DealBook: Justice Dept. Seeks to Block Anheuser's Deal for Modelo

The Justice Department sued on Thursday to block the Anheuser-Busch InBev proposed $20.1 billion deal to buy control of Grupo Modelo of Mexico, arguing that the merger would significantly reduce competition in the American beer market.

The deal, announced last summer, would add Corona Extra to the company’s formidable stable of brands, including Budweiser and Stella Artois.

But the Justice Department said in its lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Washington, that allowing the merger to proceed would reduce competition in the beer industry across the country as a whole and in 26 metropolitan areas in particular. The combined company would control about 46 percent of annual sales in the country, the government said, far outpacing Anheuser-Busch InBev’s closest competitor, MillerCoors.

“If ABI fully owned and controlled Modelo, ABI would be able to increase beer prices to American consumers,” William J. Baer, head of the Justice Department’s antitrust division, said in a statement. “This lawsuit seeks to prevent ABI from eliminating Modelo as an important competitive force in the beer industry.”

The deal is the biggest to be opposed by the Justice Department since 2011, when it sued to block the proposed $39 billion takeover by AT&T of T-Mobile USA.

The government’s move is the first significant effort to halt widespread consolidation in the beer industry in some time. Anheuser-Busch InBev itself was the product of a blockbuster merger between two of the world’s biggest brewers, and one of MillerCoors’s parents is the acquisitive SABMiller.

In its complaint, the Justice Department said Modelo had served as a low-price counterbalance to its larger competitors, resisting the price increases Anheuser-Busch InBev has promoted regularly.

In a statement, Anheuser-Busch said, “We remain confident in our position, and we intend to vigorously contest the D.O.J.’s action in federal court.”

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Prior Problems In 787 Battery Set Off Concerns Boeing Was Aware of 787 Battery Problems Before Failure

Toru Hanai/Reuters

All Nippon Airways, the biggest operator of 787s, is holding jets at Haneda airport in Tokyo.

Even before two battery failures led to the grounding of all Boeing 787 jets this month, the lithium-ion batteries used on the aircraft had experienced multiple problems that raised questions about their reliability.

Officials at All Nippon Airways, the jets’ biggest operator, said in an interview on Tuesday that it replaced 10 of the batteries in the months before fire in one plane and smoke in another led regulators around the world to ground the jets.

The airline said it told Boeing of the replacements as they occurred but was not required to report them to safety regulators because they were not considered a safety issue and no flights were canceled or delayed.

National Transportation Safety Board officials said Tuesday that their inquiry would include the replacements.

The airline also, for the first time, explained the extent of the previous problems, which underscore the volatile nature of the batteries and add to concerns over whether Boeing and other plane manufacturers will be able to use the batteries safely.

In five of the 10 replacements, All Nippon said that the main battery had showed an unexpectedly low charge. An unexpected drop in a 787’s main battery also occurred on the All Nippon flight that had to make an emergency landing in Japan on Jan. 16.

The airline also revealed that in three instances, the main battery had failed to start normally and had had to be replaced, along with the charger. In other cases, one battery showed an error reading and another, used to start the auxiliary power unit, failed. All of the events occurred from May to December of last year. The malfunctioning batteries, made by the Japanese manufacturer GS Yuasa, were serviced by All Nippon maintenance crew members. (The battery from the plane involved in the emergency landing was sent back to GS Yuasa.)

Japan Airlines, which operates seven 787s, said Wednesday that there had been “several cases” in which maintenance crew members needed to replace 787 batteries after irregularities, but the carrier declined to give details. The switches were not considered a safety risk and were conducted “within the scope of regular maintenance,” said Kazunori Kidosaki, a company spokesman.

Kelly Nantel, a spokeswoman for the National Transportation Safety Board, said investigators had only recently heard that there had been “numerous issues with the use of these batteries” on 787s. She said the board had asked Boeing, All Nippon and other airlines for information about the problems.

“That will absolutely be part of the investigation,” she said.

