San Diego Mayor Facing Harassment Accusations From Four More Women

Four women leaders in San Diego appear together and describe how they had been victims of the mayor’s unwanted sexual advances.
Four prominent women leaders in San Diego disclosed Thursday night that Mayor Bob Filner had made unwanted sexual advances toward them in recent years, bringing the total to seven women who have publicly accused the mayor of sexual harassment this week.

The women appeared together in an interview broadcast on KPBS-TV in San Diego just two hours before Democratic party leaders voted in favor of asking the mayor to resign due to multiple allegations that he has sexually harassed women.

The women said they decided to break their silence because they did not want younger women staff members at City Hall or women doing business with Mayor Filner, 70, to be subjected to the same inappropriate conduct they had silently endured despite feeling violated and angry.

“It made me very, very angry,” said Veronica Froman, a retired Navy rear-admiral who recalled how Mr. Filner had blocked her from exiting a room after a meeting. Then, she said, he slid his finger down her cheek as he asked her if she had a man in her life.

“Enough is enough,” said Ms. Froman, who had previously worked for the former mayor, a Republican. “There are young women working with him and to think that my silence is effecting those young women is devastating. It is time we stood up and say we can not have this amoral man leading our city.”

Mr. Filner, a former Democratic congressman who was elected mayor last year, has resisted growing pressure from political and business leaders to step down since allegations first surfaced in mid-July. As The Lede previously reported, he acknowledged in a YouTube video that he had not shown full respect to his female staff members but he denied that he had subjected anyone to sexual harassment.

Mayor Bob Filner apologizes in a video after a longtime supporter called for his resignation after disclosing staff members and others had complained to her about his unwanted sexual advances.

On Monday, Irene McCormack Jackson, his former communications chief, filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against him. She said that the mayor had groped and tried to kiss her while she was working in her City Hall office and he had also suggested she should not wear panties to work.

In addition to Ms. Froman, the other three women who came forward on Thursday included a dean at San Diego State University, a businesswoman and the president of a tenants organization.

Joyce Gattas, dean of the College of Professional Studies and Fine Arts at San Diego State University, said she had kept silent about Mr. Filner’s behavior toward her even though she had helped develop the university’s sexual harassment policy.

She told KPBS about “interactions with Bob where he’s held me too tight, a kiss on the cheek which is inappropriate, hands on the knee that last too long.”

“I’ve experienced his sexual innuendos,” she said, describing how the remarks had left her with a “strange feeling of: This is inappropriate, this is unwanted and this shouldn’t be happening.”

Ms. Gattas said, though, like many women of her generation, she had put up with his conduct, in part, out of fear of retribution. “I look at women who are my peers,” she said. “We never told our stories yet we live with those stories for the rest of our lives. I wanted to be here today to say this is the time. I do not want women to be living with these experiences because they feel they have nowhere to go.”

Another woman, Sharon Bernie-Cloward, president of the San Diego Port Tenants Association, told KPBS that Mr. Filner, as a congressman, approached her at an event in 2010, told her she was beautiful and that he “wanted to date me” after his re-election. Then she said he groped her on her backside.

Patti Roscoe, a businesswoman, said Mr. Filner had tried to kiss her on the lips so that she would have to squirm to get away. “I was so violated,” she said. “I was so offended.”

Tips, sources, story ideas? Please leave a comment or find me on Twitter @jenniferpreston.

Daily Report: Facebook’s Mobile Ad Revenue Cheers Investors

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Facebook’s Stock Soars Amid Rosy Growth Expectations

Facebook’s stock levitated nearly 30 percent on Thursday, to $34.36 a share, after a second-quarter earnings report that was far stronger than Wall Street had predicted.

Securities analysts raised their revenue and profit estimates and stock-price targets for the social networking company, which has seen sentiment about its prospects swing widely since its initial public offering at $38 a share in May 2012.

Even the bears were impressed with the company’s second-quarter performance. Richard Greenfield of BTIG Research, who had long recommended that investors sell Facebook’s stock, put out a report on Wednesday declaring, “We were wrong.”

In an interview on Thursday, Mr. Greenfield said: “The reality was that I don’t think I’ve ever raised my estimates on a company of this size by that much. They literally crushed my expectations.”

The big rise in the company’s mobile revenue, to 41 percent of its total ad revenue, is the principal factor driving the change in perceptions, as I explored in an article in Thursday’s Times.

But investors also seem to be giving Facebook more credit for its growth potential than they were in the past. Mr. Greenfield, for example, now predicts that the company will have revenue of $9.3 billion next year, up from his previous estimate of $7.4 billion.

Facebook, which has about 1.2 billion users worldwide, said it has more than one million active advertisers, including all of the biggest global brands â€" a doubling from a year ago. The company said it sees great opportunity in reaching out to small local businesses, which are getting simplified tools to run ads, as well as in offering more sophisticated tools for big consumer brands.

Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, said that 88 million to 100 million people are on Facebook during primetime TV hours in the United States.

“I think what that shows is the size and engagement of our audience,” she said in an interview on Wednesday.

Facebook’s Home suite of applications for Android smartphones has so far failed to get any traction with users, so ads are not a priority there.

But Ms. Sandberg pointed to initiatives like Facebook for Every Phone, which has brought the social network to 100 million users of basic cellphones. Although ads are just beginning on the service, she said they are already appealing to advertisers because “there is not really an easy way to reach people in the developing world.”

And it’s only a matter of time before Facebook starts including ads in Instagram, its popular photo and video sharing service.

Aaron Kessler, an analyst at Raymond James brokerage firm, said that the huge stock price increase on Thursday reflected Facebook playing catch-up.

“Facebook has underperformed basically all year,” said Mr. Kessler, a fan who had a strong buy on the company’s stock before the earnings came out and just raised his price target to $38.

Still, there are reasons to be cautious. One concern, said Mr. Kessler, is how engaged users are with the service. A measure widely followed by Wall Street â€" the ratio of daily active users to monthly active users â€" rose slightly to 61 percent.

“But teenagers are relatively flat in the usage,” he said.

During a conference call with analysts on Wednesday (transcript here), Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, acknowledged that trend, but added, “Instagram is growing quickly as well. So if you combine the two services together, we believe our engagement and share of time spent are likely growing quickly throughout the world.”

