Woman Found Fatally Shot at Home of Pistorius

Emilio Morenatti/Associated Press

Oscar Pistorius, the South African Olympic and Paralympic track star, in September.

JOHANNESBURG — Paralympic champion Oscar Pistorius was taken into police custody early Thursday morning after he shot and killed a woman in his home in Pretoria, according to South African police officials.

Mr. Pistorius, 26, won two gold medals and a silver at last year’s Paralympic Games in London. He was the first double amputee to run in the Olympics and reached the 400-meter semi-final in 2012 in London. Known by the nickname Blade Runner, he races using carbon fiber prosthetic blades.

Early Thursday morning, the police responded to a report of gunshots in the upscale housing complex where Mr. Pistorius lives, said Col. Katlego Mogale, a police spokeswoman. When they arrived, they found paramedics treating a 30-year-old woman for gunshot wounds. The woman was pronounced dead and a 26-year-old man was taken into custody, Colonel Mogale said. She declined to identify the man as Mr. Pistorius, but another police official confirmed that it was the runner.

Colonel Mogale said that the case is being investigated as a murder and that the suspect is expected to appear in court later Thursday. She would not comment on a possible motive for the shooting.

“A case of murder has been opened,” Colonel Mogale said. “Currently the investigators and the forensic people are on the scene.”

Reports from local media said that Mr. Pistorius told the police that the shooting was an accident and that he had mistaken the woman, who was said to be his girlfriend, for an intruder.

South Africa has one of the world’s highest rates of violent crime, and break-ins by armed robbers are relatively common. Legal handgun ownership is also common, with some restrictions.

Adele Kirsten of Gun-Free SA, an anti-gun violence organization, said that whatever the motive, the shooting was an avoidable tragedy.

“The idea that you have a gun to protect your family against intruders, the data doesn’t bear that out,” Ms. Kirsten said. “What it tells us is that having a gun in your home puts you and your family at risk of being shot.”

In the Paralympics last September, Mr. Pistorius won individual gold, when he successfully defended his Paralympic 400 meter title. He had lost his 100- and 200-meter titles, but was part of the gold medal-winning 4x100 meter relay team. He same second in the 200 meter race.

After that contest, Mr. Pistorius damaged his reputation among his followers by criticizing the winner, Alan Oliveira of Brazil, raising questions about the length of the winner’s blades. Mr. Pistorius later apologized and praised the gold medalist in the 100 meter race, Jonnie Peacock of Britain.

Mr. Pistorius, who was born without fibulas, had both legs amputated below the knee before his first birthday and he battled for many years to compete against able-bodied athletes. In 2008, he qualified for the Beijing Games but was ruled ineligible by track’s world governing body because his blades were deemed to give him a competitive advantage.

South African journalists said Mr. Pistorius lived in an upscale, walled complex near the South Africa capital of Pretoria and that his girlfriend was a fashion model. A reporter outside the complex on Thursday said it was protected by high walls and razor wire.

Lydia Polgreen reported from Johannesburg, and Alan Cowell from Paris.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 14, 2013

An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly in one reference to the sprinter at whose home a woman was fatally shot. He is Oscar Pistorius, not Pretorius.

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Olympian Pistorius in custody after woman killed

PRETORIA, South Africa (AP) — Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorius was taken into custody and was expected to appear in court Thursday after a 30-year-old woman who was believed to be his girlfriend was shot dead at his home in South Africa's capital, Pretoria.

Police Lt. Col. Katlego Mogale told The Associated Press that officers received a call in the early hours of the morning that there had been a shooting at the double-amputee runner's home in a gated housing complex.

Mogale said when police arrived they found paramedics trying to revive the woman, who had been shot an unspecified number of times. Mogale, who was speaking to the AP from the scene, said the woman died at the house.

Officers found a 9 mm pistol at Pistorius' house and Mogale said the 26-year-old Pistorius is expected to appear in court later on Thursday.

Police have not released the name of the woman, but the publicist for Reeva Steenkamp, Pistorius' girlfriend, told Sky News that Steenkamp had died. Tributes to Steenkamp, a model, poured onto social media sites.

Many South African media outlets had reported that the dead woman was Pistorius' girlfriend Steenkamp and that he may have mistaken her for a burglar and shot her, but police did not clarify the dead woman's relationship to Pistorius. Mogale said the victim's family had not yet identified the body.

It was reported that the woman may have been trying to surprise Pistorius for Valentine's Day and he thought she was an intruder breaking into his home. The shooting prompted discussions on talk radio shows about the country's gun control laws.

Radio 702 talk show host Redi Thlabi discussed accidental shootings, including one in which a father shot his daughter as she tried to sneak out early one morning, mistaking her for an intruder.

"I am just shocked and speechless," Thlabi said. "I wonder if this puts the spotlight on the gun ownership debate. Do you feel safe when you hear such stories?"

Pistorius made history in London last year when he became the first double-amputee track athlete to compete in the Olympic Games. He is one of South Africa's and the world's most famous sportsmen.

