo, Dara’a and Hama. Around three-quarters of those killed were male, the analysis found.

“Unless there is a quick resolution to the conflict, I fear thousands more will die or suffer terrible injuries as a result of those who harbor the obstinate belief that something can be achieved by more bloodshed, more torture and more mindless destruction,” Ms. Pillay said.

Her comments echoed warnings in the past week by Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations and Arab League mediator for Syria, that Syria must achieve a political solution or face “hell,” with the danger that 100,000 people could die in 2013 if the conflict was not halted.

Mr. Brahimi spoke after visits to Moscow and Damascus at the end of last month in his latest push to kick-start stalled negotiations on a transitional government based on the formula agreed to in Geneva in June 2012, but his efforts have attracted scant support from Syrian opposition groups.

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How to Sync All Your Calendars Onto One Smartphone

It’s a simple request: I just want my online calendars to sync with my smartphone… is that too much to ask? It took some initial research and finesse, but I’ve discovered the best ways to get your Yahoo and Google calendars to appear on either an Android or Apple IOS mobile device.

Google Calendar on Android Phone
When you first set up your Android phone, you had to create or enter your Google account info, so the phone already has the login info for your Google Calendar. Now you can go to your phone’s Settings, choose Accounts, click the Google account and then make sure “Sync Calendar” is checked. Then go to the Calendar App on your Android phone and it should be there.

For multiple calendars, hit the Settings button and then Calendars to customize which Google calendars you see.

Yahoo Calendar on Android Phone
Although it seems like it should be easy to add the Yahoo Calendar to your Android, I never got mine to sync. Theoretically, you would open the Android calendar on your phone, hit the Settings option, and Add Account. But depending on the flavor of Android I tried, I either couldn’t add a Yahoo account or when I did, it didn’t sync. It could just be me, but I found a lot of people online with the same issue. So I tried one of the most recommended apps to solve the problem – Smoothsync for Yahoo. It costs just under three dollars, and once you install it, you can sync all your Yahoo calendars into the native Android calendar. Ah, sweet relief.

[Related: New Tricks for New (and Old) Androids]

Yahoo Calendar on iPhone
On your IOS device, hit Settings. If you haven’t added your Yahoo Account yet, do so by going to Mail, Contacts, Calendars. Choose “Add Account.” Once you’ve input your Yahoo login info, the next screen gives you the option to Sync Mail, Contacts, and Calendars. Make sure calendars is on. Hit the Home button, open the IOS calendar. Hit the Calendars button on the top corner and you will see all your calendars listed under Yahoo. If you only have one Yahoo calendar, make sure you check to have it show in your IOS Cal. Also, many people have multiple Yahoo calendars: a family calendar, a work calendar, a soccer team calendar for the kids, and a personal calendar. You can customize which of these Yahoo Calendars show up by checking or unchecking them in this screen.

Google Calendar on iPhone
It’s a little more complicated, but you can also put a Google or Gmail calendar on the iPhone. Here’s how:

If you only have your one personal Google calendar to sync, you do things the same way as with Yahoo: Go to Settings on your IOS device, add your Google account (if you haven’t done so yet) by going to Mail, Contacts, Calendars. Choose “Add Account.”

Once you’ve input your Google login info, the next screen gives you the option to Sync Mail, Contacts, and Calendars. Make sure Calendars is on. Hit the Home button, then open the IOS calendar. Hit the Calendars button on the top corner and you will see your calendar listed under Google. You can track those Google dates in the IOS calendar and multiple Yahoo calendars at the same time.

But if you want multiple Google calendars, you need an app for that. Google does let you do this through their mobile site, but that’s basically just a website without the power of notifications and all the extras you like from your calendars. So I suggest getting the CalenMob app. It’s free with ads or $ 5 ad-free. It syncs all your Google calendars to the app (not the native IOS calendar) and adds in notification options, SMS functions and email alert options. It also syncs simultaneously to your Yahoo calendars.

