John McAfee Plays Hide-and-Seek in Belize

Photo Illustration by The New York Times

John McAfee, right, a pioneer in computer security who lives in Belize, is a “person of interest” in the murder of his neighbor. More Photos »

DANIEL GUERRERO promised during his campaign for mayor here to clean up San Pedro, the only town on this island, a 20-minute puddle jump from the mainland. But if he ever runs for re-election, don’t expect him to mention that vow.

“I meant clean up the trash, the traffic, that sort of thing,” he says. “I didn’t mean this.”

“This” is a full-blown international media frenzy and the kind of mess that no politician could have seen coming. It started on Nov. 11, the morning that Gregory Faull, a 52-year-old American, was found dead, lying face up in a pool of blood in his home. He had been shot in the head. His laptop and iPhone were missing. A 9-millimeter shell was found nearby.

What happened next turned this from a local crime story to worldwide news: The police announced that a “person of interest” in the investigation was a neighbor, John McAfee, a Silicon Valley legend who years ago earned millions from the computer virus-fighting software company that still bears his name.

A priapic 67-year-old, with an improbable mop of blond-highlighted hair and a rotating group of young girlfriends, Mr. McAfee quickly melted into the island’s lush green forest. Then, for Belizean authorities, the real embarrassment began.

Asserting his innocence, Mr. McAfee became a multiplatform cyberdissident, with a Twitter account, and a blog at whoismcafee.com with audio links, a comments section, photographs and a stream of invective against the government and the police of Belize. He has done interviews on podcasts, like the “Joe Rogan Experience,” and offered a $25,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of “the person or persons” who killed Mr. Faull. He has turned lamming it into a kind of high-tech performance art.

“I am asking all people of conscience to read this blog, especially the links in the ‘Background’ section,’ and see the ugly truth unfolding here,” he posted on Nov. 18. “Speak out. Write your congressmen. Write the prime minister. Do what you can.”

Before he went underground, Mr. McAfee led a noisy, opulent and increasingly stressful life here. He was known for the retinue of prostitutes who he says moved in and out of his house, and for employing armed guards, some of whom stood watch on the beach abutting his house. He also kept a pack of untethered dogs on his property who barked at and sometimes bit passers-by.

Two days before the murder, someone had poisoned a handful of those dogs. As it happens, Mr. Faull had complained about the animals, as well as the guards and the constant late-night inflow and outflow of taxis on the dirt path that runs behind his and Mr. McAfee’s homes — a path so tiny that it’s supposed to be off-limits to cars.

Mr. Faull had shown up at the town council office a few weeks ago with a letter decrying the din and the dogs, as well as Mr. McAfee’s guns and behavior. Nothing came of it.

“We were planning to meet with John McAfee and hand him the letter,” Mr. Guerrero said. “But it never happened. We were busy doing other work.”

In hindsight, that looks like a blunder. Mr. McAfee has since said on his blog that he had no choice but to flee because police and politicians in Belize are corrupt and eager to kill him. As proof, he has written at length about a late April raid that the country’s Gang Suppression Unit conducted at a property of his on the mainland, in a district called Orange Walk.

Some McAfee watchers have a different theory — namely, that he grew paranoid and perhaps psychotic after months of experimenting with and consuming MDPV, a psychoactive drug. These experiments were described in detail by Mr. McAfee himself, under the pseudonym “Stuffmonger” in a forum on Bluelight, a Web site popular with drug hobbyists.

So, here’s one hypothesis: Rich man doses himself to madness while seeking sexual bliss through pharmacology. Then shoots neighbor in a rage. Case closed, right? Ah, but those Bluelight posts were a ruse, Mr. McAfee would later blog, just one of the many pranks he has perpetrated over the years — part of a bet with a friend to see if he could create Bluelight’s largest-ever thread.

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Israel Moves to Expand Settlements in East Jerusalem

Ronen Zvulun/Reuters

A worker at a construction site in the West Bank Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim, near Jerusalem, in June. Israel plans to link the settlement with Jerusalem. More Photos »

JERUSALEM — Israel is moving forward with development of Jewish settlements in a contentious area east of Jerusalem, defying the United States by advancing a project that has long been condemned by Washington as effectively dooming any prospect of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

A day after the United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to upgrade the status of the Palestinians, a senior Israeli official said the government would pursue “preliminary zoning and planning preparations” for a development that would separate the West Bank cities of Ramallah and Bethlehem from Jerusalem. If such a project were to go beyond blueprints, it could prevent the creation of a viable, contiguous Palestinian state.

