Cameron Promises Britons a Referendum on E.U. Membership

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Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain speaking in London on Wednesday.

LONDON — Prime Minister David Cameron promised Britons a decisive referendum within five years on membership in the European Union — provided he wins the next election — in a long-awaited speech on Wednesday whose implications have alarmed the Obama administration and are likely to set the markers for an intense debate in Britain and across Europe.

“It is time for the British people to have their say. It is time to settle this European question in British politics,” he told an audience in London, raising fears in capitals as distant as Washington that a ballot could lead to Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union.

His pledge drew a sharp response from European leaders who accused Mr. Cameron, in the words of a senior German politician, of trying to “cherry-pick” the economic benefits of E.U. membership without subscribing to the broader European project. Politicians in France and Germany said Britain could not have “Europe à la carte.”

The United States has been unusually public in its insistence that Britain, a close ally, stay in the union, fearing its departure would heighten centrifugal forces that would weaken Europe as a diplomatic, military and financial partner.

President Obama recently told Mr. Cameron by telephone that “the United States values a strong U.K. in a strong European Union, which makes critical contributions to peace, prosperity and security in Europe and around the world,” a spokesman said.

Mr. Cameron coupled his promise of a referendum with an impassioned defense of continued membership in a more streamlined and competitive European Union, built around its core single market underpinning the body’s internal trade. But he acknowledged the risks, saying any exit from the European Union “would be a one-way ticket.”

“I know there will be those who say the vision I have outlined will be impossible to achieve. That there is no way our partners will cooperate. That the British people have set themselves on a path to inevitable exit. And that if we aren’t comfortable being in the E.U. after 40 years, we never will be,” he said. “But I refuse to take such a defeatist attitude — either for Britain or for Europe.”

“And when the referendum comes,” he said, “I will campaign for it with all my heart and soul.”

The speech was a defining moment in Mr. Cameron’s political career, reflecting a belief that by wresting some powers back from the European Union, he can win the support of a grudging British public that has long been ambivalent — or actively hostile — toward the idea of European integration.

“We have the character of an island nation — independent, forthright, passionate in defense of our sovereignty,” he said. “We can no more change this sensibility than drain the English Channel.”

Coming a day after the leaders of France and Germany met in Berlin to celebrate a half-century of sometimes uneasy partnership, Mr. Cameron’s plea for acknowledgment of British distinctions seemed to reflect some of the deepest political and philosophical differences between London and Continental Europe on integration.

France wants Britain to stay in the European Union, both as an ally in security matters and as a counterweight to Germany. But France is also outspoken in its refusal to allow Britain to pick and choose its obligations. Paris objects not so much to a British refusal to take on new obligations, especially since Britain does not use the euro, as to any effort to repatriate powers already ceded to Brussels.

The French concern, shared by many others in and out of the euro zone, is that Britain will undermine one of the great, if unfinished accomplishments of the European Union, the single market in goods and services.

“You cannot do Europe à la carte,” said Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius of France. “Imagine the E.U. was a soccer club: once you’ve joined up and you’re in this club, you can’t then say you want to play rugby.”

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, who is often sympathetic to Mr. Cameron’s criticisms of European Union excesses, said she and her country viewed Britain as “an important part and an active member” of the European Union. The E.U., she said, “has always meant that we should find fair compromises.”

Steven Erlanger and Scott Sayare contributed reporting from Paris and Victor Homola from Berlin.

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The Lede Blog: Prince Harry Compares War to PlayStation and Taliban Is Not Amused

A Taliban spokesman said on Tuesday that Prince Harry must have “mental problems,” following the broadcast of remarks by the royal in which he said that killing militants from an Apache helicopter was similar to playing video games.

As soon as Britain’s ministry of defense announced on Monday that Prince Harry had left Afghanistan, ending his four-month deployment there, the British news media rushed to broadcast video of the royal officer at war, which was recorded with his cooperation on the condition that it not be released until his tour was over.

Britain’s Channel 4 News broke into its bulletin on Monday night just minutes after the announcement to broadcast its edit of the footage, which was shot last month at Camp Bastion in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province by the British Press Association.

A video report from Britain’s Channel 4 News shot during Prince Harry’s recent deployment to Afghanistan.

The Channel 4 News report drew attention to how frequently the prince, whose mother was being chased by photographers when she died in a fatal car accident, mentioned his distaste for the British press.

At one stage in the interview, Prince Harry said that he was not troubled by killing militants. “Take a life to save a life,” he said. “If there’s people trying to do bad stuff to our guys, then we’ll take them out of the game.”

In another edit of the footage, posted online by The Guardian, Prince Harry, who is known as Captain Wales in the army, explained that he was glad to have been “pushed forward to the front seat,” the one reserved for the attack helicopter’s gunner. That was, he said, “a joy for me because I’m one of those people that loves playing PlayStation and Xbox, so with my thumbs I like to think I’m probably quite useful — if you ask the guys I thrash them at FIFA the whole time,” referring to a popular video game series.

