Chasing Riches From Africa to Europe and Finding Only Squalor

But Europe beckoned.

In his West African homeland, Mr. Jallow’s salary was the equivalent of just 50 euros a month, barely enough for the necessities, he said. And everywhere in his neighborhood in Serekunda, Gambia’s largest city, there was talk of easy money to be made in Europe.

Now he laughs bitterly about all that talk. He lives in a patch of woods here in southern Spain, just outside the village of Palos de la Frontera, with hundreds of other immigrants. They have built their homes out of plastic sheeting and cardboard, unsure if the water they drink from an open pipe is safe. After six years on the continent, Mr. Jallow is rail thin, and his eyes have a yellow tinge.

“We are not bush people,” he said recently as he gathered twigs to start a fire. “You think you are civilized. But this is how we live here. We suffer here.”

The political upheaval in Libya and elsewhere in North Africa has opened the way for thousands of new migrants to make their way to Europe across the Mediterranean. Already some 25,000 have reached the island of Lampedusa, Italy, and hundreds more have arrived at Malta.

The boats, at first, brought mostly Tunisians. But lately there have been more sub-Saharans.

Experts say thousands more — many of whom have been moving around North Africa trying to get to Europe for years, including Somalis, Eritreans, Senegalese and Nigerians — are likely to follow, sure that a better life awaits them.

But for Mr. Jallow and for many others who arrived before them, often after days at sea without food or water, Europe has offered hardships they never imagined. These days Mr. Jallow survives on two meals a day, mostly a leaden paste made from flour and oil, which he stirs with a branch.

“It keeps the hunger away,” he said.

The authorities estimate that there are perhaps 10,000 immigrants living in the woods in the southern Spanish province of Andalusia, a region known for its crops of strawberries, raspberries and blueberries, and there are thousands more migrants in areas that produce olives, oranges and vegetables. Most of them have stories that echo Mr. Jallow’s.

From the road, their encampments look like igloos tucked among the trees. Up close, the squalor is clear. Piles of garbage and flies are everywhere. Old clothes, stiff from dirt and rain, hang from branches.

“There is everything in there,” said Diego Cañamero, the leader of the farm workers’ union in Andalusia, which tries to advocate for the men. “You have rats and snakes and mice and fleas.”

The men in the woods do not call home with the truth, though. They send pictures of themselves posing next to Mercedes cars parked on the street, the kind of pictures that Mr. Jallow says he fell for so many years ago. Now he shakes his head toward his neighbors, who will not talk to reporters.

“So many lies,” he said. “It is terrible what they are doing. But they are embarrassed.”

Even now, though, Mr. Jallow will not consider going back to Gambia. “I would prefer to die here,” he said. “I cannot go home empty-handed. If I went home, they would be saying, ‘What have you been doing with yourself, Amadou?’ They think in Europe there is money all over.”

The immigrants — virtually all of them are men — cluster by nationality and look for work on the farms. But Mr. Cañamero says they are offered only the least desirable work, like handling pesticides, and little of it at that. Most have no working papers.

Occasionally, the police bring bulldozers to tear down the shelters. But the men, who have usually used their family’s life savings to get here, are mostly left alone — the conditions they live under are an open secret in the nearby villages.

The mayor of Palos de La Frontera did not return phone calls about the camp. But Juan José Volante, the mayor of nearby Moguer, which has an even larger encampment, issued a statement saying the town did not have enough money to help the men. “The problem is too big for us,” he said. “Of course, we would like to do more.”

Rachel Chaundler contributed reporting.

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Life in Prison for Kidnapper of Smart

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Elizabeth Smart finally got her chance Wednesday to confront the street preacher convicted of holding her captive and raping her for months when she was just 14. Now 23, she stood tall in the courtroom — stoic, with an even voice and a strength Brian David Mitchell clearly lacked.

Mitchell, frail and skinny with a long, peppery white beard, sang hymns softly and closed his hollow eyes, just as he did throughout his trial, just as he would moments later as the judge gave him two life sentences without parole. That did not stop Smart from looking right at him and coolly speaking her piece.

It took her about 30 seconds.

"I don't have very much to say to you. I know exactly what you did," said Smart, wearing a houndstooth checked skirt, an ivory jacket and pearls. "I know that you know that what you did was wrong. You did it with full knowledge ... but I have a wonderful life now and no matter what you do, you will never affect me again.

"You took away nine months of my life that can never be returned. You will have to be held responsible for those actions, whether it's in this life or the next, and I hope you are ready for when that time comes."

Mitchell's sentencing closed a major legal chapter in the heartbreaking ordeal that stalled for years after he was declared mentally ill and unfit to stand trial in state court. A federal jury in December unanimously convicted the 57-year-old of kidnapping and unlawful transportation of a minor across state lines for sex.

When the judge asked if he had anything to say, Mitchell, whose hands and feet were bound, kept right on singing. His bizarre demeanor changed just once during the hearing: As he was sentenced, he sang louder.

Outside the courthouse, a beaming Smart, now a Brigham Young University music student, told reporters that the sentencing "is the ending of a very long chapter and the beginning of a very beautiful chapter for me." She said she wants to work with other crime victims and lend her support to the cause of missing children.

Smart was snatched from her Salt Lake City bedroom by knifepoint in the early hours of June 5, 2002. The massive search to find the blond-haired, blue-eyed girl riveted the nation, as did her improbable recovery while walking with her captor on a suburban Salt Lake City-area street on March 12, 2003.

At trial, she testified in a steady, clear voice about her "nine months of hell." Mitchell whisked her away to his camp in the foothills near the family home. She was stripped of her favorite red pajamas, draped in white, religious robes and forced into a polygamous marriage with Mitchell. She was tethered to a metal cable strung between two trees and subjected to near-daily rapes while being forced to use alcohol and drugs.

Mitchell, who outlined his religious beliefs in a rambling 27-page manifesto he called "The Book of Immanuel David Isaiah," took Smart to California for five of the months she was held captive. She recalled being forced to live homeless, dress in disguises and stay quiet or lie about her identity if ever approached by strangers or police. She said he threatened her life and the lives of her family every day.

U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball said Mitchell deserved a life sentence because the facts of the case were "unusually heinous and degrading."

Carlie Christensen, U.S. attorney for Utah, said the resolution was long overdue for Smart and her family. "It is a measure of justice for Elizabeth and it will certainly ensure Brian David Mitchell will never inflict such intolerable and unspeakable cruelty on anyone else again," Christensen said.

The defense waived its closing remarks before sentencing. Parker Douglas, a member of Mitchell's defense team, said outside the courthouse that the sentence was not unexpected.

"I wish Elizabeth Smart and her family the best. I hope they get to move on," Douglas said. He added that the decision about whether to appeal depends largely on what Mitchell wants.

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In Jam on Van Wyck? Try to Say It Right

For traffic reporters, linguists and some Dutch purists, however, the gridlocked highway also poses a serious phonetic hazard nearly as perilous as its bottlenecks.

After decades of pronouncing Van Wyck like “candlestick,” an enlightened few now call it the “Van Wike,” which some Dutch say is the more proper pronunciation.

But even that is in dispute.

Agnes Treuren, an officer in the Dutch Consulate in New York, insisted that both pronunciations were emphatically wrong. “It is ‘Fon Weig,’ with the last syllable pronounced like leg or beg,” she said, before adding: “I have never been on the Fon Weig Expressway. I live on the Upper East Side.”

The latest tongue-twisting debate has been reignited in some phonetically correct circles because of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s plan for the $3 billion Willets Point development in the shadow of Citi Field, which opponents complain will make the already congested Van Wyck unbearable. They have gone to court to press the city to build two ramps to ease traffic on the expressway, which is once again being mispronounced — by lawyers on both sides, and even the judge — with reckless abandon.

The 9.3-mile highway, which was designed by Robert Moses and built from 1947 to 1963, connects the Whitestone Expressway with Kennedy Airport. It was named after Robert Anderson Van Wyck, who in 1898 became the first mayor of New York as a five-borough city.

But whatever Ms. Treuren and other Dutch natives might think, the descendants of the mayor have no doubt about the correct pronunciation of the highway that bears their name. “It rhymes with like — not lick,” said Bronson Van Wyck, 38, a party planner for the billionaire set, whose great-great-great-grandfather was a cousin of Robert Van Wyck.

Mr. Van Wyck’s cavernous apartment contains a 600-page tome on the Van Wyck lineage, which is perched on a bookshelf near a small drawing of the Archangel Michael by the Flemish painter Anthony Van Dyck (“pronounced dike”).

Sighing with the resignation of someone who has also grappled his whole life with a first name that sounds like a last name, he lamented that at least half of New Yorkers seemed to mangle the family name.

“Robert Van Wyck himself pronounced it Van Wike; that is what the family says,” said Mr. Van Wyck, the president of Van Wyck & Van Wyck, an event production and marketing company whose clients have included George Soros and Rupert Murdoch. “That is the correct way.”

The eminently proper Mr. Van Wyck, whose ancestors settled in New York in the 1660s when it was New Amsterdam, traced the bungling of “Van Wyck” to 1963, when local radio traffic reporters unschooled in the intricacies of Dutch pronunciation clung stubbornly to the more roll-off-the-tongue “Wick.”

In a city filled with linguistic perils (think HOW-ston, not HEW-ston), the matter of phonetic faux pas resurfaced in recent weeks after the killing of Osama bin Laden, which prompted television reporters to descend on Vesey Street next to ground zero and to mispronounce it live on air as VES-see (it is VEE-zee, some local residents say).

Traffic and phonetic experts said generations of New Yorkers had been stumped by the Van Wyck — even those without a driver’s license.

