Closing the Deal at the Virtual Checkout - NYTimes.com

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By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER

Shoppers rarely drive to the mall, load up their carts and then abandon them in the middle of the store. On the Web, though, it happens all the time.

In online stores, it is much easier for shoppers to fill their virtual shopping carts — and much easier for them to get distracted by an e-mail message or comparison shopping on other sites. Then there are the design flaws and technical glitches that can get in the way of closing a sale.

These problems have been around since online shopping was invented, but they have taken on more urgency in the last year as consumer spending has shriveled. So e-commerce companies are trying a variety of techniques to push shoppers through the virtual checkout line.

There are still plenty of people browsing online, but not so many buyers. In the second quarter, the number of visitors to e-commerce sites who eventually bought something shrank for most sites from the year before, by as much as 30 percent for Zappos.com and 26 percent for Gap, according to comScore.

“It’s pretty clear that people are looking at more alternatives, evaluating more options, getting better prices — but not buying,” said Gian M. Fulgoni, executive chairman of comScore.

Shoppers spent $130 billion online in the last year, according to comScore. But e-commerce sites missed out on billions more because customers abandoned their carts once they ran into problems while checking out, according to Tealeaf, a company that makes software to help e-commerce sites monitor customers’ behavior.

“The small transactions add up,” said Rebecca Ward, chief executive of Tealeaf, whose customers include Wal-Mart and Best Buy. “This is revenue that people really wanted to commit to the company and were unable to do it, and it often ends up being in the millions of dollars.”

Many shoppers fill their carts just to keep track of things they like or to check shipping rates and taxes, with little intention to buy. While there is no industrywide data, some e-commerce companies estimate that only about 3 percent of shoppers who visit an e-commerce site buy something, and when they do load their shopping carts, as many as two-thirds abandon them.

One of the biggest reasons people procrastinate more when shopping online is the fear of regret, said Dan Ariely, a professor of behavioral economics at Duke, a visiting professor at M.I.T. and author of the book “Predictably Irrational.”

It is much simpler online than offline to discover that an item you bought yesterday is on sale somewhere else today. In fact, he said, people often spend more time researching a product after buying it online than before, to prove that they should not regret the purchase.

Online retailers do a few things to fight this inclination. Zappos.com and Overstock.com inject urgency by alerting customers when an item they have put it in their shopping cart is almost sold out.

“The Internet gives us this ability to kind of have wish lists — you can look at 15 products, throw them in your cart and then sleep on it,” said Stormy D. Simon, senior vice president for branding and customer care at Overstock.com. “We incentivize them.”

Other sites have developed a new, extreme version of limited-time sales. Gilt offers items for 36 hours or until they run out, and Neiman Marcus runs two-hour, online-only sales.

“All these strategies get people to fear that they will regret not acting” instead of acting, Mr. Ariely said.

Customer reviews can also nudge would-be shoppers who are on the fence about making a purchase. A company called Bazaarvoice helps e-commerce customers, like Macy’s and Dell, publish user reviews and ratings on their sites. For a customer unsure about new shoes or a new sofa, social validation can make the difference.

Some sites try to make the check-out process easier by offering alternative ways to pay. Bill Me Later, which eBay bought last year for $820 million, lets people click one button to check out. Later, they get a bill in the mail.

TrialPay, a start-up company, lets people get a product free if they buy another product. A shopper can buy WinZip software online for $29.95, for example, or get it free by signing up for Netflix. Then Netflix pays TrialPay for bringing in the new customer.

Though the Web makes it easier for shoppers to abandon their carts, it also makes it easier for shops to track would-be customers and encourage them to buy.

“In the real world, the jeweler or optician has no way of knowing who I was or how to get me back in the store, but online you can do all that, which is why it’s such an amazing retail opportunity,” said Saul Klein, a partner at Index Ventures, which has invested in e-commerce companies, including TrialPay.

Index has also backed a start-up called Criteo, which lets e-commerce sites “follow” visitors who leave without making a purchase and show them banner ads when they visit another site. Say a shopper has been perusing digital cameras on a consumer electronics site, then goes to lunch. Later, he checks the headlines on a news site, where he is shown an ad for the digital camera site, luring him back.

Some e-commerce sites encourage shoppers to log in before they fill their carts. Then, if they leave, the site can send them an e-mail message reminding them that their cart is still there and perhaps offering a carrot, like free shipping. Tealeaf’s software can identify each registered shopper who got to a certain point in the buying process before giving up.

It also alerts shopping sites about technical problems that might otherwise have been invisible. A month ago, the clothing retailer Bluefly realized that some international shoppers were unable to check out. Using Tealeaf’s software, Bluefly discovered that the glitch had been there for a year. Instead of reporting the problem, customers had simply been leaving the site without making the purchase.

After Bluefly fixed the problem, revenue from international shoppers increased 10 percent in a month, and Matt Raines, Bluefly’s vice president for technology, estimated that the fix would result in $1.1 million in additional revenue this year.

Bluefly also runs daily promotions and timed sales and shows Bluefly ads to previous visitors when they are on other sites. It is starting to offer customers the option to save the items in their cart to buy later, and is considering running customer reviews.

“When customers are trying to purchase something, we need to do everything in our power to make sure they can do it,” Mr. Raines said.

Exercise Called Off After Turkey Excludes Israel - NYTimes.com

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By SEBNEM ARSU and ISABEL KERSHNER

ISTANBUL — A multinational air force exercise that was supposed to take place in Turkey has been postponed indefinitely after the Turks asked Israel not to participate, officials said Sunday, in a sign of the strained relations between the two allies.

The 11-day exercise, which takes place every few years, was supposed to start on Monday.

A statement on the Turkish military’s Web site said that the exercise would take place on a national level, but that international participation had been canceled after “international negotiations conducted by the Turkish Foreign Ministry.” Military officials declined to elaborate.

A Foreign Ministry official, who requested anonymity because of the delicacy of the matter, said the international exercise was postponed for technical, not political, reasons.

But another government official, who also spoke anonymously, said, “We can say that Turkey has reservations against the participation of Israel.”

The Israeli military said the exercise had been postponed “as a result of Turkey’s decision to change the list of participating countries, thus excluding Israel.”

Israel and Turkey have long been strategic allies with strong military ties. Last year, Turkey mediated indirect negotiations between Israel and Syria, and this summer Turkey and Israel carried out a joint naval exercise.

But diplomatic relations between the two nations have eroded, particularly since Israel’s three-week military offensive in Gaza last winter, in which hundreds of Palestinian civilians died. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey accused Israel of “savagery” and crimes against humanity. Israel said it was acting in self-defense to halt Palestinian rocket fire.