“This is a serious war, a historic war, resistance for us, for our people,” a Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, told Agence France-Presse in response, “and now this prince comes and compares this war with his games, PlayStation or whatever he calls it.”

But the spokesman added, “we don’t take his comments very seriously, as we have all seen and heard that many foreign soldiers, occupiers who come to Afghanistan, develop some kind of mental problems on their way out.”

In another part of the interview, posted online by The Telegraph, Prince Harry said that his brother, Prince William, was jealous of him. “He’d love to be out here and, to be honest with you, I don’t see why he couldn’t,” Harry said. “No one knows who’s in the cockpit. Yes you get shot at, but, you know, if the guys who are doing the same job as us are being shot at on the ground, then I don’t think there’s anything wrong with us being shot at as well. Yeah, people back home might have issues with that, but we’re not special.”

Video of remarks by Prince Harry about how much his brother would like to serve in Afghanistan.

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NFL lifts suspension of Saints coach Sean Payton

NEW YORK (AP) — Sean Payton is back as coach of the New Orleans Saints.

Payton's season-long suspension for his role in the Saints' bounty program was lifted by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell on Tuesday, nearly two weeks earlier than expected.

The decision allows Payton to attend the Senior Bowl in Mobile, Ala., on Saturday, where some of the top college players available for the NFL draft will be competing.

Payton, along with assistant head coach Joe Vitt, general manager Mickey Loomis, and four players including Jonathan Vilma, was suspended after an investigation found the club had a performance pool offering cash rewards for key plays, including big hits. The player suspensions eventually were overturned.

"I clearly recognize that mistakes were made, which led to league violations," Payton said in a statement. "Furthermore, I have assured the commissioner a more diligent protocol will be followed."

The suspension was scheduled to end after the Super Bowl on Feb. 3, but was moved up after Payton and Goodell met on Monday.

"Coach Payton acknowledged in the meeting his responsibility for the actions of his coaching staff and players and pledged to uphold the highest standards of the NFL and ensure that his staff and players do so as well," Goodell said in a statement. "'Sean fully complied with all the requirements imposed on him during his suspension.

"More important, it is clear that Sean understands and accepts his responsibilities as a head coach and the vital role that coaches play in promoting player safety and setting an example for how the game should be played at all levels."

Saints owner Tom Benson welcomed back his coach.

"We are all thankful that Sean Payton has been reinstated," Benson said. "We have a lot of work to do and we are in the middle of it right now."

There remains one outstanding issue for the Saints stemming from the bounty probe: What will become of the Saints' second pick next spring. As part of the bounty punishment, Goodell fined the Saints $500,000 and took away second-round picks in 2012 and 2013. However, Goodell left open the possibility of restoring the 2013 second-rounder and instead docking the team a later-round pick if he is satisfied with the club's level of cooperation in the bounty matter.

What the Saints do know is that the 49-year-old Payton is set to return to New Orleans for the next five seasons. Earlier this month he signed a contract extension running through the 2017 season.

The coach is the last person punished in the bounty probe to return to work. Before Tuesday, Payton had not been at work since mid-April, when Goodell rejected the coach's appeal of his suspension.

Loomis was suspended for eight games, Vitt for six and former defensive coordinator Gregg Williams remains suspended indefinitely

Vilma and current Saints defensive lineman Will Smith, along with former Saints Scott Fujita and Anthony Hargrove, were given suspensions of various lengths, but never served a game. Their punishments were overturned after lengthy appeals which also coincided with exhaustive litigation in federal court.

The litigation included Vilma's defamation lawsuit against Goodell, which was dismissed by U.S. District Judge Ginger Berrigan last week.

Payton has guided the most successful period in the franchise's history, leading the Saints to three NFC South division titles and four postseason appearances. Two of his teams advanced to the NFC Championship and the 2009 squad won Super Bowl XLIV.

He is the only coach in Saints history to win a Super Bowl. But his legacy was tarnished by the NFL's bounty probe, as Goodell ruled that Payton failed to exert proper institutional control over a cash-for-hits bounty program run by Williams from 2009-2011.

Although the Saints objected to the characterization of what coaches and players have said was nothing more than a performance pool for big plays, Goodell suspended Payton for the entire season.

Payton is 62-34 in regular-season games as Saints coach and 5-3 in the postseason. During the three seasons before his suspension, the Saints won 41 regular-season and playoff games combined, more than any other team in the NFL.

Payton has primarily handled the offense in New Orleans, teaming up with quarterback Drew Brees to break numerous NFL and club records. The single-season NFL records set by the Saints in 2011 included yards passing by a team (5,505) and a quarterback (5,476). The Saints also set a record for total offensive yards with 7,474.

Without Payton on the sideline this season, the Saints missed the playoffs for the first time since 2008. Brees remained prolific, but his 18 interceptions also tied for a league high heading into the final weekend of the season.

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Well: The Appetite Workout

Every January, many people start working out, hoping to lose weight. But as studies attest, exercise often produces little or no weight loss — and even weight gain — and resolutions are soon abandoned. But new science suggests that if you stick with the right kind of exercise, you may change how your body interacts with food. It’s more than a matter of burning calories; exercise also affects hormones.