[Related: True/False: Never Sell Your Old Phone]

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Paparazzo killed after taking shots of Bieber car

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A paparazzo was struck and killed by a car while darting across a street after taking pictures of Justin Bieber's Ferrari when it was pulled over along a freeway in Los Angeles, police said Wednesday.

Bieber was not in the car at the time. The singer later said his prayers were with the family of the 29-year-old photographer who was pronounced dead at a hospital shortly after the accident late Tuesday afternoon.

His name was withheld by police pending notification of relatives.

"Hopefully this tragedy will finally inspire meaningful legislation and whatever other necessary steps to protect the lives and safety of celebrities, police officers, innocent public bystanders, and the photographers themselves," Bieber said in the statement released by Island Def Jam Music Group.

The death came about six months after another photographer was charged with reckless driving and with violating a 2010 California law that toughened punishment for those who drive dangerously in pursuit of photos for commercial gain.

However, a judge later dismissed the paparazzi law charges, saying the law was overly broad and violated First Amendment free-speech protections.

On Tuesday, a friend of Bieber's was behind the wheel of the Ferrari registered to the singer when a California Highway Patrol officer pulled it over for speeding along Interstate 405, authorities said.

"This photographer evidently had been following the white Ferrari" and when it was pulled over he stopped, parked and crossed the street to snap photos, Walton said.

The photographer stood on a low freeway railing to shoot photographs of the traffic stop over a chain-link fence, authorities said.

"The CHP officer told him numerous times that it wasn't safe for him to be there and to return to his vehicle," Walton said.

After the officer issued the traffic ticket and the Ferrari left, the photographer began to run back across the street to his car when he was struck by a Toyota Highlander, Walton said.

The driver, a 69-year-old Los Angeles woman, had two small grandchildren in the back seat.

It was not immediately clear how fast she was going. The photographer was carried about 30 feet on the hood of her car, Walton said.

"The windshield was smashed in her car and there was glass all over the front seat" but no blood, Walton said.

The motorist was distraught after the crash. She and the children were taken away by her husband.

She was not believed to be at fault for the accident and was unlikely to be cited, police said.

"There were no sidewalks on the street there, there was no crossing place for a pedestrian, there was no reason to expect a pedestrian," Walton said.

The street also was dark and winding, he added.

"It would have been very difficult for her to see him," Walton said.

It was not immediately clear whether the photographer was a freelancer or full-time professional, although he was carrying expensive camera gear and had connections to a photo agency, Walton said.

In the previous incident, photographer Paul Raef was charged in July with reckless driving and also with violating the paparazzi law that set a maximum penalty of six months in jail and a $2,500 fine.

Authorities said Raef was arrested after Bieber was chased in another car on Interstate 101 at speeds up to 80 mph.

However, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Thomas Rubinson dismissed the paparazzi law charges.

The law was prompted by the experiences of Jennifer Aniston, who provided details to a lawmaker on being unable to drive away after she was surrounded by paparazzi on Pacific Coast Highway.

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Well: Good and Bad, the Little Things Add Up in Fitness

Phys Ed

Gretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness.

The past year in fitness has been alternately inspiring, vexing and diverting, as my revisiting of all of the Phys Ed columns published in 2012 makes clear. Taken as a whole, the latest exercise-related science tells us that the right types and amounts of exercise will almost certainly lengthen your life, strengthen your brain, affect your waistline and even clear debris from inside your body’s cells. But too much exercise, other 2012 science intimates, might have undesirable effects on your heart, while popping painkillers, donning stilettos and sitting and reading this column likewise have their costs.

With New Year’s exercise resolutions still fresh and hopefully unbroken on this, day two of 2013, it now seems like the perfect time to review these and other lessons of the past year in fitness science.

First, since I am habitually both overscheduled and indolent, I was delighted to report, as I did in June, that the “sweet sport” for health benefits seems to come from jogging or moderately working out for only a brief period a few times a week.