Separately, Mr. Erdogan said Sunday that Armenia must withdraw from the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, a day after Turkey signed an accord with Armenia to normalize relations after decades of enmity.

Sebnem Arsu reported from Istanbul, and Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem.

In Typhoons’ Wake, Filipinos Search for Victims - NYTimes.com

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By CARLOS H. CONDE

MANILA — Using picks, shovels and bare hands, rescuers and volunteers searched Sunday for bodies buried by dozens of landslides in the Philippines, as the country struggled to recover from successive typhoons that have killed more than 600 people.

The exact number of casualties from the landslides and the floods caused by the last typhoon, Parma, was hard to determine.

The National Disaster Coordinating Council reported a countrywide death toll of 193 from Parma. It takes time, however, for the council to confirm regional tolls.

The number of deaths was expected to rise as rescuers searched mountainous and interior areas in the northern Philippines, where Parma lingered for a week before leaving the country on Friday.

“Dozens of people are still missing,” said Lt. Col. Ernesto Torres, spokesman for the National Disaster Coordinating Council, according to Reuters. “We have heavy equipment there, but our rescuers are very cautious because they are also at risk.”

He continued: “As of now, food and relief materials can only be delivered by helicopters because it would take two to five days to clear up roads and bridges washed out by floods and landslides.”

In late September, Typhoon Ketsana battered Manila and nearby provinces, killing 337 people. Several areas affected by Ketsana remained flooded on Sunday.

Parma, which first hit the Philippines on Oct. 3 but returned on Thursday, caused more than $100 million in damage to crops and property. The northern Philippines, particularly central Luzon, supplies more than half of the country’s rice; Parma damaged vast tracts of paddies that were to be harvested this month.

Parma has been particularly disastrous because it hit remote, mountainous areas, where use of heavy equipment is limited.

“Much of the rescue work is done manually,” said Santos Nero, deputy secretary general of the Cordillera Peoples Alliance, a nonprofit organization that is involved in the rescue and relief operations.

The destruction has been heavy in Benguet Province, where at least six landslides were reported and where more than 150 bodies have been recovered.

Mr. Nero said damming and erosion caused by extensive mining in Benguet, which has been going on for at least a hundred years, exposed whole communities to danger. “Our worry now is that the next storm could unleash so much rain that it might break the tailings dams of these mining companies,” Mr. Nero said by telephone from Baguio City, where his group is based. “That would be the worst disaster.”

Much of Pangasinan Province, in the plains of central Luzon, was inundated by floodwaters released from several dams that submerged more than a hundred villages downstream. Residents said it rained for three consecutive days before the release of the dam water. The government, using helicopters from both the Philippine and the United States military, has resorted to airdropping relief supplies because of the isolation of many villages.

Parma not only flooded cities and towns, it also rendered major roads and highways impassable and destroyed several bridges that connect the provinces to the capital, Manila.

Pakistani Police Had Warned Military About a Raid - NYTimes.com

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By JANE PERLEZ

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The mastermind of the militant assault on Saturday that shook the heart of the Pakistani military was behind two other major attacks in the last two years, and the police had specifically warned the military in July that such an audacious raid was being planned, police and intelligence officials said Sunday.

The revelation of prior warning was sure to intensify scrutiny of Pakistan’s ability to fight militants, after nine men wearing army uniforms breached the military headquarters complex in Rawalpindi and held dozens hostage for 20 hours until a commando raid ended the siege. In all, 16 people were killed, including eight of the attackers, the military said.

The surviving militant, who was captured early Sunday morning, was identified as Muhammad Aqeel, who officials said was a former soldier and the planner of this attack and others. Mr. Aqeel, who is also known as Dr. Usman because he had once worked with the Army Medical Corps before dropping out about four years ago, is believed to be a member of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a militant group affiliated with Al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban.

The army has been promising to fight back against the fierce Taliban insurgency holed up in the tribal region of South Waziristan amid pressure from the Obama administration, which is about to secure a major aid package that would give $1.5 billion a year to the government here.

The attack on the headquarters was a signal that the Taliban insurgency had penetrated deeply into Punjab Province, where the military headquarters are located, and was no longer confined to the wild tribal areas that serve as the operational center for the Pakistani Taliban.

The militant leader, Mr. Aqeel, led the commando operation against the Sri Lankan cricket team during its visit to Lahore earlier this year, according to a senior police officer in Punjab involved in the investigation into that assault. He was also behind the suicide bombing that killed the army surgeon general in 2008, military officials said.

In a warning to the authorities in July, the criminal investigation department of the police in Punjab said the militants who attacked the Sri Lankan cricket team in March would make a similar kind of assault on military headquarters. The warning, contained in a letter to the leading intelligence agencies, predicted militants would dress in military uniforms and would try to take hostages at the headquarters.

The contents of the letter were published in the Oct. 5 editions of a leading newspaper, The News, and were confirmed Sunday by a senior official of the criminal investigation department.

The letter specifically said that militants belonging to the umbrella group of the Pakistani Taliban would join forces with two other groups, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and Jaish-e-Muhammad, to attack the military headquarters. The Pakistani Taliban took credit for the Saturday attack in a telephone call to the television network Geo.

The assault on the headquarters represented a severe breakdown in military security and intelligence for the army, which is regarded with the highest esteem among the Pakistani public and is widely considered as the one institution that can keep the fractured country together.

In London on Sunday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and the British foreign secretary, David Miliband, said the attack showed the severe threat that militants pose to stability in Pakistan. But they brushed aside a question about whether, given the increased militant activity, the Pakistani government could be trusted to keep its own nuclear weapons secure.

“In respect of the nuclear issue, there is no evidence that has been shown publicly or privately of any threat to the Pakistani nuclear facilities,” Mr. Miliband said at the news conference.

Mrs. Clinton reiterated that the Obama administration had “confidence in the Pakistani government.”

The attack on Saturday showed intimate knowledge of the layout of the military headquarters in Rawalpindi and was skillfully planned, said a retired Pakistani Army brigadier and special forces officer, Javed Hussain.

The attackers, apparently driving in one van, managed to drive easily through the first security post on the main road into the headquarters, Brigadier Hussain said. At a second security post soldiers opened fire, and four of the attackers were killed.

But four or five of the attackers survived the firefight at the second post and appeared to have made a beeline on foot for the military intelligence building, which is close to the main entrance, according to accounts from military officials.