Much of the company’s advertising revenue growth is coming from price increases, not the sale of more ads, Mr. Kessler said. If Facebook does start serving up more ads to users, especially irrelevant ads, there is a risk that users will get turned off. (Mr. Zuckerberg said the company was closely monitoring that.)

Finally, there is the tyranny of comparisons. Investors typically focus on a company’s year-over-year growth.

Ads in the news feed and from mobile ads, which drove much of the second quarter’s growth, basically didn’t exist in the second quarter last year, so their growth rates were fantastic. Going forward, year-over-year percentage growth will almost certainly be smaller.

David Ebersman, Facebook’s chief financial officer, uttered a word of caution to that effect in Wednesday’s call with analysts.

“Remember that News Feed ads really began to contribute to our revenue in the third and fourth quarters last year, which will make for more difficult year-over-year comparisons in Q3 and Q4 relative to Q2,” he said.

In its quarterly financial filing with securities regulators on Thursday, Facebook put it even more starkly, “We expect that our user growth and revenue growth rates will decline over time as the size of our active user base increases and as we achieve higher market penetration rates. As our growth rates decline, investors’ perceptions of our business may be adversely affected.”

In other words, beware irrational exuberance.

Juror Says George Zimmerman ‘Got Away With Murder’

Donna Svennevik/ABC, via Associated Press Juror B29 from the George Zimmerman trial, center, with her lawyer, David Chico, right, were interviewed on “Good Morning America,” by Robin Roberts on Thursday.

A juror in the trial of George Zimmerman told ABC News that she believed Mr. Zimmerman “got away with murder” in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin.

The juror, known as Juror B29, said that she and others on six-woman jury had no choice but to vote for an acquittal in the case because of Florida law and the evidence presented at the trial in Sanford, Fla. Mr. Zimmerman argued that he shot Mr. Martin, an unarmed teenager, in self-defense.

“You can’t put the man in jail even though in our hearts we felt he was guilty,” said the woman whose interview is scheduled to be broadcast on ABC’s “World News” on Thursday night and “Good Morning America” on Friday. “But we had to grab our hearts and put it aside and look at the evidence.”

The juror also said that she felt badly for the Martin family. About Mr. Zimmerman, she said, that “the law couldn’t prove it.”

“But you can’t get away from God,” she told Robin Roberts, anchor for “Good Morning America.” “And at the end of the day, he’s going to have a lot of questions and answers he has to deal with.”

The juror, whose full name has not been revealed by the court, did allow her face to be shown during the interview but withheld her name because of concerns for her safety, ABC News reported.

She is the second of six jurors to come forward. Offering a different perspective on the jury negotiations was Juror B37, who spoke to CNN’s Anderson Cooper, with her face hidden from the cameras.

In a lengthy interview, Juror B37 said she believed that Mr. Zimmerman was “justified” in the shooting of Mr. Martin. She said she believed the defense argument that, while Mr. Zimmerman should not have followed the teenager, he shot and killed Mr. Martin in self-defense.

Shortly after the interview was broadcast, four other jurors, as The Lede previously reported, distanced themselves from Juror B37, saying that her statements did not reflect their views.

It is not known if Juror B29 was among them, or if the remaining jurors share her perspective.

What Are Apple’s ‘Amazing’ New Products?

On Tuesday, Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, again teased tech blogs about new Apple gadgetry.

“We are laser-focused and working hard on some amazing new products that we will introduce in the fall and across 2014,” Mr. Cook said at the company’s earnings call.

What could these elusive “new products” be? Here are a few possibilities:

Since at least late 2011, Apple has been trying to figure out how to reinvent the television. At that time, Apple employees and people close to the company, all speaking on condition of anonymity, said that a television “was not actively being built, but Apple would eventually make a television.” But they did say it wasn’t a question of whether Apple would expand into the television market, but a question of when.

Since then, many reports have indicated that the company continues to explore television-related products. In March, speaking at the D: All Things Digital technology conference, Mr. Cook said Apple had ”a very grand vision” for the television.

Just making a fancy television set with an Apple logo on it would be underwhelming, because there are plenty of nice TVs already. But the way people find things to watch with a clunky remote control or a cumbersome channel interface is ripe for disruption. Apple is collaborating with distributors like Time Warner Cable and some content providers on fixing these problems on set-top boxes before moving further into TV land.

A new product that is most likely to come in the near future sounds less than revolutionary: a less expensive iPhone. Apple already sells older-generation iPhone models for less than the latest model, but the company’s devices are struggling to gain traction in some big markets overseas, namely China. Apple still has not struck a deal to sell iPhones with China’s biggest cellphone carrier, China Mobile, which has 600 million subscribers. A cheaper, new iPhone model â€" perhaps one with a plastic back instead of metal â€" could be the card Apple needs to play in order to persuade the carrier.

And, of course, there’s the so-called AppleiWatch. The iWatch, as it has been nicknamed, is expected to have a curved screen and would be Apple’s first serious foray into wearable computing.

All of the right pieces seem to line up for the iWatch, too. Corning, the maker of the ultra-tough Gorilla Glass that is used in the iPhone, has scaled the engineering challenge of creating bendable glass that could be used in the iWatch.

Recent reports by Forrester Research predict that the next devices and platforms that companies should focus on will be based on wearable computing.

Or Apple could enter an entirely new product category. But that seems unlikely. As Philip W. Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, said last year, Apple executives once talked about making “crazy stuff,” including an Apple car.

What Are Apple’s ‘Amazing’ New Products?

On Tuesday, Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, again teased tech blogs about new Apple gadgetry.

“We are laser-focused and working hard on some amazing new products that we will introduce in the fall and across 2014,” Mr. Cook said at the company’s earnings call.

What could these elusive “new products” be? Here are a few possibilities:

Since at least late 2011, Apple has been trying to figure out how to reinvent the television. At that time, Apple employees and people close to the company, all speaking on condition of anonymity, said that a television “was not actively being built, but Apple would eventually make a television.” But they did say it wasn’t a question of whether Apple would expand into the television market, but a question of when.

