Life Expectancy Rises Around World, Study Finds

A sharp decline in deaths from malnutrition and infectious diseases like measles and tuberculosis has caused a shift in global mortality patterns over the past 20 years, according to a report published on Thursday, with far more of the world’s population now living into old age and dying from diseases mostly associated with rich countries, like cancer and heart disease.

Tony Karumba/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Children in Nairobi, Kenya. Sub-Saharan Africa lagged in mortality gains, compared with Latin America, Asia and North Africa.

The shift reflects improvements in sanitation, medical services and access to food throughout the developing world, as well as the success of broad public health efforts like vaccine programs. The results are striking: infant mortality declined by more than half from 1990 to 2010, and malnutrition, the No. 1 risk factor for death and years of life lost in 1990, has fallen to No. 8.

At the same time, chronic diseases like cancer now account for about two out of every three deaths worldwide, up from just over half in 1990. Eight million people died of cancer in 2010, 38 percent more than in 1990. Diabetes claimed 1.3 million lives in 2010, double the number in 1990.

“The growth of these rich-country diseases, like heart disease, stroke, cancer and diabetes, is in a strange way good news,” said Ezekiel Emanuel, chairman of the department of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania. “It shows that many parts of the globe have largely overcome infectious and communicable diseases as a pervasive threat, and that people on average are living longer.”

In 2010, 43 percent of deaths in the world occurred at age 70 and older, compared with 33 percent of deaths in 1990, the report said. And fewer child deaths have brought up the mean age of death, which in Brazil and Paraguay jumped to 63 in 2010, up from 30 in 1970, the report said. The measure, an average of all deaths in a given year, is different from life expectancy, and is lower when large numbers of children die.

But while developing countries made big strides the United States stagnated. American women registered the smallest gains in life expectancy of all high-income countries’ female populations between 1990 and 2010. American women gained just under two years of life, compared with women in Cyprus, who lived 2.3 years longer and Canadian women who gained 2.4 years. The slow increase caused American women to fall to 36th place in the report’s global ranking of life expectancy, down from 22nd in 1990. Life expectancy for American women was 80.5 in 2010, up from 78.6 in 1990.

“It’s alarming just how little progress there has been for women in the United States,” said Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, a health research organization financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation at the University of Washington that coordinated the report. Rising rates of obesity among American women and the legacy of smoking, a habit women formed later than men, are among the factors contributing to the stagnation, he said. American men gained in life expectancy, to 75.9 years from 71.7 in 1990.

Health experts from more than 300 institutions contributed to the report, which provided estimates of disease and mortality for populations in more than 180 countries. It was published in The Lancet, a British medical journal.

The World Health Organization issued a statement on Thursday saying that some of the estimates in the report differed substantially from those done by United Nations agencies, though others were similar. All comprehensive estimates of global mortality rely heavily on statistical modeling because only 34 countries — representing about 15 percent of the world’s population — produce quality cause-of-death data.

Sub-Saharan Africa was an exception to the trend. Infectious diseases, childhood illnesses and maternity-related causes of death still account for about 70 percent of the region’s disease burden, a measure of years of life lost due to premature death and to time lived in less than full health. In contrast, they account for just one-third in South Asia, and less than a fifth in all other regions. Sub-Saharan Africa also lagged in mortality gains, with the average age of death rising by fewer than 10 years from 1970 to 2010, compared with a more than 25-year increase in Latin America, Asia and North Africa.

Globally, AIDS was an exception to the shift of deaths from infectious to noncommunicable diseases. The epidemic is believed to have peaked, but still results in 1.5 million deaths each year.

Over all, the change means people are living longer, but it also raises troubling questions. Behavior affects people’s risks of developing cancer, heart disease and diabetes, and public health experts say it is far harder to get people to change their ways than to administer a vaccine that protects children from an infectious disease like measles.

“Adult mortality is a much harder task for the public health systems in the world,” said Colin Mathers, a senior scientist at the World Health Organization.

Tobacco use is a rising threat, especially in developing countries, and is responsible for almost six million deaths a year globally. Illnesses like diabetes are also spreading fast.

Donald G. McNeil Jr. contributed reporting.

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DealBook: Best Buy Gives Founder More Time to Make a Bid

Best Buy plans to give its founder a reprieve from holiday shopping.

The electronics retailer said on Friday that it would give its founder, Richard Schulze, until Feb. 28 to make a takeover bid for the company. That will give Mr. Schulze and his private equity partners the chance to review holiday sales before making their bid.