The hostages, including soldiers and civilians, were held in two rooms in the one-story military intelligence directorate building inside the headquarters, according to several army officers, who declined to be identified because they were not authorized to speak to the news media.

Among those killed in the attack was Brig. Anwar ul-Haq, the director of security for military intelligence. He was shot in the first hour of the siege by one of the gunmen who had penetrated his building, according to relatives of the brigadier who attended his funeral Sunday.

When Brigadier ul-Haq heard shooting, he interrupted a conference he was conducting and went into the corridor with an aide, according to the relatives’ accounts. When he saw a man in military uniform with his back turned to him, the brigadier told him to flee, but instead, the man turned around and shot the brigadier, the relatives said.

The hostage-takers held their captives in at least two groups, military officials said. In one room, 22 hostages were clustered with three assailants, one of whom wore a suicide bomb jacket. There were 12 hostages in another room, where another assailant wore a suicide jacket.

In their assault to free the hostages, special commandos successfully killed one would-be suicide bomber, but other militants in the room fired at two of the commandos, killing them, a military official said.

As commandos approached the second room, another suicide bomber blew himself up, bringing down the roof and causing injuries among the captives, the military official said.

Salman Masood contributed reporting from Islamabad, Ismail Khan from Peshawar, and Waqar Gillani from Lahore.

On Cluttered Ballots of India, Families Proliferate - NYTimes.com

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By JIM YARDLEY

AMRAVATI, India — Rajendra Shekhawat, nicely polished in a pressed white shirt and neatly parted hair, his face sunburned from campaigning in the south Indian sun, says he is running for office as a common man. His pink cheeks suggest otherwise, though, since common men in India usually toil outdoors without requiring sunscreen.

Another clue is the elephant in every room in which he campaigns in this city in the state of Maharashtra: Mom. She is Pratibha Patil, the president of India.

“I’m not using my parents’ name at all,” Mr. Shekhawat, 42, stated in an upstairs office in his parents’ home, which he is indisputably using as a campaign headquarters. “I’m running on my own. But for sure, being in a political family for so many years does help me, and gives me easy accessibility for doing the work of the people.”

Democracy is built on the oft-tarnished ideal that any man or woman can get elected, but in India, home to the world’s biggest democracy, it helps to be part of a political family. The Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, scions of the governing Congress Party, is India’s version of the Kennedys. But other political dynasties, large and small, have proliferated so rapidly that many analysts believe nepotism is corroding the political system.

India’s chaotic politics can sometimes seem democratic to a fault: the election cycle rarely pauses and the country has roughly 1,050 registered national and regional political parties. But most of the major parties, including the majority Congress Party, are internally undemocratic; there are no primaries and party leaders discourage public dissent. Party bosses select candidates and have shown an increasing tendency to select their own relatives.

Here in Amravati, the decision by Congress Party leaders to run Mr. Shekhawat for Tuesday’s elections in Maharashtra State has provoked an angry backlash. He is running for a state assembly seat in the same district where his parents once held elected office. But to put him there, Congress leaders pushed aside Mr. Sunil Deshmukh, a former radiologist and two-term Congress incumbent with broad local support. Leaders offered Mr. Deshmukh the chance to run elsewhere, but he rebelled and is seeking his own seat as an independent.

“This is a fight against injustice,” declared Mr. Deshmukh, warming to his role as political insurgent. “If he is defeated, that will send a very strong message to all parties, no? If the person is only the son or daughter or a nephew of an important person, you can’t just thrust him on the people.”

Across India, political families are entrenched at every level of government and politics. At least nine of the 32 members of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s cabinet either descended from political families or have children seeking or holding office. Parliament is littered with political families; a recent study found that 31 of the 58 women elected had a husband, brother, father or father-in-law in politics.

The trend is even more glaring at the state level. In Maharashtra, analysts estimate that 30 or more party candidates running this month are from political families. The state’s chief minister, the top executive post, is the son of a former chief minister. This is also the case in two other states while the Congress Party is strongly considering replacing the late chief minister of Andhra Pradesh with his son.

“It has gotten into the DNA of the Indian political system,” said Jagdeep Chhokar, a founding member of the Association for Democratic Reform in New Delhi. “To control the workings of the party, the leader depends on trusted people. And one of the traditions of Indian culture is that you trust family members more than outsiders.”

Indian politics have a high turnover rate and voting blocs can be defined by region, religion, caste or community. Yet analysts say Indian voters favor a familiar family pedigree, partly because of a cultural reverence for the family and because of habits in some regions that trace back centuries. Several of the royal families who ruled over feudal states have today evolved into political families.

Modern India’s political marketplace is so crowded with parties and candidates that the “brand” of a familiar family name can bring an advantage, several analysts say. And the closed nature of political parties often perpetuates the dynastic problem; in several cases, rebels who broke from one party have formed their own and installed relatives around them.

Few political families are eager to step away from the power and lucre of office. In the state of Haryana, which has several local political dynasties, a recent study concluded that incumbents running for re-election had increased their personal wealth, on average, by 388 percent during their five years in office.

“Every political family these days is keen to keep someone in the field,” said Suhas Palshikar, who teaches politics at Pune University in Maharashtra. “Lots of resources are involved. Lots of networks are involved. And to put it crudely, a lot of money is involved.”

Mrs. Patil, 74, the Indian president, has less than three years remaining in her term. The position of president is largely ceremonial, with real power invested in the prime minister and his cabinet, though the presidency does command deference. Mrs. Patil’s press officer said the president had not been involved in her son’s candidacy but that the son, like anyone, has a constitutional right to seek office.

Her son’s opponents belittle any suggestion that his family did not orchestrate his candidacy and call him a carpetbagger who has spent much of his life away from Amravati, returning only in the past year after his political ambitions had been kindled.

“His only asset is his mom,” said Dr. Pradeep Shingore, 56, a cardiologist who is the Bharatiya Janata Party candidate for the seat. “Politics is being used as ancestral property.”

On a cloudless morning in one of the city’s slums, the incumbent, Mr. Deshmukh, led supporters on a padyatra, or foot march, a ritual in Indian politicking. Sprinkled in the crowd were the mayor and 20 other local officials from the Congress Party who are defiantly supporting him.

“People are very angry,” said Ashok Dongre, the mayor. “These families are not good for democracy because the common person, the party worker in the field, should be encouraged to go for higher positions. If you do not do that, how will the party succeed?”

Many observers consider Mr. Deshmukh the favorite in the race, though he faces practical obstacles. Every candidate on the ballot is accompanied by a party symbol, which provides a guide for illiterate rural voters. The Congress symbol, an open hand, is iconic in India. But as an independent, Mr. Deshmukh had no symbol; after considering choices offered by the election bureau, he decided upon an image of a television.