Tom Kaminski, managing editor of traffic and transit information at WCBS-AM (880), said that in the pantheon of mispronounced New York landmarks, Van Wyck was neck-and-neck with the Kosciuszko Bridge, which connects Queens and Brooklyn and was named in the 1940s for Tadeusz Kosciuszko, a Polish-Lithuanian hero of the Revolutionary War.

Mr. Kaminski, whose grandparents came to New York from Gdansk in 1908, said “ ‘Kosciuszko’ was routinely botched by traffic reporters who tended to say “Kos-kee-OOS-ko” rather than the more correct Polish pronunciation “Ka-SHOO-sko.”

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Democrats Put G.O.P. on Spot as Medicare Plan Fails

Democrats staged the vote to press their advantage coming out of their victory on Tuesday in the contest, fought in large part over Medicare, for a House seat in upstate New York that had long been in Republican hands. Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, brought the legislation to the floor so that Senate Republicans would either have to vote for it, exposing them to attacks from Democrats and their allies, or against it, exploiting growing Republican divisions on the issue.

Five of 47 Senate Republicans voted against it — four because they said it went too far, one on the ground that the budget measure that contained it did not go far enough fast enough to address the budget deficit.

The House Republican Medicare plan would convert it into a subsidized program for the private insurance market. When they proposed it last month as the centerpiece of their budget plan, Republicans were confident that the wind of budget politics was at their backs.

But the last six weeks have left Republicans pointed into a something more like a headwind. With polls and angry town hall meetings suggesting that many voters were wary of a Medicare overhaul if not opposed, party unity and optimism have given way to a bit of a Republican-on-Republican rumpus.

House leaders have made clear they will not try to pass Medicare legislation this year. Some Republican candidates and elected officials have moved to distance themselves from the plan, even as others remain in chin-out defense of it and others still are declining to commit themselves one way or another.

With the Democratic victory in the House race, many House Republicans argued that Democrats had no credible plan of their own to ensure the long-term survival of Medicare, and reprised their criticism of the health care overhaul, including Medicare spending cuts, that Democrats passed in the last Congress.

But Democrats, hopeful that the Medicare fight is a path to a political turnabout, are clinging to the recent developments like koalas to eucalyptus trees, insisting that the New York race was, as Senator  Kirsten E. Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, said, “a bellwether for elections to come.”

It is still a long way to Election Day 2012, the underlying problem of a long-term fiscal imbalance remains as pressing as ever, and Democrats face divisions and message problems of their own. After the Senate vote on the House Republican Medicare plan, the Senate voted 97 to 0 on Wednesday to reject the budget put forward early this year by President Obama, reflecting a recognition by Democrats that they will have to do more than they initially proposed to rein in the expansion of the national debt and address the rising costs of Medicare and other entitlement programs.

But after a 2010 election that seemed to signal not only a Republican resurgence but also a rejection of big government and a need for bold, Tea Party-type steps to slash spending, the politics now look much more complicated. Both parties are being reminded anew that voters like the idea of budget cuts, but that they often recoil when those cuts threaten the programs that touch their lives.

The divisions among Republicans over the Medicare plan are in large part situational.

Three of the Republicans senators who voted against the House plan on Wednesday are moderates from Northeastern states: Scott P. Brown of Massachusetts and Susan Collins and Olympia J. Snowe of Maine. A fourth, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, won re-election in November as a write-in candidate after being defeated in the Republican primary. The fifth, Rand Paul of Kentucky, voted no on the ground that the House plan, drafted by Representative Paul D. Ryan, the chairman of the Budget Committee, took too long to pay down the national debt.

Candidates looking to shore up their conservative bona fides among Republican presidential primary voters, like Jon M. Huntsman Jr., a former governor of Utah, have praised the plan. Some Congressional incumbents, like Ms. Snowe, weighed the respective threats of Tea Party primary challengers against the wrath of moderate or elderly voters, and decided not to support it.

Some presidential candidates seeking to appeal to a broader base, like former Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, are trying to split the difference, saying that the plan is adequate but that they will offer their own that will be even more refined.

Others still, like George Allen, a Republican candidate for Senate in Virginia, appear to be trying to figure out where the political minefields are, and refuse to say if they support the plan.

Just as each candidate must take a measure of his own race, the party’s response is also driven by circumstances. Newt Gingrich, a presidential candidate who seemed to think he could walk his party back from an increasingly toxic issue, denounced the plan to great retribution from both the establishment and Tea Party wings, and had to recant. Mr. Brown, who is running for re-election in a tough state, said he would vote against the plan but was greeted largely by silence within his party.

But Democrats by no means have a smooth course, either. While Mr. Obama has tried to set parameters for budget negotiations, his party has yet to settle on a plan for Medicare or the broader budget issues. And failure to address the nation’s fiscal problems aggressively could carry its own risk for Democrats, something former President Bill Clinton warned his party about Wednesday.

“You shouldn’t draw the conclusion that the New York race means that nobody can do anything to slow the rate of Medicare costs,” Mr. Clinton said at a budget forum sponsored by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation. “I just don’t agree with that.”

Instead, he said: “You should draw the conclusion that the people made a judgment that the proposal in the Republican budget is not the right one. I agree with that.”

Representative Steny H. Hoyer, the minority whip, has said Medicare is “on the table” for any agreement with Republicans in the debt limit negotiations, a seeming nod to the notion that many Democrats, especially those in moderate districts, are loath to go back to their districts and brag about doing nothing to rein in the costly entitlement program.

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Survivors Cower as New Storm Brews but Passes

Patrick Fallon for The New York TimesBrie Watson, a nurse, directed people to the stairwells as they moved to the basement of the Red Cross shelter at the Missouri Southern State University gymnasium on Tuesday night as another storm passed nearby.

JOPLIN, Mo. — As rescue workers continue to sift through the wreckage of this city piece by piece, hoping to unearth survivors and victims of a lethal tornado, local leaders have been wrestling with the difficult question of when to start cleaning up the destroyed area.

TimesCast | Search Continues in Joplin

They know that ultimately they must sweep away what the storm did not.

But so far the word bulldoze is one that they have been hesitant to use in news conferences, as rescue and recovery efforts continue. But they acknowledge that it is only a matter of time before the battered and blown-down houses, which cover an area stretching more than a half-mile wide and six miles long, have to be stripped to their foundations and hauled away.

Standing in a wreckage-strewn park across from a hospital that is now only a concrete shell, the mayor pro tem, Melodee Colbert-Kean, said that officials understood the need to be careful about how fast they moved forward. In addition to the considerable logistical challenges, there are the emotional considerations imbued in the splintered lumber, crushed brick and strewn personal possessions — as well as the remains of the missing.

“To a lot of people, it’s just rubble,” she said. “But to a whole bunch more, it’s lives.”

That rubble was once assembled neatly into more than 5,000 buildings stretching through nearly a third of the city. Now it is where at least 125 people died, the most in a single tornado since modern record-keeping began in the United States in 1950. It is a rolling junkyard presided over by the jagged forms of denuded trees. The mess revealed a prosthetic leg, a college thesis, a live guinea pig, an empty wheelchair, a pocket watch, and a child’s doll.

Still, even residents of the hardest-hit area seemed to carry a gloomy resignation about what was surely ahead. “What else can you do but bulldoze it?” said Anna Kent, 54, as she wandered through rubble that once was a friend’s home in search of missing items. “They ought to draw a perimeter around all of it and take it all. What else can you do?”

After days exposed to the constant rain, these piles already smelled of mold. Nails and other sharp objects tore through tires and shoes alike. Even so, residents continued to stay in the damaged area, along with looters seeking both precious and scrap metal, and gawkers who have slowed emergency vehicles by creating traffic jams.

No new bodies or survivors were found Wednesday after the debris was searched a third time, said Mark Rohr, the city manager. City officials said that local leaders were already talking to the Army Corps of Engineers coming into the area to clear it of the wreckage, though it remained unclear where such a massive amount of material would go. Gov. Jay Nixon of Missouri said he waived certain restrictions to speed the clean-up effort.

As they talk of tearing down they are also discussing efforts to rebuild the area, with City Council members even discussing whether to change the zoning in certain areas to better reflect the development of this mostly blue-collar city of 49,000 in southwest Missouri. “We’re getting ready to have some lengthy City Council meetings,” said Gary Shaw, a city councilor and former mayor.

For many residents, imagining a rebuilt Joplin was too much, too fast. Yes, they said, Joplin will surely remake itself and people will build new homes and businesses. But, at the moment, the thought of a reshaped city felt faraway, said Kenny McGoyne, who was trying to find what was left of the bunk beds and chairs beneath his crumbled business, Kenny’s Used Furniture Emporium. “In a way, the place is already bulldozed,” he said. “I don’t know where we’ll go.”

Meanwhile, city officials were trying to find ways to manage access to the destroyed area. Law enforcement officials were posted at major intersections to keep people from entering, an effort that leaders said was aimed at preventing looting and gawking. A curfew was also put into effect restricting access after dark.

Monica Davey contributed reporting.

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Signs Grow That Palin May Run

While it is by no means clear that she would be willing to give up her lucrative speaking career and her perch as an analyst on Fox News to face the scrutiny and combat that would come with her entrance into the race, she is being pressed by supporters for a decision and has acknowledged that time is running out.

Two people familiar with the details of the real estate transaction said that Ms. Palin and her husband, Todd, have bought a $1.7 million house in Scottsdale, Ariz. Like others interviewed for this article, they would speak only on the condition of anonymity so as not to anger the Palins, who have become especially protective of their privacy in the maelstrom that has followed them since 2008. The Arizona Republic reported over the weekend on speculation in Scottsdale that the Palins were the buyers of the house, reporting the purchase was through a shell company that hid their identity.