A 2012 study from the University of Wyoming looked at a group of women who either ran or walked and, on alternate days, sat quietly for an hour. After the running, walking or sitting, researchers drew blood to test for the levels of certain hormones and then directed the women to a room with a buffet. Human appetite is complicated, driven by signals from the brain, gut, fat cells, glands, genes and psyche. But certain appetite-related hormones, in particular ghrelin, which stimulates hunger, are known to be instrumental in determining how much we consume.

Studies have shown that exercise typically increases the production of ghrelin. Workouts make you hungry. In the Wyoming study, when the women ran, their ghrelin levels spiked, which should have meant they would attack the buffet with gusto. But they didn’t. In fact, after running they consumed several hundred fewer calories than they burned.

Their restraint, the researchers said, was due to a concomitant increase in other hormones that initiate satiety. These hormones, only recently discovered and still not well understood, tell the body that it has taken in enough fuel; it can stop eating. The augmented levels of the satiety hormones, the authors write, “muted” the message from ghrelin. Sitting and, notably, walking did not change the blood levels of the women’s satiety hormones, and the walkers overate, consuming more calories at the buffet than they had burned.

A related study published in December looked at the effects of moderate exercise, the equivalent of brisk jogging. It found that after 12 weeks, formerly sedentary, overweight men and women began recognizing, without consciously knowing it, that they should not overeat.

Researchers gave volunteers doctored milkshakes. Some contained maltodextrin, a flavorless sweetener that packed 600 calories into the drinks. The others, without maltodextrin, had 246 calories. Before beginning the exercise program, the volunteers ate more at a buffet lunch and throughout the rest of the day after drinking the high-calorie shake than when they were given the lower-calorie version. Their appetite regulation was out of whack.

But after three months of exercise, the volunteers consumed fewer calories throughout the day when they had the high-calorie shake than the lower-calorie one. Exercise “improves the body’s ability to judge the amount of calories consumed and to adjust for that afterward,” says Catia Martins, a professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, who led the study.

But not all exercise. Running, it would seem, better hones the body’s satiety mechanisms than walking. And longevity counts. You need to stick with the program for several months, Martins says, to truly fine-tune appetite control.

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DealBook Column: Prophesies Made in Davos Don't Always Come True

You’re going to be hearing a lot of predictions over the next several days. Be leery.

Some of the world’s biggest names in business and politics are descending on the snowy enclave that is Davos, Switzerland, for the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, which begins Tuesday evening. They are there to talk big ideas — and perhaps more important, to rub elbows and do business over Champagne and cheese fondue. (Yes, I’ll be there, too.)

Invariably, there will be panel discussions filled with provocative prognostications about the state of the economy, politics, technology and an assortment of other issues. But if you’re looking to the Alps for the wisdom of crowds, the wisdom of this crowd of the global elite may not be the most accurate.

The predictions that have emanated from Davos always have a ring of plausibility to them, in part because of the credibility of the speakers. But all too often they fall short.

Here is just one example: Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft and global philanthropist, has made the pilgrimage to the Alps for more than a decade and made a series of somewhat famous — or infamous — predictions.

When asked about Google back in 2003, he didn’t have an upbeat outlook on the company’s future nor its founders.

“These Google guys, they want to be billionaires and rock stars and go to conferences and all that,” Mr. Gates said. “Let us see if they still want to run the business in two to three years.” (Larry Page, a co-founder, is the chief executive.)

And the next year, Mr. Gates followed up that prediction with this marvel of what the future would look like: “Two years from now, spam will be resolved.” (If only.)

Broader predictions about the economy have been even more miss than hit. In 2011, ahead of what turned into a full-blown economic crisis in Europe that threatened the existence of the euro, Christine Lagarde, the French minister of finance at the time, declared: “I think the euro zone has turned the corner. Let’s not short Europe and let’s not short the euro zone.” (If you had bet against the euro zone then, you would have made a small fortune.)

And it is not just recent predictions that have been, for lack of a less polite word, off. Abby Joseph Cohen, the longtime Goldman Sachs market analyst, announced in Davos in 2000, at the height of the technology bubble, that she expected a big year for stocks, with the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index gaining 10 percent. Of course, the S.& P. 500 did nearly the opposite, falling 9.1 percent that year, followed by two more years of declines that totaled a 34 percent drop. (In fairness, Ms. Cohen revised her prognosis several months after her trip to Davos and told her clients to sell stocks.)

How’s this for an anti-prescient panel? In 2001, the World Economic Forum put together a panel on “the shape of the 21st century corporation.” Among the headliners were Ken Lay, the chief executive of Enron; Carleton S. Fiorina, the chief executive of Hewlett-Packard; and David H. Komansky, the chief executive of Merrill Lynch. (We know how their tenures turned out.)

In 2006, about a year and half before the credit crisis was upon us, Martin Halusa, the chief executive of Apax Partners, declared that he expected to see a private equity fund of $100 billion within a decade.

News flash: private equity funds have become smaller, not bigger. He has three years to see his prediction come true, so stay tuned.