“He has come to seek your blessing!” a campaign worker shouted in the slum as others waved banners with the television image. “His symbol is television! Tee-vee! Tee-vee! Tee-vee!”

For his part, Mr. Shekhawat, the president’s son, brushes aside criticism of his candidacy. He is making his first run for office after working for an educational institute controlled by his family and has spent more than a decade working inside the Congress Party. He says Mr. Deshmukh has failed to promote development projects adequately and accuses him of the political sin of disloyalty.

“This kind of defiance shows indiscipline,” Mr. Shekhawat said. “Nobody is above the party. Nobody.”

Nepotism presents an especially complicated question for the Congress Party and the Gandhi dynasty. Rahul Gandhi, the presumptive heir to the party, has been visiting poor villages while promoting the idea of making the party more open and internally democratic. As part of his tour, Mr. Gandhi appeared Friday in Amravati for a rally with local Congress candidates.

On the stage with him was the president’s son.

Hari Kumar contributed reporting.

2 State Races May Put Lens on President - NYTimes.com

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By ADAM NAGOURNEY

LEESBURG, Va. — When President Obama captured the White House nearly a year ago, his victory in Virginia was, for many Democrats, one of the most heartening moments of the night.

He was the first Democratic presidential candidate to win this state since 1964, assembling a coalition — independent voters, economically distressed rural Democrats and blacks — that his party saw as evidence that it could take and hold Republican-leaning areas across the nation.

But things are different today. At a time when Mr. Obama’s national approval ratings have declined, a Democratic candidate for governor, R. Creigh Deeds, is struggling to keep Virginia in the Democratic column.

The strong sentiment against George W. Bush that reverberated throughout this state one year ago has dissipated; Mr. Obama’s policies have become a flash point for Mr. Deeds’s Republican opponent, Robert F. McDonnell, who has used it to draw independents to his camp.

There are two big elections in 2009 — the contest for governor here and one in New Jersey where Gov. Jon Corzine, a Democrat, is struggling to survive in a spirited three-way race.

Off-year elections are prone to overinterpretation, and governor’s races tend to be determined by the quality of the candidates and local issues rather than national politics; overcrowded highways are the biggest topic this year in Virginia.

For all that, Virginia, a laboratory for many of the ways Mr. Obama tried to change the ideological appeal and tactics of his party, is looming as an early if imprecise test of this president and his policies.

It is measuring the ability of Mr. Obama to build a coalition and hold it together during tough political battles in Washington. It could be an early gauge of whether Mr. Obama and his party have now taken political ownership of the rising unemployment rate and the continued sense of economic anxiety that he used a year ago to the advantage of Democrats. Most ominously, it is signaling the problem Democrats might have in the midterm Congressional elections next year with independent voters, upset with Mr. Obama over increasing deficits and his advocacy of big-government programs.

A White House that has shown no hesitation to delve into state races — Mr. Obama is planning to make at least one more trip to New Jersey on behalf of Mr. Corzine, aides said — has been struggling to figure out how to deal with Virginia. Mr. Deeds’s aides have pleaded with the White House to send Mr. Obama into the state; it has yet to agree.

“The most precious commodity we have is the president’s time, and we have to appropriate it on a rational basis between now and Election Day,” said David Axelrod, a senior adviser to Mr. Obama.

Their apprehension was underscored on Friday after The Washington Post published a poll showing that Mr. McDonnell’s lead over Mr. Deeds had expanded in recent weeks to nine percentage points, 53 percent to 44 percent. A month earlier, Mr. McDonnell had led by 4 points.

Among independent voters, Mr. Deeds trailed Mr. McDonnell by 21 points in a recent poll.

Mr. Obama’s advisers argued that it would be a mistake to draw any national lessons from Virginia. Democrats won races for governor in both Virginia and New Jersey in 2001, and Mr. Bush went on to win re-election easily in 2004. And for more than 30 years, the party that has won the White House has in the following year lost the Virginia governor’s seat.

“I would just hesitate to make sweeping judgments about what does this mean in the here and now in terms of health care, and also the 2010 Congressional races in both states and the 2012 presidential election,” said David Plouffe, who was Mr. Obama’s campaign manager.

But Mr. McDonnell said in an interview that one reason he was doing so well was that Mr. Deeds was paying a price for what Democrats were doing in Washington.

“There are blocs of independent voters that are being driven over — or inclined to support me — because they are very concerned about these federal policies: its spending and the new intrusions into the free enterprise system,” Mr. McDonnell said. “Those voters probably leaned toward President Obama in the last cycle. But when voters see specifics — cap and trade, card check, unfunded mandates — I think some bloc of voters said, ‘This is not the change we thought we are getting, and because we are fiscally conservative, we are going to take another look at the Republican candidate for governor.’ ”

Nick Ayres, the executive director of the Republican Governors Association, which has spent over $5 million here to try to put Virginia back in the Republican column, said Mr. Obama and his party would certainly suffer damage should Mr. Deeds lose. “This is a state that Obama won by seven points,” he said, adding: “They don’t want this to be their Olympics Part II.”

In New Jersey, Mr. Corzine is struggling in his bid for re-election against Christopher J. Christie. A Democratic loss there would be an embarrassment for this White House and provide a jolt of energy to a Republican Party at a crucial time, as it is recruiting candidates and raising money for the midterm elections. Republicans in 1993 won the governors’ races in New Jersey and Virginia and went on to capture Congress in 1994.

However, because of Mr. Corzine’s deep unpopularity in that state, it is not as clear that a Democratic defeat there would offer lessons that go beyond New Jersey.

In Virginia, Mr. Deeds has made efforts to put some distance between himself and Mr. Obama, including saying he was not an Obama Democrat. In an interview, he said his difficulties to date were the result of the tough economy. The current governor, Tim Kaine, is a Democrat who is barred from seeking re-election because of term limits.

“Right now, the economy is in tough shape, and they are seeing these elections through those lenses,” Mr. Deeds said. “People are concerned about the economy, and that is our headwind.”

Still, Mr. Deeds seems ambivalent about the president, inviting him to campaign here even as he places at least some of the blame for his troubles on what Democrats are doing in Washington.

Mr. Deeds said that Democrats should not be overly confident about Virginia and suggested that in some ways, Mr. Obama had enjoyed a unique success, given his particular appeal.

“With so much economic turmoil, Barack Obama was a hope agent,” he said. “He’s a leader and dealer in hope. A merchant of hope.”