Since then, many reports have indicated that the company continues to explore television-related products. In March, speaking at the D: All Things Digital technology conference, Mr. Cook said Apple had ”a very grand vision” for the television.

Just making a fancy television set with an Apple logo on it would be underwhelming, because there are plenty of nice TVs already. But the way people find things to watch with a clunky remote control or a cumbersome channel interface is ripe for disruption. Apple is collaborating with distributors like Time Warner Cable and some content providers on fixing these problems on set-top boxes before moving further into TV land.

A new product that is most likely to come in the near future sounds less than revolutionary: a less expensive iPhone. Apple already sells older-generation iPhone models for less than the latest model, but the company’s devices are struggling to gain traction in some big markets overseas, namely China. Apple still has not struck a deal to sell iPhones with China’s biggest cellphone carrier, China Mobile, which has 600 million subscribers. A cheaper, new iPhone model â€" perhaps one with a plastic back instead of metal â€" could be the card Apple needs to play in order to persuade the carrier.

And, of course, there’s the so-called AppleiWatch. The iWatch, as it has been nicknamed, is expected to have a curved screen and would be Apple’s first serious foray into wearable computing.

All of the right pieces seem to line up for the iWatch, too. Corning, the maker of the ultra-tough Gorilla Glass that is used in the iPhone, has scaled the engineering challenge of creating bendable glass that could be used in the iWatch.

Recent reports by Forrester Research predict that the next devices and platforms that companies should focus on will be based on wearable computing.

Or Apple could enter an entirely new product category. But that seems unlikely. As Philip W. Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, said last year, Apple executives once talked about making “crazy stuff,” including an Apple car.

Case’s Fund Invests in E-Commerce Start-Up

The Revolution growth fund, started by Stephen M. Case and two former AOL colleagues, invested $40 million in Bigcommerce, a start-up whose software helps companies create and manage online stores, the fund announced Thursday.

Case’s Fund Invests in E-Commerce Start-Up

The Revolution growth fund, started by Stephen M. Case and two former AOL colleagues, invested $40 million in Bigcommerce, a start-up whose software helps companies create and manage online stores, the fund announced Thursday.

Spanish Train Crash Caught on Video

Security-camera footage said to show the deadly train accident in Spain on Wednesday.

Security-camera footage leaked to the public via YouTube captured the moment on Wednesday that a passenger train derailed outside Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain, killing at least 78 people.

While the identity of the person who initially uploaded the video to YouTube remains unknown, Carmen Prieto, a communications officer at the Spanish Development Ministry, said it was recorded by a security camera operated by ADIF, the Spanish rail infrastructure body, which issued a statement saying that the crash took place at 8:41 p.m. local time on Wednesday.

Even before the government confirmed that the footage was authentic, an editor from the Spanish newspaper El País told The Lede that the video was broadcast repeatedly on state television on Thursday without any claim from officials that it was false. The footage shows the train rounding a curve and then careening off the tracks, with some of the cars behind the engine appearing to jack-knife and slam into each other, which is consistent with accounts from passengers who survived the crash.

Graphic video recorded in the immediate aftermath of the accident was uploaded to YouTube by Isidoro Castaño, a resident of the area who said he was attending a local residents’ association meeting near the tracks when he heard what sounded like an explosion.

Video of the immediate aftermath of the train accident uploaded to YouTube by Isidoro Castaño, a resident of the area who rushed to the scene.

Mr. Castaño told El País:

I ran outside and saw a cloud of smoke, and the train on fire. People were screaming ‘Get me out of here!’ There was still no help and it was us neighbors who tried to pull them out of the windows, using the train’s grills as if they were stretchers. There were dead people, injured. Then help arrived, the police, ambulances. They asked us if we would hold a drip and suddenly they said, ‘Don’t let this man fall asleep.’ And I talked to them so that they wouldn’t fall asleep. So that they wouldn’t die.

We asked them where they were going, what their names were … to keep them awake. And they asked: ‘Where is my child?’ There were old people, young people, small children we took from people’s arms. It was an inferno.

A local newspaper, La Voz de Santiago, published video of desperate efforts to rush survivors from the tracks for treatment.

El País also reported that sources from the train company Renfe said the driver of the train, Francisco José Garzón Amo, was not found to have alcohol in his system, but there were concerns that he might have been going too fast into the curve.

According to a translation of the report posted on the newspaper’s English-language section:

The Facebook profile of Garzón was deleted in the early hours of the morning. However, as soon as his identity became known, journalists and members of the public began to peruse it for information. Among Garzón’s posts on the social networking site was a photo, uploaded on March 8, 2012 by Garzón, featuring a speedometer with the needle at 200km/h.

Underneath the photo, some of Garzón’s contacts had left comments. “Dude, you’re going full speed, braaaaake” read one of the posts, to which Garzón answered: “I’m right on the limit, I can’t go any faster or they’ll give me fine.”

Today’s Scuttlebot: Chromecast and Painting With Windows ’95

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Obama\'s Remarks on Race Prompt Emotional Outpouring on Twitter

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Video of the Royal Baby Watch in London

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The Five Stages of the Royal Baby Wait

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Whether a Boy or a Girl, Third in Line to the Throne

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Wait for Royal Baby Lets a Nation Revel in Nostalgia

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How the Royal Birth Will Be Announced

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Books, Brioche and Baby Clothes: The Royal Merchandise

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Norwegian Woman, Sentenced After Reporting Rape in Dubai, Is ‘Pardoned\'

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British Royal Family Announces Birth of a Prince

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Witness Accounts of New Violence in Egypt

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Video of Navalny\'s Return to Moscow

A screenshot from the Russian activist Aleksei Navalny's blog showed supporters greeting him at a train station in Moscow on Saturday.

Updated, Tuesday, 4:03 p.m. As he reported on his own blog over the weekend, the Russian opposition activist Aleksei A. Navalny was greeted by hundreds of supporters at a train station in Moscow on Saturday, one day after he was released from jail in the city of Kirov.

Speaking after a turbulent 48 hours - during which he was sentenced to five years in prison on what he insists are politically motivated charges, and then released pending an appeal after demonstrators decorated the Russian Parliament with stickers bearing his name during street protests - Mr. Navalny promised to spend the next seven weeks campaigning to be elected mayor of Moscow, even as he fights to have his prison sentence overturned.