While Arizona would be a more convenient travel hub for a presidential campaign than Alaska, there are other reasons the Palins might want a house there. Their daughter Bristol recently bought a house in Maricopa, which is near Scottsdale.

Ms. Palin has reshuffled her staff, rehiring two aides who have helped plan her political events. And she is expected to resume a schedule of public appearances soon — perhaps as early as this weekend — to raise her profile at a moment when the Republican presidential field appears to be taking final form.

The drumbeat intensified on Tuesday night when the conservative filmmaker Stephen K. Bannon was quoted on RealClearPolitics, a political news site, as saying that he was releasing a feature film he made with Ms. Palin’s acquiescence about her tenure as governor of Alaska. The film is to be shown next month in Iowa, whose caucuses open the nominating contest.

Taken together, the moves are at odds with conventional wisdom — if not wishful thinking — among establishment Republicans in Washington that Ms. Palin has decided not to run. That thinking has been voiced increasingly as the party’s professional political class, which Ms. Palin has railed against, has sought to declare the field of candidates closed.

Ms. Palin would undoubtedly be able to raise substantial campaign financing and attract constant media attention if she ran. But she is a divisive figure in the party, and would have to overcome what polls have consistently suggested is skepticism and even opposition to her among some fellow Republicans.

Still, supporters of Ms. Palin say that her constituency beyond the Beltway remains eager, and aides and associates have said she is receptive to their calls of “Run, Sarah, run.”

“All indications are that she will be in — her supporters have an intuition about it,” said Jeff Jorgensen, chairman of the Republican Party of Pottawattamie County, Iowa, where Ms. Palin came in second in a straw poll last week. “People are looking for somebody, a Ronald Reagan reincarnate, who does not seem to be out there yet.”

If she were to enter the race, Ms. Palin would draw significant attention in a field that now features three other former governors — Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, Jon M. Huntsman Jr. of Utah, and Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota — and a smattering of other hopefuls, including Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota.

None of the likely and declared candidates have fully galvanized the Tea Party activists who form the core of Ms. Palin’s support.

When asked about her deliberations, Ms. Palin’s aides have pointed to recent televised interviews that they said were indicative of her thinking.

“I want to make sure that we have a candidate out there with Tea Party principles,” she told the Fox News Channel host Sean Hannity last week.

“We have got to have faith that the Republican Party is going to surface somebody who can take on both sides of the aisle,” she said on Fox Business Network.

Raising concerns about “sacrifices that have to be made on my children’s part,” she nonetheless told the Fox News Channel host Greta Van Susteren, “I have that fire in my belly.”

All of that said, Ms. Palin has shown that she is able to command maximum media attention when she wants it, and her book sales and public speaking fees depend to some degree upon her stature as a possible national leader.

Some of the staff changes she has made also serve the interests of her one-woman media conglomerate. In February, she hired a new chief of staff, Michael Glassner, a former adviser to Senator Bob Dole of Kansas, a step that sent the blogosphere buzzing that she would soon enter the race. But Ms. Palin is busy enough that she needs such a chief of staff in any case.

She recently parted ways with a communications aide, Michael Goldfarb, and with her foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann, who is often tied to the neoconservative movement, bringing in a less hawkish adviser, Peter Schweizer. After dismissing two aides, Jason Recher and Doug McMarlin, who worked in the White House for President George W. Bush, she has recently rehired them.

And one of her advisers, Rebecca A. Mansour, had an embarrassing moment this week when the conservative political Web site The Daily Caller published messages she wrote to an online friend that included, among other things, criticism of Ms. Palin’s daughter Bristol. Ms. Palin’s aides have acknowledged that she will need a more disciplined operation if she pursues the presidency. But they have also said that in contrast with other hopefuls, she still has time to achieve that, because her network of supporters can be activated almost instantly.

Ms. Palin has identified the first filing deadlines to qualify for state primary and caucus ballots, telling Ms. Van Susteren, “that’s what will dictate my decision and my announcement.” The first of those deadlines do not arise until the fall, but meeting them can require arduous work that cannot start in earnest without a formal declaration.

Ryan Rhodes, a leader of the Tea Party movement in Iowa, said state voters expect candidates to invest real time there. A Tea Party bus tour through the state in June, Mr. Rhodes said, would be an ideal place for her to demonstrate her seriousness. “She’ll be on the top of a lot of people’s minds,” he said.

Michael D. Shear contributed reporting from Washington, and Marc Lacey from Scottsdale, Ariz.

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Maria Sharapova Extends Her Reach

“And do you think I knew what Sports Illustrated was?” Ms. Sharapova said recently, recalling the moment when her agent, Max Eisenbud, first showed her the magazine, expecting her to be as excited as he was. “I knew what Vogue was, but I didn’t know what Sports Illustrated was.”

Ms. Sharapova, over coffee at a SoHo hotel last month, laughed at herself, saying, “When you are young, you are a little naïve.”

But you had to wonder: Was Maria Sharapova really all that naïve?

One does not become the highest paid female athlete in the world without recognizing that the greatest potential for earnings comes not from winning championships, but from endorsement deals, particularly with fashion and sportswear brands. Ms. Sharapova, now 24 years old and the seventh ranked women’s singles player, made $24.5 million from June 2009 to June 2010, according to Forbes, about $4 million more than her nearest competitor, Serena Williams.

Last year, she renewed her contract with Nike in an expanded eight-year deal that is estimated to be worth as much as $70 million, the most ever for a female athlete, including royalties from clothes she designs for Nike. She also designs shoes and handbags for Cole Haan and endorses luxury brands like Tiffany and Tag Heuer, and the electronics company Sony Ericsson.

Expanding her reach into the unexpected, she is about to announce a new partnership with Jeff Rubin, the man who helped create Dylan’s Candy Bar in 2001 and a chain of candy shops inside F. A. O. Schwarz stores (called F. A. O. Schweetz) in the 1990s, to develop her own brand of candy and sweets. Gumballs will be shaped like tennis balls, and gummy candies will be packaged in containers shaped like tennis-ball cans, according to plans drawn up by Mr. Rubin, who hopes to have them ready in time for a rollout at the United States Open in August.

The name of her brand? Sugarpova.

Despite recent progress in her professional comeback, which has been regarded somewhat skeptically since a shoulder operation in 2008 took her out of the game for most of a year, Ms. Sharapova is laying the groundwork for what her life will be like after tennis. Ever the ferocious (and vocal) competitor, her victory on a clay court at the Italian Open in Rome on May 15 may have set up a possible storyline for a Sharapova revival, as she entered the French Open this week as one of the tournament’s favorites.

But it is her competitiveness off the court that has made for a more riveting match in recent years, as Ms. Sharapova fights for turf among those athletes who aspire to become brands — pushing both Nike and Cole Haan to produce more of her designs, creating the candy business and now expanding her online presence with a Facebook page with 4.3 million fans. (That’s more than any other female athlete has, she pointed out.)

As she walked past the suits sitting at the white-linen-covered tables of the restaurant in the Trump SoHo hotel, in a loose, black-and-white flecked halter top and high-waisted black trousers that made her look even taller than her 6 feet 2 inches, a few early-morning diners looked up from their plates. Model? Actress? It was a few moments before her name could be recognized among their whispers. She hardly seemed to notice the attention, but then it would take a lot more than that to break Ms. Sharapova’s focus.

“I’ve been very competitive by nature from a young age, whether it was eating a bowl of pasta faster than somebody else, or always wanting to be the first one in line,” she said. When she was 13, training on scholarship at the Bollettieri Tennis Academy in Bradenton, Fla., a reporter from “HBO Real Sports” asked her if she had the chance to win Wimbledon or make $20 million in endorsements, which would she choose? She looked into the camera and said, without hesitation, “I would choose to win Wimbledon, because then the millions will come.”

Retelling the story, Ms. Sharapova said: “I looked at the guy — and I remember this — I thought to myself, ‘Are you stupid? Maybe I’m not getting things. How could he even ask me this question. You can’t buy Wimbledon. It’s not purchasable. You have to earn Wimbledon. Second of all, if you win Wimbledon, of course you are going to get this money. I mean, it’s Wimbledon.’ I’m thinking this and then I find myself saying this — not the first part, not the fact he is asking me a stupid question — but the second part that, of course, if you win Wimbledon, then the money is going to come. Looking back on that, I thought, ‘God, I had guts. I was brave to say that.’ ”

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Well: Less Active at Work, Americans Have Gotten Bigger

Getty Images/SuperStockA worker operates a press at the New Orleans Times-Picayune, typical of the physical activity that was common in many workplaces in earlier decades.

Looking beyond poor eating habits and a couch-potato lifestyle, a group of researchers has found a new culprit in the obesity epidemic: the American workplace.

A sweeping review of shifts in the labor force since 1960 suggests that a sizable portion of the national weight gain can be explained by declining physical activity during the workday. Jobs requiring moderate physical activity, which accounted for 50 percent of the labor market in 1960, have plummeted to just 20 percent.

The remaining 80 percent of jobs, the researchers report, are sedentary or require only light activity. The shift translates to an average decline of about 120 to 140 calories a day in physical activity, closely matching the nation’s steady weight gain over the past five decades, according to the report, published Wednesday in the journal PLoS One.

Today, an estimated one in three Americans are obese. Researchers caution that workplace physical activity most likely accounts for only one piece of the obesity puzzle, and that diet, lifestyle and genetics all play an important role.

But the new emphasis on declining workplace activity also represents a major shift in thinking, and it suggests that health care professionals and others on the front lines against obesity, who for years have focused primarily on eating habits and physical activity at home and during leisure time, have missed a key contributor to America’s weight problem. The findings also put pressure on employers to step up workplace heath initiatives and pay more attention to physical activity at work.