Specifically, an encouraging 2012 study of 52,656 American adults found that those who ran 1 to 20 miles per week at an average pace of about 10 or 11 minutes per mile — my leisurely jogging speed, in fact — lived longer, on average, than sedentary adults. They also lived longer than the group (admittedly small) who ran more than 20 miles per week.

“These data certainly support the idea that more running is not needed to produce extra health and mortality benefits,” Dr. Carl J. Lavie, a cardiologist in New Orleans and co-author of the study told me. “If anything,” he said, “it appears that less running is associated with the best protection from mortality risk.”

Similarly, in a study from Denmark that I wrote about in September, a group of pudgy young men lost more weight after 13 weeks of exercising moderately for about 30 minutes several times a week than a separate group who worked out twice as much.

The men who exercised the most, the study authors discovered, also subsequently ate more than the moderate exercisers.

Even more striking, however, the vigorous exercisers subsequently sat around more each day than did the men who had exercised less, motion sensors worn by all of the volunteers showed.

“They were fatigued,” said Mads Rosenkilde, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Copenhagen and the study’s co-author.

Meanwhile, the men who had worked out for only about 30 minutes seemed to be energized by their new routines. They stood up, walked, stretched and even bounced in place more than they once had. “It looks like they were taking the stairs now, not the elevators, and just moving around more,” Mr. Rosenkilde said. “It was little things, but they add up.”

And that idea was, in fact, perhaps the most dominant exercise-science theme of 2012: that little things add up, with both positive and pernicious effects. Another of my favorite studies of 2012 found that a mere 10 minutes of daily physical activity increased life spans in adults by almost two years, even if the adults remained significantly overweight.

But the inverse of that finding proved to be equally true: not fitting periods of activity into a person’s daily life also affected life span. Perhaps the most chilling sentence that I wrote all year reported that, according to a large study of Western adults, “Every single hour of television watched after the age of 25 reduces the viewer’s life expectancy by 21.8 minutes.”

I am watching much less television these days.

But not all of the new fitness science I covered this year was quite so sobering or, to be honest, consequential. Some of the more practical studies simply validated common sense, including reports that to succeed in ball sports, keep your eye on the ball; during hot-weather exercise, pour cold water over your head; and, finally, on the day before a marathon, eat a lot.

But when I think about the science that has most affected how I plan my life, I return again and again to those studies showing that physical activity alters how long and how well we live. My days of heedless youth are behind me. So I won’t soon forget the study I wrote about in September detailing how moderate, frequent physical activity in midlife can delay the onset of illness and frailty in old age. Exercise won’t prevent you from aging, of course. Only death does that. But this study and others from this year underscore that staying active, even in moderate doses, dramatically improves how your aging body feels and responds.

Aging also inspired my favorite reader comment of 2012, which was posted in response to a research scientist’s name. “‘Dr. Head,’” the reader wrote. “That shall be the name of my all-senior-citizen metal band,” which, if its members gyrate and vigorously bound about like Mick Jagger on his recent tour, should ensure themselves decades in which to robustly perform.

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Case Study: A Start-Up’s Dilemma: A Lack of Capital, or Lack of Control

Eatwhatever is a two-step, breath-freshening product created four years ago by a then-26-year-old Australian expatriate named Jacqui Rosshandler. Starting with $60,000 in capital, contracting out production and working solo from her New York apartment, Ms. Rosshandler and her company, Jacquii L.L.C., managed to grab a promising but tenuous toehold in the billion-dollar breath-freshening industry.

THE CHALLENGE Running low on inventory early in 2011 and lacking the money for another production run to fulfill orders to her Web site and restock her Manhattan retail accounts, Ms. Rosshandler feared she would have to shut down her start-up. She had been rejected by bank after bank (some citing her lack of American citizenship). She had decided against asking friends for money — or her parents, who had already helped at the outset — and she had come up dry with venture capitalists. As her prospects dimmed, she started interviewing for jobs.