Best Buy cautioned that its founder may not make a bid, and that it may turn down any offer that is made.

Shares of the retailer tumbled nearly 17 percent in morning trading on Friday, to $11.75, as investors appeared worried that the chances of a successful takeover were growing remote.

Mr. Schulze remains the single biggest shareholder, with a roughly 20 percent stake, but analysts and investors have questioned whether he can line up the requisite equity and debt financing.

He has reached tentative agreements to partner with a number of leveraged buyout firms — currently including Cerberus Capital Management, Leonard Green & Partners and TPG Capital — to aid him in his campaign, a person briefed on the matter said. But any offer is unlikely to come close to the $8.8 billion that he initially floated.

The announcement comes as shares in Best Buy have fallen steadily in recent months, down 33 percent over the last three months. Even with the holiday shopping season in full swing, the retailer is expected to struggle against online competitors like Amazon.com and bigger rivals like Wal-Mart Stores.

Analysts suspect that consumer will continue to use Best Buy stores as “showrooms” to play around with products, before buying them more cheaply elsewhere. That’s despite efforts by the company’s relatively new chief executive, Hubert Joly, to entice shoppers with redesigned stores and improved customer service.

The company said last month that its same-store sales fell yet again, as it reported a $10 million loss in its third quarter.

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Chinese Court Said to Punish Tibetan Students with Prison Terms

BEIJING — A Chinese court has sentenced eight Tibetan students to prison for their role in street protests last month that unnerved security forces already coping with a wave of self-immolations, many of them by young people who have become increasingly radicalized in their opposition to Chinese policies in the region, a Washington-based advocacy group reported on Wednesday.

According to the group, the International Campaign for Tibet, the students, from a predominantly Tibetan part of Qinghai Province, were sentenced to five-year terms on Dec. 5 for organizing demonstrations in response to government booklets that vilified the self-immolators and disparaged the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader.

The group said news of the verdicts was based on a Tibetan exile with contacts in the region. Local government officials reached by telephone on Thursday declined to comment.

Word of the trials and convictions comes amid a growing crisis for Beijing as it tries to stop the surge in self-immolations that began more than two years ago. So far, nearly 100 people in Tibetan areas of the country have set themselves on fire, nearly a third of them since November. The majority have been in their teens and 20s.

The authorities have responded harshly, locking down some monasteries, requiring Buddhist monks to attend “political education” classes and issuing new regulations that criminalize any act seen as encouraging the protests. Earlier this week, the official Xinhua news agency said a Tibetan monk and his nephew had been detained for their role in eight self-immolations.

The student demonstrations in Tsolho Prefecture, known in Chinese as Hainan, began late last month after the authorities distributed the pamphlets. Infuriated by several passages, students from the Tsolho Professional Training School marched to a government building chanting slogans that called for “freedom” and Tibetan language rights, according to Radio Free Asia.

At one point, some protesters burned the pamphlets, drawing a violent response from paramilitary police who arrested a number of participants. “They beat up the students, hurled tear gas at them and there was also some kind of explosive used on the student crowd,” according to an account published by Radio Free Asia, quoting a local source. More than 20 students were injured, several critically, the report said.

Although the literature was designed in part to convince local students to support bilingual education, it also took aim at the Dalai Lama, calling him a “political itinerant who wants to split the Chinese Motherland.” It also described the self-immolators as puppets controlled by “foreign imperialist forces.”

Kate Saunders, communications director for the International Campaign for Tibet, said such protests, including a series of student-led demonstrations last month in a nearby city, Rebkong, underscored the intense antipathy young people feel toward Chinese educational policies, which often emphasize Mandarin over Tibetan.

“This is a new political moment in Tibet, with a new generation prepared to directly confront the authorities despite the risks,” Ms. Saunders said. “But it seems the authorities have no strategy other than oppression and as we can see it is not working.”

She said that at least 18 students from the school remained in police custody in addition to three monks who have been accused of sending news of the protests to the outside world.

Mia Li contributed research

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Aresco, basketball schools talk Big East future

NEW YORK (AP) — Big East Commissioner Mike Aresco is working with the officials from the conference's seven nonfootball members to keep the rebuilding league from splitting apart.

A person familiar with the situation tells The Associated Press that Aresco and officials from those seven Catholic schools held a conference call Thursday to discuss the future of the league. Those schools are considering breaking away from the rest of the transitioning league.

Such a break could kill the Big East, but it would most likely not end easily.