Boeing, based in Chicago, has said repeatedly that any problems with the batteries can be contained without threatening the planes and their passengers.

Boeing officials said the need to replace the batteries also suggested that safeguards were activated to prevent overheating and keep the drained batteries from being recharged. Company officials said the batteries can drain too deeply if left on without being connected to power sources.  Trying to recharge such batteries could generate excessive heat, so safety mechanisms lock out any attempts to do that.

Boeing officials said that improperly connecting a battery can also render it unusable.  And they acknowledged that some of the new batteries were not lasting as long as intended. They said that could cause airlines to replace them more frequently but did not pose a safety problem.

A GS Yuasa official, Tsutomu Nishijima, said battery exchanges were part of the normal operations of a plane but would not comment further.

The Federal Aviation Administration decided in 2007 to allow Boeing to use the lithium-ion batteries instead of older, more stable types as long as it took safety measures to prevent or contain a fire. But once Boeing put in those safeguards, it did not revisit its basic design even as more evidence surfaced of the risks involved, regulators said.

Matthew L. Wald contributed reporting.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 30, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the action taken by All Nippon Airways with 10 lithium-ion batteries it replaced on Boeing 787 jets between May and December of last year. The malfunctioning batteries were sent to the airline’s maintenance department for service, not to the maker, GS Yuasa. (The battery from the plane involved in an emergency landing earlier this month was, however, sent back to GS Yuasa.)

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A-Rod implicated in PED use again as MLB probes

NEW YORK (AP) — Alex Rodriguez is in the middle of Major League Baseball's latest doping investigation after an alternative weekly newspaper reported baseball's highest-paid star was among the big leaguers listed in the records of a Florida clinic the paper said sold performance-enhancing drugs.

The Miami New Times said Tuesday that the three-time AL MVP bought human growth hormone and other performance-enhancing substances during 2009-12 from Biogenesis of America LLC, a now-closed anti-aging clinic in Coral Gables, Fla., near Rodriguez's offseason home.

The new public relations firm for the New York Yankees third baseman issued a statement denying the allegations.

New Times said it obtained records detailing purchases by Rodriguez, 2012 All-Star game MVP Melky Cabrera, 2005 AL Cy Young Award winner Bartolo Colon and 2011 AL championship series MVP Nelson Cruz of Texas.

Cabrera left San Francisco after the season to sign with Toronto, while Oakland re-signed Colon.

Other baseball players the newspaper said appeared in the records include Washington pitcher Gio Gonzalez, who finished third in last year's NL Cy Young Award voting, and San Diego catcher Yasmani Grandal.

Biogenesis, which the New Times said was run by Anthony Bosch, was located in a beige, nondescript office park. The former clinic is no longer listed as a business in its directory,

"There was a flier put out by the building management a couple weeks ago. It was put on all the doors and windows of all the offices," said Brad Nickel, who works in a cruise planning company on the floor above where the clinic was located. "It just said this guy's not really a doctor, he doesn't belong here, he's no longer allowed here, call the police or the building management if you see him."

The New Times posted copies of what it said were Bosch's handwritten records, obtained through a former Biogenesis employee it did not identify.

Bosch's lawyer, Susy Ribero-Ayala, said in a statement the New Times report "is filled with inaccuracies, innuendo and misstatements of fact."

"Mr. Bosch vehemently denies the assertions that MLB players such as Alex Rodriguez and Gio Gonzalez were treated by or associated with him," she said.

Rodriguez appears 16 times in the documents New Times received, the paper said, either as "Alex Rodriguez," ''Alex Rod" or the nickname "Cacique," a pre-Columbian Caribbean chief.

Rodriguez admitted four years ago that he used PEDs from 2001-03. Cabrera, Colon and Grandal were suspended for 50 games each last year by MLB following tests for elevated testosterone. Responding to the testosterone use, MLB and the players' union said Jan. 10 they were authorizing the World Anti-Doping Agency laboratory outside Montreal to store each major leaguer's baseline testosterone/epitestosterone (T/E) ratio in order to detect abnormalities.