THE BACKGROUND Ms. Rosshandler was working at a Manhattan events and interior design company when, on New Year’s Day in 2007, she decided that like her father, a successful plastics industry entrepreneur in Australia, she would prefer to work for herself. Her idea: to improve upon a South African product called Odor-Go that she had seen in her native country but nowhere in the United States. Her product would have gel caps to be swallowed, similar to Odor-Go, but it would package them with follow-up mints to be sucked. Plus, her breath-freshening duo would be gluten-free and vegan. “I wanted to be able to take my own product,” she said, explaining that most gel caps are made using meat byproducts. She filed to trademark the name Eatwhatever.

It was her understanding that the way to vanquish bad breath caused by oniony, garlicky foods was to go to the source of the problem, the stomach. Having studied acting and law, not chemistry, Ms. Rosshandler left the product formulation to a contract manufacturer. “Parsley has been used for generations to freshen breath,” she said. “People know, just from everyday life, that freshening the mouth only — especially after consuming pungent foods — doesn’t get rid of the smell that comes from within the stomach. We found that the combination of concentrated organic peppermint and parsley oils, when dissolved in the stomach, provides this fresh feeling from within. Your breath actually smells good, from deep inside, not just superficially from the mouth.”

She hired a package designer and prominently displayed the tagline: 2 Steps to Kissable Breath. Also on the packaging was a cheeky instructional mash-up of the two operative steps (swallow and suck). She was, after all, seeking a young demographic. “I had no idea what I was doing,” said Ms. Rosshandler, laughing.

She began her sales efforts in 2008 by walking into the C.O. Bigelow flagship apothecary store in Manhattan and asking, “Who does the buying here?” She left with a sale. A month or so after Eatwhatever’s debut, a friend in public relations helped her get a mention on DailyCandy’s main page. That brought $20,000 worth of orders to her Web site in 12 hours and generated plenty of buzz. With the help of a distributor, Eatwhatever soon cracked New York retail outlets like Ricky’s, Joe Coffee and Zitomer, a specialty department store; Ms. Rosshandler even opened retail beachheads in Paris and Sydney.

But lacking contracts with mass merchants, sales volume remained low. The company’s annual revenue failed to top $40,000 in 2008, 2009 and 2010. Squeezed for cash, Ms. Rosshandler could not pay for marketing or, eventually, even for her next production run. That is when she interviewed for a job selling high-fashion hair accessories.

THE OPTIONS And then in rode her white knight. Or was he? She had networked her way to Arthur T. Shorin, an investor and former chief executive of the Topps Company, a confectionary company known for its baseball trading cards, who promised candy industry expertise and contacts and an immediate infusion of $250,000, with more to come if justified. But Mr. Shorin’s nonnegotiable terms were stark. In return, he wanted 75 percent of the enterprise. Ms. Rosshandler would retain 25 percent with the opportunity to earn back another 15 percent should certain benchmarks be met. The offer included a salaried job in Mr. Shorin’s New York company, Artuitive, an incubator for start-ups.

Friends advised Ms. Rosshandler against the deal, citing the tough terms, even if she were to rebuild her stake to 40 percent. But Mr. Shorin had impressed her in their exploratory meetings, and she asked herself this question: Isn’t 25 percent of something better than 100 percent of nothing?

WHAT OTHERS SAY Steve Schuster, founder of Schuster Products in Milwaukee, maker of Blitz mints: “Ms. Rosshandler finds herself in a precarious cash-flow position and — typical of many start-up entrepreneurs — may not completely grasp how much money she actually will need to grow her brand to a reasonable level of distribution. Arthur Shorin presents a very shrewd and unique proposition. Basically, he is her lifeline. Shorin, who made a staggering amount of money selling Topps to Michael Eisner’s private equity company, has great knowledge of the candy industry. It is imperative for Ms. Rosshandler to move forward with this proposition.” 