And then there was Davos 2008, about eight months before Lehman Brothers collapsed and the global economy spiraled downward. What did C. Fred Bergsten, senior fellow and director emeritus of the Peter G. Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, have to say about the state of the economy? “It is inconceivable — repeat, inconceivable — to get a world recession.” (A year later, he defended his words, saying, “through the first three quarters of last year, my prediction was correct.”)

That’s not to say every prediction said in Davos is wrong. Nouriel Roubini, known as Dr. Doom, announced in Davos in 2007, “The risk of some crisis happening is rising.” And while he turned out to be right, he was roundly criticized for being too pessimistic by Michael Lewis, who wrote a critical piece about doom and gloom of some academics. His piece was titled, “Davos Is for Wimps, Ninnies, Pointless Skeptics.”

Did Mr. Roubini really know the full extent of the crisis brewing? Of course not. But directionally, he was correct.

Having said that, he was back playing Dr. Doom last year in Davos and predicted that Greece would default within a year and that Portugal was next. George Soros, the billionaire investor, was also sounding the same alarm about Greece’s eventual default. “The odds are in that direction,” Mr. Soros said. (That hasn’t come true — at least not yet.)

That same year, Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, had it right: “We know for sure that we have avoided a major, major credit crunch, a major funding crisis.” (Of course, he could help control the outcome.)

What about the wisdom of the collective crowd, not just the individual predictions? If you’re looking for the mood of the corner office — even if it is a fleeting mood — the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum is actually a pretty good litmus test.

PricewaterhouseCoopers does a survey of many of the participants that it reveals on the first night of the conference. While the results would not have helped investors in 2008 (the group was still quite bullish), listening to the results in 2009, 2010 and even 2011, the view was generally on target.

But, of course, it is the individual predictions that receive the most attention. I remember paying particular attention to this one: In 2008, the futurists and technology forecasters Peter Schwartz, a co-founder of the Global Business Network, and Paul Saffo of Stanford University declared that they expected the publication of newspapers to end by 2014. Luckily, the prediction track record in Davos isn’t great.

A version of this article appeared in print on 01/22/2013, on page B1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Prophesies Made in Davos Don’t Always Come True.

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Algerian Prime Minister Says at Least 37 Foreigners Dead in Siege

Anis Belghoul/Associated Press

Algerian Army vehicles on Sunday near a remote town in southeastern Algeria where hostages were taken in a four-day ordeal.

ALGIERS — In his first official tally of the deadly scope of Algerian hostage crisis, Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal said Monday that the known death toll among the foreign captives had risen steeply from 23 to 37, and that five additional foreigners remained unaccounted for.

In a televised news conference, Mr. Sellal also said that 29 militants were killed and that three were captured alive during the four-day ordeal that terrorized a remote Algerian gas field refining site. Two of the attackers were Canadian, he contended.

Algerian officials had been forecasting that the tally of foreign dead would rise from a preliminary estimate of 23, a concern that was reinforced by reports that a significant number of hostages from Japan and the Philippines had been killed at the site. On Monday, the Algerian prime minister said the dead came from eight different nations, without specifying which ones. He also said that one Algerian hostage had been killed as well.

Mr. Sellal was more specific about the attackers, telling the news conference that they had come from Egypt, Canada, Mali, Niger, Mauritania and Tunisia, although it was unclear how he knew for sure. Algerian officials have been saying that few if any of the attackers were believed to have been Algerian.

The prime minister asserted that the attackers had started out in northern Mali — a claim made by the attackers themselves, which had initially been dismissed by the Algerian authorities as far-fetched because the Mali border is hundreds of miles away.

But the prime minister added that the attackers had ultimately crossed into Algeria through its eastern border with Libya, which is much closer to the refining site. If true, it would serve as a powerful a reminder of Libya’s instability since the overthrow of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi more than a year ago, and of the enormous distances that complicate the monitoring of national boundaries in the vast Sahara.

“We would need two NATOs to monitor our borders,” Mr. Sellal said.

He corroborated assertions made by other Algerian officials and accounts from freed hostages that the militants had intended to destroy the gas complex and had booby-trapped some hostages with explosives.

In all, the prime minister said, 790 workers were on the site, including 134 foreigners of 26 nationalities, when it was first seized by a heavily armed militant band in one of the most brazen assaults in years.

The prime minister’s news conference represented the most detailed Algerian tally of casualties in the days of alternating standoff and confrontation that began early on Wednesday as the raiders swept in from the desert to take over the internationally managed gas plant, hundreds of miles from Algiers.

Earlier Monday, the Philippines Foreign Affairs Department announced casualties among its citizens for the first time, saying 6 Filipino hostages had been killed and four were still missing.

Additionally, citing an unidentified government source, Reuters said Algeria had informed Japan that 9 of its citizens had died — if corroborated, the highest death toll by a nation reported so far — while previous Japanese accounts had spoken of 10 unaccounted for. Officials in Tokyo declined to confirm those figures but news reports quoted Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as saying that 7 Japanese captives died and that three were still unaccounted for.