Having had both his legs amputated below the knee before his first birthday because of a congenital condition, he campaigned for years to be allowed to compete against able-bodied athletes. Having initially been banned because of his carbon fiber blades — which critics said gave him an unfair advantage — he was cleared by sport's highest court in 2008 and allowed to run at the top events.

He competed in the 400 meters and on South Africa's 4x400 relay team at the London Games, making history after being have his selection confirmed on South Africa's team at the very last minute. He also retained his Paralympic title in the 400 meters in London.

South Africa's Sports Confederation and Olympic committee released a statement later Thursday saying they had been "inundated" with requests for comment but were not in a position to give out any details of the shooting.

"SASCOC, like the rest of the public, knows no more than what is in the public domain, which is there has been an alleged fatal shooting on the basis of a mistaken identity and an apparent assumption of a burglary," the South African Olympic committee said. "The organization is in no position to comment on the incident other than to say our deepest sympathy and condolences have been expressed to the families of all concerned."

South Africa has some of the world's highest murder rates, with nearly 50 people killed each day in the nation of 50 million. It also has high rates of rape, other assaults, robbery and carjackings.

U.N. statistics show South Africa has the second highest rate of shooting deaths in the world, second only to Colombia.

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Imray reported from Cape Town, South Africa.

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Use of Morning-After Pill Is Rising, Report Says

The use of morning-after pills by American women has more than doubled in recent years, driven largely by rising rates of use among women in their early 20s, according to new federal data released Thursday.

The finding is likely to add to the public debate over rules issued by the Obama administration under the new health care law that require most employers to provide free coverage of birth control, including morning-after pills, to female employees. Some religious institutions and some employers have objected to the requirement and filed lawsuits to block its enforcement.

Morning-after pills, which help prevent pregnancy after sex, were used by 11 percent of sexually active women from 2006 to 2010, the period of the study. That was up from just 4 percent in 2002. Nearly one in four women between the ages of 20 and 24 who had ever had sex have used the pill at some point, the data show.

Morning-after pills are particularly controversial among some conservative groups who contend they can cause abortions by interfering with the implantation of a fertilized egg that the groups regard as a person.

Medical experts say that portrayal is inaccurate, and that studies provide strong evidence that the most commonly used pills do not hinder implantation, but work by delaying or preventing ovulation so that an egg is never fertilized in the first place, or thicken cervical mucus so sperm have trouble moving.

This month, the Obama administration offered a proposal that could expand the number of groups that do not need to provide or pay for birth control coverage. But the proposal did not end the political fight over the issue, which legal experts say may end up in the Supreme Court.

The new data was released by the National Center for Health Statistics and based on interviews with more than 12,000 women from 2006 to 2010. Researchers asked sexually active women if they had ever used emergency contraception, “also known as Plan B, Preven or morning-after pills,” as well as about their use of other forms of birth control.

Over all, 99 percent of sexually active women ages 15 to 44 have used contraception at some point in their lives, or about 53 million women, up slightly from 2002. An earlier report found that 62 percent of all women of reproductive age were currently using some form of birth control.

The new report found that 98.6 percent of sexually active Catholic women had used contraception at some point, but the data did not show how many Catholic women currently use contraception.

Condom use has risen markedly. More than 93 percent of women said they had partners who had used condoms at some point, compared with 82 percent of women in 1995, a likely effect of strong public advocacy for condom use during the AIDS epidemic.

In contrast, women who had used intrauterine devices, or IUDs, at some point in their lives declined to about 8 percent from 10 percent in 1995. The use of birth control pills has remained steady since 1995 at 82 percent.

Eighty-nine percent of white women said they had used birth control pills at some point, compared with 67 percent of Hispanic women, 78 percent of black women and 57 percent of Asian women.

Education played a role in the type of contraception used. Forty percent of women without a high school diploma said they chose sterilization, while just 10 percent of women with a bachelor’s degree said they used that method. Those without a high school diploma were also far more likely to use three-month injectables, like Depo-Provera — 36 percent compared with 13 percent of women with a college degree.

About 12 percent of college graduates said they had used emergency contraception, while 7 percent of women with only a high school degree said they had used it.

Educated women were far more likely to have practiced periodic abstinence based on the menstrual cycle. About 28 percent of women with a master’s degree or higher had practiced this method, while just 13 percent of women without a high school diploma had, the report found.

White women, American-born Hispanic women and black women were most likely to practice withdrawal, with more than half of women in each group saying they have used that method. Just 44 percent of foreign-born Hispanics said they practiced withdrawal.

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Japanese Economy Contracts and Remains in Recession

TOKYO (AP) — Japan’s economy remained mired in recession late last year, shrinking 0.4 percent in annualized terms for the third straight quarter of contraction on feeble demand at home and overseas.

The government reported Thursday that growth for all of 2012 was 1.9 percent, after a 0.6 percent contraction in 2011 and a 4.7 percent increase in 2010 and a 5.5 percent contraction in 2009.