The current Big East football membership includes only four schools — South Florida, Connecticut, Cincinnati and Temple — that are committed to the league beyond 2013. But there are 11 schools with plans to join the Big East in the next three years.

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Another Look at a Drink Ingredient, Brominated Vegetable Oil

James Edward Bates for The New York Times

Sarah Kavanagh, 15, of Hattiesburg, Miss., started an online petition asking PepsiCo to change Gatorade’s formula.

Sarah Kavanagh and her little brother were looking forward to the bottles of Gatorade they had put in the refrigerator after playing outdoors one hot, humid afternoon last month in Hattiesburg, Miss.

But before she took a sip, Sarah, a dedicated vegetarian, did what she often does and checked the label to make sure no animal products were in the drink. One ingredient, brominated vegetable oil, caught her eye.

“I knew it probably wasn’t from an animal because it had vegetable in the name, but I still wanted to know what it was, so I Googled it,” Ms. Kavanagh said. “A page popped up with a long list of possible side effects, including neurological disorders and altered thyroid hormones. I didn’t expect that.”

She threw the product away and started a petition on Change.org, a nonprofit Web site, that has almost 200,000 signatures. Ms. Kavanagh, 15, hopes her campaign will persuade PepsiCo, Gatorade’s maker, to consider changing the drink’s formulation.

Jeff Dahncke, a spokesman for PepsiCo, noted that brominated vegetable oil had been deemed safe for consumption by federal regulators. “As standard practice, we constantly evaluate our formulas and ingredients to ensure they comply with federal regulations and meet the high quality standards our consumers and athletes expect — from functionality to great taste,” he said in an e-mail.

In fact, about 10 percent of drinks sold in the United States contain brominated vegetable oil, including Mountain Dew, also made by PepsiCo; Powerade, Fanta Orange and Fresca from Coca-Cola; and Squirt and Sunkist Peach Soda, made by the Dr Pepper Snapple Group.

The ingredient is added often to citrus drinks to help keep the fruit flavoring evenly distributed; without it, the flavoring would separate.

Use of the substance in the United States has been debated for more than three decades, so Ms. Kavanagh’s campaign most likely is quixotic. But the European Union has long banned the substance from foods, requiring use of other ingredients. Japan recently moved to do the same.

“B.V.O. is banned other places in the world, so these companies already have a replacement for it,” Ms. Kavanagh said. “I don’t see why they don’t just make the switch.” To that, companies say the switch would be too costly.

The renewed debate, which has brought attention to the arcane world of additive regulation, comes as consumers show increasing interest in food ingredients and have new tools to learn about them. Walmart’s app, for instance, allows access to lists of ingredients in foods in its stores.

Brominated vegetable oil contains bromine, the element found in brominated flame retardants, used in things like upholstered furniture and children’s products. Research has found brominate flame retardants building up in the body and breast milk, and animal and some human studies have linked them to neurological impairment, reduced fertility, changes in thyroid hormones and puberty at an earlier age.

Limited studies of the effects of brominated vegetable oil in animals and in humans found buildups of bromine in fatty tissues. Rats that ingested large quantities of the substance in their diets developed heart lesions.

Its use in foods dates to the 1930s, well before Congress amended the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act to add regulation of new food additives to the responsibilities of the Food and Drug Administration. But Congress exempted two groups of additives, those already sanctioned by the F.D.A. or the Department of Agriculture, or those experts deemed “generally recognized as safe.”

The second exemption created what Tom Neltner, director of the Pew Charitable Trusts’ food additives project, a three-year investigation into how food additives are regulated, calls “the loophole that swallowed the law.” A company can create a new additive, publish safety data about it on its Web site and pay a law firm or consulting firm to vet it to establish it as “generally recognized as safe” — without ever notifying the F.D.A., Mr. Neltner said.

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High Cost Leads Canada to Study Plans to Buy F-35s

Canada said Wednesday that it would reconsider plans to buy 65 F-35 fighter jets after an independent audit found that the sophisticated stealth planes would cost substantially more than the government had promised.

The decision was an unusual step back by Stephen Harper, the prime minister, who has been a strident defender of the purchase despite widespread public criticism of the price. Two cabinet ministers said an independent panel would review a variety of options, including a version of Boeing’s Super Hornet fighter as well as sticking with the F-35, made by Lockheed Martin.

“We have hit the reset button and are taking the time to do a complete assessment of all available aircraft,” Rona Ambrose, the public works minister, told reporters in Ottawa.