Japan’s NHK television interviewed an unnamed Algerian worker who escaped the gas plant. He said that not long after sporadic firing started, militants appeared, armed with machine guns, antitank rockets and antiaircraft missiles. He said the attackers were kind to Algerian staff members, who were given food and blankets. Their targets were the foreign workers, who were rounded up.

The first ones he saw killed were two Japanese and a Filipino, gunned down before his eyes. He said the militants made the foreign hostages wear bombs strapped onto their bodies. He fled during the army attack, and did not know if those foreigners had survived.

The standoff between several dozen radical Islamists and Algerian security services came to a bloody conclusion on Saturday when the Algerians assaulted the kidnappers’ last redoubt at the facility, where hundreds of Algerian and scores of expatriate workers were employed.

The victims — from the United States, Britain, France, Japan and other countries — were killed after hours of harrowing captivity. An unknown number of the hostages died in the assault on Saturday; Algerian officials said they also killed most of the remaining hostage takers, who they said were followers of Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a warlord linked to Al Qaeda based in northern Mali. A regional Web site reported that he had issued a video claiming responsibility for the attack.

Adam Nossiter reported from Algiers, and Alan Cowell from London. Reporting was contributed by Steven Erlanger and Scott Sayare from Paris, Alan Cowell and Stanley Reed from London, Floyd Whaley from Manila, Martin Fackler from Tokyo, Eric Schmitt and Michael R. Gordon from Washington, and Michael Schwirtz from New York.

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Harbaugh brothers take 49ers, Ravens to Super Bowl

This Super Bowl will be filled with firsts — and one significant last.

The Harbaughs, San Francisco's Jim and Baltimore's John, will be the first pair of brothers to coach against each other in the NFL title game.

Quarterbacks Colin Kaepernick of the 49ers and Joe Flacco of the Ravens each will be playing in his first Super Bowl — where success is the ultimate measure of elite QBs.

It'll be Baltimore's first crack at a championship in a dozen years, San Francisco's first in 18. They are a combined 6-0 in Super Bowls (the 49ers own five of those victories), so one club will lose the big game for the first time.

And middle linebacker Ray Lewis, Baltimore's emotional leader and top tackler, will be playing in the final game of his 17-year career before heading into retirement.

"This is our time," Lewis pronounced.

For all of those story lines, none is expected to command as much attention as Harbaugh vs. Harbaugh. The game in New Orleans on Feb. 3 was quickly given all manner of nicknames: The Brother Bowl. The Harbaugh Bowl. The Har-Bowl. The Super-Baugh.

The Harbaughs' sister, Joani Crean, wrote in a text to The Associated Press: "Overwhelmed with pride for John, Jim and their families! They deserve all that has come their way! Team Harbaugh!"

As John prepared to coach the Ravens in the AFC championship game Sunday night, he watched on the stadium's big video screen as Jim's 49ers wrapped up the NFC championship.

John looked into a nearby TV camera, smiled broadly and said: "Hey, Jim, congratulations. You did it. You're a great coach. Love you."

Less than four hours later, the Ravens won, too. Some siblings try to beat each other in backyard games. These guys will do it in the biggest game of all.

Who's a parent to cheer for?

During the 2011 regular season, the Harbaughs became the only brothers to coach against each other in any NFL game (the Ravens beat the 49ers 16-6 on Thanksgiving Day that year).

The NFC West champion 49ers (13-4-1) opened as 5-point favorites, seeking a record-tying sixth Super Bowl title to add to those won by Hall of Fame quarterbacks Joe Montana and Steve Young.

Lewis was the MVP when the AFC North champion Ravens (13-6) beat the New York Giants in 2001.

With Kaepernick's terrific passing — he was 16 of 21 for 233 yards and a touchdown in only his ninth career NFL start — and two TD runs by Frank Gore, San Francisco erased a 17-point deficit to beat the Atlanta Falcons 28-24 Sunday.

Baltimore then fashioned a comeback of its own, scoring the last 21 points to defeat the New England Patriots 28-13, thanks in large part to Flacco's three second-half touchdown tosses, two to Anquan Boldin. Lewis and the rest of Baltimore's defense limited the high-scoring Patriots to one touchdown.

In the often risk-averse NFL, each Harbaugh made a critical change late in the regular season in a bid to boost his team's postseason chances. Clearly, both moves worked.

After 49ers quarterback Alex Smith, the starter in last season's overtime NFC title game loss to the Giants, got a concussion, Jim switched to Kaepernick for Week 11 — and never switched back. Now San Francisco has its first three-game winning streak of the season, at precisely the right time.

Baltimore, meanwhile, was in the midst of a three-game losing streak when John fired offensive coordinator Cam Cameron and promoted quarterbacks coach Jim Caldwell to replace him.

The 50-year-old John is 15 months older than Jim and generally the less demonstrative of the pair, although John certainly did not lack intensity while making his case with officials a couple of times Sunday.

The ever-excitable Jim — who was treated for an irregular heartbeat in November — was up to his usual sideline antics in Atlanta.