Video of Aleksei Navalny's remarks to supporters in Moscow on Saturday, subtitled by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

Reuters video of the scene at the train station, subtitled and posted online by the American-financed news network Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, showed the anti-corruption blogger telling his supporters, “We have a big and difficult electoral campaign in front of us, seven weeks of nonstop work, and this is only the beginning.”

Mr. Navalny also led the crowd in one of his signature chants, “We are the power!” which was heard outside the Duma during last week's protests. That part of his remarks was not included in a video edit posted online by the state news agency RIA Novosti.

Footage of Aleksei Navalny's return to Moscow from the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti.

More video of the scene, on the Russian news site Lenta.ru, showed that the police made a determined effort to keep Mr. Navalny's arrival from turning into a full-fledged rally, even making it difficult for well-wishers to hand him flowers.

The Radio Free Europe blogger Brian Whitmore noted that, in video recorded from the press scrum around Mr. Navalny, after he thanked his supporters for the protests following his conviction - saying: “You have destroyed the main privilege that the Kremlin has claimed, its alleged right to arrest anyone in court and cause that person to disappear. It's because of you that we were released the next day. Thank you! We are a huge, mighty force, and I am glad that we are realizing this and I am glad to be one with you” - a man in the crowd could be heard shouting, “We are citizens!”

Politvestnik.tv video of Aleksei Navalny's remarks on Saturday at Moscow's Yaroslavsky Station.

As Masha Lipman explained in a post for The New Yorker's news blog, the scene at Moscow's Yaroslavsky Station had “historical resonances,” even if it was not quite St. Petersburg in 1917.

On two occasions in recent decades, men who beat the system returned to Moscow by train. In December 1986, Andrey Sakharov, released by Mikhail Gorbachev, was met by a modest crowd as he arrived from his exile in the city of Gorky. On July 23, 1994, it was Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's turn to get off the train after he'd been arrested and then expelled from his country.

To become mayor of the Russian capital, Mr. Navalny faces an uphill struggle. He will not only have to get his conviction overturned, but, as Julia Ioffe explained in The New Republic, defeat the relatively popular incumbent, Sergei Sobyanin, who served for years as President Vladimir V. Putin's chief of staff. Despite those long odds, his team of young campaign volunteers are pressing ahead with their effort to blanket the Russian capital with posters of their candidate.

Пользователи самоката â€" за Навального! @apylaev @teamnavalny http://t.co/pcs0f9LCYe

- Ð'ладимир Шомин (@22cproxima) 22 Jul 13

First Video of a Prince of Cambridge

Video of Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge stepping out of St. Mary's Hospital on Tuesday with their newborn son, Prince [yet to be named] of Cambridge, for the first time.

Last Updated, 4:17 p.m. Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge emerged from the hospital late on Tuesday and presented their infant to the crowds who had gathered outside the building for days.

As Kate clutched the baby boy, who was swaddled in a white blanket, she patted him gently as the two new parents beamed and faced the cheering onlookers. Dressed in a blue dress with white polka dots, she then handed him to Prince William, who walked closer to the crowds and spoke, describing the birth as very emotional.

It's a “special time, any parent knows what this feeling feels like,” Kate said. Prince William, acknowledging the fact that journalists and crowds had waited for days to see the infant Prince of Cambridge, said: “I will remind him of his tardiness when he is a bit older.”

“We're still working on a name,” the Prince said.

He then joked about the baby's appearance, saying the baby resembled his wife. And then, apparently speaking about the baby's hair, the Prince said: “He's got way more than me.”

Leon Neal/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge appeared with their baby boy outside the Lindo Wing of St Mary's Hospital in London on Tuesday.

The couple later re-emerged with the infant belted into a car seat, and the new family left the hospital by car.

Earlier, Prince Charles and his wife had visited St. Mary's Hospital, as did Kate's parents, Michael and Carole Middleton, who later described the baby as “absolutely beautiful,” press reports said.

As our colleague Sarah Lyall reported, Kate gave birth on Monday afternoon to the baby boy, who weighed in at 8 pounds, 6 ounces. The infant will not be king for some time: he has to wait in the long line behind his great-grandmother Queen Elizabeth; his grandfather Prince Charles; and his father, Prince William.

Reporting was contributed by Robert Mackey.

Video of Deadly Violence in Cairo

As my colleague Kareem Fahim reports from Egypt, at least nine people were killed over the last 24 hours during clashes between supporters and opponents of the deposed Islamist president, Mohamed Morsi, in central Cairo, around Cairo University in Giza and north of the city in the Nile Delta.

The violence began in downtown Cairo, near Tahrir Square, on Monday and soon erupted in other parts of the capital. Video posted online by the independent Egyptian newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm showed fighting between Morsi supporters and residents of the island neighborhood of Manial, where there has been a pro-Morsi sit-in by the Muslim Brotherhood since shortly before the military deposed him three weeks ago.

Video from Al-Masry Al-Youm of clashes between supporters of deposed President Mohamed Morsi and residents of the island neighborhood of Manial in Cairo.

The fiercest fighting on Monday appeared to have been centered in the area of Giza near Cairo University, on the west bank of the Nile, across the river from downtown and Tahrir Square. An activist blogger named Tarek Nasr, who said he was on the ninth floor of a building near Cairo University, described what he saw and heard overnight in a series of Twitter updates.

Giza is a war zone

- Tarek Nasr (@TarekNasr360) 23 Jul 13

I have never heard so much gun fire in my life. Tear gas everywhere.

- Tarek Nasr (@TarekNasr360) 23 Jul 13

People running frantically, all kinds of bullets, a black smoke all over giza. many lives will be lost

- Tarek Nasr (@TarekNasr360) 23 Jul 13

Heavy gunfire still in Giza as protestors chant “Allahu Akbar” & others frantically run in streets calling for anyone to call an ambulance

- Tarek Nasr (@TarekNasr360) 23 Jul 13

I can hear simultaneously people praying fajr, gun shots & ambulance sirens. Unreal.

- Tarek Nasr (@TarekNasr360) 23 Jul 13

Mr. Nasr also shared a brief audio clip of gunfire recorded from his apartment.