The development, in an open, mostly empty area known as E1, would connect the large settlement town of Maale Adumim to Jerusalem. Israeli officials also authorized construction of 3,000 housing units in parts of East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

The timing of the twin actions seemed aimed at punishing the Palestinians for their United Nations bid, and appeared to show that hard-liners in the government had prevailed after days of debate over how to respond. That represented a surprising turnaround, after a growing sense that Israeli leaders had acceded to pressure from Washington not to react quickly or harshly.

The Obama administration swiftly condemned the move as unhelpful. Senior officials expressed frustration that it came after Israeli officials had played down the importance of the Palestinian bid and suggested that they would only employ harsh retaliatory measures if the Palestinians used their new status to go after Israel in the International Criminal Court.

“We reiterate our longstanding opposition to settlements and East Jerusalem construction and announcements,” a spokesman for the National Security Council, Tommy Vietor, said. “We believe these actions are counterproductive and make it harder to resume direct negotiations or achieve a two-state solution.”

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, in a Saban Forum speech on Friday night at a Washington hotel, criticized Israel’s decision to proceed with plans for construction without referring to any settlements directly by name. “These activities set back the cause of a negotiated peace,” Mrs. Clinton said.

Israel gave the United States only a few hours’ notice of the plan, and President Obama did not call Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a senior official said. For Mr. Obama, whose most bitter clashes with Mr. Netanyahu have come over settlements, the Israeli move could undermine a series of developments in recent weeks — from the violence in Gaza to the Palestinian vote — in which the two leaders appeared to draw closer together.

In her speech, Mrs. Clinton condemned the General Assembly vote as “a step that will not bring us any closer to peace,” and reiterated America’s deep commitment to Israel.

“America has Israel’s back,” she said, “and this month we proved it again.” After listing many ways in which the United States has supported Israel, Mrs. Clinton articulated the two-state vision, what she called the need for a “political horizon.”

“There is more the Israelis need to do,”she said, adding, “There is still an opportunity with the West Bank Palestinians” to have a different status quo that would be in Israel’s interest.For years, American and European officials have told the Israelis that E1 is a red line. The leaked, somewhat vague, announcement of plans to proceed with building is the diplomatic equivalent of what the Israeli military did last month when it massed tens of thousands of ground troops at the Gaza border. It is a potent threat that may well, in the end, not be carried out because the Israeli government worries about its consequences.

The Palestinian Authority described the plan as “a new act of defiance from the Israeli government.” Saeb Erekat, the chief negotiator, said in a statement, “At a moment where the Palestinian leadership is doing every single effort to save the two-state solution, the Israeli government does everything possible to destroy it.”

Mr. Netanyahu’s office declined to comment on the zoning and construction decisions, which were made Thursday night around the time of the General Assembly vote.

Jodi Rudoren reported from Jerusalem, and Mark Landler from Washington. Michael R. Gordon contributed reporting from Washington; Peter Baker from Hatfield, Pa.; and Ethan Bronner from New York.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 30, 2012

An earlier version of this article misspelled the given name and surname of the leader of the Israeli Labor Party. She is Shelly Yacimovich, not Shelley Yachnimovich.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 30, 2012

An earlier version of this article misidentified the location of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Saban Forum speech in Washington. It was at a hotel, not at the Brookings Institution.

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General Assembly Grants Palestine Upgraded Status in U.N.

Damon Winter/The New York Times

The Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, center, was congratulated by Turkey’s foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu. More Photos »

UNITED NATIONS — More than 130 countries voted on Thursday to upgrade Palestine to a nonmember observer state of the United Nations, a triumph for Palestinian diplomacy and a sharp rebuke to the United States and Israel.

But the vote, at least for now, did little to bring either the Palestinians or the Israelis closer to the goal they claim to seek: two states living side by side, or increased Palestinian unity. Israel and the militant group Hamas both responded critically to the day’s events, though for different reasons.

The new status will give the Palestinians more tools to challenge Israel in international legal forums for its occupation activities in the West Bank, including settlement-building, and it helped bolster the Palestinian Authority, weakened after eight days of battle between its rival Hamas and Israel.

But even as a small but determined crowd of 2,000 celebrated in central Ramallah in the West Bank, waving flags and dancing, there was an underlying sense of concerned resignation.

“I hope this is good,” said Munir Shafie, 36, an electrical engineer who was there. “But how are we going to benefit?”

Still, the General Assembly vote — 138 countries in favor, 9 opposed and 41 abstaining — showed impressive backing for the Palestinians at a difficult time. It was taken on the 65th anniversary of the vote to divide the former British mandate of Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab, a vote Israel considers the international seal of approval for its birth.

The past two years of Arab uprisings have marginalized the Palestinian cause to some extent as nations that focused their political aspirations on the Palestinian struggle have turned inward. The vote on Thursday, coming so soon after the Gaza fighting, put the Palestinians again — if briefly, perhaps — at the center of international discussion.