The figures were worse than expected, as many analysts had forecast the economy may have emerged from recession late last year as the Japanese yen weakened against other major currencies, giving a boost to Japanese export manufacturers.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who took office in late December, is championing aggressive spending and monetary stimulus to help get growth back on track. He has lobbied the central bank to set an inflation target of 2 percent, aimed at breaking out of Japan’s long bout of deflation, or falling prices, that he says are inhibiting corporate investment and growth.

But the Bank of Japan was not expected to announce any major new initiatives from a policy meeting on Thursday. The current central bank governor, Masaaki Shirakawa, is due to leave office on March 19, and Mr. Abe is expected to appoint as his successor an expert who favors his more activist approach to monetary policy.

Last year began on an upbeat note with annual growth in the first quarter at 6 percent as strong government spending on reconstruction from the March 2011 tsunami disaster helped spur demand. But the economy contracted in the second quarter and deteriorated further as frictions with China over a territorial dispute hurt exports to one of Japan’s largest overseas markets.

Despite the dismal data for last year, many in Japan expect at least a temporary bump to growth from higher government spending on public works and other programs. An index measuring consumer confidence, released this week, jumped to its highest level since 2007, the biggest increase in a single month.

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Pope to Make First Public Appearance Since Decision to Resign

VATICAN CITY — As Christians embarked on the 40-day period of Lent preceding Easter, Pope Benedict XVI made his first public appearance on Wednesday since the stunning announcement of his resignation two days ago, holding a general audience at the Vatican before a mass at St. Peter’s described by officials as likely to be his final celebration of a major mass in the huge basilica before his retirement on Feb. 28.

Loud cheers greeted the pope as he entered the Vatican’s audience hall which has a capacity of around 8,000 people.

The day — Ash Wednesday at the beginning of one of the most important periods in the Christian religious calendar — offered the pope’s followers a chance to see and hear him before he withdraws into a far more sheltered life in a convent within the Vatican walls where an apartment has been prepared for him.

Still unclear, however, are some of the practical consequences of Benedict’s decision, Vatican officials acknowledged Tuesday, from how the former pope will be addressed, to what to do with the papal ring used to seal important documents, traditionally destroyed upon a pope’s death.

“There are a series of questions that remain to be seen, also on the part of the pope himself, even if it is a decision that he had made some time ago,” the Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said at a news conference. “How he will live afterward, which will be very different from how he lives now, will require time and tranquillity and reflection and a moment of adaptation to a new situation.”

Thousands of Catholics gathered for a glimpse of Benedict, including Francesca Meggiorini, from Verona, who had brought her four children with her because, she said, “this is special. I wanted my kids to be present. The pope was a man whose simple words went straight to the heart. So it’s wonderful for my children to be here. I think this experience will remain in their memory.”

Kevin Murphy, on a pilgrimage from Saint Benedict School in Bury St. Edmunds in eastern England, called Benedict “a great moral and spiritual leader.” And Fabio Semeraro, a ballet dancer from Rome, said he came to see the pope after “because it’s an important event. You get attached to a pope, but then again, after there will be another.”

Even though the Code of Canon Law allows popes to resign, the occurrence was rare enough to have caught Vatican officials off guard, including on issues like the protocol and potentially awkward logistics of having a former pope and his successor share a backyard.

When he leaves the papacy at the end of the month, Benedict will retire to his summer home in Castel Gandolfo, in the hills outside Rome, before moving to the Mater Ecclesiae convent, a plain, four-story structure built 21 years ago to serve as an international place “for contemplative life within the walls of Vatican City,” as it is described on a Vatican Web site.

Workers began transforming the building into a residence in November, after the cloistered nuns who had occupied the convent left, Father Lombardi said. He did not tip his hand about whether the renovations were carried out with the pontiff as the future occupant in mind. “The pope knew this place, this building and thought it was appropriate for his needs,” he said.

The timing, however, raised suspicions that the pope had been planning the details of his retirement for some time. The editor of the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, wrote Monday that the pope had made his decision “many months ago,” after a demanding trip to Mexico and Cuba in March 2012, “and kept with a reserve that no one could violate.”

Father Lombardi said that the stress of that trip had further convinced the pope that he no longer had the stamina to do the job.

In fact, the pope had meditated on the possibility of resigning for years. In the 2010 book “Light of the World: The Pope, the Church and the Signs of the Times,” from a series of interviews conducted by Peter Seewald, a German journalist, Benedict said that if a pope “clearly realized that he is no longer physically, psychologically and spiritually capable of carrying out the duties of his office,” he would have “the right, and under some circumstances also an obligation, to resign.”

Rumors of his imminent resignation began to appear periodically in the Italian news media in recent years, as the pope appeared increasingly frail in public appearances.

A Vatican official, who asked not to be named because he was discussing papal business, said that the number of people who had known about the pope’s decision “a long time, could be counted on one hand.” But the pope had informed a small group of other collaborators “in recent days.”