"We are always extremely disappointed to learn of potential links between players and the use of performance-enhancing substances," MLB said in a statement. "Only law enforcement officials have the capacity to reach those outside the game who are involved in the distribution of illegal performance-enhancing drugs. ... We are in the midst of an active investigation and are gathering and reviewing information."

A baseball official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to make public statements, said Monday that MLB did not have any documentation regarding the allegations. If MLB does obtain evidence, the players could be subject to discipline. First offenses result in a 50-game suspension and second infractions in 100-game penalties. A third violation results in a lifetime ban.

Rodriguez is sidelined for at least the first half of the season after hip surgery Jan. 16. A 50-game suspension would cost him $7.65 million of his $28 million salary.

"The news report about a purported relationship between Alex Rodriguez and Anthony Bosch are not true," Rodriguez said in a statement issued by a publicist. "He was not Mr. Bosch's patient, he was never treated by him and he was never advised by him. The purported documents referenced in the story — at least as they relate to Alex Rodriguez — are not legitimate."

Jay Reisinger, a lawyer who has represented Rodriguez in recent years, said the three-time AL MVP had retained Roy Black, an attorney from Rodriguez's hometown of Miami. Black's clients have included Rush Limbaugh and William Kennedy Smith.

Bosch did not return a phone message seeking comment.

MLB hopes to gain the cooperation of Bosch and others connected with the clinic, another baseball official said, also on condition of anonymity because no public statements on the matter were authorized. In order to successfully discipline players based on the records, witnesses would be needed to authenticate them, the official said.

Players could be asked to appear before MLB for interviews, but the official said MLB would be reluctant to request interviews before it has more evidence.

Rodriguez spent years denying he used PEDs before Sports Illustrated reported in February 2009 that he tested positive for two steroids in MLB's anonymous survey while with the Texas Rangers in 2003. Two days later, he admitted in an ESPN interview that he used PEDs over a three-year period. He has denied using PEDs after 2003.

If the new allegations were true, the Yankees would face high hurdles to get out of the final five years and $114 million of Rodriguez's record $275 million, 10-year contract. Because management and the players' union have a joint drug agreement, an arbitrator could determine that any action taken by the team amounted to multiple punishments for the same offense.

But if Rodriguez were to end his career because of the injury, about 85 percent of the money owed by the Yankees would be covered by insurance, one of the baseball officials said.

Gonzalez, 21-8 for the Washington Nationals last season, posted on his Twitter feed: "I've never used performance enhancing drugs of any kind and I never will, I've never met or spoken with tony Bosch or used any substance provided by him. anything said to the contrary is a lie."

Colon was not issuing a statement, agent Adam Katz said through spokeswoman Lisa Cohen.

"We are aware of certain allegations and inferences," Cruz's law firm, Farrell & Reisinger, said in a statement. "To the extent these allegations and inferences refer to Nelson, they are denied."

Cruz and Gonzalez had not previously been linked to performance-enhancing drugs. Cruz hit 24 home runs last year for the Rangers.

The New Times report said it obtained notes by Bosch listing the players' names and the substances they received. Several unidentified employees and clients confirmed to the publication that the clinic distributed the substances, the paper said. The employees said that Bosch bragged of supplying drugs to professional athletes but that they never saw the sports stars in the office.

The paper said the records list that Rodriguez paid for HGH; testosterone cream; IGF-1, a substance banned by baseball that stimulates insulin production; and GHRP, which releases growth hormones.

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Associated Press writers Jennifer Kay in Coral Gables, Fla., and Curt Anderson in Miami, and AP Sports Writers Howard Fendrich and Tim Reynolds contributed to this report.

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Phys Ed: Helmets for Ski and Snowboard Safety

Recently, researchers from the department of sport science at the University of Innsbruck in Austria stood on the slopes at a local ski resort and trained a radar gun on a group of about 500 skiers and snowboarders, each of whom had completed a lengthy personality questionnaire about whether he or she tended to be cautious or a risk taker.