“The question is, where do we go from here and what does it mean?” Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian prime minister, who was in New York for the vote, said in an interview. “The sooner the tough rhetoric of this can subside and the more this is viewed as a logical consequence of many years of failure to move the process forward, the better.” He said nothing would change without deep American involvement.

President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, speaking to the assembly’s member nations, said, “The General Assembly is called upon today to issue a birth certificate of the reality of the state of Palestine,” and he condemned what he called Israeli racism and colonialism. His remarks seemed aimed in part at Israel and in part at Hamas. But both quickly attacked him for the parts they found offensive.

“The world watched a defamatory and venomous speech that was full of mendacious propaganda against the Israel Defense Forces and the citizens of Israel,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel responded. “Someone who wants peace does not talk in such a manner.”

While Hamas had officially backed the United Nations bid of Mr. Abbas, it quickly criticized his speech because the group does not recognize Israel.

“There are controversial issues in the points that Abbas raised, and Hamas has the right to preserve its position over them,” said Salah al-Bardaweel, a spokesman for Hamas in Gaza, on Thursday.

“We do not recognize Israel, nor the partition of Palestine, and Israel has no right in Palestine,” he added. “Getting our membership in the U.N. bodies is our natural right, but without giving up any inch of Palestine’s soil.”

Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Ron Prosor, spoke after Mr. Abbas and said he was concerned that the Palestinian Authority failed to recognize Israel for what it is.

“Three months ago, Israel’s prime minister stood in this very hall and extended his hand in peace to President Abbas,” Mr. Prosor said. “He reiterated that his goal was to create a solution of two states for two peoples, where a demilitarized Palestinian state will recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

“That’s right. Two states for two peoples. In fact, President Abbas, I did not hear you use the phrase ‘two states for two peoples’ this afternoon. In fact, I have never heard you say the phrase ‘two states for two peoples’ because the Palestinian leadership has never recognized that Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people.”

The Israelis also say that the fact that Mr. Abbas is not welcome in Gaza, the Palestinian coastal enclave run by Hamas, from which he was ejected five years ago, shows that there is no viable Palestinian leadership living up to its obligations now.

Jennifer Steinhauer contributed reporting from Washington, Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem, and Khaled Abu Aker from Ramallah, West Bank.

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High & Low Finance: A Clash of Auditors in H.P. Deal and Loss

The battle over Hewlett-Packard’s claim that it was bamboozled when it bought Autonomy, a British software company, has been long on angry rhetoric and short on details about the accounting that was supposedly wrong and led to an $8.8 billion write-down.

But the eternal question asked whenever a fraud surfaces — “Where were the auditors?” — does have an answer in this case.

They were everywhere.

They were consulting. They were advising, according to one account, on strategies for “optimizing” revenue. They were investigating whether books were cooked, and they were signing off on audits approving the books that are now alleged to have been cooked. They were offering advice on executive pay. There are four major accounting firms, and each has some involvement.

Herewith a brief summary of the Autonomy dispute:

Hewlett-Packard, a computer maker that in recent years has gone from one stumble to another, bought Autonomy last year. The British company’s accounting had long been the subject of harsh criticism from some short-sellers, but H.P. evidently did not care. The $11 billion deal closed in October 2011.

Last week, H.P. said Autonomy had been cooking its books in a variety of ways. Mike Lynch, who founded Autonomy and was fired by H.P. this year, says the company’s books were fine. If the company has lost value, he says, it is because of H.P.’s mismanagement.

Autonomy was audited by the British arm of Deloitte. H.P., which is audited by Ernst & Young, hired KPMG to perform due diligence in connection with the acquisition — due diligence that presumably found no big problems with the books.

That covered three of the four big firms, so it should be no surprise that the final one, PricewaterhouseCoopers, was brought in to conduct a forensic investigation after an unnamed whistle-blower told H.P. that the books were not kosher. H.P. says the PWC investigation found “serious accounting improprieties, misrepresentation and disclosure failures.”

That would seem to make the Big Four tally two for Autonomy and two for H.P., or at least it would when Ernst approves H.P.’s annual report including the write-down.

But KPMG wants it known that it “was not engaged by H.P. to perform any audit work on this matter. The firm’s only role was to provide a limited set of non-audit-related services.” KPMG won’t say what those services were, but states, “We can say with confidence that we acted responsibly and with integrity.’

Deloitte did much more for Autonomy than audit its books, perhaps taking advantage of British rules, which are more relaxed about potential conflicts of interest than are American regulations enacted a decade ago in the Sarbanes-Oxley law. In 2010, states the company’s annual report, 44 percent of the money paid to Deloitte by Autonomy was for nonaudit services. Some of the money went for “advice in relation to remuneration,” which presumably means consultations on how much executives should be paid.