“He was here once, and I expect him to come back again,” Mr. Deeds said.

Civilian Goals Largely Unmet in Afghanistan - NYTimes.com

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By ELISABETH BUMILLER and MARK LANDLER

WASHINGTON — Even as President Obama leads an intense debate over whether to send more troops to Afghanistan, administration officials say the United States is falling far short of his goals to fight the country’s endemic corruption, create a functioning government and legal system and train a police force currently riddled with incompetence.

Interviews with senior administration and military officials and recent reports assessing Afghanistan’s progress show that nearly seven months after Mr. Obama announced a stepped-up civilian effort to bolster his deployment of 17,000 additional American troops, many civil institutions are deteriorating as much as the country’s security.

Afghanistan is now so dangerous, administration officials said, that many aid workers cannot travel outside the capital, Kabul, to advise farmers on crops, a key part of Mr. Obama’s announcement in March that he was deploying hundreds of additional civilians to work in the country. The judiciary is so weak that Afghans increasingly turn to a shadow Taliban court system because, a senior military official said, “a lot of the rural people see the Taliban justice as at least something.”

Administration officials describe Mr. Obama as impatient with the civilian progress so far. “The president is not satisfied on any of this,” said a senior administration official, who asked for anonymity so that he could more freely discuss internal deliberations at the White House.

The disputed Aug. 20 Afghan election has laid bare the ineffectiveness of the government of President Hamid Karzai, administration officials said, and frozen steps toward reform.

The vote was so tainted by evidence of fraud and irregularities that no clear winner emerged.

Even before the election, a January Defense Department report assessing progress in Afghanistan concluded that “building a fully competent and independent Afghan government will be a lengthy process that will last, at a minimum, decades.”

Administration officials blamed the election for many of the setbacks and said a resolution to the vote — which some fear will not happen until next spring — would put them in a better position to move forward on civilian reforms.

“It was always regarded as hard to do, and it was very much keyed to having a successful election,” said Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who coordinated the Obama administration’s initial review of Afghanistan policy in the spring. “Instead we had a fiasco.”

The questions within the White House over the Afghan government’s dysfunction have to some extent been obscured by the loud public debate in recent weeks about whether to increase troop levels and by how much.

Officials said over the weekend that Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top NATO commander in Afghanistan, had prepared options that include a maximum troop increase of about 80,000, a number highly unlikely to be considered seriously by the White House. Much of the official focus has been on a lower option that the general presented, for 40,000 additional troops. The United States currently has about 68,000 troops in the country.

Administration officials said there had been progress on Afghan education and access to health care, and claimed some success on a nascent antinarcotics campaign that has phased out efforts to eradicate poppy crops, used for opium, and stepped up interdiction and incentives for Afghan farmers to grow wheat. Tom Vilsack, the secretary of agriculture, is to promote the effort in a trip to Afghanistan in December, officials said.

State Department officials also said they were close to their target of having 974 aid workers in Afghanistan by year’s end as part of what they called Mr. Obama’s civilian “surge.” They said 575 civilians were on the ground now.

“From the very start, there was an understanding that we need to move quickly,” Jacob J. Lew, the deputy secretary of state overseeing the civilian deployment, said in a telephone interview. “We feel very good about the people we’re sending out. They’re motivated, they’re prepared, they’re brave.”

But Henry Crumpton, a former top C.I.A. and State Department official who is an informal adviser to General McChrystal, called those stepped-up efforts inadequate. “Right now, the overwhelming majority of civilians are in Kabul, and the overwhelming majority never leave their compounds,” said Mr. Crumpton, who recently returned from a trip to Afghanistan. “Our entire system of delivering aid is broken, and very little of the aid is getting to the Afghan people.”

Anthony H. Cordesman, a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who has advised General McChrystal, said that while progress had been made since 2001, when American-led forces toppled the Taliban, the overall effort “has been a nightmare; vast amounts have been wasted.”

Since 2001, the United States has allocated nearly $13 billion for civilian aid to Afghanistan, officials at the State Department said, and other countries have given or promised billions more. But in a sign of the difficulties of working with one of the poorest countries in the world, the Defense Department report in January noted that although the Afghan Ministry of Finance is responsible for tracking international aid, there is “no reliable data on the total amount of international assistance that has been pledged or dispersed to the country.”

So far, even determining how to judge progress has been a challenge for the administration.

When Mr. Obama announced his strategy in March, he promised benchmarks to assess how the administration was doing. Those benchmarks, 46 in all, were provided in draft form to Congress only last month, and members of both parties immediately called them too vague.

But the standards set out by Mr. Obama in a report that accompanied his March announcement made clear the overwhelming work to be done. Among other things, the report called for “a dramatic increase in Afghan civilian expertise,” “engaging the Afghan government and bolstering its legitimacy” and “breaking the link between narcotics and the insurgency.”

Richard C. Holbrooke, the administration’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said in a telephone interview last week that 50 to 65 civilian agricultural workers would soon be helping farmers in Afghanistan, up from the current 11. He also said it made sense to give farmers incentives to grow wheat rather than destroy their poppy crops, which he said were not as indispensable to Taliban financing as previously thought.

“We were taking a huge propaganda hit and accomplishing nothing,” Mr. Holbrooke said.

Advisers to the administration said the military was likely to do much of the civilian work in the foreseeable future, at least until Afghanistan is more secure.

Administration officials reported some success in training the Afghan Army, but acknowledged a failure to build up the Afghan police force, which is widely considered corrupt and feckless.

Mark Mazzetti, Thom Shanker and Peter Baker contributed reporting.

U.S. Can’t Trace Foreign Visitors on Expired Visas - NYTimes.com

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By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr. and JULIA PRESTON

DALLAS — Eight years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and despite repeated mandates from Congress, the United States still has no reliable system for verifying that foreign visitors have left the country.

New concern was focused on that security loophole last week, when Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, a 19-year-old Jordanian who had overstayed his tourist visa, was accused in court of plotting to blow up a Dallas skyscraper.

Last year alone, 2.9 million foreign visitors on temporary visas like Mr. Smadi’s checked in to the country but never officially checked out, immigration officials said. While officials say they have no way to confirm it, they suspect that several hundred thousand of them overstayed their visas.

Over all, the officials said, about 40 percent of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States came on legal visas and overstayed.

Mr. Smadi’s case has brought renewed calls from both parties in Congress for Department of Homeland Security officials to complete a universal electronic exit monitoring system.

Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, the senior Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said the Smadi case “points to a real need for an entry and exit system if we are serious about reducing illegal immigration.”

Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York and chairman of the Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on immigration, said he would try to steer money from the economic stimulus program to build an exit monitoring system.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, immigration authorities, with more than $1 billion from Congress, have greatly improved and expanded their systems to monitor foreigners when they arrive. But despite several Congressional authorizations, there are no biometric inspections or a systematic follow-up to confirm that foreign visitors have departed.

Homeland security officials caution that universal exit monitoring is a daunting and costly goal, mainly because of the nation’s long and busy land borders, with more than one million crossings every day. The wrong exit plan, they said, could clog trade, disrupt border cities and overwhelm immigration agencies with information they could not effectively use.

Since 2004, homeland security officials have put systems in place to check all foreigners as they arrive, whether by air, sea or land. Customs officers now take fingerprints and digital photographs of visitors from most countries, instantly comparing them against law enforcement watch list databases. (Canadians and Mexicans with special border-crossing cards are exempt from those checks.)

But homeland security officials said that a series of pilot programs since 2004 had failed to yield an exit monitoring system that would work for the whole nation. They have not yet found technology to support speedy exit inspections at land borders. And airlines balked at an effort last year by the Bush administration to make them responsible for taking fingerprints and photographs of departing foreigners.

The current system relies on departing foreigners to turn in a paper stub when they leave.

Last year, official figures show, 39 million foreign travelers were admitted on temporary visas like Mr. Smadi’s. Based on the paper stubs, homeland security officials said, they confirmed the departure of 92.5 percent of them. Most of the remaining visitors did depart, officials said, but failed to check out because they did not know how to do so. But more than 200,000 of them are believed to have overstayed intentionally.

Immigration authorities have put in place a separate system for keeping track of foreigners who, unlike Mr. Smadi, come on student visas. That system has proved effective at confirming that the students have stayed in school and do not overstay their visas, officials said.

Immigration analysts said that given the difficulties of enforcing the United States’ vast borders, it remains primarily up to law enforcement officials to thwart terrorism suspects who do not have records that would draw scrutiny before they enter the United States.

“You can’t ask the immigration system to do everything,” said Doris Meissner, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, a research center in Washington, and a former commissioner of the immigration service. “This is an example of how changes in law enforcement priorities and techniques since Sept. 11 actually got to where they should be.”

Mr. Smadi, like many tourists who overstay visas, was able to fade easily into society and encountered few barriers to starting a life here, according to court documents and people who know him. He enrolled in high school, obtained a California identification card, landed jobs in two states and rented a string of apartments and houses. He bought at least two used cars, and even procured a handgun and ammunition.

Mr. Smadi’s arrest on Sept. 24 for the attempted bombing was not his first encounter with American law enforcement. Two weeks earlier, a sheriff’s deputy in Ellis County, Tex., pulled him over for a broken tail light just north of the town of Italy, then arrested him for driving without a license or insurance.

When the deputy checked his identity, Mr. Smadi’s name showed up on a watch list by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which was already investigating him. But the background check turned up no immigration record. The deputy called the F.B.I. and was told there was no outstanding arrest warrant for Mr. Smadi. So on the evening of Sept. 11, Mr. Smadi paid a $550 fine and walked out of the county jail.

“There was nothing to indicate to us that this person was currently in the States illegally,” said Chief Deputy Dennis Brearley.

Mr. Smadi had come to the United States from Jordan in early 2007 on a six-month tourist visa, immigration officials say.

For a few weeks he stayed in San Jose, Calif., with Hana Elrabodi, a retired Jordanian businessman who knew his family, according to Mr. Elrabodi’s wife, Temina. Though Mr. Smadi was not authorized to work, he found a job at a local restaurant. In late March, Mr. Smadi obtained a California identification card using Mr. Elrabodi’s address.

In October 2007, Mr. Smadi moved into an apartment in Santa Clara with his younger brother, Hussein Smadi, and another man he identified as his cousin, according to the manager of the apartment complex, Joe Redzovic. Mr. Smadi took another job, in a falafel restaurant, and in the winter he briefly enrolled in the Santa Clara High School.

After a fire gutted his Santa Clara apartment, Mr. Smadi moved to Dallas. Though his visa had expired by April 2008, he landed a job working behind the counter at Texas Best Smokehouse in Italy, Tex., about 45 miles from Dallas. He rented a bungalow nearby, using his California identification and passing a criminal background check, said his former landlord, David South.

Three months later, Mr. Smadi married one of his co-workers, Rosalinda Duron. They separated in the fall of 2008 after only three months, Ms. Duron said.

Investigators have found no evidence that Mr. Smadi, during his first year in the United States, openly espoused Islamic fundamentalism. Neither have they found any evidence that he received terrorist training abroad or came to the United States intending to commit a terrorist act, said Mark White, a spokesman for the F.B.I. in Dallas.

But by the spring of 2008, he caught the attention of the F.B.I. by posting incendiary remarks about wanting to kill Americans on Jihadist Web sites. Over the summer, he met with agents posing as members of Al Qaeda and planned to bomb the Fountain Place office building in downtown Dallas, according to an indictment unsealed on Thursday.

His arrest on terrorism charges came after he parked a truck that he had been told was carrying explosives in the building’s underground garage, according to court documents.

When the F.B.I. later searched his residence, they found a Beretta 9 millimeter pistol and a box of ammunition, along with his passport and the expired visa, the court documents show.

At March, Gay Rights Activists Push for Nationwide Equality - washingtonpost.com

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March Pushes Marital, Military Equality

By Nelson Hernandez and Yamiche Alcindor
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, October 12, 2009

Tens of thousands of gay-rights activists marched Sunday in Washington to show President Obama and Congress that they are impatient with what they consider piecemeal progress and are ready to fight at the federal level for across-the-board equality, including for the right to marry and the right to serve in the military.

Key votes on same-sex marriage are coming up in the District and Maine, and Obama reiterated his campaign promise Saturday to end the "don't ask, don't tell" policy that forces gay and lesbian members of the armed forces to keep their sexual orientation a secret.

But organizers of the National Equality March and its participants said they want to shift the political effort toward seeking equality in all states, rather than accepting just local and state-level victories.

"We're not settling," said Cleve Jones, co-chairman of the march and founder of the Names Project, the AIDS memorial quilt that recognizes Americans who have died from HIV- or AIDS-related causes. "There's no such thing as a fraction of equality. We want equal protection under the law."

The march was coordinated by Equality Across America, a group formed this year. Organizers said they represent those who want immediate fundamental change in the legal status of gays, as opposed to those who think patience is needed as legal obstacles are overcome.