“If we’re going to try to get to the root of what’s causing the obesity epidemic, work-related physical activity needs to be in the discussion,” said Dr. Timothy S. Church, a noted exercise researcher at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, La., and the study’s lead author. “There are a lot of people who say it’s all about food. But the work environment has changed so much we have to rethink how we’re going to attack this problem.”

The report shows that in 1960, one out of two Americans had a job that was physically active. Now it is estimated that only one in five Americans achieves a relatively high level of physical activity at work. Dr. Church notes that because the research doesn’t factor in technological changes, like increasing reliance on the Internet and e-mail, many people in service and desk jobs that have always involved only light activity are now moving less than ever, meaning the findings probably understate how much physical activity has been lost during work hours.

While it has long been known that Americans are more sedentary at work compared with the farming and manufacturing workers of 50 years ago, the new study is believed to be the first in which anyone has estimated how much daily caloric expenditure has been lost in the workplace.

“It’s a light bulb, ‘aha’ moment,” said Barbara E. Ainsworth, the president-elect of the American College of Sports Medicine and an exercise researcher at Arizona State University. “I think occupational activity is part of that missing puzzle that is so difficult to measure, and is probably contributing to the inactivity and creeping obesity that we’re seeing over time.”

For years, the role that physical activity has played in the obesity problem has been uncertain. Numerous studies suggest there has been little change in the average amount of leisure-time physical activity, posing a conundrum for researchers trying to explain the country’s steady weight gain. As a result, much of the focus has been on the rise of fast-food and soft drink consumption.

Other studies have suggested that changing commuting habits, declining reliance on public transportation and even increased time in front of the television have played a role in the fattening of America. But none of those issues can fully explain the complex changes in nationwide weight-gain patterns.

Some earlier research has hinted at the fact that workplace physical activity is associated with weight and health. One seminal set of studies of London bus drivers and conductors showed that the sedentary bus drivers had higher rates of heart disease than the ticket-takers, who moved around during the workday.

Dr. Church said that during a talk on the country’s obesity patterns, he was struck by the fact that Mississippi and Wisconsin both have high rates of obesity, despite having little in common in terms of demographics, education or even weather. It occurred to him that both states have waning agricultural economies, prompting him to begin exploring the link between changes in the labor force and declines in workplace physical activity.

He quickly discovered that a decline in farming jobs alone could not explain increasing obesity around the country, and began exploring job shifts over several decades. Using computer models, Dr. Church and colleagues assigned metabolic equivalent values to various job categories and then calculated changes in caloric expenditure at work from 1960 to 2008.

“You see the manufacturing jobs plummet and realize that’s a lot of physical activity,” said Dr. Church. “It’s very obvious that the jobs that required a lot of physical activity have gone away.”

Ross C. Brownson, an epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis, said that both health professionals and the public needed to broaden the traditional definition of physical activity as something that occurs during planned exercise, like running or working out at the gym.

“We need to think about physical activity as a more robust concept than just recreational physical activity,” said Dr. Brownson, whose 2005 report on declining physical activity in the workplace is cited in the PLoS One report. “In many ways we’ve engineered physical activity out of our lives, so we’ve got to find ways to put it back into our lives, like taking walks during breaks or having opportunities for activity that are more routine to our daily lives, not just going to the health club.”

Researchers said it is unlikely that the lost physical activity can ever be fully restored to the workplace, but employers do have the power to increase the physical activity of their employees by offering subsidized gym memberships or incentives to use public transit. Some companies have set up standing workstations, and marketers now offer treadmill-style desks. Employers can also redesign offices to encourage walking, by placing printers away from desks and encouraging face-to-face communication, rather than e-mail.

“The activity we get at work has to be intentional,” said Dr. Ainsworth. “When people think of obesity they always think of food first, and that’s one side of it, but it’s high time to look at the amount of time we spend inactive at work.”

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The TV Watch: Television Diva Gives Thanks and Signs Off

The surprise was that at long last there weren’t any more surprises. Oprah Winfrey took her final bow on Wednesday by holding back. “There will be no makeovers, no surprises — really, no surprises,” she told her studio audience. “You will not be getting a car or a tree. This last hour is really about me saying thank you.”

"The Oprah Winfrey Show," a daytime television fixture for 25 years, ended on Wednesday.

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An electronics store on Union Square in Manhattan tuned into the finale of “The Oprah Winfrey Show” on Wednesday. The show ended a 25-year run.

And Ms. Winfrey did exactly that in a valedictory monologue that was something between a graduation address and a Sunday homily, praising God and her fans for her success and exhorting viewers to “connect, embrace, liberate, love somebody, just one person and then spread that to two and as many as you can.”

And the lack of ceremony, the absence of celebrities, goody bags or confetti, was less a letdown than a relief after the star-studded, two-part Oprah-fest on Monday and Tuesday at the United Center in Chicago, a Pharaonic tribute that capped what was already a season-long elegy to the star of the “The Oprah Winfrey Show.” Ms. Winfrey called the tribute a “love intervention on steroids.” And come to think of it, there hadn’t been such an over-the-top display of self-celebration since 2005, when Ms. Winfrey released a six-disc DVD collection of her greatest moments, timed to the 20th anniversary of her syndicated show — unless it was her 50th birthday celebration in 2004, which featured 2,000 roses, a 400-pound cake and testimonials from the likes of John Travolta and Nelson Mandela.

Ms. Winfrey’s last show was a lot more like the first nationally syndicated episode of “The Oprah Winfrey Show” in 1986, when the young woman who overcame an abusive, deprived childhood was only beginning to be known but had already developed a messianic streak. Ms. Winfrey showed a clip of that maiden appearance, in which she explained, “This show always allows people, hopefully, to understand the power they have to change their own lives.”

For her final farewell Ms. Winfrey chose to separate the two contradictory strands — spiritual guide and show-business diva — that are the alchemy of her success. Inconsistencies are the core of her improbable, inimitable career. There is no one like her partly because she is never less than two opposite things at once, Hollywood royalty and star-struck commoner, entertainer and confessor, profit seeker and prophet. Ms. Winfrey was a tycoon and also a tastemaker whose endorsement made the fortunes of housewives, authors, singers and even presidential candidates. She built schools, rescued abused children and hawked beauty treatments, sometimes all in the same show. Ms. Winfrey could move from high literature to lowly undergarments in a heartbeat; she is the woman who introduced “Anna Karenina” and Spanx to the masses.

The best way to measure her stature in the world isn’t by her rank on the Fortune 500 list or the number of accolades from celebrities like Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise and Maria Shriver. (Ms. Shriver gave audiences an extra frisson by seeming to allude to the deceptions of her estranged husband, Arnold Schwarzenegger, while praising Ms. Winfrey. “You have shown love, support, wisdom and most of all,” Ms. Shriver told her, pausing to add, “the truth.”)

Ms. Winfrey’s role isn’t calculable even through the obeisance paid by world leaders or the heartfelt tributes from the ordinary people whom she has inspired over the past 25 years.

It’s easier to look around and try to determine who in popular culture is poised to take her place, and the answer is no one. Her most popular protégés, like Dr. Oz and Dr. Phil, may take over some of her share-and-heal duties. Competitors like Ellen DeGeneres and perhaps newcomers like Anderson Cooper and Katie Couric could inherit some of her celebrity interviews. But nobody can copy her unique gift for mixing philanthropy and self-interest. Whether giving a car to each member of a studio audiences or sending scores of needy students to college, Ms. Winfrey made doing good seem like fun; carrying out good deeds didn’t preclude living the good life.

That could be because Ms. Winfrey blends the mystical and the practical better than anyone else in show business. Last week, in an episode devoted to her three most memorable guests, she said that one of them, Mattie J. T. Stepanek, a child poet with muscular dystrophy who later died, persuaded her to continue until 2011 instead of ending after the 20th anniversary. Ms. Winfrey said she considered Mattie a prophet, so that when he told her he had a feeling she should continue her show until the 25th season, she instantly complied. She did not add that it was also the moment her contract with CBS, which owns the syndication rights to her show, expires.

Ms. Winfrey closed with these words: “I won’t say goodbye. I’ll just say ‘until we meet again.’ To God be the glory.”

And she has spent her last days — and her entire 25th season — not so much bidding farewell as coaxing viewers to follow her to her next project, the cable network she created in her own image, OWN.

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Patriot Act Battle Could Hinder Investigators

Two sections of the Patriot Act, the law Congress passed shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and a section from a related intelligence law are set to expire Thursday night unless lawmakers vote to extend them. Majorities in both chambers are apparently willing to approve extending them for four years.

But Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, a libertarian-leaning Republican elected last year, is blocking a hurry-up vote to do so. He wants the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, to first allow a vote on several proposed amendments, including a measure that would exempt gun records from being searched under the Patriot Act.

Mr. Paul and Mr. Reid blamed each other for the standoff. If the Senate cannot speed up its usual process for debating bills, the chamber will not be able vote until Friday morning. The House would then still need to approve the bill before it could be sent to President Obama, who is visiting Europe, to be signed into law.

Mr. Reid said Wednesday night that he was working on an agreement that would allow some amendments to be considered Thursday before proceeding to the final vote.

If there is a lapse, a senior administration official said, the F.B.I. would be able to continue using orders it had already obtained, but it would not be able to apply for new ones if further tips and leads came in about a possible terrorist operation. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, reacted with alarm to that prospect, saying no one could predict what the consequences of a temporary lapse might be.

“This is unprecedented,” the official said. “We don’t believe the risk is worth it.”