The consulting arms of the Big Four also have relationships that can be complicated. At an auditing conference this week at New York University, Francine McKenna of Forbes.com noted that Deloitte was officially a platinum-level “strategic alliance technology implementation partner” of H.P. and said she had learned of “at least two large client engagements where Autonomy and Deloitte Consulting worked together before the acquisition.” A Deloitte spokeswoman did not comment on that report.

To an outsider, making sense of this brouhaha is not easy. In a normal accounting scandal, if there is such a thing, the company restates its earnings and details how revenue was inflated or costs hidden. That has not happened here, and it may never happen. There is not even an accusation of how much Autonomy inflated its profits, but if there were, it would be a very small fraction of the $8.8 billion write-off that H.P. took. Autonomy never reported earning $1 billion in a year.

That $8.8 billion represents a write-off of much of the good will that H.P. booked when it made the deal, based on the conclusion that Autonomy was not worth nearly as much as it had paid. It says more than $5 billion of that relates to the accounting irregularities, with the rest reflecting H.P.’s low stock price and “headwinds against anticipated synergies and marketplace performance,” whatever that might mean.

Some of the accounting accusations relate to how Autonomy booked expenses. The H.P. version is that the British company made sales of hardware — personal computers it bought and resold — look like sales of valuable software. It hid some costs as marketing expenses when they should have been reported as costs of goods sold.

All that, if true, would inflate operating profit margins and growth rates for the most important part of the business. But it would not change net earnings.

Floyd Norris comments on finance and the economy at nytimes.com/economix.

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Hockey Coaches Defy Doctors on Concussions, Study Finds

Despite several years of intensive research, coverage and discussion about the dangers of concussions, the idea of playing through head injuries is so deeply rooted in hockey culture that two university teams kept concussed players on the ice even though they were taking part in a major concussion study.

The study, which will be published Friday in a series of articles in the journal Neurosurgical Focus, was conducted during the 2011-12 hockey season by researchers from the University of Western Ontario, the University of Montreal, Harvard and other institutions.

“This culture is entrenched at all levels of hockey, from peewee to university,” said Dr. Paul S. Echlin, a concussion specialist and researcher in Burlington, Ontario, and the lead author of the study. “Concussion is a significant public health issue that requires a generational shift. As with smoking or seat belts, it doesn’t just happen overnight — it takes a massive effort and collective movement.”

The study is believed to be among the most comprehensive analyses of concussions in hockey, which has a rate of head trauma approaching that of football. Researchers followed two Canadian university teams — a men’s team and a women’s team — and scanned every player’s brain before and after the season. Players who sustained head injuries also received scans at three intervals after the injuries, with researchers using advanced magnetic resonance imaging techniques.

The teams were not named in the study, in which an independent specialist physician was present at each game and was empowered to pull any player off the ice for examination if a potential concussion was observed.

The men’s team, with 25 players and an average age of 22, played a 28-game regular season and a 3-game postseason. The women’s team, with 20 players and an average age of 20, played 24 regular-season games and no playoff games. Over the course of the season, there were five observed or self-reported concussions on the men’s team and six on the women’s team.

Researchers noted several instances of coaches, trainers and players avoiding examinations, ignoring medical advice or otherwise obstructing the study, even though the players had signed consent forms to participate and university ethics officials had given institutional consent.

“Unless something is broken, I want them out playing,” one coach said, according to the study.

In one incident, a neurologist observing the men’s team pulled a defenseman during the first period of a game after the player took two hits and was skating slowly. During the intermission the player reported dizziness and was advised to sit out, but the coach suggested he play the second period and “skate it off.” The defenseman stumbled through the rest of the game.

“At the end of the third period, I spoke with the player and the trainer and said that he should not play until he was formally evaluated and underwent the formal return-to-play protocol,” the neurologist said, as reported in the study. “I was dismayed to see that he played the next evening.”

After the team returned from its trip, the neurologist questioned the trainer about overruling his advice and placing the defenseman at risk.

“The trainer responded that he and the player did not understand the decision and that most of the team did not trust the neurologist,” according to the study. “He requested that the physician no longer be used to cover any more games.”

In another episode, a physician observer assessed a minor concussion in a female player and recommended that she miss the next night’s game. Even though the coach’s own playing career had ended because of concussions, she overrode the medical advice and inserted the player the next evening.

According to the report, the coach refused to speak to another physician observer on the second evening. The trainer was reluctant to press the issue with the coach because, the trainer said, the coach did not want the study to interfere with the team.

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Hockey Coaches Defy Doctors on Concussions, Study Finds

Despite several years of intensive research, coverage and discussion about the dangers of concussions, the idea of playing through head injuries is so deeply rooted in hockey culture that two university teams kept concussed players on the ice even though they were taking part in a major concussion study.