Some in the latter group are political veterans, such as Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), the highest-ranking openly gay political figure in the United States. Last week, Frank said he thought the march was "useless," a remark that was attacked at the rally.

"How many more tears should be shed before some politicians in a backroom can decide it is convenient to join us and fight for our freedom?" asked David Mixner, a longtime activist who spoke at the rally.

Attendees expressed complicated feelings about Obama. Nearly every person interviewed said he or she had voted for him, but many people said they were disappointed by what they see as a lack of action on key gay-rights issues, such as letting gays serve openly in the military.

Thousands of people marched from McPherson Square, a few blocks from the White House, down Pennsylvania Avenue, chanting "President Obama: Let mama marry mama!" and "L, G, B, T -- We demand equality!"

Marchers carried signs reading "We Won't Wait for Full Equality" and "Mind Your Own Marriage." Spectators watched from the street and the roof of the Newseum, many cheering the participants. As the march ended about 2:30 p.m., people gathered on Capitol Hill for a rally.

Many supporters identified themselves as heterosexual, carrying signs with such slogans as "I'm Not Queer But I'm Here."

Organizers seemed surprised by the turnout.

"They told me that you didn't care and you wouldn't come," Mixner told the crowd. "The president asked us to help him, and help him we will."

The march occurred at a critical time for the gay-rights movement, with a president who has vowed to fight for equality and Democrats in control of Congress.

Obama pledged Saturday night at a fundraising dinner for the Human Rights Campaign that he would end the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy, but he provided no specifics on how. Many gay activists said that they are tired of waiting and that he should immediately move to repeal the military's policy and the Defense of Marriage Act.

Sue Null, 72, walked near the White House holding a sign that said "My Gay Children Deserve Rights."

The retired teacher said she traveled nine hours from Brevard, N.C., with dozens of others to represent children who were too busy working to make the trip. Of her four children, two are gay, she said.

"It's painful as a mother," she said. "It's discouraging. Every parent wants their children to have opportunities. But that's not what our government is about. I've seen nothing from the Obama administration."

Others seemed more hopeful.

"I love President Obama," said Kendra Bopp of Ashtabula, Ohio. "He's not perfect, but his heart's in the right place, and he's trying."

On Tuesday, David A. Catania (I-At Large), an openly gay member of the D.C. Council, introduced a bill that would allow same-sex marriages in the nation's capital. Council members have said they want to pass the measure by Christmas.

Maine is holding a referendum Nov. 3 that could overturn a state law approved in May that allows same-sex marriage. The vote is seen as a bellwether; five other states have legalized same-sex marriage, but none has done it with the affirmation of a popular vote.

Some District residents said they can taste victory.

Matthew Fornataro and William Dooner, a D.C. couple together for 3 1/2 years, said they want to get married as soon as the city will allow.

"Our country was founded on the idea all people are created equal," Fornataro said. "We as a country need to stand up for the ideals the founders based it on."

"D.C. is our nation's capital," said Jamie Stephens, who lives in the District. "If D.C. goes someplace, the rest of the nation is sure to follow. This is just a great steppingstone."

In India, More Women Demand Toilets Before Marriage - washingtonpost.com

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By Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, October 12, 2009

NILOKHERI, India -- An ideal groom in this dusty farming village is a vegetarian, does not drink, has good prospects for a stable job and promises his bride-to-be an amenity in high demand: a toilet.

In rural India, many young women are refusing to marry unless the suitor furnishes their future home with a bathroom, freeing them from the inconvenience and embarrassment of using community toilets or squatting in fields.

About 665 million people in India -- about half the population -- lack access to latrines. But since a "No Toilet, No Bride" campaign started about two years ago, 1.4 million toilets have been built here in the northern state of Haryana, some with government funds, according to the state's health department.

Women's rights activists call the program a revolution as it spreads across India's vast and largely impoverished rural areas.

"I won't let my daughter near a boy who doesn't have a latrine," said Usha Pagdi, who made sure that daughter Vimlas Sasva, 18, finished high school and took courses in electronics at a technical school.

"No loo? No 'I do,' " Vimlas said, laughing as she repeated a radio jingle.

"My father never even allowed me an education," Pagdi said, stroking her daughter's hair in their half-built shelter near a lagoon strewn with trash. "Every time I washed the floors, I thought about how I knew nothing. Now, young women have power. The men can't refuse us."

Indian girls are traditionally seen as a financial liability because of the wedding dowries -- often a life's savings -- their fathers often shell out to the groom's family. But that is slowly changing as women marry later and grow more financially self-reliant. More rural girls are enrolled in school than ever before.

A societal preference for boys here has become an unlikely source of power for Indian women. The abortion of female fetuses in favor of sons -- an illegal but widespread practice -- means there are more eligible bachelors than potential brides, allowing women and their parents to be more selective when arranging a match.

"I will have to work hard to afford a toilet. We won't get any bride if we don't have one now," said Harpal Sirshwa, 22, who is hoping to marry soon. Neem tree branches hung in the doorway of his parents' home, a sign of pride for a family with sons. "I won't be offended when the woman I like asks for a toilet."

Satellite television and the Internet are spreading images of rising prosperity and urban middle-class accouterments to rural areas, such as spacious apartments -- with bathrooms -- and women in silk saris rushing off to the office.

India's rapid urbanization has also contributed to rising aspirations in small towns and villages. On a crowded highway that runs into this village, about 170 miles north of New Delhi, young women, once seen clinging to the backs of motorbikes driven by their fathers or husbands, now drive their own scooters. One recent popular TV ad shows a rural girl sheepishly entering a scooter showroom, then beaming as she whizzes through the parking lot on her new moped.

With economic freedom, women are increasingly expecting more, and toilets are at the top of their list, they say.

The lack of sanitation is not only an inconvenience but also contributes to the spread of diseases such as diarrhea, typhoid and malaria.

"Women suffer the most since there are prying eyes everywhere," said Ashok Gera, a doctor who works in a one-room clinic here. "It's humiliating, harrowing and extremely unhealthy. I see so many young women who have prolonged urinary tract infections and kidney and liver problems because they don't have a safe place to go."

Previous attempts to bring toilets to poor Indian villages have mostly failed. A 2001 project sponsored by the World Bank never took off because many people used the latrines as storage facilities or took them apart to build lean-tos, said Ranjana Kumari, director of the Center for Social Research in New Delhi, who worked on the program.

But by linking toilets to courtship, "No Toilet, No Bride" has been the most successful effort so far. Walls in many villages are painted with slogans in Hindi, such as "I won't get my daughter married into a household which does not have a toilet." Even popular soap operas have featured dramatic plots involving the campaign.