Cliff Cheney, an American photojournalist based in Cairo, wrote on Twitter that he saw at least 15 burned-out cars near the pro-Morsi sit-in on Monday night. He said that parts of the neighborhood around the university were a tense “no man's land.”

Saw maybe 15 burned out cars on Cairo Univ Road. MB sit-in people thought it was 20. We had to run from thugs before I could get full count.

- Cliff Cheney (@cliffcheney) 23 Jul 13

So 15 to 20 cars burned. People from sit-in wouldn't exit their perimeter with us due to danger. #Nahda to Radwan AlTayeb is a no-man's land

- Cliff Cheney (@cliffcheney) 23 Jul 13

Video posted on YouTube by the newspaper El Watan appeared to show some of what Mr. Nasr and Mr. Cheney had reported near Cairo University.

Video posted to YouTube by El Watan, an independent Egyptian newspaper, showed scenes from the violence near Cairo University overnight on Monday.

El Watan's report, headlined “Gunfire Exchanged Between the Brotherhood and Security Forces at Cairo University,” showed civilians shooting off fireworks, a form of improvised weapon popular in street battles, and police officers firing tear gas from armored vehicles. Shirtless young men involved in the street battle appeared to be cooperating with the security forces, and at one point an unidentified civilian bleeding from his lower back said that the Islamists had “opened fire on us.”

In a second El Watan video report uploaded to YouTube on Tuesday, a group of more than half a dozen men identified as “eyewitnesses” to the violence in Giza said that members of the Brotherhood had opened fire with pellets and live ammunition. Several of the men accused supporters of Mr. Morsi of shooting from a high floor of a nearby mosque.

Video posted to YouTube by El Watan, an independent Egyptian newspaper, showed a group of men identified as eyewitnesses to the violence in Giza overnight on Monday.

Video of Clashes in Brazil Appears to Show Police Infiltrators Among Protesters

Supporters of Brazil's protest movement and the police in Rio de Janeiro spent much of Tuesday arguing online over which side was to blame for violence at a demonstration the night before, at the start of a papal visit.

While neither side was able to produce definitive proof of who instigated the clashes on Monday near the governor's palace in Rio, shortly after Pope Francis left the area, an examination of video recorded by witnesses, protesters and the police did appear to show undercover officers - called infiltrators by the protesters and intelligence agents by the authorities - at work.

A central piece of evidence in the arguments presented by both sides was 40 seconds of video released by Rio's military police that showed a man near the front line between the two sides lighting and then hurling a Molotov cocktail, which exploded with a loud bang near officers in riot gear.

Video released by the military police in Rio de Janeiro recorded as a standoff between protesters and officers turned violent on Monday night.

Although the police provided the video to the newspaper O Globo, and issued an invitation to the public via Twitter to watch what the department described as images of the protester who started the confrontation by throwing a Molotov cocktail at officers, within hours the clip was mysteriously removed from YouTube.

Vejam vídeo com manifestante que iniciou confronto atirando Coquetel Molotov contra #PMs http://t.co/YgPk80v3Z8

- PMERJ (@PMERJ) 22 Jul 13

Late Tuesday, the police uploaded a different video clip to YouTube that captured a loud bang at some stage in the clashes outside an Esso station on Rua Pinheiro Machado near the Guanabara Palace. But that video was recorded from so far behind police lines that it offered no view of the person who threw the explosive.

Video posted on YouTube by the police in Rio de Janeiro on Tuesday, said to show the early stages of clashes the night before.

Asked to explain the disappearance of video promoted by the department online, a police spokeswoman, Vanessa Andrade, suggested in an e-mail to The Lede that the clip had been removed from YouTube by hackers acting in defense of the protesters.

Brazilian bloggers who support the protests advanced a very different argument: that the masked man caught on video throwing the improvised explosive was an undercover police officer who had acted as an agent provocateur to give the authorities an excuse to break up the demonstration by force. Attempting to prove this theory, one blogger produced an annotated YouTube clip that mixed the police video with another view of the same area recorded later on Monday.

An annotated YouTube video mixing images shot by the police with those recorded by other witnesses to clashes in Rio de Janeiro on Monday night.

According to the theory advanced in the annotated video, the bomb thrower pictured in the police video, wearing a T-shirt with a bulky design on the front, was identical to a man caught on video later, retreating behind police lines and pulling off his T-shirt, alongside a second man also suspected of being an undercover officer.

Other bloggers, including Lucio Amorim - a marketing consultant who captured stunning Vine video of street protests in Rio last month - pointed out that another video clip recorded by a witness to Monday's demonstrations showed the same two men passing unmolested through a crowd of uniformed officers.

Video of two men dressed like protesters retreating through police lines away from the scene of Monday's clashes in Rio de Janeiro.

Looking closely at the two videos, there appears to be little doubt that the two men shown at the end of the annotated clip also appear in the other video (the action from about the 46-second mark of the first clip seems to exactly match what unfolds about 20 seconds into the second), and the men do seem to be treated by the uniformed officers much more like colleagues than protesters.

The red wall that appears in the background of this video is the outside of Fluminense Football Club‘s historic Estadio Presidente Manoel Schwartz ground, where the pope also made an appearance on Monday night, just before the clashes began. Two New York Times journalists who were present when the clashes started said that the Molotov cocktail and the first volleys of tear gas came shortly after the pope left in his helicopter.

A third video clip, recorded by a witness armed with a better camera, appeared to offer even better evidence that the two men retreating from the protesters' side were most likely undercover officers.

Video recorded on Monday night in Rio de Janeiro showed two men in civilian clothes being allowed to pass through a crowd of uniformed police officers after displaying identification.

In the third clip, a close view from a reverse angle, the two men were briefly stopped by a uniformed officer who seemed to take them for protesters before one of them pulled out some form of identification and said, “It's the police, dude.”

Ms. Andrade, the police spokeswoman, said the police force in Rio “has never denied that its intelligence has agents accompanying the demonstrations with the goal of obtaining information and predicting movements. This information is important for the decisions of our commanders.” She insisted, however: “These intelligence agents only work with observation. To imagine that a police officer would throw a Molotov cocktail at his professional colleagues, putting their lives at risk, is something that surpasses the limits of good sense and reveals a sordid conspiracy used to justify the criminal violence of these vandals.”