The announcement came after the auditor, KPMG, estimated that Canada would spend $45.8 billion to buy and operate the planes over 42 years, the expected life span.

When Peter MacKay, the defense minister, first announced Canada’s plan to buy the F-35 in 2010, he said the purchase price was $9 billion, but declined to provide operating cost estimates. The next year during an election campaign, the Conservatives put the total cost over 20 years at $16 billion.

If Canada were to back out of the project, it would be a blow to Lockheed and the Pentagon, which is counting on foreign sales to help reduce the cost of building each of the planes.

The F-35 was conceived as the Chevrolet of the sky, a radar-evading aircraft that could be built relatively cheaply and adapted to the needs of the Air Force, Navy and Marines.

But almost from the start, development of the planes and their sophisticated gear proved far more costly and difficult than anticipated.

The plane is now projected to be the most expensive weapons program in history, with the Pentagon spending $396 billion to buy 2,443 planes by the late 2030s. The United States is counting on 10 allies to buy at least 700 more.

To meet the Pentagon’s targets of $79 million to $106 million a plane, depending on the model, Lockheed needs to increase its economies of scale by spreading the costs across as many planes as possible. Canada’s hesitancy about the project could add to worries among the allies about the plane’s cost.

This year, economically troubled Italy cut its planned F-35 order by 30 percent. Britain and Australia have delayed decisions on how many F-35s to buy. And lawmakers in the Netherlands are also questioning the jet’s cost.

The Pentagon and Lockheed have stepped up their efforts to reassure those countries and persuaded two others, Israel and Japan, to sign on.

“You have to wonder when a slip becomes a slide with this program,” said Richard L. Aboulafia, an analyst with the Teal Group in Fairfax, Va. “This is not a simple question of a fighter from a new generation all by itself in the market. There is price pressure and there’s a growing cost-consciousness among all customers.”

Until recently, the ruling Conservative Party in Canada swiftly rejected any suggestion that the country not buy the F-35s. Two years ago, Mr. Harper said that critics of the acquisition were “playing politics with the lives of our men and women in uniform.”

But after the office of the Auditor General of Canada released a report in March indicating that the planes would cost much more than the $16 billion the government had indicated, Mr. Harper’s aides began edging away from the program and hired KPMG to produce the new cost estimates.

Ms. Ambrose and Mr. MacKay repeatedly used the word “reset” on Wednesday and avoided questions about what that step would mean in evaluating alternatives. The ministers and officials, however, did make it clear that no decision had been made to start a formal competition among aircraft manufacturers and acknowledged that it remained possible that Canada would stick with the F-35.

The review, Mr. MacKay said, would “ensure that a balance is maintained between the military needs and taxpayer interests.”

Canada’s concerns about the costs of the F-35s come as American officials worry that the F-35’s huge price tag could make it a target for budget cutters in Washington as well. The Pentagon has already slowed the program to fix technical problems and reduce the immediate costs.

Pentagon and Lockheed officials sought on Wednesday to play down the developments in Canada.

Lt. Col. Melinda F. Morgan, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said the KPMG cost estimate for Canada was in line with the Pentagon’s current projections for the cost of the planes.

She said that Canada’s decision to review its options seemed similar to a high-level review the Pentagon conducted in 2010 when problems were mounting with the planes. Top Pentagon officials determined then that they had no alternative that could provide the same capability.

Lockheed issued a statement noting it had worked with Canada’s armed forces for 50 years and looked forward to continuing the relationship.

The KPMG study said that if Canada wanted to stick to the original $9 billion price, it would be able to buy only 55 planes.

Possible alternatives to the F-35 include an updated version of Boeing’s F/A-18 Hornet, called the Super Hornet, and several European models. The Royal Canadian Air Force currently flies CF-18s, a version of the Hornet. While some of Canada’s jets date back about 30 years, Mr. MacKay said Wednesday that the fleet could be kept operational for at least another decade.

In the past, Mr. MacKay and others have emphasized the need for Canada’s next generation of fighters to include the radar-evading stealth technology found on the F-35. But several military analysts in Canada have noted that the country’s air force had not been actively involved in first strikes, where stealth would be most crucial. Others have questioned using the single-engine F-35 for patrols in remote Arctic regions, a primary mission for Canada’s military.

Separately on Wednesday, the government also reduced its estimate of business that Canadian companies were likely to win from F-35 contracts to $9.8 billion from $12 billion.