He spun around and sent his headset flying when the original call stood after he threw his red challenge flag on a catch by the Falcons. He hopped and yelled at his defense to get off the field after their key fourth-down stop with less than 1½ minutes left. He made an emphatic-as-can-be timeout signal with 13 seconds remaining.

Expect CBS to fill plenty of time during its Super Bowl broadcast with shots of Jim, that trademark red pen dangling in front of his chest, and John, who usually wears a black Ravens hat. That is sure to be a focal point, right up until they meet for a postgame handshake in two weeks' time.

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AP Sports Writer Janie McCauley in San Francisco contributed to this report.

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Follow Howard Fendrich on Twitter at http://twitter.com/HowardFendrich

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Online: http://pro32.ap.org/poll and http://twitter.com/AP_NFL

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Recipes for Health: Lentil, Celery and Tomato Minestrone

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

If you did a lot of cooking over the Christmas and New Year’s holidays you may have some celery hearts lingering in your refrigerator. You needed a few branches for a stew, a stock, or a soup, so you bought a whole bunch, and here it is weeks later and the rest of the celery is wilting in the produce drawer.

This doesn’t have to happen if you think of this vegetable as something more than an aromatic. I’m a big fan of celery, both raw and cooked, as the main ingredient or as one of several featured ingredients in a dish. You can do the traditional thing with raw celery and dice it up and add it to a potato, tuna or egg salad, or you can make a celery salad, slicing the branches as thin as you can get them and tossing them with herbs, radishes, oil and vinegar, and blue cheese. If you are cooking with celery, don’t stop at one branch when you make soup. The celery contributes a wonderful herbal flavor dimension. It retains its texture for a long time when you cook it, so I used it as the main vegetable in a risotto and loved the way it stood up to the creamy rice.

You always see celery listed as an ingredient in tonic juices and blender drinks. It has long been used in Chinese medicine to help control high blood pressure, which makes sense because it contains phytochemicals called phthalides that reduce stress hormones and work to relax the muscle walls in arteries, increasing blood flow. The vegetable is an excellent source of Vitamins K and C, and a very good source of potassium, folate, dietary fiber, molybdenum, manganese, and Vitamin B6. Another bonus attribute – it is very low in calories. However, it is on the high side as far as sodium goes.

Lentil, Celery and Tomato Minestrone

I make minestrones like this all the time, but I hadn’t made a version with this much celery in it until I made this one, and I loved the dimension of flavor it contributes to the mix.

1 cup lentils, rinsed

1 onion, halved

A bouquet garni made with 2 sprigs each thyme and parsley, a bay leaf, and a Parmesan rind

1 1/2 quarts water

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

1 medium carrot, diced

3 celery stalks, diced

2 garlic cloves, minced

Salt, preferably kosher salt, to taste

1 28-ounce can chopped tomatoes, with liquid

Pinch of sugar

2 tablespoons tomato paste

1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley

Very thinly sliced celery, from the inner heart, for garnish

Freshly grated Parmesan cheese for serving

1. Combine the lentils, 1/2 onion and the bouquet garni with 1 quart water in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat, add salt to taste, cover and simmer 30 minutes.

2. Chop the remaining onion. Heat the olive oil in a large, heavy soup pot or Dutch oven over medium heat and add the onion, carrot, and celery. Cook, stirring often, until the onion is tender, about 5 minutes, and add the garlic and a pinch of salt. Stir together until fragrant, about 1 minute, and add the canned tomatoes with their liquid and the sugar. Bring to a simmer and cook, stirring often, for about 10 minutes, until the tomatoes have cooked down somewhat and smell fragrant.

3. Add the lentils with their broth, the tomato paste, salt to taste, an additional 2 cups water, and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat, cover, and simmer 30 minutes. Taste and adjust seasonings. Season to taste with freshly ground pepper, stir in the parsley and serve, garnishing each bowl with thinly sliced celery heart if you want some crunch, and passing the Parmesan at the table.

Yield: Serves 4 to 6 (4 if there are teen-agers in your house)

Advance preparation: This will keep for three or four days in the refrigerator. It may require thinning out. It’s even better the day after you make it. I have a teenage son and he just about polished off the leftovers – which should have served 3 – the day after I tested the recipe.

Variation: Shortly before serving add 2 cups baby spinach and simmer just until wilted.

Nutritional information per serving (4 servings): 276 calories; 4 grams fat; 0 grams saturated fat; 1 gram polyunsaturated fat; 2 grams monounsaturated fat; 0 milligrams cholesterol; 49 grams carbohydrates; 12 grams dietary fiber; 392 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste); 17 grams protein

Nutritional information per serving (6 servings): 184 calories; 2 grams fat; 0 grams saturated fat; 0 grams polyunsaturated fat; 2 grams monounsaturated fat; 0 milligrams cholesterol; 32 grams carbohydrates; 8 grams dietary fiber; 261 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste); 11 grams protein

Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health.”

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DealBook: In Euro Zone, Signs of Progress and Fears of Complacency

PARIS – This may be the year that Europe stops being the ticking time bomb of the global economy.