The study, which will be published Friday in a series of articles in the journal Neurosurgical Focus, was conducted during the 2011-12 hockey season by researchers from the University of Western Ontario, the University of Montreal, Harvard and other institutions.

“This culture is entrenched at all levels of hockey, from peewee to university,” said Dr. Paul S. Echlin, a concussion specialist and researcher in Burlington, Ontario, and the lead author of the study. “Concussion is a significant public health issue that requires a generational shift. As with smoking or seat belts, it doesn’t just happen overnight — it takes a massive effort and collective movement.”

The study is believed to be among the most comprehensive analyses of concussions in hockey, which has a rate of head trauma approaching that of football. Researchers followed two Canadian university teams — a men’s team and a women’s team — and scanned every player’s brain before and after the season. Players who sustained head injuries also received scans at three intervals after the injuries, with researchers using advanced magnetic resonance imaging techniques.

The teams were not named in the study, in which an independent specialist physician was present at each game and was empowered to pull any player off the ice for examination if a potential concussion was observed.

The men’s team, with 25 players and an average age of 22, played a 28-game regular season and a 3-game postseason. The women’s team, with 20 players and an average age of 20, played 24 regular-season games and no playoff games. Over the course of the season, there were five observed or self-reported concussions on the men’s team and six on the women’s team.

Researchers noted several instances of coaches, trainers and players avoiding examinations, ignoring medical advice or otherwise obstructing the study, even though the players had signed consent forms to participate and university ethics officials had given institutional consent.

“Unless something is broken, I want them out playing,” one coach said, according to the study.

In one incident, a neurologist observing the men’s team pulled a defenseman during the first period of a game after the player took two hits and was skating slowly. During the intermission the player reported dizziness and was advised to sit out, but the coach suggested he play the second period and “skate it off.” The defenseman stumbled through the rest of the game.

“At the end of the third period, I spoke with the player and the trainer and said that he should not play until he was formally evaluated and underwent the formal return-to-play protocol,” the neurologist said, as reported in the study. “I was dismayed to see that he played the next evening.”

After the team returned from its trip, the neurologist questioned the trainer about overruling his advice and placing the defenseman at risk.

“The trainer responded that he and the player did not understand the decision and that most of the team did not trust the neurologist,” according to the study. “He requested that the physician no longer be used to cover any more games.”

In another episode, a physician observer assessed a minor concussion in a female player and recommended that she miss the next night’s game. Even though the coach’s own playing career had ended because of concussions, she overrode the medical advice and inserted the player the next evening.

According to the report, the coach refused to speak to another physician observer on the second evening. The trainer was reluctant to press the issue with the coach because, the trainer said, the coach did not want the study to interfere with the team.

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Most Americans Face Lower Tax Burden Than in the 80s

What Is Fair?:
Taxes are still a hot topic after the presidential election. But as a country that spends more than it collects in taxes, are we asking the right taxpayers to pay the right amounts?

BELLEVILLE, Ill. — Alan Hicks divides long days between the insurance business he started in the late 1970s and the barbecue restaurant he opened with his sons three years ago. He earned more than $250,000 last year and said taxes took more than 40 percent. What’s worse, in his view, is that others — the wealthy, hiding in loopholes; the poor, living on government benefits — are not paying their fair share.

“It feels like the harder we work, the more they take from us,” said Mr. Hicks, 55, as he waited for a meat truck one recent afternoon. “And it seems like there’s an awful lot of people in the United States who don’t pay any taxes.”

These are common sentiments in the eastern suburbs of St. Louis, a region of fading factory towns fringed by new subdivisions. Here, as across the country, people like Mr. Hicks are pained by the conviction that they are paying ever more to finance the expansion of government.

But in fact, most Americans in 2010 paid far less in total taxes — federal, state and local — than they would have paid 30 years ago. According to an analysis by The New York Times, the combination of all income taxes, sales taxes and property taxes took a smaller share of their income than it took from households with the same inflation-adjusted income in 1980.

Households earning more than $200,000 benefited from the largest percentage declines in total taxation as a share of income. Middle-income households benefited, too. More than 85 percent of households with earnings above $25,000 paid less in total taxes than comparable households in 1980.

Lower-income households, however, saved little or nothing. Many pay no federal income taxes, but they do pay a range of other levies, like federal payroll taxes, state sales taxes and local property taxes. Only about half of taxpaying households with incomes below $25,000 paid less in 2010.

The uneven decline is a result of two trends. Congress cut federal taxation at every income level over the last 30 years. State and local taxes, meanwhile, increased for most Americans. Those taxes generally take a larger share of income from those who make less, so the increases offset more and more of the federal savings at lower levels of income.