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Cheikh Modibo Diarra, Mali’s Prime Minister, Resigns After Arrest

BAMAKO, Mali — Soldiers arrested Mali’s prime minister at his residence late Monday night, signaling new turmoil in a West African nation racked by military interference and an Islamist takeover in the north.

Associated Press

Prime Minister Cheikh Modibo Diarra appeared on state television and announced his government’s resignation on Tuesday.

Hours later, Prime Minister Cheikh Modibo Diarra appeared grim-faced on national television to announce his government’s resignation. A spokesman for soldiers who seized power earlier in the year — and later nominally relinquished it to Mr. Diarra — confirmed the prime minister’s arrest on Tuesday morning, accusing him of “playing a personal agenda” while the country faced a crisis in the north. The soldiers arrived at Mr. Diarra’s home around 11 p.m. Monday as he was preparing for a flight to Paris for a medical checkup, said the military spokesman, Bakary Mariko. The prime minister was taken to the military encampment at Kati, just outside Bamako, the capital, where Capt. Amadou Sanogo, the officer who led the March military coup, and others told him “there were proofs against him that he was calling for subversion,” Mr. Mariko said.

On Tuesday morning, the streets of Bamako appeared calm following what appeared to be the country’s second coup d’état in less than a year. But the new upheaval is likely to be considered a setback to Western efforts to help Mali regain control of territory lost to Qaeda-linked militants earlier in the year.

The West has watched with growing alarm as Islamist radicals have constructed a stronghold in the country’s vast north. The United Nations, regional African bodies, France and the United States have tried to aid the faltering Malian Army in a military strike to take back the lost north. Those efforts have so far not coalesced into a coherent plan, despite numerous meetings and United Nations resolutions. More meetings at the United Nations are planned for later this month.

The latest political turmoil in the capital will almost certainly slow down any campaign in the north, however. Already, the United States has expressed reluctance to provide too much direct military assistance, given the shakiness of the political order here. Those doubts are only likely to increase following the latest upheaval.

Mr. Diarra — appointed last spring as a caretaker prime minister until new elections could be organized — was known to disagree with Captain Sanogo on military policy.

He has been an advocate of immediate international military assistance to recapture the north from the Islamists. Captain Sanogo has rebuffed suggestions that the Malian military is incapable of handling the job on its own. Indeed, the captain for weeks resisted the notion that troops from other African nations should even approach the capital.

While Mr. Diarra has made the rounds of foreign capitals, pleading for help to fight the increasingly aggressive Islamists, military leaders have remained at the Kati base, grumbling.

That conflict was evident in the declarations of the military’s spokesman on Tuesday. “Since he has been in power, he has been working simply to position his own family,” Mr. Mariko said. “There has been a paralysis in government.”

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NHL, union to return to bargaining

TORONTO (AP) — The NHL and its players' union will return to bargaining Wednesday at an undisclosed location in an effort to save the hockey season.

The Canadian Press on Tuesday reported the resumption of talks, citing unidentified people on both sides of the dispute.

Tuesday marked the 87th day of the lockout. Wednesday's session will be the first meeting since the sides blamed each other after talks broke off last week.

Until then, they appeared to be making progress during three days in New York in which they exchanged proposals. Union executive director Donald Fehr maintains there are agreements on almost all the important issues.

The NHL eliminated 16 more days from the regular-season schedule Monday, canceling games through Dec. 30 in addition to the New Year's Day Winter Classic and the All-Star Game, which were already wiped out.

In all, more than 40 percent of the regular season that was scheduled to begin Oct. 11 has been scratched.

The latest cancellations were generally regarded as both bad news and good news.

While losing another two weeks hurts the league and the players, the fact that the NHL did not take more games off the schedule sparked speculation owners are holding out hope of making a deal that could start the season in early January.

Commissioner Gary Bettman has said the league would not want to play anything less than a 48-game season, which is what it had after 1994-95 lockout ended.

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Concussion Liability Issues Could Stretch Beyond N.F.L.

Paul Kitagaki Jr./The Sacramento Bee, via Associated Press

Insurers could raise premiums with a higher risk of lawsuits for concussions, like the one 49ers quarterback Alex Smith sustained a month ago.

As the N.F.L. confronts a raft of lawsuits brought by thousands of former players who accuse the league of hiding information about the dangers of concussions, a less visible battle that may have a more widespread effect in the sport is unfolding between the league and 32 of its current and former insurers.

The dispute revolves around how much money, if any, the insurers are obliged to pay for the league’s mounting legal bills and the hundreds of millions of dollars in potential damages that might stem from the cases brought by the retired players.