The three sections that may lapse allow investigators to get “roving wiretap” court orders allowing them to follow terrorism suspects who switch phone numbers or providers; to get orders allowing them to seize “any tangible things” relevant to a security investigation, like a business’s customer records; and to get national-security wiretap orders to monitor noncitizen suspects who are not believed to be connected to any foreign power.

The standoff led to a harsh exchange Wednesday. Mr. Reid accused Mr. Paul of putting the country at risk with “political grandstanding.” Mr. Paul accused Mr. Reid of breaking a promise to allow a full debate over the Patriot Act, which he portrayed as a threat to constitutional rights.

“We don’t want our records to be sifted through by a government without judicial review,” Mr. Paul said. “They don’t want to vote on this because they know the American people agree with us.”

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Suspect in Shooting of Giffords Ruled Unfit for Trial

The ruling by Judge Larry A. Burns of Federal District Court suspends the court proceedings against Mr. Loughner while the suspect, who experts said has schizophrenia, undergoes treatment at a federal psychiatric facility in Springfield, Mo.

Before the judge’s decision, Mr. Loughner disrupted the hearing with an outburst that prompted deputy marshals to carry him from the room. He will return to court on Sept. 21, when the judge will review again whether Mr. Loughner understands the 49 charges against him and can assist in his defense.

It remains possible, legal experts said, that Mr. Loughner will never be found competent, and could remain in a psychiatric facility indefinitely, but prosecutors said they hoped the trial would resume. “Our goal has always been and always will be to go to trial,” said Dennis K. Burke, a United States attorney, speaking to reporters outside the courthouse.

Mr. Loughner, 22, looked haggard when he walked into court in shackles. Shaved bald and standing erect during his first court appearance in January, he now has long sideburns and unkempt hair and walks stooped over. He rocked back and forth in his chair during the proceedings, buried his face in his hands midway through and interrupted the judge with an outburst.

“Thank you for the freak show,” he appeared to say. “She died right in front of me. You’re treasonous.”

Other witnesses heard him say, “Thank you for the free shot,” and court officials were reviewing the recording to confirm.

A lawyer close to the case said that Mr. Loughner continued to believe he killed Ms. Giffords and that he has clashed with his lawyer, Judy Clarke, who told him the congresswoman survived a bullet wound to the head.

Expecting that he might act out, security personnel were positioned within two feet of Mr. Loughner and quickly spirited him out of the room. He was escorted back moments later and told the judge he would prefer to watch on a television screen in an adjoining holding cell.

Judge Burns’s ruling that Mr. Loughner was incompetent followed the recommendations of two experts, Christina Pietz, a psychologist who works for the Bureau of Prisons and was appointed by the prosecution, and Dr. Matthew Carroll, a psychiatrist in private practice in San Diego appointed by the judge.

Dr. Pietz conducted 12 interviews with Mr. Loughner over nine hours. She found that his thoughts were random and disorganized and that he suffered delusions and offered nonsensical answers to her questions. She diagnosed schizophrenia.

Similarly, Dr. Carroll found after five interviews over seven hours that Mr. Loughner experienced delusions, bizarre thoughts and hallucinations and appeared to suffer from paranoid schizophrenia, the judge said. Dr. Carroll considered whether Mr. Loughner was faking a mental illness but reported that he showed no signs of that, the judge said.

Judge Burns said he reviewed the hours of videotaped interviews and agreed with the experts’ conclusions. “At the present time, Mr. Loughner does not have a rational understanding of these proceedings,” Judge Burns said, ordering him treated for up to four months.

Paul G. Cassell, a criminal justice expert at the S. J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah, said psychiatric evaluations would continue to determine whether Mr. Loughner’s condition has improved. If the experts believe that Mr. Loughner can be rendered competent through psychiatric treatment, then he can be forced to take medications, said Mr. Cassell, a former federal judge.

Forcing medication raises troubling issues for society, said Cynthia Hujar Orr, a lawyer in San Antonio who is a past president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. “Is it ethical and proper to help someone regain competence just to go after them for a death penalty offense or a murder offense?” she asked.

John Schwartz contributed reporting from New York.

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Deal Reached in Albany to Cap Property Taxes

The proposed property tax cap, which must be approved by the Legislature, is aimed at reversing the economic decline in many parts of the state outside of New York City. It also seeks to curb soaring property tax bills in areas like Long Island, Westchester County and pockets of upstate New York, where residents are facing among the highest property taxes in the nation.

Some residents, particularly those who are older and live on fixed incomes, are being forced out of their homes by rising property taxes.

“It is going to be a game changer, and it’s going to change the trajectory of this state,” Mr. Cuomo said.

New York has long had some of the highest property taxes in the nation, and those taxes increased by 5.5 percent, on average, each year from 1999 to 2009, according to statistics provided by the Cuomo administration.

The Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan research group, said this month that three of the five highest-taxed counties in the nation were in New York: Nassau, Westchester and Rockland Counties. In Nassau and Westchester, the median annual property tax bill exceeds $8,000.

The tax-cap agreement was welcomed by business and farm groups, but teachers’ unions reacted with dismay, saying the move would cause cuts to money for education and would diminish the quality of public schools. The unions pointed to California as an example, saying a property tax cap and broader budget woes have had a harmful effect on schools in that state.

“New York would be devastated by the toughest cap in the nation at a time when its public schools have suffered three years of the toughest cuts to education,” said Richard C. Iannuzzi, president of New York State United Teachers. “There’s no question this strikes at the heart of the educational needs of the most vulnerable students, especially children of color and children who live in poverty.”

The agreement gives the Democratic governor, who made limiting property tax increases a cornerstone of his campaign, his biggest political victory since the Legislature approved an on-time and relatively austere budget in March, and it further establishes Mr. Cuomo’s record of fiscal conservatism.

The agreement, which would take effect next year, would limit the annual increase in the overall amount of property taxes collected by a local government or a school district. Property tax increases for individual homeowners could vary as properties are reassessed.

“This issue is probably the most powerful and pervasive issue across this state,” the governor said at an appearance with legislative leaders on Tuesday. “People in New York City don’t feel it, but I can’t tell you how many times somebody has come up to me and said, ‘You have to do something about property taxes; I just can’t afford to stay in my home anymore.’ ”

The Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, a Manhattan Democrat, has said the tax cap should be approved only in concert with the renewal, and the strengthening, of rent-stabilization regulations in New York City. But Mr. Cuomo, who supports strengthening rent stabilization, and the Senate majority leader, Dean G. Skelos, a Republican from Long Island who does not, said they did not believe the rent issue would jeopardize the passage of a property tax cap before the scheduled end of the legislative session, June 20.

Forty-three other states have some limits on property taxes. But New York is unusual because property taxes are the main source of support for schools outside of the city, where the schools are primarily financed by a municipal income tax.

While some details remain to be worked out, particularly the length of time before the legislation expires, legislative leaders in both parties said they were confident that a final agreement was at hand.

“This is a great day,” said Mr. Skelos, adding, “New York State once again can be competitive in creating jobs, and rather than exporting people, bringing people to the state.”

Mr. Silver said, “With this legislation, we are finally able to bring property taxes under control and still provide critical services.”

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Yankees 5, Blue Jays 4: Sabathia Throws Complete Game, and Yankees Rally in Ninth for Win

The offense did the rest. The Yankees scored two runs in the eighth and two with two outs in the ninth — the final one on Mark Teixeira’s single — to rally for a 5-4 victory over the Toronto Blue Jays at Yankee Stadium.

With one out in the ninth and the Yankees trailing by a run, Jorge Posada electrified the crowd with a double to right-center off Frank Francisco. He was given a standing ovation as he was removed for pinch-runner Chris Dickerson, who moved to third on a groundout by Derek Jeter.

Curtis Granderson singled home Dickerson to tie the score, then stole second base before Teixeira singled through the infield, scoring him to make a winner out of Sabathia (5-3).

Teixeira may have been the hero, but he credited Posada’s double with getting things started, saying: “That’s huge. If that doesn’t happen, it may not have ended up the way it did.”

Posada, who is hitting .183, said the victory could be a sign of good things to come.

“It can turn it around, it really can,” he said. “It’s a good feeling in here when you win a game like that.”

Sabathia, who retired the final 16 Toronto batters, outlasted the Blue Jays’ Ricky Romero, who pitched seven dominant innings but was let down by his bullpen.

It was just Sabathia’s second complete game in Yankee Stadium since he joined the Yankees three seasons ago, though he pointed out that on a team with Mariano Rivera, complete games are hardly necessary.

“When you’ve got a closer like Mo, eight innings is really a complete game,” he said. “So I just have to go out there and be able to keep us in the game and give us a chance to win.”

Russell Martin got the Yankees off to a good start in the second with a home run to left field. It was his ninth homer of the season, breaking a tie for most home runs by a catcher this season with Toronto’s J. P. Arencibia.

Sabathia then faltered a bit, giving the run back in the top of the third. He allowed sharp singles by Rajai Davis, Yunel Escobar and Corey Patterson before striking out Jose Bautista on a checked swing to end the inning.

Things became messy for Sabathia in the top of the fourth as the Blue Jays scored three runs, but then both pitchers settled down into the duel that many anticipated, with Romero facing just one over the minimum number of batters during the fourth, fifth and sixth innings, and Sabathia pitching five perfect innings to close out the game.

In the bottom of the eighth, Granderson led off with a double. After a groundout by Teixeira and a strikeout by Alex Rodriguez, Robinson Cano doubled to score Granderson and came home on a single by Martin. The struggling Nick Swisher popped out to right field to end the threat.

On top of his gutsy performance, Sabathia seemingly found a way to deal with the red-hot Bautista, who hit his major-league-leading 19th home run Monday night. Bautista went 0 for 4, accounting for the final out in four innings.