In a half-dozen states, including Connecticut, Florida and New Jersey, the increases were large enough to offset the federal savings for most households, not just the poorer ones.

Now an era of tax cuts may be reaching its end. The federal government depends increasingly on borrowed money to pay its bills, and many state and local governments are similarly confronting the reality that they are spending more money than they collect. In Washington, debates about tax cuts have yielded to debates about who should pay more.

President Obama campaigned for re-election on a promise to take a larger share of taxable income above roughly $250,000 a year. The White House is now negotiating with Congressional Republicans, who instead want to raise some money by reducing tax deductions. Federal spending cuts also are at issue.

If a deal is not struck by year’s end, a wide range of federal tax cuts passed since 2000 will expire and taxes will rise for roughly 90 percent of Americans, according to the independent Tax Policy Center. For lower-income households, taxation would spike well above 1980 levels. Upper-income households would lose some but not all of the benefits of tax cuts over the last three decades.

Public debate over taxes has typically focused on the federal income tax, but that now accounts for less than a third of the total tax revenues collected by federal, state and local governments. To analyze the total burden, The Times created a model, in consultation with experts, which estimated total tax bills for each taxpayer in each year from 1980, when the election of President Ronald Reagan opened an era of tax cutting, up to 2010, the most recent year for which relevant data is available.

The analysis shows that the overall burden of taxation declined as a share of income in the 1980s, rose to a new peak in the 1990s and fell again in the 2000s. Tax rates at most income levels were lower in 2010 than at any point during the 1980s.

Governments still collected the same share of total income in 2010 as in 1980 — 31 cents from every dollar — because people with higher incomes pay taxes at higher rates, and household incomes rose over the last three decades, particularly at the top.

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Benghazi Violence Beyond Control of Militias

Esam Omran Al-Fetori/Reuters

Libyan police officers carried the body of Faraj Mohammed el-Drissi, the Benghazi security director, after he was gunned down last week.

BENGHAZI, Libya — The killing was not a shock here, in the city where Libyans started their quest to shake off dictatorship and now struggle, nearly two years later, to douse the simmering violence that is a legacy of the revolt.

One evening last week, a car screeched down a residential street. Three men stepped out and with startling ease gunned down Faraj Mohammed el-Drissi, the man whose job it was to ensure this city’s security.

Mr. Drissi, who had been on the job since October, was among roughly three dozen public servants killed over the last year and a half, including army officers, security agents, officials from the deposed government and the United States ambassador, J. Christopher Stevens. In all the cases, no one has been convicted, and in many, no one has even been questioned. That is unlikely to change anytime soon.

Since Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi was killed more than a year ago, Benghazi has in many ways regained its balance, as residents build long-delayed additions to their homes and policemen direct traffic on some streets. But Mr. Drissi’s killing made it hard to ignore a darker rhythm — one that revolves around killing with impunity. The government is still weaker than the country’s militias, and neither is willing, or able to act.

“It is impossible for members of a brigade to arrest another,” said Wanis al-Sharif, the top Interior Ministry official in eastern Libya. “And it would be impossible that I give the order to arrest someone in a militia. Impossible.”

The violence was thrown into sharp relief after the September attack on the United States intelligence and diplomatic villas. Libyan and American officials accused militants associated with Libya’s ubiquitous militias, and specifically, members of Ansar al-Shariah.

“The killing of the ambassador brought back the true reality of this insecure state,” said Ali Tarhouni, a former Libyan finance minister who leads a new political party. “It was a major setback, to this city and its psyche.”

Justice itself is a dangerous notion here and throughout Libya, where a feeble government lacks the power to protect citizens or to confront criminal suspects. It barely has the means to arm its police force, let alone rein in or integrate the militias or confront former rebel fighters suspected of killings.

“Some had to do with personal grudges,” said Judge Jamal Bennor, who serves as Benghazi’s justice coordinator. But most were like the killing of Mr. Drissi. “This was a political assassination,” he said.

Adding to the feeling of lawlessness are the revelations that foreign intelligence services, like the C.I.A., are active around the country without answering to anyone, people here said. Every day, an American drone circles Benghazi, unsettling and annoying residents. Police officers share Kalashnikovs. The courts are toothless. Libyan and American investigators, faced with Benghazi’s insecurity, are forced to interview witnesses hundreds of miles away, in the capital, Tripoli.

And so the government is forced to reckon with the militias, who by virtue of their abundant weapons hold the city’s real power. Men like Wissam bin Hamid, 35, who before the revolution owned an automobile workshop, is now the leader of an umbrella group of former rebel fighters. Some groups, like Mr. Hamid’s, operate with the government’s blessing, while others are called rogue. The distinctions often seem arbitrary, but either way, the militias are effectively a law unto themselves.