Ireland is on track to leave international bailout limbo by summer. Talk of Greece leaving the euro is off the table. And financial speculators have generally stopped betting the euro zone will blow up.

But even as the sense of emergency fades, Europe is potentially facing a starker problem.

For three years, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and a phalanx of policy makers have been working to shore up the euro’s foundations to prevent the currency union from unraveling. As they gather with academics, executives and various experts this week at the World Economic Forum, which opens Wednesday in Davos, Switzerland, the biggest concern is that leaders might become less vigilant now that the heat is off, ushering in a raft of new troubles that could dog the euro for years to come.

“The risk is that complacency takes hold because there is no more urgency in the crisis, and that everything that has been done up until now will be deemed sufficient,” said Jacob Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. If that happens, he warned, “Europe will turn into the next Japan, and become a permanently depressed or stagnating economic area.”

Ms. Merkel might be forgiven for feeling a sense of vindication. Her deliberate approach to crisis management and refusal to get too far ahead of German public opinion has often frustrated her euro zone peers and foreign allies. And yet, the strategy seems to have worked — so far, at least. Ms. Merkel, who is to speak at Davos on Thursday, and other European leaders have generally done just enough to contain the crisis without alienating taxpayers.

Much of the credit for the current calm in Europe goes to Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank. He appeased financial markets with his promise last summer to do whatever it took to preserve the euro, including buying the government bonds of Spain if necessary to keep a lid on the country’s borrowing costs.

The effect of Mr. Draghi’s promise has been evident: financial markets have stopped driving the borrowing costs of Spain and Italy toward the danger levels that led Ireland, Greece and Portugal to reach for international financial lifelines. Today, few people fear that Europe’s southern countries will break away from the euro union.

Other dire prospects, like Germany and other Northern European countries fleeing the euro union to avoid getting caught in a quagmire, have also dropped off the watch list. If anything, the focus of anxiety is the fiscal situation in the United States, where gridlock in Washington has become just as debilitating for the country’s finances as the euro policy paralysis was for European politicians.

“Some European policy makers who visited the United States recently were delighted to see that because of the fiscal cliff, Europe wasn’t on every channel,” said Kenneth S. Rogoff, a professor of economics at Harvard University. “There is an ecstasy over the fact that they won’t blow apart tomorrow.”

Still, Mr. Rogoff added, Europe must revive economic growth to fully address its problems. “And even if they do, that’s not a long-term solution,” he said. “They need to integrate more fully, or they will fall apart.”

Europe’s political leaders have taken important steps to improve spending discipline among euro members, to provide a financial backstop for troubled euro zone countries and to consolidate supervision of banks. Despite many imperfections, the measures seem to have been enough to convince investors that officials are slowly constructing a more resilient currency union.

“European countries have shown their resolve in making the euro a success and reaffirmed the deep political commitment to work together toward a stronger union,” Vítor Constâncio, the vice president of the European Central Bank, told an audience in Beijing on Jan. 12.

But leaders have yet to address some serious flaws in the structure of the euro zone. For example, they have not solved the problem of how to wind down terminally ill banks without sticking taxpayers with the bill. And they are far away from a deposit insurance fund for Europe, which means the risk of bank runs remains.

“In order to define a turning point, you need a lot of factors besides the stabilization of financial markets,” Mr. Draghi said this month.

But coming events could undermine confidence. Germany will hold national elections in September, which could make Ms. Merkel even more cautious than usual and stall euro zone decision making. Already, her main rivals pulled off an upset in regional elections this weekend in Lower Saxony.

Italian elections are also looming. Mario Monti, the prime minister who has restored Italy’s international credibility and is to speak at Davos on Wednesday, faces a public that is grumpy about a rollback of job protections and other policy overhauls. Silvio Berlusconi, a former Italian prime minister who presided over years of economic standstill, is attempting a populist comeback.

In France, President François Hollande’s pledge to bring the deficit down to 3 percent of gross domestic product this year to adhere to the rules governing euro membership may be challenged if France’s military engagement in Mali and the surrounding region turns into a drawn-out affair.

Across the channel, Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain, who is scheduled to speak at Davos on Thursday morning, has sounded warnings that the country might leave the European Union if changes in its administration are not made. “The danger is that Europe will fail and that the British people will drift toward the exit,” according to prepared text of a speech Mr. Cameron postponed delivering last week because of developments in the hostage crisis in Algeria.

In the meantime, the severe effects of prolonged austerity in several European countries are leaving deep social scars. Tax increases and steep spending cuts have ground many European citizens deeper than ever into hardship, prompting millions to demonstrate in Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain. Recessionary economies in those countries are expected to get worse before they improve.

In Greece, where austerity has hit the hardest, people are burning trash and wood this winter for lack of money to pay electricity bills, and the government’s efforts to enact structural overhauls needed to turn the economy around and attract foreign investors continue to lag.

And then there is Germany, which itself is being tugged into a slowdown as its cash-poor southern neighbors continue to refrain from buying Audis and other high-priced German goods.