The researchers had asked their volunteers to wear their normal ski gear and schuss or ride down the slopes at their preferred speed. Although they hadn’t informed the volunteers, their primary aim was to determine whether wearing a helmet increased people’s willingness to take risks, in which case helmets could actually decrease safety on the slopes.

What they found was reassuring.

To many of us who hit the slopes with, in my case, literal regularity — I’m an ungainly novice snowboarder — the value of wearing a helmet can seem self-evident. They protect your head from severe injury. During the Big Air finals at the Winter X Games in Aspen, Colo., this past weekend, for instance, 23-year-old Icelandic snowboarder Halldor Helgason over-rotated on a triple back flip, landed head-first on the snow, and was briefly knocked unconscious. But like the other competitors he was wearing a helmet, and didn’t fracture his skull.

Indeed, studies have concluded that helmets reduce the risk of a serious head injury by as much as 60 percent. But a surprising number of safety experts and snowsport enthusiasts remain unconvinced that helmets reduce overall injury risk.

Why? A telling 2009 survey of ski patrollers from across the country found that 77 percent did not wear helmets because they worried that the headgear could reduce their peripheral vision, hearing and response times, making them slower and clumsier. In addition, many worried that if they wore helmets, less-adept skiers and snowboarders might do likewise, feel invulnerable and engage in riskier behavior on the slopes.

In the past several years, a number of researchers have attempted to resolve these concerns, for or against helmets. And in almost all instances, helmets have proved their value.

In the Innsbruck speed experiment, the researchers found that people whom the questionnaires showed to be risk takers skied and rode faster than those who were by nature cautious. No surprise.

But wearing a helmet did not increase people’s speed, as would be expected if the headgear encouraged risk taking. Cautious people were slower than risk-takers, whether they wore helmets or not; and risk-takers were fast, whether their heads were helmeted or bare.

Interestingly, the skiers and riders who were the most likely, in general, to don a helmet were the most expert, the men and women with the most talent and hours on the slopes. Experience seemed to have taught them the value of a helmet.

Off of the slopes, other new studies have brought skiers and snowboarders into the lab to test their reaction times and vision with and without helmets. Peripheral vision and response times are a serious safety concern in a sport where skiers and riders rapidly converge from multiple directions.

But when researchers asked snowboarders and skiers to wear caps, helmets, goggles or various combinations of each for a 2011 study and then had them sit before a computer screen and press a button when certain images popped up, they found that volunteers’ peripheral vision and reaction times were virtually unchanged when they wore a helmet, compared with wearing a hat. Goggles slightly reduced peripheral vision and increased response times. But helmets had no significant effect.

Even when researchers added music, testing snowboarders and skiers wearing Bluetooth-audio equipped helmets, response times did not increase significantly from when they wore wool caps.

So why do up to 40 percent of skiers and snowboarders still avoid helmets?

“The biggest reason, I think, is that many people never expect to fall,” says Dr. Adil H. Haider, a trauma surgeon and associate professor of surgery at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and co-author of a major new review of studies related to winter helmet use. “That attitude is especially common in people, like me, who are comfortable on blue runs but maybe not on blacks, and even more so in beginners.”

But a study published last spring detailing snowboarding injuries over the course of 18 seasons at a Vermont ski resort found that the riders at greatest risk of hurting themselves were female beginners. I sympathize.

The takeaway from the growing body of science about ski helmets is in fact unequivocal, Dr. Haider said. “Helmets are safe. They don’t seem to increase risk taking. And they protect against serious, even fatal head injuries.”

The Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma, of which Dr. Haider is a member, has issued a recommendation that “all recreational skiers and snowboarders should wear safety helmets,” making them the first medical group to go on record advocating universal helmet use.

Perhaps even more persuasive, Dr. Haider has given helmets to all of his family members and colleagues who ski or ride. “As a trauma surgeon, I know how difficult it is to fix a brain,” he said. “So everyone I care about wears a helmet.”