“I just try to move it around; he’s a tough hitter,” Sabathia said of his success against Bautista. “I just try to throw strikes to all parts of the zone. It worked out tonight.”

It did not work out for Francisco, who blew his second save of the season

Toronto Manager John Farrell said: “To their credit, Posada jump-started their offense in the ninth with that double. We just couldn’t close it out.”

Soriano, who felt soreness in his injured elbow during his throwing session Monday, will be examined Wednesday by Dr. James Andrews in Pensacola, Fla. The Yankees are withholding the results of Soriano’s latest magnetic resonance imaging test until Andrews has had a chance to examine it.

The latest news seemed to concern Manager Joe Girardi.

“I really thought that we would have him getting ready to possibly go out on a rehab assignment shortly,” Girardi said before the game, “and that doesn’t seem to be the case now.”

INSIDE PITCH

Derek Jeter was the Yankees’ designated hitter. When asked before the game if it was a half-day for Jeter, Joe Girardi joked: “A half-day, yeah. Kids like half-days.” Jeter went 0 for 5 and remains 25 hits short of 3,000. ... Nick Swisher got the start in right field after two consecutive days off. Despite facing a left-hander, Swisher was unable to break out of his season-long slump, going 0 for 4 and lowering his batting average to .208. ... Reliever Dave Robertson will travel to his hometown, Tuscaloosa, Ala., after Wednesday’s game to survey hurricane damage and start a charity to raise money for recovery.

Tyler Kepner contributed reporting.

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Romney and Democrats Spar Over Auto Bailout

On the day that Chrysler wrote a check repaying $5.1 billion to the United States Treasury, President Obama and his Democratic allies claimed credit for saving a crucial industry in Michigan, a state that will be a critical battleground in the 2012 presidential election.

“Supporting the American auto industry required making some tough decisions,” Mr. Obama said in a statement, “but I was not willing to walk away from the workers at Chrysler and the communities that rely on this iconic American company.”

Democrats also sought to highlight past statements from Mr. Obama’s likely Republican rivals, who had criticized the president for a federal bailout that they said was unnecessary and wasteful.

The Democratic National Committee on Tuesday released a YouTube video highlighting a 2008 opinion article by Mitt Romney in The New York Times titled “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.” In the video, Mr. Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, is shown asserting, “If you write a check, they are going to go out of business.”

In 2009, Mr. Romney said Mr. Obama’s plans for rescuing the automobile industry were “tragic” and “a very sad circumstance for this country.”

A Romney spokesman said on Tuesday that the president’s plan was modeled after one Mr. Romney advocated in 2008.

“Mitt Romney had the idea first,” said Eric Fehrnstrom, a Romney spokesman, citing the Times opinion article. “You have to acknowledge that. He was advocating for a course of action that eventually the Obama administration adopted.”

But Mr. Fehrnstrom also accused Mr. Obama of wasting billions of dollars “propping up” the auto companies as part of the government’s restructuring plans for the industry.

“Mitt Romney argued that instead of a bailout, we should let the car companies go through a restructuring under the bankruptcy laws,” Mr. Fehrnstrom said.

Democratic officials in Washington and Michigan responded that Mr. Fehrnstrom’s assertion flew in the face of both the time line of events and the financial reality that was facing the companies at the time.

“Mitt Romney must think that the entire country has fallen into a state of amnesia if he believes he can get away with this revisionist history,” said Brad Woodhouse, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee. “The record is clear. Mitt Romney would have let G.M. and Chrysler go bankrupt without extending them a dime of federal assistance.”

Democratic officials noted that Chrysler and General Motors received the federal aid only after they entered bankruptcy — not before, as Mr. Romney’s spokesman asserted.

And they said the bankruptcy’s success depended on the federal money.

“Mitt Romney is doing circuslike contortions to get out from under the damaging words he uttered in 2008,” said Jennifer M. Granholm, a former Democratic governor of Michigan.

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U.S. Suit Sees Manipulation of Oil Trades

But on Tuesday, federal commodities regulators filed a civil lawsuit against two obscure traders in Australia and California and three American and international firms.

The suit says that in early 2008 they tried to hoard nearly two-thirds of the available supply of a crucial American market for crude oil, then abruptly dumped it and improperly pocketed $50 million.

The regulators from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission would not say whether the agency was conducting any other investigations into oil speculation. With oil prices climbing again this year, President Obama has asked Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to set up a working group to look into fraud in oil and gas markets and “safeguard against unlawful consumer harm.”

In the case filed Tuesday, the defendants — James T. Dyer of Australia, Nicholas J. Wildgoose of Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., and three related companies, Parnon Energy of California, Arcadia Petroleum of Britain and Arcadia Energy, a Swiss company — have told regulators they deny they manipulated the market.

If the United States proves the claims, the defendants may give up $50 million in profits that were believed to be made as a result of the manipulation and also pay a penalty of up to $150 million.

The commodities agency says the case involves a complex scheme that relied on the close relationship between physical oil prices and the prices of financial futures, which move in parallel.

In a matter of a few weeks in January 2008, the defendants built up large positions in the oil futures market on exchanges in New York and London, according to the suit, filed in the Federal Court in the Southern District of New York.

At the same time, they bought millions of barrels of physical crude oil at Cushing, Okla., one of the main delivery sites for West Texas Intermediate, the benchmark for American oil, the suit says. They bought the oil even though they had no commercial need for it, giving the market the impression of a shortage, the complaint says.

At one point they had such a dominant position that they owned about 4.6 million barrels of crude oil, estimating that this represented two-thirds of the seven million barrels of excess oil then available at Cushing, according to lawsuits.

This type of oil is also the main driver of prices of the futures contracts, and their actions caused futures prices to rise, the authorities say. “They wanted to lull market participants into believing that supply would remain tight,” the agency said. “They knew that as long as the market believed that supply was tight and getting even tighter, there would be upward pressure on the prices of W.T.I. for February delivery relative to March delivery, which was their goal.”

The traders in mid-January cashed out their futures position, and then a few days later began to bet on a decline in oil futures, with Mr. Wildgoose remarking in an e-mail about the “inevitable puking” of their position on an unsuspecting market, the federal lawsuit says.

In one day, Jan. 25, they then dumped most of their holdings of West Texas Intermediate oil, and profited by the drop in futures.

The traders repeated the buying and selling in March 2008, and were preparing to do it again in April but stopped when investigators contacted them for information, the suit says.

Between January and April, average gas prices rose roughly to $3.50 a gallon, from $3. It was not until later in 2008, after the defendants had ceased their reported actions, that oil prices soared higher — reaching $145 that July. By the end of the year, prices had fallen to about $44. The Texas oil is now around $100.

Many other factors were at work, including tight oil supplies in the Middle East and fears that a growing global economy would consume more oil. Yet the enforcement action by the commodities regulator was the first credible evidence that a small group of traders also played a role in manipulating prices.

“This will  help to satisfy the desire to find a culprit and throw them under the wheels of justice,” said Michael Lynch, an oil market specialist at Strategic Energy and Economic Research, a consulting firm.

Calls to Arcadia Petroleum in London were not immediately returned. A person who answered the phone at Arcadia Energy in Switzerland said that he was unaware of the complaints and that Mr. Dyer and Mr. Wildgoose were on vacation and unavailable for comment.

In the last few years, the commission has settled a handful of cases of manipulation in the natural gas market.

In 2007, it settled charges for $1 million against the Marathon Petroleum Company for trying to manipulate West Texas Intermediate crude oil in 2003.

The agency brought an action similar to its latest case in 2008, asserting that Optiver Holding, a proprietary trading fund based in the Netherlands with a Chicago affiliate, used a trading program in 2007 to issue orders to manipulate the crude oil market. The case is pending. It involved claims of manipulation of futures contracts for light sweet crude, New York Harbor heating oil and New York Harbor gasoline.

Clifford Krauss contributed reporting.

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After Missouri Tornado, Grim Search for Missing

Kyle and Alicia Gordon lost their home in Sunday's tornado in Joplin, Mo. Hundreds of people are still missing. More Photos »

JOPLIN, Mo. — The sun shone for the first time in days on this devastated city on Tuesday, illuminating the full extent of the damage as rescue workers performed the grim task of searching for survivors and victims in buildings leveled by the United States’ deadliest tornado since modern record-keeping began.

Volunteers look for victims of a devastating tornado in Joplin, Mo., on Tuesday. More Photos »

At least 122 people died, a number that seems likely to rise. An additional 1,500 people remained on the official list of those who remained unaccounted for, which ballooned in a flood of worried phone calls but is gradually shrinking as the names of the living and the dead are scratched off.

The police said two people were found alive Tuesday, in addition to seven found on Monday.

Because cellphone service was knocked out by the storm on Sunday and remained spotty two days later, many residents were unable to contact friends and relatives who may still be alive. Residents’ frustration and fears grew as officials declined to share the names of the dead and the missing, and they have turned to local radio and Facebook.

Meanwhile, bands of workers and volunteers — armed with crowbars, sledgehammers and chainsaws — continued to dig through the debris of wood, metal and plastic that blanketed the city. Their mission was still officially one of rescue, but those doing the digging worked urgently, with the knowledge that their task could soon turn to just recovery.

While much of Tuesday provided a respite from the nearly unrelenting rain and wind that had hampered rescue efforts, more challenging weather was in the forecast.

The Sunday tornado — whose classification was upgraded by the National Weather Service on Tuesday to the most severe level, with winds exceeding 200 miles per hour — was the deadliest in a season in which twisters have killed more than 480 people.

The Joplin tornado damaged nearly a third of the city. But workers were particularly concerned about a busy strip of big-box stores and densely populated apartment complexes that included Hampshire Terrace, where Becky Carithers returned Tuesday morning to the wreckage of her apartment. The site was now a bare slab of concrete and wood, and she found that the winds had stripped her of nearly all her possessions.