Josh Kopelman, a partner at First Round Capital, Philadelphia: “I believe that entrepreneurs, not investors, create great companies. In my experience, if a founder doesn’t retain meaningful equity at the seed stage, it greatly reduces their motivation and creates a real misalignment between investor and entrepreneur. I’d encourage Ms. Rosshandler to keep looking for alternatives, including the possibility of raising money from her friends. If she believes the company is going to create value and be successful, then she is actually doing her friends a favor by letting them invest — assuming she is candid about the extreme level of risk and that they don’t invest money they aren’t prepared to lose. I’d encourage her to consider tweaking the branding to make it more PG-13 than R-rated, as it might reduce some investor’s unease. I know it’s hard to turn down money — especially when a company really needs it.”

Adeo Ressi, founding member of TheFunded and head of The Founder Institute, an early stage business accelerator based in Silicon Valley: “Ms. Rosshandler should definitely not take this deal. First, she loses complete control of the company, and she can be removed or wiped out of her equity at any moment without notice. Second, the deal is very unusual, so she will never be able to attract other investors again. Third, the round values the operating business under $75,000, around two times revenue. As the terms indicate, she will be an employee of Artuitive, so this deal resembles a generous employment offer rather than a viable investment. This is an angel investment opportunity, and there are the largest number of angel investors in history. The volume of investors is both good and bad. On the positive side, if Ms. Rosshandler dedicates four months and meets with a lot of angels, she will raise $500,000 with a seven-figure valuation. On the negative side, she will need to meet with over 150 angels and waste a lot of time pitching to people that will try to take advantage of her, like Arthur Shorin.”

THE RESULTS Offer your thoughts on the You’re the Boss blog at nytimes.com/boss. Next week, on the blog and on this page, we will give an update on what Jacqui Rosshandler decided to do.

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House Takes On Fiscal Cliff

Joshua Roberts/Reuters

Representative Nancy Pelosi, the minority leader, arrived on Capitol Hill to meet with House Democrats and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Tuesday.

WASHINGTON — As the new year began on Tuesday, Congressional efforts to head off tax increases on most working Americans shifted to the House, where members began to pore over details of a plan passed by the Senate in the early morning hours as Republican leaders began the delicate task of assessing the measure’s fate in their chamber.

Molly Riley/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Representative Eric Cantor arrived at the Capitol on Tuesday.

J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press

House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio arrived on Capitol Hill in Washington, on Tuesday.

Alex Brandon/Associated Press

Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Monday after a meeting with Senate Democrats on the fiscal negotiations.

House Republicans were planning to meet at 1 p.m. to discuss the Senate legislation, cobbled together after furious negotiations between Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the Republican Senate leader, Mitch McConnell, to avert automatic tax increases for all but the wealthiest Americans and put off, for two months, large cuts to the Pentagon and other areas of government.

Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House Democratic leader, said she would also present the plan to House Democrats and Mr. Biden, who helped sell the deal to Senate Democrats on Monday night, was set to meet with members of his party in the House just after noon.

With just two days to go before a new Congress convenes, the House has essentially three choices: reject the bill, pass it as written by the Senate after what is certain to be a robust, even rancorous debate, or amend the bill and quickly return it across the rotunda to the Senate. Should the House choose to amend the measure, it would almost certainly imperil its chances of becoming law before the new Congress convenes. The Senate compromise, which enjoyed wide bipartisan support, was so hard fought and senators do not anticipate taking another vote on it.

Any failure to pass the measure before the 112th Congress ends as of noon Thursday would require the process to start over in the new 113th Congress, meaning the Senate would have to vote again with a changed membership due the departure of several veteran lawmakers and the arrival of newcomers from both parties as a result of victories in the November elections.

But the strong, bipartisan 89-to-8 vote in the Senate about 2 a.m. on Tuesday will put strong pressure on the House to approve the legislation since a defeat would essentially leave the House responsible for a steep series of tax increases and spending cuts that some economists warn could send the nation back into a recession.