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BlackBerry Maker Unveils Its New Line

Marcus Yam for The New York Times

Thorsten Heins, the chief executive of BlackBerry, which was known as Research in Motion, introduces the company's new phones.

BlackBerry’s maker unveiled a new operating system and a new line of phones on Wednesday, along with a new corporate name, with the hope of restoring its products’ status as a symbol of executive cool.Analysts, technology reviewers and app developers with advance access to the BlackBerry Z10 and the BlackBerry 10 operating system have said it is the company’s first competitive touch-screen phone. But BlackBerry 10 arrives long after Apple’s iPhone and phones using Google’s Android operating system have come to dominate the smartphone market that the BlackBerry effectively created. According to IDC, BlackBerry now holds just 4.6 percent of that market, about one-tenth of its historic peak.

To emphasize the changes brought by the new operating system, Thorsten Heins, who took over as chief executive a year ago, said the company, known until now as Research In Motion, had adopted BlackBerry as its corporate name. Its Nasdaq trading symbol will become BBRY, and it will trade as BB in Toronto.

In addition to the BlackBerry Z10 phone, there will be a second model, the Q10, that includes one of the line’s signature physical keyboards.

Verizon Wireless announced that it would price the Z10 at $200 with a two-year contract. It will also be carried by AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile.

“Today represents a new day in the history of BlackBerry,” Mr. Heins said. “These BlackBerry 10 devices are absolutely the best typing experiences in the industry.”

BlackBerry said the Z10 would be available in the United States in March and in Canada on Feb. 5.

There were few surprises in the initial portion of Mr. Heins’s presentation. The company began demonstrating the touch-screen phone and operating system in May and also made prototypes available to app developers at the time. In recent weeks, photographs of the final version of the phones have made their way to various American and European technology Web sites.

Physically, the Z10 resembles an iPhone 5 with its corners snipped off.

But unlike its competitors, the Z10 lacks a button to take users back to a home page and relies entirely on users swiping their fingers across the 4.2-inch screen from different directions to summon features or menus.

While the Z10 lacks a physical keyboard, the main attraction of BlackBerrys for many current users, the company said that it had developed software which should alleviate some of the inadequacies of on-screen typing. According to BlackBerry, its software studies users’ common typing mistakes over time and then starts automatically correcting them. It will also build up a list of commonly used words and offer them as suggestions that can be selected with a flick of a finger.

While developing the new operating system, the company took great pains to improve its strained relationship with app developers. The operating system was also designed in a way that allows them to adapt Android apps for BlackBerry 10 by making some relatively minor modifications.

BlackBerry said Wednesday that more than 70,000 BlackBerry 10 apps were now available.

For corporate and government users, BlackBerry 10 server software will allow them to divide employees’ BlackBerry 10 phones into separate work and personal spheres and give I.T. managers complete control over the former.

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At War Blog: On the Job in Afghanistan, Female Soldiers Reflect

KABUL, Afghanistan — In the shadow of transport aircraft, rows of helicopters and supply pallets, women in uniform are a well-established part of the fabric of military life on bases and near the front lines in Afghanistan — a minority, to be sure, but one so common on the job that it’s hardly seen as an issue.

For active-duty military women in Afghanistan, the news of the end of the combat exclusion for women seemed far less momentous than it may have back in the United States. Not that it wasn’t seen as good news, and an important moment, but the talk here quickly turned to practicalities: what the change might mean for them, for their friends, for the women who will come after them.

The one thing soldiers wanted to make clear was that women had been there already — doing at least some of the jobs that they will now be able to do as full members of combat units rather than in external groups attached to them. And no doubt there will gradually be more of them making the shift.

“The biggest issue that America needs to understand is that we have been out there in the field, on the front lines,” said Sgt. Natasha Nelson, 23, a signal communications specialist. “There’s one of my best friends, and she’s a medic and she’s been out there on the front lines forever. From my experience, now I’ve only been in for four years, but it’s not new to us, it’s new to them,” she said, referring to the American public.