Ms. Carithers screamed in astonishment and joy when a man emerged from a car down the street. Her neighbor was alive. She cried aloud to him — “You lived!” — then repeated it more softly to her companion. Then she wept.

“I’m so glad he’s O.K.,” she said. She fell into her companion’s arms, her chest heaving against him.

“Oh, my God,” she said.

The sobs deepened and continued for a long time before she spoke again, her voice heavy with revelation: “We lived. We lived.”

Most of the Hampshire Terrace buildings had already been searched once and marked by a spray-painted “X.” But they were now being searched more thoroughly. A crew of 50 firefighters from St. Louis planned to spend the day sifting through the wreckage in the rubble of the two-story buildings in the horseshoe-shaped complex.

The cadaver-sniffing dogs they requested had not arrived, and high-tech cameras and listening devices could do only so much, so the work was slow and back-breaking as they moved boards and bricks one at a time.

“This is one of the last areas where they don’t have a firm, clear picture of what happened,” said Ed Beirne, an assistant fire chief in charge of the group.

He took pains to manage expectations. “We’re always hopeful, but we briefed the guys to plan for the worst,” he said. “Anyone who was injured in here is probably expired by now.”

The residents of the 100-unit complex used the break in the weather after days of continued rain, hail, lightning and tornado warnings to search for salvageable possessions — a child’s favorite toy, a lost wedding ring, the flag that had been draped over a father’s coffin. Some wondered where they would put these waterlogged keepsakes, pointing out that they needed to find a place to live.

The biggest discoveries were of each other. Neighbors shared tearful embraces and recounted harrowing episodes of riding out the storm.

Jennifer Preston, Sarah Wheaton and Timothy Williams contributed reporting from New York. 

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Economic Scene: Top Colleges, Largely for the Elite

Like it or not, these colleges have outsize influence on American society. So their admissions policies don’t matter just to high school seniors; they’re a matter of national interest.

More than seven years ago, a 44-year-old political scientist named Anthony Marx became the president of Amherst College, in western Massachusetts, and set out to change its admissions policies. Mr. Marx argued that elite colleges were neither as good nor as meritocratic as they could be, because they mostly overlooked lower-income students.

For all of the other ways that top colleges had become diverse, their student bodies remained shockingly affluent. At the University of Michigan, more entering freshmen in 2003 came from families earning at least $200,000 a year than came from the entire bottom half of the income distribution. At some private colleges, the numbers were even more extreme.

In his 2003 inaugural address, Mr. Marx — quoting from a speech President John F. Kennedy had given at Amherst — asked, “What good is a private college unless it is serving a great national purpose?”

On Sunday, Mr. Marx presided over his final Amherst graduation. This summer, he will become head of the New York Public Library. And he can point to some impressive successes at Amherst.

More than 22 percent of students now receive federal Pell Grants (a rough approximation of how many are in the bottom half of the nation’s income distribution). In 2005, only 13 percent did. Over the same period, other elite colleges have also been doing more to recruit low- and middle-income students, and they have made some progress.

It is tempting, then, to point to all these changes and proclaim that elite higher education is at long last a meritocracy. But Mr. Marx doesn’t buy it. If anything, he worries, the progress has the potential to distract people from how troubling the situation remains.

When we spoke recently, he mentioned a Georgetown University study of the class of 2010 at the country’s 193 most selective colleges. As entering freshmen, only 15 percent of students came from the bottom half of the income distribution. Sixty-seven percent came from the highest-earning fourth of the distribution. These statistics mean that on many campuses affluent students outnumber middle-class students.

“We claim to be part of the American dream and of a system based on merit and opportunity and talent,” Mr. Marx says. “Yet if at the top places, two-thirds of the students come from the top quartile and only 5 percent come from the bottom quartile, then we are actually part of the problem of the growing economic divide rather than part of the solution.”

I think Amherst has created a model for attracting talented low- and middle-income students that other colleges can copy. It borrows, in part, from the University of California, which is by far the most economically diverse top university system in the country. But before we get to the details, I want to address a question that often comes up in this discussion:

Does more economic diversity necessarily mean lower admissions standards?

No, it does not.

The truth is that many of the most capable low- and middle-income students attend community colleges or less selective four-year colleges close to their home. Doing so makes them less likely to graduate from college at all, research has shown. Incredibly, only 44 percent of low-income high school seniors with high standardized test scores enroll in a four-year college, according to a Century Foundation report — compared with about 50 percent of high-income seniors who have average test scores.

“The extent of wasted human capital,” wrote the report’s authors, Anthony P. Carnevale and Jeff Strohl, “is phenomenal.”

This comparison understates the problem, too, because SAT scores are hardly a pure measure of merit. Well-off students often receive SAT coaching and take the test more than once, Mr. Marx notes, and top colleges reward them for doing both. Colleges also reward students for overseas travel and elaborate community service projects. “Colleges don’t recognize, in the same way, if you work at the neighborhood 7-Eleven to support your family,” he adds.

Several years ago, William Bowen, a former president of Princeton, and two other researchers found that top colleges gave no admissions advantage to low-income students, despite claims to the contrary. Children of alumni received an advantage. Minorities (except Asians) and athletes received an even bigger advantage. But all else equal, a low-income applicant was no more likely to get in than a high-income applicant with the same SAT score. It’s pretty hard to call that meritocracy.

•

Amherst has shown that building a better meritocracy is possible, by doing, as Mr. Marx says, “everything we can think of.”

E-mail: leonhardt@nytimes.com; twitter.com/DLeonhardt

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Hopes Rise in South as Waters Do Not

Flood-estimate maps showed water reaching depths of up to 20 feet and pooling out into every part of the floodway within eight days.

A week and a half later, those maps appear to have been a bit pessimistic. The water has taken an unexpected trajectory as it moves out into the floodway, and some areas will probably be spared significant flooding. The flooding has also moved more slowly than anticipated, forcing local officials to recalibrate by the day.

Mandatory evacuation orders have been lifted and then reinstated in some areas, and lifted altogether in others. At least one shelter has closed for lack of evacuees.

The promising outlook does not mean that all is clear. The water is rising, if slowly, and in some places is spreading over roads and moving toward homes. Backwater flooding, which occurs when tributaries, bayous and small bodies of water overflow, is a concern throughout the basin, and there is still an enormous amount of water that must funnel out into the Gulf of Mexico, threatening Morgan City and the other communities at the basin’s spout.

A barge that was sunk in a bayou just outside of Morgan City in an effort to protect populated areas from an influx of backwater appears to be working for the most part, said Bill Pecoraro, a member of the Morgan City port commission.

But the crest of the flood is not expected to reach Morgan City until Monday, and water will stay high for some time. It remains to be seen how well the barge, a temporary fix, will hold up over several weeks, Mr. Pecoraro said.

He added, however, that it appeared the flooding would not be as significant as some had feared. “It looks like it’s going to be anticlimactic,” he said.

It is too early to tell with any certainty why the flood projections in south Louisiana have diverged with reality, officials said.

“There’s probably not going to be one definitive answer to that,” said Jeff Graschel, a hydrologist with the National Weather Service.

But the outlook was improving even before the spillway, about an hour north of Baton Rouge, was put into use. While officials with the United States Army Corps of Engineers at one point anticipated having to send water out through the spillway at 300,000 cubic feet per second, or half its capacity, that projection was cut in half by the time the first gate on the spillway was opened.

The water is currently gushing out at 114,000 cubic feet per second, less than a quarter of capacity, and corps officials do not expect to use any more gates than the 17 that are now open. They might start closing gates in as soon as a week, in the same gradual manner as they were opened.

The floodwaters were originally expected to fill up the Atchafalaya River Basin within several days, curling around levees and threatening towns like Krotz Springs and Melville that lie in the western part of the basin.

But, Charles Shadie, the head of water control for the Mississippi Valley Division of the corps, said “the flows tend to be hugging the eastern side of the floodway.”

St. Landry Parish, which sits due west of Morganza, rescinded a mandatory evacuation order for certain areas on Monday, though a voluntary order was still in effect. With all these changing orders, residents are not entirely sure what to do.

“We’re frustrated, like many of the citizens here, with not being able to get a definite timeline,” said Lisa Vidrine, the director of St. Landry Parish’s Department of Emergency Preparedness.

Mr. Graschel explained that the flooding models were based on the last time — the only time — the Morganza spillway was opened, in 1973. There are a number of reasons the comparison is not perfect, he said.

In 1973, the floodway had already been pounded by heavy rainfall when the spillway was opened. As a result, the Atchafalaya River was running high, soils were saturated and pools and other potential water storage areas were full. The spillway itself was opened much more quickly in 1973, as opposed to the gradual opening that took place this month.

“It’s kind of comparing apples to oranges,” Mr. Graschel said.

Residents in the floodway have been trying to adjust.

“It’s sort of yo-yo living,” said Charlene Guidry, 57, who has left her riverfront house in Butte La Rose. A mandatory evacuation order was declared for Butte La Rose last week, then was lifted, then went into effect again on Tuesday at noon.

“It gets a little frustrating,” Ms. Guidry said. But, she added, better to leave and have nothing happen than to stay and experience the worst.

“When you look at people in Joplin, Mo., and Tuscaloosa, Ala., we’ve got nothing to complain about,” she said.

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Ahmadinejad Backs Out of Key Role at OPEC

Mr. Ahmadinejad had announced nine days earlier that he would assume the position of oil minister on a caretaker basis in time to attend the OPEC meeting to press for higher oil prices. Now that a lower level minister will take the podium, most energy experts say the meeting is unlikely to produce any sudden shifts in OPEC pricing or production policy.