The police in Rio are of course far from alone in sending undercover officers to infiltrate protest movements. The New York Police Department has done so for years, as my colleague Jim Dwyer reported eight years ago.

Although the video evidence strongly suggests that those two men in Rio de Janeiro were undercover officers, there appears to be no proof that either of them was the bomb thrower. A close look at still frames of the original police video next to frames from the two other clips seems to show that while the man who hurled the Molotov cocktail was wearing a black T-shirt with a white design on the front, the man who retreated through the crowd of officers later wore a black T-shirt with a red design.

PMERJ via Globo A screenshot from video released by the police in Rio de Janeiro showed a masked man moments before he hurled a Molotov cocktail at officers.

A still frame from video recorded on Monday night in Rio de Janeiro showed a man suspected of being an undercover police officer carrying a large backpack.

A still frame from video recorded by a witness to clashes on Monday night in Rio de Janeiro appeared to show two undercover officers in jeans and T-shirts retreating behind police lines.

Although the other man suspected of being an undercover officer is bare-chested in these three clips, he appears to have been wearing a black T-shirt with a white pattern on its side, rather than the front, in more video of the clashes posted on Facebook by supporters of the protest movement.

That Facebook video, recorded as the police chased and ultimately captured one protester, seems to show the same undercover officer taking part in the arrest before pulling off his T-shirt and using it to cover his face as witnesses started to take his picture.

The blogger Lucio Amorim later shared a photograph on Facebook that appeared to show the same man pulling off his T-shirt just after the arrest.

An image of a Brazilian man suspected of being an undercover police officer taking off his T-shirt after assisting in the arrest of a protester in Rio on Monday.

Part of that same scene, the arrest of the protester after he ran from the officers and was knocked down with a shot from a stun gun, was also captured in video recorded by another witness from a bridge above the road.

Video of Monday's clashes in Rio de Janeiro showed the arrest of a man accused by the police of throwing a Molotov cocktail at them.

A blogger named Felipe Buarque released perhaps the most useful overview of the clashes, a 12-minute video that captured everything from the first loud bang outside the Esso station to the dramatic arrest of the protester near the bridge. Protesters eagerly pointed to Mr. Buarque's video, calling it evidence that the man who was detained by the police was not the bomb thrower.

Video of Monday's clashes in Rio de Janeiro posted on YouTube by a blogger named Felipe Buarque.

The man in that video, whose arrest was also recorded by TV Globo, was identified by the police as Bruno Ferreira. Ms. Andrade, the police spokeswoman, told The Lede that Mr. Ferreira was “accused of having thrown the Molotov cocktail that left two officers with burns on their bodies.” Mr. Ferreira, however, was not wearing a black T-shirt with a white design on it, but a green jacket with a zipper. He was “released by the justice system on Tuesday night for lack of material evidence,” Ms. Andrade said.

Another video of his arrest shot from the street showed even more clearly that he was not wearing a black T-shirt and offered a glimpse of the man in civilian clothes quickly pulling off his shirt.

Video of a protester's arrest on Monday in Rio de Janeiro.

An image of Mr. Ferreira standing on the metal barricade between protesters and the police, apparently taken before the clashes, was shared online by his supporters as evidence that he was not wearing a black T-shirt at any stage.

Yasuyoshi Chiba/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images An image of Monday's protest in Rio before clashes broke out, showing a protester who was arrested later standing on a barricade with his fist raised.

Perhaps sensitive to how badly their reputation can be damaged by video evidence of what takes place at protests, the police took aggressive steps Monday night to limit the number of cameras at future demonstrations by bashing the head of at least one world-renowned news photographer, and arresting two members of the activist media collective known as Mídia Ninja.

As our colleagues Simon Romero and William Neuman reported last month, Ninja, “a Portuguese acronym for Independent Journalism and Action Narratives, has been circulating through the streets with smartphones, cameras and a generator held in a supermarket cart - a makeshift, roving production studio.”

On Monday night, the Brazil-based journalist Dom Phillips reported, the police detained Filipe Peçanha, a Ninja cameraman who goes by the nickname Carioca, as he was streaming live video of the protest.

Midia Ninja reporter's arrest while broadcasting live.
http://t.co/paAFMRUvoG

- Dom Phillips (@domphillips) 23 Jul 13

Inevitably, video of his arrest was also captured from another angle on another camera. (In both clips, a man standing next to the citizen journalist, wearing a light blue shirt and talking on a phone, looked to be one of those identified by protesters as potential infiltrators.)

The arrest of Filipe Peçanha, a member of the activist media collective Mídia Ninja, on Monday night.

In a statement to The Lede, the police spokeswoman Ms. Andrade said, “The goal of detaining people on Monday night was to identify who had incited the disorder.” The police Twitter feed seemed to confirm that the authorities make no difference between activists documenting protests and vandals inspiring disorder: “Two protesters who transmitted the protests live were arrested for inciting violence.”

Foram presos por incitar violência dois manifestantes que transmitiam ao vivo as manifestações

- PMERJ (@PMERJ) 22 Jul 13

Another Twitter update warned: “Whoever posts multimedia material on the Internet that encourages violence and vandalism is criminal.”

Quem posta material multimídia na Internet incentivando a violência e o #vandalismo é criminoso.

- PMERJ (@PMERJ) 22 Jul 13

Video of Mr. Peçanha's subsequent release showed protesters adapting soccer chants in celebration.

Protesters in Rio de Janeiro celebrated the release of a citizen journalist on Tuesday.

In an odd twist, hours after police officers at the demonstration battered the Agence France-Presse photographer Yasuyoshi Chiba on the head, the Rio de Janeiro police Twitter feed offered one of his photographs as proof that it was the officers who were the real victims of Monday's violence.

Tropa da @PMERJ atacada em manifestação de ontem :

http://t.co/9zimGChzzm http://t.co/ER8jXttntR

- PMERJ (@PMERJ) 23 Jul 13

The Third Man on Snowden\'s Reading List

The Russian lawyer Anatoly Kucherena spoke to the state-owned channel Russia Today on Wednesday after meeting with Edward J. Snowden at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport.