Mr. Hamid and others insist that they are loyal to the state. Leading political figures said they respected Mr. Hamid but had concerns about many of the other militia leaders, among them hard-line Islamists.

The militias are called on for crucial tasks, including safeguarding elections. Mr. Hamid’s militia, a branch of a group called Libya Shield, has been called on to enforce order hundreds of miles away from Benghazi, in towns beyond the government’s reach. The militia has also worked with American officials: they escorted intelligence officers and diplomats away from the besieged villas on Sept. 11, and later, provided protection for American investigators visiting the city in search of evidence in the attack, Mr. Hamid said.

Osama al-Fitory and Suliman Ali Zway contributed reporting.

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State of the Art: Tablets Are Hot Holiday Gifts, but Which One to Buy? — Review

From left: J. Emilio Flores for The New York Times, Jim Wilson/The New York Times, Everett Kennedy Brown/European Pressphoto Agency

From left, the Kindle PaperWhite, the iPad Mini and the  Nexus 7.

The other day, I joined NPR for a segment about high-tech holiday gifts. I was ready for the calls from listeners. I’d brushed up on cameras, phones, laptops, music players and game consoles. I was prepared to talk about limiting screen time, digital addiction, cyberbullying. I knew where to get the best deals.

But all six callers had the same question: “What tablet should I get?”

There were variations, of course. “— for my kid?” “— for my elderly father?” “— just for reading?” “— for not much money?” But in general, it was clear: the gadget most likely to be found under the tree this year is thin, battery-powered and flat.

No wonder people are confused. The marketplace has gone tablet-crazy. There’s practically a different model for every man, woman and child.

There’s the venerable iPad, of course. And now the iPad Mini. There are new tablets from Google, also in small and large. There are Samsung’s Note tablets in a variety of sizes, with styluses. There are $200 touch-screen color e-book/video players. There’s a new crop of black-and-white e-book readers. There are stunningly cheap plastic models you’ve never heard of. There are tablets for children (and I don’t mean baby aspirin).

So how are you, the confused consumer, supposed to keep tabs on all these tablets? By taking this handy tour through the jungle of tablets 2012. Keep hands and feet inside the tram at all times.

DIRT-CHEAP KNOCKOFFS You can find no-name tablets for $100 or even less. You can also find mystery-brand Chinese tablets in toy stores, marketed to children.

Don’t buy them. They don’t have the apps, the features, the polish or the pleasure of the nicer ones. The junk drawer is already calling their names.

E-BOOK READERS The smallest, lightest, least expensive, easiest to read tablets are the black-and-white e-book readers. If the goal is simply reading — and not, say, watching movies or playing games — these babies are pure joy.

Don’t bother with the lesser brands; if you’re going to get locked into one company’s proprietary, copy-protected book format, you’ll reduce your chances of library obsolescence if you stick with Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

Each company offers a whole bunch of models. But on the latest models, the page background lights up softly, so that you can read in the dark without a flashlight. (These black-and-white models also look fantastic in direct sun — now you get the best of both lighting conditions.)

The one you want is the Kindle PaperWhite ($120), whose illumination is more even and pleasant than the equivalent Nook’s.

Of course, plain, no-touch, no-light Kindles, with ads on the screen saver, start as low as $70. But the light and the touch-screen are really worth having.

COLOR E-READERS/PLAYERS Amazon and B.& N. each sell a seven-inch tablet that, functionally, lands somewhere between an e-book reader and an iPad. They have beautiful, high-definition touch-screens. They play music, TV shows, movies and e-books. They can surf the Web. They even run a few handpicked Android apps like Netflix and Angry Birds.

They’re nowhere near as capable as full-blown, computerlike tablets of the iPad/Nexus ilk, mainly because there are so few apps, accessories and add-ons. But they cost $200; you’re paying only a fraction of the price.

The big two here are, once again, Amazon and B.& N. If you’re not already locked in to one of those companies’ books and videos because you owned a previous model, the Nook HD is the one to get. It’s much smaller and lighter than the Kindle Fire HD. It has a much sharper screen. And the $200 price includes a wall charger (the Fire doesn’t) and no ads (the Fire does). Or get the classy Google Nexus 7, also $200. Although its book/music/movie catalog is far smaller, its Android app catalog is far larger (but see “iPad versus Android,” below).

BIG COLOR READERS/PLAYERS This year, both Amazon and B.& N. have introduced jumbo-screen (9-inch) versions of their HD tablets. Here again, B.& N. offers a better value than its 9-inch Kindle Fire HD rival. For $270, the Nook HD+ offers a sharper screen, lighter weight, no ads, a memory-card slot and a wall charger.