The move by Mr. Ahmadinejad to take over the oil ministry and project himself on the world stage at the June 8 meeting in Vienna was seen as the latest skirmish in a confrontation with the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that surfaced a month ago and put a sharp public focus on the widening cracks within Iran’s ruling elite. The reversal suggested that his ability to exert independent power in either domestic or foreign affairs is diminishing.

“The leader has drawn a bright red line around Ahmadinejad’s continued power grabs,” said Cliff Kupchan, a former State Department official who is now an Iran expert at Eurasia Group, a consultancy. “Ahmadinejad has been severely weakened.”

A senior oil ministry official, Shojaoddin Bazargani, was quoted by the official Islamic Republic News Agency on Monday as saying that Mr. Ahmadinejad had made “his own decision and will appoint one of his cabinet ministers to attend the meeting.” A Foreign Ministry spokesman confirmed the report on Tuesday, putting to rest days of conflicting accounts on whether Mr. Ahmadinejad would be attending the OPEC conference.

Iran experts say that Mr. Ahmadinejad’s faction has been weakened as parliamentary elections approach next year, and that a more pliant figure would likely be favored by conservative religious leaders for the next presidential election in 2013.

The intrigue surrounding Mr. Ahmadinejad’s political position deepened Tuesday when a mysterious explosion jolted Iran’s largest oil refinery just as he was scheduled to arrive for the inauguration of an expansion project. At least 20 people were injured in the blast, which Iran’s semiofficial Fars news agency attributed to a gas leak.

Mr. Ahmadinejad went ahead with a nationally broadcast speech from the facility.

The power struggle broke out in the open last month when Mr. Ahmadinejad dismissed Heydar Moslehi, the chief of the intelligence ministry. Ayatollah Khamenei reversed the decision, a sign that he would retain control over the powerful ministry.

Two weeks ago Mr. Ahmadinejad appeared to make another move to consolidate power by firing three ministers in a cabinet streamlining. But last weekend the Guardian Council, a powerful body of clerics and jurists responsible for upholding the constitution, ruled that the president had overstepped his authority.

Mr. Ahmadinejad’s aides have insisted so far that he is retaining his additional post as oil minister, but his decision not to travel to the OPEC meeting suggests that he is no more than a caretaker of the oil ministry, which is responsible for more than three-quarters of the country’s revenue.

Iran experts say that while he is wounded politically, Mr. Ahmadinejad is still powerful and likely to challenge Ayatollah Khamenei again.

“I don’t see him as being on the ropes,” said Jamie Webster, a Middle East expert at PFC Energy, a consultancy. He noted that while Ayatollah Khamenei has the power to dismiss Mr. Ahmadinejad, the president retains support among many rural and poor Iranians. A shift in government fuel and food subsidies late last year protected the rural poor from costs that have been otherwise borne by the urban middle class.

Iran holds OPEC’s 12-nation rotating presidency, a position that normally means that the country’s oil minister delivers the opening remarks and presides over the proceedings.

With tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia already heightened by the Saudi troop deployment in Bahrain to help repress mainly Shiite demonstrators, Mr. Ahmadinejad’s presence at the meeting would have almost certainly threatened to cause verbal hostilities and disrupt meaningful policy planning, global petroleum experts said.

“Ahmadinejad’s absence leaves Saudi Arabia free to conduct the agenda as it sees fit,” Mr. Kupchan said, “without the distraction of this spotlight-grabbing leader.”

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Democrat Wins G.O.P. Seat; Rebuke Seen to Medicare Plan

The results set off elation among Democrats and soul-searching among Republicans, who questioned whether the party should rethink its commitment to the Medicare plan, which appears to have become a liability as 2012 elections loom.

Two months ago, the Democrat, Kathy Hochul, was considered an all-but-certain loser in the race against Jane Corwin. But Ms. Hochul seized on her Republican rival’s embrace of the proposal from Representative Paul D. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin, to overhaul Medicare, and she never let up.

Voters, who turned out in strikingly large numbers for a special election, said they trusted Ms. Hochul, the county clerk of Erie County, to protect Medicare.

“I have almost always voted the party line,” said Gloria Bolender, a Republican from Clarence who is caring for her 80-year-old mother. “This is the second time in my life I’ve voted against my party.”

Pat Gillick, a Republican from East Amherst, who also cast a ballot for Ms. Hochul, said, “The privatization of Medicare scares me.”

The district, which stretches from Buffalo to Rochester, has been in Republican hands for four decades, producing influential Republican figures like Representative Jack Kemp. The campaign drew intense interest, with both major parties in Washington and their allies flooding the district with radio and television advertising. Total spending exceeded $6 million.

On Tuesday, Republicans were already debating the factors that shaped the outcome of the race. The mood inside a meeting of the House Republican caucus in the Capitol was anxious, and some members suggested that it would be oversimplifying to attribute the results to one cause.

Some said Ms. Corwin proved a less nimble and ultimately less appealing candidate than Ms. Hochul, who was an energetic campaigner and seemed to connect with audiences on the trail.

So, when Medicare erupted as a driving issue in the race, Ms. Corwin, a wealthy former Wall Street analyst, was knocked off balance and struggled to respond.

In the closing hours of the race, Ms. Corwin admitted as much, saying about her rival’s attacks: “When she started making these comments, I thought, ‘This is so outrageous no one would ever believe it.’ Apparently some people did.”

Others cited the presence of a third candidate, Jack Davis, who ran on the Tea Party line after failing to win the Republican nomination. Mr. Davis not only drew conservative support away from Ms. Corwin, but also turned his aggressive attacks on her in the end, contributing to her negative numbers.

And Ms. Hochul seemed genuinely well-liked by the public. As the clerk of Erie County, she oversees the autos bureaus, which issue driver’s licenses; she became more prominent in 2008 when she challenged former Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s plan to issue licenses to illegal immigrants.

“I remember when she was in the auto bureau in Buffalo, she did a lot with the license plates,” said Jim Van Wagner, a Republican and former auto worker from Albion, adding: She’s a good one.”

Still, given the makeup of the district, one of four in the state that John McCain carried in 2008, Republicans said they needed to understand if they had misread the public.

“It’s a Republican district with a solid Republican candidate,” said Representative Peter T. King, a Republican from Long Island. “What went wrong? We definitely have to determine the extent to which the Medicare issue hurt us.”

The seat became vacant in February when Representative Christopher Lee, a Republican, abruptly resigned after he e-mailed a shirtless photo of himself to a woman and it was published on the Internet.

Top Republicans, including House Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio and the majority leader, Eric Cantor of Virginia, traveled to the district to provide support to Ms. Corwin. At the same time, the national party and its allies, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and a group tied to the Republican strategist Karl Rove, jumped in, spending at least $1.1 million on radio and television ads supporting Ms. Corwin.

Democrats brought out their heavy hitters too, including Bill Clinton, who recorded a phone message that reached homes throughout district; and Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House Democratic leader, who sent out fund-raising solicitations casting the race as an opportunity for Democrats to win in the backyard of Republicans.

The race also marked the debut of House Majority PAC, a group recently established by Democratic strategists as a counterbalance to the conservative organizations that helped Republicans make significant gains in the 2010 elections. House Majority PAC spent nearly $400,000 on advertising in the race.

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Tornadoes Strike in Oklahoma and Texas

An official searched for a missing child near a lakeshore after a tornado ripped through the Falcon Lake area in Piedmont, Okla., on Tuesday.

A series of tornadoes struck central Oklahoma on Tuesday, wiping out homes and businesses and killing at least four people. Officials said the number could rise as search and rescue teams started to fan out across a state already battered by storms over the weekend.

A half-mile-wide tornado moving towards Piedmont, Okla., on Tuesday.

The largest and most severe of the tornadoes struck around midday, touching down in Caddo County and then sweeping from the southwest to northeast corners of Canadian County, where it devastated El Reno, a town of 15,000 people about 25 miles west of downtown Oklahoma City.

Cherokee Ballard, a spokeswoman for the state medical examiner, said four people had died in Canadian County, where a weather-monitoring site recorded winds of 151 miles per hour, The Associated Press reported.

At least 60 people were reported injured across central Oklahoma, many along the Interstate 40 corridor that runs past El Reno.

The tornado left a trail of shredded and overturned cars along I-40, destroyed livestock, set off a gas line explosion and spurred people across El Reno to evacuate their homes. Amy Brandley, the Canadian County flood plain manager, said emergency crews had only just begun to assess the damage.

“Our county commissioner’s crews are out with heavy equipment clearing roads right now so search and rescues can take place,” she said.

The tornado that struck in El Reno was one of several twisters across the state on Tuesday. By 8 p.m., the National Weather Service had tornado watches in effect across 11 counties and was warning that “supercells,” which can spawn some of the most violent twisters, had developed across the central part of the state and were moving eastward. The agency posted an urgent alert on its Web site predicting an “outbreak of strong tornadoes” throughout late Tuesday.

“Plan now where you will seek shelter,” the notice advised.

In Kansas, the police said two people died when high winds threw a tree into their van around 6 p.m. near St. John, about 100 miles west of Wichita, The A.P. reported.

The news agency said that funnel clouds were reported across the northern suburbs of Dallas and Fort Worth around sundown Tuesday, with brief tornado touchdowns in Corinth, Saginaw and Bedford.

Other brief tornadoes were reported near Springtown and Azle, just northwest of Fort Worth, and near Muenster, 65 miles north of Fort Worth. There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.

Even the National Weather Service was not immune from the danger. Earlier in the day its Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., about 20 miles south of downtown Oklahoma City, had to be evacuated as one of the day’s tornadoes approached.

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