When he retires to Vatican City, the pope will be able to move freely, Father Lombardi said, though it was “premature” to say how involved he will be in day-to-day activities — like saying Mass — at the Vatican.

He would not, however, intervene in the choice of his successor. “You can be sure that the cardinals will be autonomous in their decision and he will have no specific role in this election,” Father Lombardi said, adding that the pope was “a very discreet person.”

The conclave to choose the next pope will begin 15 to 20 days after the pope resigns, and a new leader of the Roman Catholic Church is expected to be in place by Easter, which falls on March 31 this year.

Father Lombardi said the pope would continue to perform his regular duties until the end of the month, and would keep all the appointments on his calendar. Some parts of his schedule will be modified to take into account the heightened public interest in the pope during his final days in office, Father Lombardi indicated.

For instance, the Ash Wednesday mass usually takes place in a church on the Aventine Hill. But this year it will be conducted in St. Peter’s to allow a greater number of the faithful to attend, Father Lombardi said.

His final audience, on Feb. 27, will be moved to St. Peter’s Square instead of the usual indoor venue used in winter, “to allow the faithful to say goodbye to the pope.”

Elisabetta Povoledo reported from Vatican City, and Alan Cowell from Paris.

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No. 8 Michigan State routs No. 4 Michigan 75-52

EAST LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Michigan State has muddled through much of its season, finding ways to win games short on style with gritty substance.

The eighth-ranked Spartans, though, showed their potential in an impressive 75-52 win over No. 4 Michigan on Tuesday night in the rivalry's first matchup of top 10 teams.

"The sky is the limit," guard Keith Appling said.

If Michigan State can play anything like it did against the Wolverines, Appling might be right.

The Spartans (21-4, 10-2 Big Ten) broke a first-place tie in the conference with No. 1 Indiana, which plays at Michigan State next Tuesday after the Spartans try to avoid a letdown Saturday night at Nebraska.

Appling acknowledged he was a little bit surprised by the lopsided victory — the school's largest since beating Michigan by 27 points in 2002 — but shrugged off the significance of it with much of the regular season remaining.

"We just have to take it for what it is and prepare for our next game," Appling said.

The Wolverines (21-4, 8-4) have lost three of four, but the closely contested setbacks on the road against the Hoosiers and at Wisconsin were nothing like the latest when they were held to a season-low points total.

"They bullied us — point blank," said Tim Hardaway Jr., who matched a career low with two points.

Michigan State didn't trail once, led by as many as 16 points in the first half and enjoyed 30-point leads in the second.

"We probably played our best game in three years," Spartans coach Tom Izzo said. "And, they probably played one of their worst."

Michigan coach John Beilein agreed.

"That was the worst we've played in a long, long time and credit Michigan State for that," he said.

Burke scored 18 points for the Wolverines and didn't get much help from his teammate offensively, or defensively.

"It was an embarrassing loss," Burke said.

Hardaway Jr. was held scoreless until making a layup in the opening minute of the second half — after turning down Beilein's suggestion to work on his shot during halftime warmups — and didn't score again. Hardaway was 1 of 11 from the field.

"He's been playing as good as any player in the country," Beilein said. "He had a bad night, credit Michigan State's defense. Tim had a bad night and Tim Hardaway will bounce back like he always has."

Glen Robinson III was 1 of 4 and scored two points to match his season low.

The Wolverines, who pride themselves on taking care of the basketball, had a season-high 16 turnovers and didn't have much success getting the ball away from the turnover-prone Spartans. Michigan made fewer than 40 percent of its shots and scored one fewer point than it did in a three-point loss at Ohio State.

"Maybe we got exactly what we deserve and it's medicine for the future," Beilein said.

Everything went right for Michigan State, which had just eight turnovers and made 48-plus percent of its shots.

Gary Harris scored 17 points, making five 3-pointers, and Derrick Nix had his way on the inside, scoring 14 points as part of a balanced offense.

Appling had 11 points and Branden Dawson scored 10 before leaving the court late in the game because Michigan's Mitch McGary hit him in the face inadvertently with his right arm.

Izzo said Dawson got hit in the nose and had a cut on his lip.

"I do think he's going to be OK," Izzo said.

Matt Costello scored a season-high eight points and fellow freshman Denzel Valentine had seven points to help Michigan State win its second straight in the series after losing three in a row following a run of dominance for the Spartans.

White-clad fans in the stands were fired up before the game even started and they stayed enthusiastic, standing for much of the game, because the home team gave them plenty of reasons to cheer from start to finish.

"The crowd was just awesome," Izzo said. "It kind of reminded me of back in the day."

In the first matchup of 20-win teams in Division I basketball this season, Michigan State showed it might not be a rebuilding this season.

Michigan, meanwhile, has been humbled since being ranked No. 1 last month for the first time since the 1992-92 season.