Capt. Jessica Kirkendall, 32, an intelligence officer, echoed that thought: “To an extent, it’s a reflection of what’s already on the battlefield.”

And, said Sgt. Maj. Micheal Horton, 48, it’s a natural progression. When she entered the military 24 years ago, the job of being a sapper had just opened to women. Sapper, a term popularly associated with demining, actually covers most combat engineering tasks that are done in support of combat infantry units.

“They had just opened up engineering work to females, so I got to be a heavy equipment operator,” she said. Then a few years ago the job of being a bridge crew member opened, and “that was a major thing.”

So the next step – opening all combat units to women –  seems logical, especially since the realities of the 21st-century battlefield demand that women work alongside their male counterparts. Sergeant Major Horton pointed to members of “female engagement teams,” who are attached to infantry units and tasked with gathering intelligence from female civilians, among other things, as examples of women who are already in combat situations.

“The female engagement teams are embedded with infantry — they can talk it, they can walk it, they can carry their load,” she said.

Sergeant Major Horton did, however, sound a bit regretful that the exclusion had not been lifted sooner so that she could have risen to be a commander in a combat unit. Will she benefit? “Not at my echelon – I can’t apply for any more jobs,” she said. “I could be nominated probably for some of the positions, but I still wouldn’t have had the experience as a junior commander.”

The change will make the greatest difference for young women who are just now choosing their military occupational field or are still at a fairly junior level and could switch into a combat unit and still have time to build a career.

For Sergeant Nelson, who loves her work as a signal communications specialist, there’s the opportunity to become part of an infantry unit now and go to the front lines. She’s not sure she will do that, but finally it’s at least a real prospect.

These women played down the numbers of women who would be likely to take advantage of the new opportunity. “Do I think the floodgates will open? No,” Captain Kirkendall said.

Lt. Cmdr. Laura Reshetar, 33, who formerly served as a naval surface warfare officer and is now a future operations planner at the International Security Assistance Force headquarters in Kabul, sounded palpably excited about the decision. But she agreed with Captain Kirkendall that only a small number of women would seek combat slots at first.

“Personally I think it’s awesome, but I don’t think there will be tons of women rushing to do those jobs,” she said. “It will be the alpha females: highly athletic, highly motivated.” She added that she would not choose a combat specialty in part because she eventually wants to be a mother and would worry that she would not be able to give her all to the job if she were worrying about a child.

Above all, these women felt that at last, military policy was catching up with women’s aspirations.

“It seems very undemocratic of us to say, ‘Hey you want to serve your country, great, but you can only do these certain jobs because of your gender,’” Captain Kirkendall said. “In a country that espouses this whole idea of choosing your path in life and pursuing that path to the best of your ability, it just doesn’t seem very American to say ‘except for 20 percent of you.’”

She added, “As time progresses, people will see that women are very proficient in these roles.”

Related Coverage:

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Report links A-Rod with PED use; MLB investigates

NEW YORK (AP) — Major League Baseball says it is "extremely disappointed" about a new report that says records from an anti-aging clinic in the Miami area link Alex Rodriguez and other players to the purchase of performance-enhancing drugs.

The Miami New Times said in a story Tuesday that it had obtained files through an employee at a recently closed clinic called Biogenesis.

MLB responded with a statement that says "through our Department of Investigations, we have been actively involved in the issues in South Florida." The unsigned statement also says "we are always extremely disappointed to learn of potential links between players and the use of performance-enhancing substances."

Other players on the list include Melky Cabrera, Gio Gonzalez, Bartolo Colon and Nelson Cruz. Cabrera and Colon were each suspended for failing drug tests last season. Rodriguez has admitted using steroids from 2001-03 but insisted he stopped after that.

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Well: Ask Well: Long-Term Use of Nicotine Gum

In small doses, like those contained in the gum, nicotine is generally considered safe. But it does have stimulant properties that can raise blood pressure, increase heart rate and constrict blood vessels. One large report from 2010 found that compared to people given a placebo, those who used nicotine replacement therapies had a higher risk of heart palpitations and chest pains.