"The 'No Toilet, No Bride' program is a bloodless coup," said Bindeshwar Pathak, founder of Sulabh International, a social organization, and winner of this year's Stockholm Water Prize for developing inexpensive, eco-friendly toilets. "When I started, it was a cultural taboo to even talk about toilets. Now it's changing. My mother used to wake up at 4 a.m. to find someplace to go quietly. My wife wakes up at 7 a.m., and can go safely in her home."

Pathak runs a school and job-training center for women who once cleaned up human waste by hand. They are known as untouchables, the lowest caste in India's social order. As more toilets come to India, the women are less likely to have to do such jobs, Pathak said.

"I want so much for them to have skills and dignity," Pathak said. "I tell the government all the time: If India wants to be a superpower, first we need toilets. Maybe it will be our women who finally change that."

Obama Urged to Intensify Push for Climate Measure - washingtonpost.com

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By Juliet Eilperin and Michael D. Shear
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, October 12, 2009

President Obama is coming under renewed pressure internationally and in the United States to throw his weight behind climate-change legislation, which advocates fear has suffered in light of the president's sweeping domestic agenda.

The Nobel committee's announcement Friday that Obama won the Peace Prize was a fresh reminder that much of the world expects him to lead the way toward a global climate pact. The committee cited his "more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges."

And in Washington, advocates are clamoring for more evidence that Obama will make good on his campaign promise to impose the first-ever national cap on greenhouse gases. Last week, the leading author of Senate climate legislation sought personal assurances from Obama during an Oval Office meeting, saying he wanted to "hear it from him directly" as he pushed ahead.

Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) told Obama he needs to direct his administration to be more aggressive in order to get Congress to take steps to limit pollution that contributes to global warming. But Kerry emerged from the meeting saying Obama had pledged closer coordination between the White House and its congressional allies on the issue.

"The bottom line is there's no way to negotiate a bill like this without the involvement of the administration that they've promised -- and they've been producing," Kerry said in an interview. "If we're going to talk about oil and gas, we need to know what the administration will sign off on."

Obama aides say the fears are unfounded, part of what senior adviser David Axelrod called "tempests and . . . kerfuffles" about the process of lawmaking that bear little relation to the actual progress they are making toward historic new laws aimed at preventing environmental degradation.

Asked to respond to concerns about the level of engagement by the White House, aides compiled the following statistics: Administration officials have met on the topic with more than half of the senators, they said. There have been calls with 100 mayors in 17 states and more than 50 energy-related events in 24 states. Officials have reached out to "hundreds" of energy stakeholders and local lawmakers, aides said.

"Our energy team is deeply, deeply involved in working with the appropriate members of Congress and their staffs. They've done a lot of work up there," Axelrod said. "This is an issue of extraordinary importance. I understand the advocates on the issue would like us to have acted by now. The president and others feel this should have been dealt with years ago."

White House officials, including energy and climate czar Carol M. Browner, Axelrod and National Economic Council Director Lawrence H. Summers, have made presentations to a group of Democrats who meet regularly each week in the Capitol to discuss climate-change legislation. And last week, Todd Stern, U.S. special envoy for climate change, met with several key senators to discuss the bill, identifying how specific provisions would affect the prospects for a global pact.

A group of centrist Democrats from manufacturing states met Thursday with Browner. One of them, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), said the administration had "been helpful" but was still working on how to protect energy-intensive and trade-exposed industries. "The bill's not there yet," he said.

But while the White House has touted the need for energy and climate legislation in several events -- including one on Wednesday with business leaders and another with veterans last month -- it has not delved deeply into the detailed work of fashioning legislation.

Several veteran energy and environmental experts said the approach differs sharply from how Senate Democrats and a Republican White House handled the Clean Air Act amendments of 1990, a major legislative overhaul in which the White House and Environmental Protection Agency officials provided their own legislative blueprint and negotiated for weeks with a bipartisan group of senators in then-Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell's office.

"I don't see how this legislation moves forward without that kind of engagement from the president," said Jonathan Lash, president of the World Resources Institute. "As of now, we don't see personal leadership from the president in helping the Senate find a bill that can get 60 votes. I hope we will."

Kerry and Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) have been negotiating for months with colleagues on what it would take for them to support climate legislation, but it remains far shy of the 60 votes it needs for passage.

Their efforts to expand the base of support for climate legislation showed some progress Sunday, when Kerry and Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) authored a New York Times op-ed outlining possible grounds for a bipartisan deal on the issue. Graham has yet to co-sponsor the Senate bill, however.

The timeline for its consideration has slipped as well. Kerry and Boxer hoped to introduce it in late July, but the bill just came out last week and will have its first hearing late this month. Boxer's panel has suffered staff departures in recent months, including that of Joseph Goffman, a senior aide who worked on the climate bill but quit this month and will start next week as one of the EPA's senior counsels.

In an interview, Kerry said that during their meeting, Obama "reiterated how committed he is to moving forward, and to moving forward as soon as possible . . . I feel very confident there's going to be a full-court press from him to get as far as we can over the next few weeks," Kerry said.

Meaningful cuts in greenhouse gas emissions worldwide are closely tied to whether Congress adopts a binding carbon cap, which has received far less public attention than the health-care bill now dominating the Senate.

In the meantime, the EPA has been marching steadily toward greater regulation of greenhouse gasses, and the administration has promoted policies aimed at curbing the nation's carbon footprint, including new fuel economy standards for cars and light trucks. Critics favor congressional action over EPA regulations, which they call a blunt tool that could hurt the economy.

"It seems what we're observing is pressure from the White House on EPA to do things, rather than pressure from the White House on Congress to do things," said American Electric Power chief executive Michael G. Morris, whose company, one of the nation's biggest electricity providers, has endorsed the House climate bill. "That doesn't seem the best approach."

On Friday, Denmark's climate and energy minister, Connie Hedegaard, who will be chairing U.N.-sponsored climate talks in December in Copenhagen, said Obama needs to do more on climate. "It is hard to imagine that he will be receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo on Dec. 10 and then come empty-handed to Copenhagen a week later," she said.

Alden Meyer, the director of strategy and policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the administration needs to identify specific emissions reductions and the size of a financial aid package to developing nations to secure a climate deal.

"Without those, the best speech in the world won't suffice to shield the U.S. from blame for bringing the negotiations to a standstill, which is the likely outcome of a scenario where we can't commit to anything," Meyer wrote in an e-mail.