"It was a big step for us, but don't think that's the real Michigan team because it's not," Izzo said.

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Follow Larry Lage on Twitter: http://twitter.com/larrylage

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Well: Getting the Right Dose of Exercise

Phys Ed

Gretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness.

A common concern about exercise is that if you don’t do it almost every day, you won’t achieve much health benefit. But a commendable new study suggests otherwise, showing that a fairly leisurely approach to scheduling workouts may actually be more beneficial than working out almost daily.

For the new study, published this month in Exercise & Science in Sports & Medicine, researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham gathered 72 older, sedentary women and randomly assigned them to one of three exercise groups.

One group began lifting weights once a week and performing an endurance-style workout, like jogging or bike riding, on another day.

Another group lifted weights twice a week and jogged or rode an exercise bike twice a week.

The final group, as you may have guessed, completed three weight-lifting and three endurance sessions, or six weekly workouts.

The exercise, which was supervised by researchers, was easy at first and meant to elicit changes in both muscles and endurance. Over the course of four months, the intensity and duration gradually increased, until the women were jogging moderately for 40 minutes and lifting weights for about the same amount of time.

The researchers were hoping to find out which number of weekly workouts would be, Goldilocks-like, just right for increasing the women’s fitness and overall weekly energy expenditure.

Some previous studies had suggested that working out only once or twice a week produced few gains in fitness, while exercising vigorously almost every day sometimes led people to become less physically active, over all, than those formally exercising less. Researchers theorized that the more grueling workout schedule caused the central nervous system to respond as if people were overdoing things, sending out physiological signals that, in an unconscious internal reaction, prompted them to feel tired or lethargic and stop moving so much.

To determine if either of these possibilities held true among their volunteers, the researchers in the current study tracked the women’s blood levels of cytokines, a substance related to stress that is thought to be one of the signals the nervous system uses to determine if someone is overdoing things physically. They also measured the women’s changing aerobic capacities, muscle strength, body fat, moods and, using sophisticated calorimetry techniques, energy expenditure over the course of each week.

By the end of the four-month experiment, all of the women had gained endurance and strength and shed body fat, although weight loss was not the point of the study. The scientists had not asked the women to change their eating habits.

There were, remarkably, almost no differences in fitness gains among the groups. The women working out twice a week had become as powerful and aerobically fit as those who had worked out six times a week. There were no discernible differences in cytokine levels among the groups, either.

However, the women exercising four times per week were now expending far more energy, over all, than the women in either of the other two groups. They were burning about 225 additional calories each day, beyond what they expended while exercising, compared to their calorie burning at the start of the experiment.

The twice-a-week exercisers also were using more energy each day than they had been at first, burning almost 100 calories more daily, in addition to the calories used during workouts.

But the women who had been assigned to exercise six times per week were now expending considerably less daily energy than they had been at the experiment’s start, the equivalent of almost 200 fewer calories each day, even though they were exercising so assiduously.

“We think that the women in the twice-a-week and four-times-a-week groups felt more energized and physically capable” after several months of training than they had at the start of the study, says Gary Hunter, a U.A.B. professor who led the experiment. Based on conversations with the women, he says he thinks they began opting for stairs over escalators and walking for pleasure.

The women working out six times a week, though, reacted very differently. “They complained to us that working out six times a week took too much time,” Dr. Hunter says. They did not report feeling fatigued or physically droopy. Their bodies were not producing excessive levels of cytokines, sending invisible messages to the body to slow down.

Rather, they felt pressed for time and reacted, it seems, by making choices like driving instead of walking and impatiently avoiding the stairs.

Despite the cautionary note, those who insist on working out six times per week need not feel discouraged. As long as you consciously monitor your activity level, the findings suggest, you won’t necessarily and unconsciously wind up moving less over all.

But the more fundamental finding of this study, Dr. Hunter says, is that “less may be more,” a message that most likely resonates with far more of us. The women exercising four times a week “had the greatest overall increase in energy expenditure,” he says. But those working out only twice a week “weren’t far behind.”

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Media Decoder Blog: Comcast Buys Rest of NBC in Early Sale

8:53 p.m. | Updated Comcast gave NBCUniversal a $16.7 billion vote of confidence on Tuesday, agreeing to pay that sum to acquire General Electric’s remaining 49 percent stake in the entertainment company. The deal accelerated a sales process that was expected to take several more years.

Brian Roberts, chief executive of Comcast, said the acquisition, which will be completed by the end of March, underscored a commitment to NBCUniversal and its highly profitable cable channels, expanding theme parks and the resurgent NBC broadcast network.

“We always thought it was a strong possibility that we’d some day own 100 percent,” Mr. Roberts said in a telephone interview.

He added that the rapidly changing television business and the growing necessity of owning content as well as the delivery systems sped up the decision. “It’s been a very smooth couple of years, and the content continues to get more valuable with new revenue streams,” he said.