Regardless of how it is resolved, the dispute could hurt teams, leagues and schools at all levels if insurers raise premiums to compensate for the increased risk of lawsuits from the families of people who play hockey, lacrosse and other contact sports.

The N.F.L., which generates about $9 billion a year, may be equipped to handle these legal challenges. But colleges, high schools and club teams may be forced to consider severe measures in the face of liability issues, like raising fees to offset higher premiums; capping potential damages; and requiring players to sign away their right to sue coaches and schools. Some schools and leagues may even shut down teams because the expense and legal risk are too high.

“Insurers will be tightening up their own coverage and make sports more expensive,” said Robert Boland, who teaches sports law at New York University. “It could make the sustainability of certain sports a real issue.”

The N.F.L. contends that the insurers, some of whom wrote policies in the 1960s, have a duty to defend the league, which has paid them millions of dollars in premiums. The question for the N.F.L. is not whether the insurers are required to help the league, but rather what percent of the league’s expenses each insurer is obliged to cover.

The 32 insurance companies have varying arguments against the league. Some wrote policies for a limited number of years and contend their obligations should also be limited. Others contend they wrote policies for the N.F.L.’s marketing arm — for licensing disputes, for example — not the league itself.

A few of the companies went bankrupt or merged with rivals. Some insurers wrote primary policies that covered up to the first $1 million of claims; the rest insured obligations in excess of that amount.

Creating a formula for how to apportion liability will in some cases depend on the broader case between the league and its players now in federal court in Pennsylvania. If the N.F.L. persuades the judge to dismiss the case, the league will be left trying to recoup its legal costs from the insurers. If the judge allows the players’ case to proceed, the definitions of when, how and whether a player’s concussions led to his illness will become critical in shaping the insurers’ exposure, and could take years to sort out.

“This is baby step 1 in the process for everyone figuring how deep in the soup they are,” said Christopher Fusco, a lawyer who has worked on similar insurance cases but is not involved in the N.F.L. litigation. “Baby step 2 will be to figure out the facts.”

Fusco and other lawyers said the facts would largely come from the underlying suit between the league and the more than 3,000 retired players, including determining when the players sustained the head trauma and their injuries. This will probably be a long process because many of the retired players in the underlying suit, some of whom are now having memory loss, played decades ago, when concussions were often undiagnosed or not recorded.

Many of the insurance companies named in the suits declined to comment, citing the continuing litigation. The N.F.L. also did not comment.

The two-tiered battle between the league and its former players and insurers echoes the litigation stemming from asbestos claims because both cases center on long-tail claims, or injuries that could take years to manifest themselves.

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Daily Stock Market Activity

Wall Street traded sharply higher Tuesday after unexpectedly cheery data out of Europe and as the Federal Reserve was set to begin its two-day policy meeting.

The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index added 1 percent in morning trading, while the Dow Jones industrial average rose 0.9 percent and the Nasdaq composite index was up 1.5 percent.

The stock market has entered a traditionally quiet period heading into the end of the year, with thinner trading volumes and fewer large fluctuations likely.

Though the pace of talks quickened in Washington to avert impending tax increases and spending cuts, senior politicians on both sides cautioned that an agreement on all the outstanding issues remained uncertain.

The lack of progress in negotiations about the “fiscal cliff” has kept investors from making aggressive bets in recent weeks, though most expect a deal will eventually be reached.

In Germany, analyst and investor sentiment rose sharply in December, entering positive territory for the first time since May, a leading survey showed. The data helped drive European shares higher. The DAX in Frankfurt was up 0.6 percent in afternoon trading, while the FTSE 100 in London gained 0.2 percent.

“We’ve been getting a lot of the beginning of our day from seeing what Europe has been doing, and I think that’s going to hold true today,” said Kim Caughey Forrest, senior equity research analyst at Fort Pitt Capital Group in Pittsburgh.

The Fed began its two-day Federal Open Market Committee meeting on Tuesday. The central bank was expected to announce a new round of Treasury securities purchases on Wednesday, according to a Reuters survey of analysts. The program would replace its so-called Operation Twist stimulus effort, which expires at the end of the year.

The Treasury Department sold its remaining stake in the American International Group, bringing an end to a government ownership role about four years after a $182 billion bailout. A.I.G.'s shares were up 4 percent in morning trading.

Two firms raised their price targets for Urban Outfitters, sending the retailer’s shares up 6 percent.

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