Yet it was clear Tuesday morning that many House Republicans were disenchanted with the plan, which, while containing many concessions that angered Democrats, still favors the latter party’s priorities and imposes a tax increase on the wealthiest Americans.

“I am halfway through reading it and haven’t found the cuts yet,” said Representative Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, who generally votes against budget bills. “It’s part medicinal, part panacea, and part treating the symptoms but not the underlying pathology.”

Democrats have their own issues with the measure due to what they see as too many concessions on taxes, making it apparent some combination of Democrats and Republicans will have to come together behind the measure if it is to clear the House and be sent to President Obama for his signature.

Speaker John A. Boehner and Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House majority leader, arrived at the Capitol early Tuesday to begin working, but a spokesman for Mr. Cantor, Doug Heye, said no decision had been made on how to proceed.

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No surprise: YouTube, Angry Birds, Instagram and Facebook among 2012′s top apps

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Playboy Hugh Hefner marries his 'runaway bride'

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Hugh Hefner is celebrating the new year as a married man once again.

The 86-year-old Playboy magazine founder exchanged vows with his "runaway bride," Crystal Harris, at a private Playboy Mansion ceremony on New Year's Eve. Harris, a 26-year-old "Playmate of the Month" in 2009, broke off a previous engagement to Hefner just before they were to be married in 2011.

Playboy said on Tuesday that the couple celebrated at a New Year's Eve party at the mansion with guests that included comic Jon Lovitz, Gene Simmons of KISS and baseball star Evan Longoria.

The bride wore a strapless gown in soft pink, Hefner a black tux. Hefner's been married twice before but lived the single life between 1959 and 1989.

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Hispanic Pregnancies Fall in U.S. as Women Choose Smaller Families

ORLANDO, Fla. — Hispanic women in the United States, who have generally had the highest fertility rates in the country, are choosing to have fewer children. Both immigrant and native-born Latinas had steeper birthrate declines from 2007 to 2010 than other groups, including non-Hispanic whites, blacks and Asians, a drop some demographers and sociologists attribute to changes in the views of many Hispanic women about motherhood.

As a result, in 2011, the American birthrate hit a record low, with 63 births per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44, led by the decline in births to immigrant women. The national birthrate is now about half what it was during the baby boom years, when it peaked in 1957 at 122.7 births per 1,000 women of childbearing age.

The decline in birthrates was steepest among Mexican-American women and women who immigrated from Mexico, at 25.7 percent. This has reversed a trend in which immigrant mothers accounted for a rising share of births in the United States, according to a recent report by the Pew Research Center. In 2010, birthrates among all Hispanics reached their lowest level in 20 years, the center found.

The sudden drop-off, which coincided with the onset of the recession, suggests that attitudes have changed since the days when older generations of Latinos prized large families and more closely followed Roman Catholic teachings, which forbid artificial contraception.

Interviews with young Latinas, as well as reproductive health experts, show that the reasons for deciding to have fewer children are many, involving greater access to information about contraceptives and women’s health, as well as higher education.

When Marucci Guzman decided to marry Tom Beard here seven years ago, the idea of having a large family — a Guzman tradition back in Puerto Rico — was out of the question.

“We thought one, maybe two,” said Ms. Guzman Beard, who gave birth to a daughter, Attalai, four years ago.

Asked whether Attalai might ever get her wish for a little brother or sister, Ms. Guzman Beard, 29, a vice president at a public service organization, said: “I want to go to law school. I’m married. I work. When do I have time?”

The decisions were not made in a vacuum but amid a sputtering economy, which, interviewees said, weighed heavily on their minds.

Latinos suffered larger percentage declines in household wealth than white, black or Asian households from 2005 to 2009, and, according to the Pew report, their rates of poverty and unemployment also grew more sharply after the recession began.

Prolonged recessions do produce dips in the birthrate, but a drop as large as Latinos have experienced is atypical, said William H. Frey, a sociologist and demographer at the Brookings Institution. “It is surprising,” Mr. Frey said. “When you hear about a decrease in the birthrate, you don’t expect Latinos to be at the forefront of the trend.”