Comcast also said that NBCUniversal would buy the NBC studios and offices at 30 Rockefeller Center, as well as the CNBC headquarters in Englewood Cliffs, N.J. Those transactions will cost about $1.4 billion.

Mr. Roberts called the 30 Rockefeller Center offices “iconic” and said it would have been “expensive to replicate” studios elsewhere for the “Today” show, “Saturday Night Live,” “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon” and other programs produced there. “We’re proud to be associated with it,” Mr. Roberts said of the building.

With the office space comes naming rights for the building, according to a General Electric spokeswoman. So it is possible that one of New York’s most famous landmarks, with its giant red G.E. sign, could soon be displaying a Comcast sign instead.

When asked about a possible logo swap on the building, owned by Tishman Speyer, Mr. Roberts told CNBC, that is “not something we’re focused on talking about today.” Nevertheless, the sale was visible in a prominent way Tuesday night: the G.E. letters, which have adorned the top of 30 Rock for several decades, were not illuminated for an hour after sunset. But the lights flickered back on later in the evening.

Comcast, with a conservative, low-profile culture, had clashed with the G.E. approach, according to employees and executives in television. Comcast moved NBCUniversal’s executive offices from the 52nd floor to the 51st floor — less opulent space that features smaller executive offices and a cozy communal coffee room instead of General Electric’s lavish executive dining room.

Comcast took control of NBCUniversal in early 2011 by acquiring 51 percent of the media company from General Electric. The structure of the deal gave Comcast the option of buying out G.E. in a three-and-a-half to seven-year time frame. In part because of the clash in corporate cultures, television executives said, both sides were eager to accelerate the sale.

Price was also a factor. Mr. Roberts said he believed the stake would have cost more had Comcast waited. Also, he pointed to the company’s strong fourth-quarter earnings to be released late Tuesday afternoon, which put it in a strong position to complete the sale.

Comcast reported a near record-breaking year with $20 billion in operating cash flow in the fiscal year 2012. In the three months that ended Dec. 31, Comcast’s cash flow increased 7.3 percent to $5.3 billion. Revenue at NBCUniversal grew 4.8 percent to $6 billion.

“We’ve had two years to make the transition and to make the investments that we believe will continue to take off,” Mr. Roberts said.

The transactions with General Electric will be largely financed with $11.4 billion of cash on hand, $4 billion of subsidiary senior unsecured notes to be issued to G.E. and a $2 billion in borrowings.

Even with the investment in NBCUniversal, Comcast said it would increase its dividend by 20 percent to 78 cents a share and buy back $2 billion in stock in 2013.

When it acquired the 51 percent stake two years ago, Comcast committed to paying about $6.5 billion in cash and contributed all of its cable channels, including E! and some regional sports networks, to the newly established NBCUniversal joint venture. Those channels were valued at $7.25 billion.

The transaction made Comcast, the single biggest cable provider in the United States, one of the biggest owners of cable channels, too. NBCUniversal operates the NBC broadcast network, 10 local NBC stations, USA, Bravo, Syfy, E!, MSNBC, CNBC, the NBC Sports Network, Telemundo, Universal Pictures, Universal Studios, and a long list of other media brands.

Mr. Roberts and Michael J. Angelakis, vice chairman and chief financial officer for the Comcast Corporation, led the negotiations that began last year with Jeffrey R. Immelt, chief executive of General Electric, and Keith Sharon, the company’s chief financial officer. JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Centerview Partners and CBRE provided financial and strategic advice.

The sale ends a long relationship between General Electric and NBC that goes back before the founding days of television. In 1926, the Radio Corporation of America created the NBC network. General Electric owned R.C.A. until 1930. It regained control of R.C.A., including NBC, in 1986, in a deal worth $6.4 billion at the time.

In a slide show on the company’s “GE Reports” Web site titled “It’s a Wrap: GE, NBC Part Ways, Together They’ve Changed History,” G.E. said the deal with Comcast “caps a historic, centurylong journey for the two companies that gave birth to modern home entertainment.”

Mr. Immelt has said that NBCUniversal did not mesh with G.E.’s core industrial businesses. That became even more apparent when the company became a minority stakeholder with no control over how the business was run, according to a person briefed on G.E.’s thinking who could not discuss private conversations publicly.

“By adding significant new capital to our balanced capital allocation plan, we can accelerate our share buyback plans while investing in growth in our core businesses,” Mr. Immelt said in a statement. He added: “For nearly 30 years, NBC — and later NBCUniversal — has been a great business for G.E. and our investors.”

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India Ink: Lost and Found at the Kumbh Mela

ALLAHABAD, Uttar Pradesh— Most people know the heart-sinking feeling of losing someone in a crowded place. Imagine the feeling of being lost at the largest gathering of humanity in the world, the Kumbh Mela.

It’s a scene so dramatic, and so common, that it’s a theme in many Bollywood movies — families who attend the Kumbh are separated and then reunited decades later.