That’s one reason that nicotine gum should, ideally, be used for no more than four to six months, said Lauren Indorf, a nurse practitioner with the Cleveland Clinic’s Tobacco Treatment Center. Yet up to 10 percent of people use it for longer periods, in some cases for a decade or more she said.

Some research has raised speculation that long-term use of nicotine might also raise the risk of cancer, though it has mostly involved laboratory and animal research, and there have not been any long-term randomized studies specifically addressing this question in people. One recent report that reviewed the evidence on nicotine replacement therapy and cancer concluded that, “the risk, if any, seems small compared with continued smoking.”

Ultimately, the biggest problem with using nicotine gum for long periods is that the longer you stay on it, the longer you remain dependent on nicotine, and thus the greater your odds of a smoking relapse, said Ms. Indorf. “What if the gum is not available one day?” she said. “Your body is still relying on nicotine.”

If you find yourself using it for longer than six months, it may be time to consider switching to sugar-free gum or even another replacement therapy, like the patch or nasal spray.

“Getting people on a different regimen helps them break the gum habit and can help taper them off nicotine,” Ms. Indorf said.

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The Caucus: LaHood to Leave Transportation Department

Ray LaHood, the former Republican congressman from Illinois who has run the nation’s Transportation Department under President Obama, will not serve a second term, he told department employees in a letter on Tuesday.

“I’ve told President Obama, and I’ve told many of you, that this is the best job I’ve ever had. I’m grateful to have the opportunity to work with all of you,” Mr. LaHood wrote. He cited the department’s efforts to curb distracted driving and to increase the efficiency of automobiles by raising emissions standards.

As transportation secretary, Mr. LaHood was at the center of efforts to reduce fatigue among pilots and called for greater investment in high-speed rail. He also pushed for large fines against Toyota for safety problems and for a new transportation bill in Congress.

“We have made great progress in improving the safety of our transit systems, pipelines, and highways, and in reducing roadway fatalities to historic lows,” he said. “We have strengthened consumer protections with new regulations on buses, trucks, and airlines.”

Mr. LaHood’s decision makes him the latest in a series of members of the president’s original cabinet to announce their departure in the last several weeks.

In a statement, Mr. Obama praised Mr. LaHood, the last remaining Republican from the president’s first-term cabinet, as a public servant who has been more interested in practical solutions than in partisan politics.

“Years ago, we were drawn together by a shared belief that those of us in public service owe an allegiance not to party or faction, but to the people we were elected to represent,” the president wrote. “And Ray has never wavered in that belief.”

Several people have been mentioned as possible replacements for Mr. LaHood at the Transportation Department. Among them: Antonio Villaraigosa, the Democratic mayor of Los Angeles; Ed Rendell, the former governor of Pennsylvania; Debbie Hersman, the chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board; and Jennifer Granholm, the former Democratic governor of Michigan.

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Follow Michael D. Shear on Twitter at @shearm.

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This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 29, 2013

Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this post said that Mr. LaHood was the sole Republican to serve in Mr. Obama's first-term cabinet. Robert Gates, a Republican who served as defense secretary under President George W. Bush, was re-appointed by Mr. Obama.

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Before Dawn, Funerals Begin for Victims of Brazil Nightclub Fire

SANTA MARIA, Brazil — The first funerals began before dawn on Monday for the more than 230 people killed after a fire ignited by a flare from a band’s pyrotechnics spectacle swept through a nightclub filled with hundreds of university students early Sunday in this city in southern Brazil.

The disaster in Santa Maria, a city of about 260,000 residents that is known for its cluster of universities, ranked as one of the deadliest nightclub fires. President Dilma Rousseff left a summit meeting in Chile to meet with survivors, and the government declared three days of mourning.

The circumstances surrounding the blaze, including reports that guards briefly blocked the exit, immediately raised questions about whether the club’s owners had been negligent and whether enforcement of safety measures was lacking. The police were questioning several band members and club owners.