D’Vera Cohn, a senior writer at the Pew Research Center and an author of the report, said that in past recessions, when overall fertility dipped, “it bounced back over time when the economy got better.”

“If history repeats itself, that will happen again,” she said.

But to Mr. Frey, the decrease has signaled much about the aspirations of young Latinos to become full and permanent members of the upwardly mobile middle class, despite the challenges posed by the struggling economy.

Jersey Garcia, a 37-year-old public health worker in Miami, is in the first generation of her family to live permanently outside of the Dominican Republic, where her maternal and paternal grandmothers had a total of 27 children.

“I have two right now,” Ms. Garcia said. “It’s just a good number that I can handle.”

“Before, I probably would have been pressured to have more,” she added. “I think living in the United States, I don’t have family members close by to help me, and it takes a village to raise a child. So the feeling is, keep what you have right now.”

But that has not been easy. Even with health insurance, Ms. Garcia’s preferred method of long-term birth control, an IUD, has been unaffordable. Birth control pills, too, with a $50 co-payment a month, were too costly for her budget. “I couldn’t afford it,” she said. “So what I’ve been doing is condoms.”

According to research by the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, the overwhelming majority of Latinas have used contraception at some point in their lives, but they face economic barriers to consistent use. As a consequence, Latinas still experience unintended pregnancy at a rate higher than non-Hispanic whites, according to the institute.

And while the share of births to teenage mothers has dropped over the past two decades for all women, the highest share of births to teenage mothers is among native-born Hispanics.

“There are still a lot of barriers to information and access to contraception that exist,” said Jessica Gonzáles-Rojas, 36, the executive director of the institute, who has one son. “We still need to do a lot of work.”

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DealBook: Major Investigations Could Bring Penalties in 2013

It is not really of question of whether there will be a major white-collar crime that captures the public’s attention in 2013; it’s a question of when and how costly it will be.

If the cases of 2012 can serve as a guide, too many loopholes in the system allow fraud to go undetected.

Take for instance the onetime futures trading firm PFGBest, whose founder confessed to having committed fraud for years at the company, which has about $200 million missing from its accounts. Though futures regulators have spent months wringing their hands on how such a fraud could have gone on for so long, the fact remains that some financiers may keep one step ahead of law enforcement when it comes to white-collar crimes.

Federal prosecutors, however, are likely to remain strongly focused on the insider trading cases. The United States attorney’s office in Manhattan has already racked up an impressive record of winning convictions in every insider trading case that went to trial. They are even winning cases the old-fashioned way by relying primarily on the testimony of cooperating witnesses.

The one black eye that remains for the government is the lack of signature prosecutions emerging from the near collapse of the financial system in 2008. Although the Justice Department and the New York attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, have filed civil cases seeking billions in recovery for the sale of questionable securities tied to toxic subprime mortgages, the cases are likely to take years to play out.

Looking ahead to 2013, several major investigations remain open and are likely to bring significant criminal or civil penalties:

Still More to Come on Libor

The investigation of manipulation of the London interbank offered rate, or Libor, had been moving quietly along until the British bank Barclays announced a $450 million settlement in June 2012. The subsequent firestorm in Parliament over the bank’s conduct led to the resignation of its chief executive, Robert E. Diamond Jr., and a push to shift control of the interest rate mechanism into more trustworthy hands.

In hindsight, Barclays got off easily as the first bank to reach a settlement, although it probably did not feel like it in the days after the announcement. UBS has become the new focus of attention for Libor manipulation; it recently paid a $1.5 billion settlement, and its Japanese subsidiary pleaded guilty to fraud.
Other banks caught up in the investigation have to be dreading whether the UBS settlement is the new benchmark. If so, then a billion dollars may be the starting point for any negotiations with the Justice Department and Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which have been leading the investigation in this country. Add to that any penalties assessed by foreign regulators, and the cost of resolving the investigation will be a significant hit to the bottom line of some global banks.