Pranmati Pandey, a middle-aged woman from Bihar, knows the experience well. The mother of four was separated from her family on Sunday morning in the tide of an estimated 30 million people who gathered for the auspicious bathing day. Late on Sunday night she sat huddled with hundreds of other people, mostly women, who had also been separated from their friends and family.

“I just looked away from my family to give rice to the poor people on the road,” Mrs. Panday said, too exhausted from the day to cry. “When I turned around they were gone.” She wandered around for a few hours before a benevolent stranger took her to the police.

Every 12  years, an enormous pop-up city is erected on a flood plain, where the Ganges, the Yamuna, and the mythical Saraswati rivers merge.  Organizers say up to 80 million people are likely to attend the six-week event.  Though there is not an official estimate of the crowds yet, the police and organizers say that on Feb. 10, the largest bathing day, the number of people separated from their family and friends at the mela rose above 20,000.

To reconnect the huge numbers of missing, scores of police officers, government officials, and nongovernmental workers, like Rajaram Tiwari, are collaborating to assure that the lost will be found. Mr. Tiwari started an organization, Bharat Seva Dal, to find missing people at the Kumbh Mela back in 1947.

Tin Cans to Smartphones

“I came to the Kumbh when I was a teenager,” Mr. Tiwari said. “I saw how many people suffered when they lost their loved ones. So, I decided to start this organization. ”

During the first few Kumbhs he attended, Mr. Tiwari said he walked around with megaphones crafted with tin cans, announcing the names of the missing. Mr. Tiwari, who is in his eighties, said that over the last few decades the government has understood the importance of his service, and eventually gave him more resources.

Now, there are tens of thousands of speakers throughout the gathering, blaring 24-hour announcements with the names and descriptions of the lost. The system is manned by Mr Tiwari’s organization, several other NGOs, and the police.

There is a chaotic order to Mr. Tiwari and his comrades’ lost-and-found command stations, the largest of which is easily identified by a golf cart-sized yellow balloon that floats several hundred feet above it. As people come in, their names and details are written on a slip of paper and broadcast across the Kumbh.

On non-bathing days when the crowds are more manageable, the system works relatively well. But as the masses gathered on Sunday, it teetered on total collapse.

Half naked and soaked pilgrims, who had been separated from their friends and family in the rush to take a dip at the Sangam, swarmed a platform set up by the police on the banks of the river in hopes of finding the missing. Terrified children stood on the platform and screamed for their parents. One little boy, who spotted his father  among the masses, jumped off the stage and crowd-surfed into his arms.

By Sunday night, mountains of paper scraps with names scrawled on them littered the tiny tin-paneled announcement room at Tiwari’s tent. With no system of tracking the missing, many of the names were read once and then discarded.

In hopes of improving the process, police this year tried to utilize mobile internet technology.

“At the last Maha Kumbh in 2001, we were using land line phones and only had one digital camera to take pictures of missing people,” said Alok Sharma, the inspector general of the police in Allahabad.

This Kumbh, Mr. Sharma, 42, said the police are using “WhatsApp,” a smart phone application that sends messages and photos in real time to share information. They’ve also created a digitized photo system of the lost and found people that is available online.

But for Mrs. Panday and the thousands of other frantic people clambering to get the attention of  the police and Mr. Tiwar’s tent for help on Sunday, cell phones mattered little.

No Phone, No Money, No Address

Mrs. Panday is illiterate,  has no money, cell phone or even a phone number to contact her loved ones. So she  relied on her name being called on the loudspeaker. She said she heard it three times but no one had turned up.

The new technologies are supposed to make policing easier and cut back on the time that people are lost from days to hours, Mr. Sharma said. But in many ways, the old-school system of public announcements remains the most effective.

“The crowds are such that they are still not that much into computers and things like that,” said Mr. Sharma, who expected 18,000 police to patrol this year’s festival. “They would just go back to the basics. That is the announcement system.”

 Hundreds of Languages

But, in a country with hundreds of different dialects, making announcements can be difficult.

During one of the bathing days in January, when Mr. Tiwari and his staff did not understand the language of a missing person named Manu, a middle-aged woman from West Bengal, he turned the mic over to her. Scared, Manu only managed to utter a few words in Bengali between sobs.

Luckily for her, a Bengali soldier heard the troubled call and came to the tent to make an announcement on her behalf. Within an hour, a member of her family showed up to claim her.

Overwhelmed with the droves of “lost people” on Sunday, the system of announcements was largely turned over to the missing.  The terrified voices of the old, young children and women reverberated around the Mela, a foreboding warning to stay close to your companions.

Bollywood Reunions

In the early hours of the morning on Monday, Mrs. Panday was still waiting for her family to claim her. A woman sitting nearby let out a shrill shout when she saw her husband. Both in their 70’s, the couple, who had been married for almost six decades, had been separated for hours.

The two made announcements for the other, but in the deafening madness of the Kumbh neither had heard them. As a last resort, the elderly man stopped by Mr. Tiwari’s tent where he reunited with his wife.