Unemployment in the euro zone continues to climb: the jobless rate in the 17 countries of the bloc hit a record 11.8 percent in November. Youth unemployment has surpassed 50 percent in Spain and Greece, a stratosphere of despair. Thousands of bright young people continue to flee Greece, Ireland, Spain and other countries every month for the booming economies of Australia and Canada.

Portuguese workers are even going to Africa in search of a better future, as the middle class there grows along with improving economic conditions on the southern part of the African continent.

Yet painful adjustments are starting to bear some fruit. Labor costs have come down in countries including Spain and Portugal, helping make their work forces more competitive within the region. In Spain, for instance, where unit labor costs have fallen 4 percent since the onset of the financial crisis in 2008, the labor market is now so alluring that Ford, Renault and Volkswagen have announced plans to expand production there.

In addition, the alarming flight of deposits from banks in Spain has come to a stop.

The euro zone’s problems have proven an opportunity for some countries to remove structural impediments to growth. In France, where Mr. Hollande has promised to make the economy more competitive, labor unions have agreed to a deal to overhaul swaths of the notoriously rigid labor market.

The deal would tame some of the French labor code’s most confounding restrictions, including lengthy hiring and firing procedures and outsize business taxes, as the country tries to lift its competitiveness, curb unemployment and improve the budget.

“Is the worst over? Probably yes,” analysts at Barclays Capital wrote in a recent note to clients.

That will be especially true if leaders and businesses persist in using the crisis as a chance to renew European competitiveness.

While some countries may have made enough economic overhauls to enjoy substantial growth, once the crisis is past, said Nicolas Véron, a senior fellow at Bruegel, a research institute in Brussels, “there are a lot of nuts still to crack.”

Jack Ewing reported from Frankfurt.

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IHT Rendezvous: China's 'Lamborghini' Coefficient: Who's Getting Richer and Who Poorer?

BEIJING — Search the word Gini, or “jini,” for Gini coefficient, the well-known measure of income inequality, on China’s biggest microblogging site and the first result today was for Lamborghini, the Italian luxury sports car (in Chinese, the two words share a similar sound in the last part of the car’s name.)

That is very ironic because the Gini coefficient measures income inequality and the Lamborghini, which can set a buyer back $300,000, is not an uncommon sight on the streets of big Chinese cities, an object of resentment among ordinary people who view it as a symbol of how a few people are amassing tremendous wealth as many struggle with low incomes, low bank deposit rates, high property prices and persistent inflation.

In other words, income inequality in China is politically sensitive.

(The Gini index is a measure of household income inequality; zero represents perfect income equality and one, perfect inequality, a situation where one person would own all the wealth, as the World Bank explains.)

So last Friday, when the government announced China’s Gini coefficient figures for the first time in over a decade, there was excitement – and quite a bit of scorn – expressed online and in media reports as well as private conversations. Why?

According to the figures, China today is actually more equal than in 2003, the National Bureau of Statistics said.

From 2003, the Gini coefficient did indeed rise, the bureau said, from 0.479 to a high in 2008 of 0.491. But by 2012 the figure had dropped to 0.474, meaning China is a more equal society today than a decade ago – despite all those Lamborghinis on the street.

At a news conference, Ma Jiantang, the bureau director, called the rate nevertheless “relatively high,” Xinhua reported. “China must accelerate its income distribution reform to narrow the rich-poor gap,” Xinhua said.

Yet the government’s “effective measures” to “bring benefits for its people” after the gobal financial crisis began in 2008 had brought down the measure, it quoted Mr. Ma as saying.

To compare with the United States: In 2011, the Gini coefficient there was also high, at 0.477, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Xinhua quoted the United Nations as putting the “warning level” on the rich-poor gap at 0.4.

Yet in China this weekend, few believed the new figures.

Here are two lively reactions from microblogs, from a journalist and an economist who together have over six million followers:

“Please choose one: 1. Really, thank you Fatherland; 2. That’s a myth; 3. Not sure, but hurry up and increase my salary,” Shi Shusi, a journalist and social commentator, the director of the state-run Worker’s Daily Weekly, said on his Sina Weibo account to nearly 875,000 followers.

Xu Xiaonian, a professor of finance and economics at the China Europe International Business School, wrote on his Weibo account (5.5 million followers): “A journalist rang to ask me to comment on today’s macroeconomic figures. I’d have to be crazy to truthfully comment on false figures. That Gini coefficient, to use the words of Zheng Yuanjie,” a popular children’s story writer, “‘no-one would even dare to write a fairytale like that.’”

A different report, in December, by researchers at the Southwestern University of Finance and Economics in the city of Chengdu, put China’s Gini at 0.61 for 2010.

While people are by and large glad to see the government once again measuring the figure after a decade-long hiatus (which Mr. Ma explained last year was due to the fact that the government did not actually know what people in the cities were earning, as I explored in a Letter from China,) a major problem facing the government is the scale of people’s “hidden income,” estimated by the Beijing-based economist Wang Xiaolu several years ago to be about 9.3 trillion renminbi (nearly $1.5 trillion).

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