Officials revised the toll downward overnight, according to news agency reports, to 231 from 233 — most killed by smoke inhalation — while 82 were hospitalized, at least 30 in serious condition.

“The smoke spread very quickly,” Aline Santos Silva, 29, a survivor, said in comments to the television network Globo News. “Those who were closest to the stage where the band was playing had the most difficulty getting out.”

Witnesses said the fire started about 2 a.m. after the band, Gurizada Fandangueira, began performing at the club, Kiss, for an audience made up mostly of students in the agronomy and veterinary medicine programs at a local university. Murilo de Toledo Tiecher, 26, a medical student at the University of Caxias do Sul who was at the club, said the band’s singer lighted a kind of flare and held it over his ahead, accidentally setting the ceiling on fire.

The band’s guitarist, Rodrigo Martins, told Brazilian radio that the band had played about five songs when he saw that the ceiling was on fire, according to The Associated Press. “A guard passed us a fire extinguisher,” he was quoted as saying. “The singer tried to use it, but it wasn’t working.”

He confirmed that the band’s accordion player, Danilo Jacques, 28, died, but he said five other members made it out safely.

With panic spreading, people stampeded to the exit, only to find it blocked by security guards, according to witnesses and fire officials. While it was not clear why patrons were initially not allowed to escape, it is common across Brazil for nightclubs and bars to have customers pay their entire tab upon leaving, instead of on a per-drink basis.

Survivors described a frenzied and violent rush for the main exit. Mr. Tiecher said he and his friends had to push through a crush of people to get around a metal barrier that was preventing the crowd from spilling out into the street. He said some people became trapped after they rushed into the bathroom near the exit, thinking it was a way out. Once he was outside, he said, he tried to pull others to safety.

“If we saw a hand or a head, we’d start pulling the person out by the hair,” he said in a telephone interview. “People were burned; some didn’t even have clothes.”

He said the guards initially thought that a fight had broken out inside, and that customers would use the opportunity to leave without paying their bar tabs. Only after they realized that a fire was raging inside did the security guards let the crowd go, Mr. Tiecher said.

Fire officials said they had trouble getting into the club because of the pileup of bodies at the entrance, according to news reports. Valdeci Oliveira, a local legislator, told reporters that he saw piles of bodies in the nightclub’s bathrooms. Health workers hauled bodies from the club to hospitals in Santa Maria all through Sunday morning. Some of the survivors were taken to the nearby city of Porto Alegre to be treated for burns.

The disaster recalls the 2003 blaze in Rhode Island that killed 100 people, one in 2004 in Buenos Aires in which 194 were killed, and a fire at a club in China in 2000 in which 309 people died.

Preventable disasters commonly claim lives in Brazil, as illustrated by Rio de Janeiro’s building collapses, manhole explosions and trolley mishaps. However, the nation’s civil service has grown significantly over the past decade, tax revenues are soaring and there is no shortage of laws and regulations governing the minutiae of companies large and small.

“Bureaucracy and corruption also cause tragedies,” said André Barcinski, a columnist for Folha de São Paulo, one of Brazil’s largest newspapers.

Brazilian television stations broadcast images of trucks carrying corpses to hospitals where family members were gathering. Photographs taken shortly after the blaze and posted on the Web sites of local news organizations showed frantic scenes in which people on the street outside the nightclub pulled bodies from the charred debris.

Parents and other family members wandered through Santa Maria on Sunday searching for their loved ones. “I still think she hasn’t died,” Cibela Focco, 35, whose daughter was in the nightclub and still had not been heard from, told reporters Sunday evening.

The tragedy took place in a region of Brazil where Ms. Rousseff spent much of her early political career before rising to national prominence as a top aide to former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and running for president herself. Before leaving the meeting in Chile, she appeared distraught, crying in front of reporters as she absorbed details of the blaze.

“This is a tragedy,” she said, “for all of us.”

Jill Langlois contributed reporting from São Paulo, Brazil, and Michael Schwirtz from New York.

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