Despite the odds, the police and organizers said that in the next few days all of the missing will be reconnected. Well, almost all of them.

Some people who turn up at the tent in the Kumbh are still hoping for the Bollywood story.  A bespectacled man in his forties came to the tent to find his father, whom became a Sadhu 35 years ago.

“I’m not lost,” the man said.  “After attending a Kumbh when I was a child, my father decided to take up the life of a Sadhu and disconnected from the family. I was just hoping this could be the Kumbh I found him.”

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Jayhawks back to winning ways with rout of K-State

LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — Bill Self was the first to acknowledge that folks around Kansas had grown spoiled.

It's only natural when one of the marquee programs in college basketball, one built upon iconic names such as James Naismith and Phog Allen, rattles off eight consecutive conference championships and throws in another national title along the way.

So when the Jayhawks scuffled to three straight losses, including an embarrassing defeat at TCU, it seemed as if the world was collapsing around the walls of Allen Fieldhouse.

"I think we just got spoiled, just like everyone around here does, that this can't happen to us," Self said matter-of-factly, "and we just let it happen."

On Monday night, they finally put an end to it.

Ben McLemore scored 30 points on his 20th birthday, Jeff Withey dominated in the paint and the No. 14 Jayhawks routed No. 10 Kansas State 83-62 to forge a tie for first place in the Big 12 between the bitter in-state rivals.

"I think it'll help us down the road, which is obviously the most important," Self said of the morass, which in reality had extended all the way back to the start of conference play. "We still control our own destiny, even though it will be difficult, without question."

One thing the Jayhawks (20-4, 8-3) have to their advantage is two wins over the Wildcats (19-5, 8-3), who had used a four-game winning streak to take over first place.

Rodney McGruder had 20 points and Angel Rodriguez added 17 for the Wildcats on Monday night, but they never seemed to be in the game despite entering the Phog as the higher-ranked team for the first time since Feb. 20, 1982.

The Jayhawks used two big runs in the first half to take a 47-29 lead at the break, and then thwarted every rally that the veteran Wildcats tried to muster down the stretch.

The result has become predictable: Kansas won for the 11th time in the last 12 games between the rivals, and for the 46th time in their last 49 meetings, prompting the student section to chant "This is our state!" once again in the closing minutes.

"Last week is over. We're going to learn from that," Withey said. "We met so many times and we talked about that so many times, and it's not going to happen again."

Most of the Jayhawks' struggles the past two weeks have centered on their offense, which had produced just 13 points in the first half in that loss to TCU last Wednesday night.

That wasn't much of a problem against the Wildcats.

McLemore, Kansas' star freshman, was 9 of 13 from the field and 6 of 10 from 3. Withey had 17 points, 10 boards and five blocked shots. Kevin Young had 13 points and Travis Releford 10.

Even backup guard Naadir Tharpe got into the act with seven points, eight assists and only one turnover, putting an exclamation mark on the quintessential get-right kind of game for Kansas.

"In the game of basketball, or any sport, it's not always who you're playing but when you're playing them," Kansas State coach Bruce Weber said. "They had a very tough week. They probably hung their head for a while. They got their head up. It's always a good remedy to come home."

Young got the Jayhawks off to a fast start with a dunk off a nifty feed from Tharpe, one of six assists he had in the first half. Withey was the recipient of Young's feed on the next trip, and McLemore's 3-pointer from the wing forced the Wildcats to call time out.

It didn't do much to ebb the tide.

Kansas used a 14-3 run to gain control, and then a 12-3 charge fueled by Tharpe and McLemore to take a 40-19 lead with 3:26 remaining in the first half.

Kansas ended up shooting 58.6 percent from the field, and 5 of 10 from beyond the arc, in building a 47-29 halftime advantage. It was the most points the offensively troubled Jayhawks had scored in a half since putting up 53 in the first half against American on Dec. 29.

"We just played as a team," McLemore said. "Went out there and gave it our all. It started on the defensive end. We got some stops and created on the offensive end."

Kansas State drew within 58-43 with 14:04 left, but Withey snuffed out the comeback.

The reigning Big 12 defensive player of the year swatted away a shot by McGruder and, moments later, threw down a massive dunk over Jordan Henriquez — a fellow 7-footer — before finishing off the three-point play. Withey then rejected McGruder at the other end, and Travis Releford had the putback that restored the Jayhawks' 20-point lead at 63-43 with 11:59 to go.

The Jayhawks put the game on cruise control down the stretch, giving Weber — who once followed Self as the man in charge at Illinois — his third loss in three tries against Kansas, and the Wildcats their sixth straight defeat in Lawrence.

Talk about things getting back to normal.

"First of all, losing three in a row is not — I understand it's not forgivable. It's a terrible, terrible deal. But what we're going through is what 99 percent of teams in America go through," Self said. "There's only 1 percent that doesn't go through this kind of stretch. And we're spoiled because it's been a long time since we went through one of these stretches."

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