E-mail: pogue@nytimes.com

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Bombings Are Said to Kill Dozens Near Syria’s Capital

Francisco Leong/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Rebels celebrated on top of a downed Syrian jet in Daret Azzeh, 20 miles west of Aleppo, on Wednesday.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Syrian state media said on Wednesday that 34 people and possibly many more had died in twin car bombings in a suburb populated by minorities only a few miles from the center of Damascus, the capital, as the civil war swirls from north to south claiming ever higher casualties. One estimate by the government’s opponents put the death toll at 47.

There were also reports from witnesses in Turkey and anti-government activists in Syria that for the second successive day insurgents had shot down a government aircraft in the north of the country, offering further evidence that the rebels are seeking a major shift by challenging the government’s dominance of the skies. It was not immediately clear how the aircraft, apparently a plane, had been brought down.

Video posted on the Internet by rebels showed wreckage with fires still burning around it. The aircraft appeared to show a tail assembly clearly visible jutting in the debris. Such videos are difficult to verify, particularly in light of the restrictions facing reporters in Syria. However, the episode on Wednesday seemed to be confirmed by other witnesses.

“We watched a Syrian plane being shot down as it was flying low to drop bombs,” said Ugur Cuneydioglu, who said he observed the incident from a Turkish border village in southern Hatay Province. “It slowly went down in flames before it hit the ground. It was quite a scene,” Mr. Cuneydioglu said.

Video posted by insurgents on the Internet showed a man in aviator coveralls being carried away. It was not clear if the man was alive but the video said he had been treated in a makeshift hospital. A voice off-camera says: “This is the pilot who was shelling residents’ houses.”

The aircraft was said to have been brought down while it was attacking the town of Daret Azzeh, 20 miles west of Aleppo and close to the Turkish border. The town was the scene of a mass killing last June, when the government and the rebels blamed one another for the deaths and mutilation of 25 people. The video posted online said the plane had been brought down by “the free men of Daret Azzeh soldiers of God brigade.”

On Tuesday, Syrian rebels said they shot down a military helicopter with a surface-to-air missile outside Aleppo and they uploaded video that appeared to confirm that rebels have put their growing stock of heat-seeking missiles to effective use.

In recent months, rebels have used mainly machine guns to shoot down several Syrian Air Force helicopters and fixed-wing attack jets. In Tuesday’s case, the thick smoke trailing the projectile, combined with the elevation of the aircraft, strongly suggested that the helicopter was hit by a missile.

Rebels hailed the event as the culmination of their long pursuit of effective antiaircraft weapons, though it was not clear if the downing on Tuesday was an isolated tactical success or heralded a new phase in the war that would present a meaningful challenge to the Syrian government’s air supremacy. In Damascus, the official SANA news agency said the explosions in Jaramana outside the city at around 7 a.m. were the work of “terrorists,” the word used by the authorities to denote rebel forces seeking the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad. Photographs on the SANA Web site showed wreckage and flames in what looked like a narrow alleyway with cars covered in chunks of debris from damaged buildings. The agency said the bombings were in the main square of Jaramana, which news reports said is largely populated by members of the Christian and Druse minorities. Residents said the neighborhood is home to many families who have fled other parts of Syria because of the conflict and to some Palestinian families. The blasts caused “huge material damage to the residential buildings and shops,” SANA said.

The photographs on the Web site showed shattered windows at the Abou Samra coffee house and gurneys laden with injured clogging what seemed to be a hospital corridor.

SANA said two bombings in other neighborhoods caused minor damage. Activists reported that there were four explosions and said they were all “huge.”

Footage broadcast on Syria’s private Addounia channel and state television showed damage scarring gray, six-story apartment houses above tangles of wrecked cars as ambulances arrived to transport the wounded and rescuers playing fire hoses on the damage. The camera panned over bloodstained sidewalks.

The blasts seemed initially at least to shift the focus of the fighting from the north, where insurgents have claimed string of tactical breakthroughs in recent days, to areas ringing Damascus.

In the north in recent days, the insurgents also claimed to have seized air bases and a hydroelectric dam, apparently seeking both to expand their communications lines and to counter the government’s supremacy in the air.

The death toll from Wednesday’s bombings was not immediately confirmed. An activist group, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, initially said that 29 people had died but revised the figure later to 47, of whom 38 had been identified. Of the 120 injured, the rebel group said, 23 people were in a serious condition, meaning that the tally could climb higher.

The explosions reflected the dramatic shift since Syria’s uprising began in March 2011 as a peaceful protest centered on the southern town of Daraa. It has since spread across the land in a full-blown civil war pitting government forces against a rebel army of Army defectors, disaffected civilians and what the authorities say are foreign jihadists.

Hala Droubi reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Alan Cowell from Paris. Sebnem Arsu contributed reporting from Istanbul, and Hania Mourtada from Beirut, Lebanon.

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