As my colleagues in Moscow report, when Anatoly Kucherena emerged from the transit zone of Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport on Wednesday after meeting with Edward J. Snowden, Mr. Kucherena - the Russian lawyer helping the former intelligence contractor with his asylum request - was asked to explain what was in the brown paper shopping bag he had left behind.

Mr. Kucherena, a supporter of President Vladimir V. Putin who reportedly sits on the public council of the Federal Security Service, the successor to the K.G.B., told the press scrum that he had brought his client a change of clothes and English translations of books by three Russian authors - Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Anton Chekhov and Nikolai Karamzin - that might help Mr. Snowden, an American, learn about the nation around the airport he has been trapped in for the past month.

Advisor Anatoly Kucherenka seemed to be really enjoying himself as he told press #Snowden wouldn't be leaving. http://t.co/1OdGIB8RX8

- Tom Barton (@TomBartonJourno) 24 Jul 13

Perhaps inevitably, journalists with a taste for the absurd wondered just what Mr. Snowden might learn about modern Russia from the first two authors, whose great works of fiction and drama portrayed human dilemmas a century before the era of Total Information Awareness.

Snowden's lawyer gave him Dostoevsky, Chekhov, fresh clothing. “You shld know who Raskolnikov was” lawyer told him, he says on Russian TV

- Michael Birnbaum (@michaelbirnbaum) 24 Jul 13

Writing in The New Republic, Julia Ioffe observed, “Kucherena said he brought Snowden a copy of Dostoyevsky's ‘Crime and Punishment,' and some Chekhov ‘for dessert.' It's time, he said, for the young man to ‘learn about our reality.' The reality that lies before Snowden, however, is not that of a Petersburg slum or a cherry orchard.”

A portrait of Nikolai Karamzin, the court historian of Czar Alexander I who died in 1826.

That left the question of what Mr. Snowden's lawyer thought a would-be citizen might learn about life in Mr. Putin's Russia by reading Karamzin, the court historian to Czar Alexander I who began his 12-volume “History of the Russian State” in 1818.

Quite a lot, perhaps.

As the Harvard professor emeritus Richard Pipes explained in the introduction to his translation and analysis of Karamzin's “Memoir on Ancient and Modern Russia,” this conservative Russian thinker's work offers a glimpse of a world in which “many Russians believed that autocracy was the only regime capable of providing the country with stability and assuring it of great power status: any alternative to it spelled chaos.”

Karamzin's “Memoir,” Mr. Pipes said, was written “for Alexander I in 1810-11 to discourage him from proceeding with his liberal reforms.” He added: “Karamzin's argument was purely pragmatic: history has shown that Russia thrived under autocracy and declined whenever the country departed from it. Proof of this contention he found in the collapse of the Kievan state and the resultant conquest of Russia by the Mongols, as well as in the so-called Time of Troubles of the early 17th century when the country disintegrated following the expiration of the Rurik dynasty.”

In one passage from the Pipes translation of “Memoir,” Karamzin argued:

Autocracy has founded and resuscitated Russia. Any change in her political constitution has led in the past and must lead in the future to her perdition, for she consists of very many and very different parts, each of which has its own civic needs; what save unlimited monarchy can produce in such a machine the required unity of action?

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: July 25, 2013

A caption in an earlier version of this post misspelled the given name of Edward J. Snowden's lawyer. He is Anatoly Kucherena, not Antatoly.

Daily Report: A Mobile Facebook for Phones in the Developing World

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Today\'s Scuttlebot: The Secret Service Sells Fake IDs and Exes in Texts

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Daily Report: STMicro in Public-Private Venture to Develop Chips in France

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A Social Network Dedicated to Happy Moments

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Big Data Analysis Adds to Guest Worker Debate

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Mainframe Computers That Change With the Times

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Today\'s Scuttlebot: The Rise of Women C.O.O.\'s and Unfriending Porn

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Daily Report: Apple Earnings Beat Expectations Despite Weaker Sales in China

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Paltalk Tries to Take Advantage of Its Prism Notoriety

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Wirelessly Expand Your Smartphone or Tablet Memory

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LaHood Says Companies Must Wake Up to Distracted Driving

When Ray LaHood was transportation secretary, he wasn't one to mince words about the risks of driving with a cellphone. But in an interview this week, just a few weeks after leaving the cabinet, he put a particularly fine point on his concerns, saying that car companies and technology companies must wake up to the deadly dangers their products can pose.

He also said that voice-recognition systems for cars - like those that let people compose texts using voice commands while driving - do not meet his standard for safety. The car industry has been making a big push into those technologies, asserting that they are a safer alternative than using a hand-held phone, but some safety advocates disagree.

Mr. LaHood, who called distracted driving “an epidemic” and made fighting it a centerpiece of his tenure, said that he wanted to see the tech and car industries be part of sending the message to consumers about the risks, just as beer companies have done with drunken driving.

“We need to get that same kind of commitment from the tech industry,” he said. “They're not there yet, and neither are the car companies.

“They have to be part of the solution,” he said.

For now, Mr. LaHood said, they are often part of the problem in two ways: by building technology for cars that takes drivers away from the task of driving, and by glorifying the idea that it's fashionable, even important, to be connected all the time. The devices, he intimated, can be as alluring as alcohol. (Previously, the head of the National Transportation Safety Board compared the lure of the devices to cigarettes, saying people have to control their impulses to answer the phone behind the wheel).

“The problem in America is our cellphones are, in a sense, like alcohol. We're hooked on them and can't put them down when behind the wheel of the car, when we're driving,” Mr. LaHood said. “We're hooked on these devices and can't put them down, anyplace, anytime, anywhere.”

It's a comment that shows how vexing safety officials have found the problem of distracted driving. Polls show that drivers know using a cellphone behind the wheel is a risk, but that they do it anyway.

Mr. LaHood, echoing other safety advocates, argued that there were lessons to take from successful past efforts to change people's safety behavior, particularly the push to reduce drunken driving and to increase seat belt use. The lessons, he said, involve having tough laws, tough enforcement of those laws and public service messages that reinforce the legal risks. Also, he said, “we must have personal responsibility.”