More ominous is the possibility that the Justice Department will demand guilty pleas from banks. That requires an acknowledgement of wrongdoing, which could prove to be useful in the numerous civil lawsuits that have been filed against the banks, meaning more money could be paid out to resolve those cases.

Tackling Bribery and Corruption

As The New York Times has detailed, Wal-Mart is dealing with significant corruption issues in its Mexican subsidiary. The company also acknowledged that it was reviewing its global operations, and had already spent nearly $100 million on its internal investigation.

Though the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act was enacted in 1977, only in the past few years have the Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission started to extract significant penalties, often in sectors that had not previously been involved in overseas bribery cases.

For example, among the settlements in 2012 included four companies in the medical field, which all paid significant penalties: Smith & Nephew, $22 million; Biomet, $22.8 million; Pfizer, $60 million; and Eli Lilly, $29 million.

As more companies get caught up in these investigations, it will be interesting to see whether the courts punish repeat offenders more harshly. For instance, I.B.M. reached settlements with the S.E.C. in 2000 and again in 2011 over violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. A federal district judge in Washington is demanding greater accountability from the company before he will approve the proposed resolution of the case.

Insider Trading in the Cross Hairs

Although insider trading cases have become a staple of federal action in the last three years, the new attention has been on Steven A. Cohen and his hedge fund firm, SAC Capital.

Prosecutors have charged a number of defendants with ties to SAC, and came close to Mr. Cohen in the insider trading indictment of the portfolio manager Mathew Martoma, Although Mr. Cohen is not named in the charges, prosecutors went out of their way to describe the “Hedge Fund Owner” as someone involved in the trading at issue, a sure sign the government is focusing on him.

Mr. Martoma’s lawyer said his client was innocent, which probably means that he will not cooperate with the government if it pursues a case against Mr. Cohen. Without that path to build a case, an interesting question is whether the S.E.C. will use its authority to hold SAC responsible as a “controlling person” for insider trading by its employees, which could result in a triple penalty being imposed. The firm received a so-called Wells notice stating that the agency is considering civil charges.

If the S.E.C. files such a case, this would be a new front in the fight over insider trading that shifts attention to the hedge funds and investment firms that employ the people who capitalized on confidential information. That could potentially expose firms to enormous liability even if their managers were not specifically aware of any legal violations.

Rogue Traders

Every year seems to bring news of a major trading loss as a result of a breakdown in the internal controls at a major financial institution. In 2011, UBS revealed that actions by Kweku Adoboli, a trader in London, cost the bank about $2.3 billion. In 2012, JPMorgan Chase said that a hedging strategy by traders in London had cost the bank at least $6 billion in losses.

On a smaller scale, the boutique brokerage firm Rochdale Securities suffered a $5 million loss when a trader bought about $1 billion in Apple shares, far beyond what he was permitted to do.

Although many of the outsize losses hurt banks’ shareholders rather than the general public, such actions have drawn public calls for accountability.

Prosecutors in London successfully obtained a conviction against Mr. Adoboli this year, and UBS was fined $47.5 million over failing to prevent the actions.

More cases like these are likely to play out. As DealBook reported in October, investigators are looking into the actions of four people who previously worked for JPMorgan in London.

The nature of the markets may allow for more such blowups. Lightning-fast electronic trading allows huge positions to be built up in minutes, heightening the risk of sizable losses if anything goes awry.

And even when there is no sign of intentional wrongdoing, a small error can easily affect global markets. A software glitch at Knight Capital ended up costing the firm about $460 million, while memories of the 2010 “flash crash” are still fresh.

As the new year comes, white-collar cases will continue to serve up new object lessons of the perils and the pitfalls of the financial system. Some will come as a result of creative maneuverings by financiers, and some may call into question whether regulators are effectively overseeing the markets.

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