The responsibility of car companies, he said, should not be to create a cool factor around dangerous technologies. He said some of the latest generation of in-car entertainment systems in fancier cars might be available to only more affluent consumers, for example, creating a sense of aspiration for all drivers who want to stay connected.

“It's expensive technology, and only people of means can afford it,” he said, “but it lends legitimacy to everyone else who can only afford a BlackBerry or cellphone to say: ‘if you're putting it in the car for these folks, then I can use mine.'”

Mr. LaHood said he would like to see tech and car companies disable the functions that are not directly related to driving when the car is in motion. “If somebody is trying to dial a number, even if it's voice-activated, they're obviously distracted from what they're supposed to be doing, and in many instances, people are driving 50 or 60 miles per hour,” he said.

Mr. LaHood, 67, said he was very proud of steps his office had taken to address distracted driving, including pushing for rules to ban federal employees from texting while driving during work hours, and setting up pilot programs to test heavy enforcement of laws prohibiting hand-held phone use by drivers.

Distracted driving “wasn't in anybody's lexicon,” he said. “We've come a long way, but we have a long way to go.”

With New Device, Google Tries Again on Internet TV

SAN FRANCISCO - Google is trying again to tackle the television.

On Wednesday, the company introduced Chromecast, a $35, two-inch stick that plugs into TVs and enables people to watch online video, listen to music and see images from laptops, tablets or phones on the TV screen - and to use their other devices as a remote control.

“We are closing the gap between TV and mobile devices,” said Sundar Pichai, Google's senior vice president for Chrome and Android, in an interview after a news conference in San Francisco. Nearly half of all peak Internet traffic in North America comes from YouTube and Netflix, he said, and people want to be able to watch those videos on the big screen.

Chromecast, unlike other gadgets that play online media on TVs, works with laptops, tablets and phones from companies other than Google, so iPhone loyalists, or people with both Android and Apple devices, can use it.

“We will not force you to have the same operating system on all your devices,” said Mario Queiroz, a Google vice president who leads development of Google's TV products.

Tech companies, including Google, Apple and Amazon.com, often try to lock in customers by offering media accessible only through their services or devices. Still, Google can take its open arms philosophy only so far. As of now, Chromecast shows media from Google's own properties, YouTube and Play, as well as Netflix. Technology called Google Cast enables any software developer to program its mobile apps to work on TVs. Google said apps from others, including Pandora, would be coming soon.

But noticeably absent are several of the most popular streaming services: Apple iTunes, Amazon.com and Hulu.

Mr. Pichai said that Google was talking to many partners and hoped that Hulu and Amazon.com services would be added. Apple is unlikely to join Google's party.

“Historically, iTunes works only on Apple devices, so they have a different approach,” he said.

Chromecast, similar to Apple AirPlay, also enables people to mirror Web sites visible in their browser on their TV screen. So users could watch videos or look at photos on the big screen, and they could theoretically watch TV shows accessible online, as on HBO Go. But expect pushback. Mr. Pichai said that media companies had the ability to block their content from Chromecast, which major broadcast networks did with Google TV.

For consumers, Chromecast is hardly the final stop on the road to Internet-connected TVs that allow users to watch whatever they want whenever they want on any device they want. Instead, it is one more offering in an already fractured market. Tech companies have been trying many experiments to merge TV and the Internet, and in the process get a share of TV viewing and advertising.

Google has tried again and again to get onto TVs, but with little success. Google TV has been underwhelming. (It runs on Android, one of Google's two operating systems. Chromecast runs on a stripped-down version of Chrome, its other operating system.) The Nexus Q, for streaming from Android devices, was dead on arrival.

Chromecast, though, could pave the way for Google's grander TV plans. It is negotiating with TV channels for an Internet cable service, in which people would be able to access cable channels in a Web browser, according to people briefed on the talks. So Chromecast may be the first step in what Google hopes will be a cable alternative.

On the hardware side, Google is trying to do away with the annoying jumble of cords and clunky boxes that accompany most TVs. Chromecast plugs into an HDMI port on a TV, connects to power through a USB cord, and uses Wi-Fi. At $35, it is well below the price of other streaming media devices. Mr. Pichai said it was profitable for Google and retailers.

For services connected to Chromecast, like YouTube and Netflix, viewers see a small symbol to click to broadcast to TV. Chromecast pulls the video from the cloud. The laptop, tablet or phone is the remote control.

A version of this article appeared in print on 07/25/2013, on page B2 of the NewYork edition with the headline: With New Device, Google Tries Again on Internet TV.

Google Debuts an Updated Nexus 7 Tablet

SAN FRANCISCO - Google revealed its latest Nexus 7 tablet on Wednesday, a day after Apple reported declining sales of the rival iPad.

The new Android tablet, which was widely expected, is a slimmer, faster, lighter, higher-resolution version of the first Nexus 7, introduced a year ago to good reviews and brisk sales. It accounted for more than 10 percent of Android tablets sold, according to Google, which held a news conference here to show the tablet and a new Internet TV device called Chromecast.

Google also announced a competitive milestone for its Play app store, which once lagged behind Apple's App Store. Play now has a million apps, exceeding Apple's 900,000. Google also announced a few new features of the Play store, like a gaming hub and textbooks.

The Nexus 7, though more expensive than the original, is less expensive than the rival iPad Mini. The Nexus 7 costs $229 to $349, depending on storage and Internet connection, while the iPad Mini costs from $329 to $659.

Apple reported on Tuesday that iPad sales were down 14 percent year over year, which some analysts attributed to its high prices in a market that is increasingly filled with lower-priced, similar-quality competitors.

The new tablet, which will be available July 30, has rear and front-facing cameras, virtual surround sound speakers, log-ins for multiple users and photo-realistic graphics that show the stubble on a gaming avatar's face. It runs on the latest version of Android, Jelly Bean 4.3. Like the first Nexus 7, it is manufactured by Asus.

Sundar Pichai, the Google senior vice president who recently added Android to his portfolio of responsibilities, which also includes Chrome, said the tablet was evidence of Google's commitment to both operating systems and to developing a consistent experience for consumers across devices.

Brian X. Chen contributed reporting from New York.