Scant Proof Is Found to Back Up Claims by Energy Drinks

Energy drinks are the fastest-growing part of the beverage industry, with sales in the United States reaching more than $10 billion in 2012 — more than Americans spent on iced tea or sports beverages like Gatorade.

Their rising popularity represents a generational shift in what people drink, and reflects a successful campaign to convince consumers, particularly teenagers, that the drinks provide a mental and physical edge.

The drinks are now under scrutiny by the Food and Drug Administration after reports of deaths and serious injuries that may be linked to their high caffeine levels. But however that review ends, one thing is clear, interviews with researchers and a review of scientific studies show: the energy drink industry is based on a brew of ingredients that, apart from caffeine, have little, if any benefit for consumers.

“If you had a cup of coffee you are going to affect metabolism in the same way,” said Dr. Robert W. Pettitt, an associate professor at Minnesota State University in Mankato, who has studied the drinks.

Energy drink companies have promoted their products not as caffeine-fueled concoctions but as specially engineered blends that provide something more. For example, producers claim that “Red Bull gives you wings,” that Rockstar Energy is “scientifically formulated” and Monster Energy is a “killer energy brew.” Representative Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, a Democrat, has asked the government to investigate the industry’s marketing claims.

Promoting a message beyond caffeine has enabled the beverage makers to charge premium prices. A 16-ounce energy drink that sells for $2.99 a can contains about the same amount of caffeine as a tablet of NoDoz that costs 30 cents. Even Starbucks coffee is cheap by comparison; a 12-ounce cup that costs $1.85 has even more caffeine.

As with earlier elixirs, a dearth of evidence underlies such claims. Only a few human studies of energy drinks or the ingredients in them have been performed and they point to a similar conclusion, researchers say — that the beverages are mainly about caffeine.

Caffeine is called the world’s most widely used drug. A stimulant, it increases alertness, awareness and, if taken at the right time, improves athletic performance, studies show. Energy drink users feel its kick faster because the beverages are typically swallowed quickly or are sold as concentrates.

“These are caffeine delivery systems,” said Dr. Roland Griffiths, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University who has studied energy drinks. “They don’t want to say this is equivalent to a NoDoz because that is not a very sexy sales message.”

A scientist at the University of Wisconsin became puzzled as he researched an ingredient used in energy drinks like Red Bull, 5-Hour Energy and Monster Energy. The researcher, Dr. Craig A. Goodman, could not find any trials in humans of the additive, a substance with the tongue-twisting name of glucuronolactone that is related to glucose, a sugar. But Dr. Goodman, who had studied other energy drink ingredients, eventually found two 40-year-old studies from Japan that had examined it.

In the experiments, scientists injected large doses of the substance into laboratory rats. Afterward, the rats swam better. “I have no idea what it does in energy drinks,” Dr. Goodman said.

Energy drink manufacturers say it is their proprietary formulas, rather than specific ingredients, that provide users with physical and mental benefits. But that has not prevented them from implying otherwise.

Consider the case of taurine, an additive used in most energy products.

On its Web site, the producer of Red Bull, for example, states that “more than 2,500 reports have been published about taurine and its physiological effects,” including acting as a “detoxifying agent.” In addition, that company, Red Bull of Austria, points to a 2009 safety study by a European regulatory group that gave it a clean bill of health.

But Red Bull’s Web site does not mention reports by that same group, the European Food Safety Authority, which concluded that claims about the benefits in energy drinks lacked scientific support. Based on those findings, the European Commission has refused to approve claims that taurine helps maintain mental function and heart health and reduces muscle fatigue.

Taurine, an amino acidlike substance that got its name because it was first found in the bile of bulls, does play a role in bodily functions, and recent research suggests it might help prevent heart attacks in women with high cholesterol. However, most people get more than adequate amounts from foods like meat, experts said. And researchers added that those with heart problems who may need supplements would find far better sources than energy drinks.

Hiroko Tabuchi contributed reporting from Tokyo and Poypiti Amatatham from Bangkok.

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Scant Proof Is Found to Back Up Claims by Energy Drinks

Energy drinks are the fastest-growing part of the beverage industry, with sales in the United States reaching more than $10 billion in 2012 — more than Americans spent on iced tea or sports beverages like Gatorade.

Their rising popularity represents a generational shift in what people drink, and reflects a successful campaign to convince consumers, particularly teenagers, that the drinks provide a mental and physical edge.

The drinks are now under scrutiny by the Food and Drug Administration after reports of deaths and serious injuries that may be linked to their high caffeine levels. But however that review ends, one thing is clear, interviews with researchers and a review of scientific studies show: the energy drink industry is based on a brew of ingredients that, apart from caffeine, have little, if any benefit for consumers.

“If you had a cup of coffee you are going to affect metabolism in the same way,” said Dr. Robert W. Pettitt, an associate professor at Minnesota State University in Mankato, who has studied the drinks.

Energy drink companies have promoted their products not as caffeine-fueled concoctions but as specially engineered blends that provide something more. For example, producers claim that “Red Bull gives you wings,” that Rockstar Energy is “scientifically formulated” and Monster Energy is a “killer energy brew.” Representative Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, a Democrat, has asked the government to investigate the industry’s marketing claims.

Promoting a message beyond caffeine has enabled the beverage makers to charge premium prices. A 16-ounce energy drink that sells for $2.99 a can contains about the same amount of caffeine as a tablet of NoDoz that costs 30 cents. Even Starbucks coffee is cheap by comparison; a 12-ounce cup that costs $1.85 has even more caffeine.

As with earlier elixirs, a dearth of evidence underlies such claims. Only a few human studies of energy drinks or the ingredients in them have been performed and they point to a similar conclusion, researchers say — that the beverages are mainly about caffeine.

Caffeine is called the world’s most widely used drug. A stimulant, it increases alertness, awareness and, if taken at the right time, improves athletic performance, studies show. Energy drink users feel its kick faster because the beverages are typically swallowed quickly or are sold as concentrates.

“These are caffeine delivery systems,” said Dr. Roland Griffiths, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University who has studied energy drinks. “They don’t want to say this is equivalent to a NoDoz because that is not a very sexy sales message.”

A scientist at the University of Wisconsin became puzzled as he researched an ingredient used in energy drinks like Red Bull, 5-Hour Energy and Monster Energy. The researcher, Dr. Craig A. Goodman, could not find any trials in humans of the additive, a substance with the tongue-twisting name of glucuronolactone that is related to glucose, a sugar. But Dr. Goodman, who had studied other energy drink ingredients, eventually found two 40-year-old studies from Japan that had examined it.

In the experiments, scientists injected large doses of the substance into laboratory rats. Afterward, the rats swam better. “I have no idea what it does in energy drinks,” Dr. Goodman said.

Energy drink manufacturers say it is their proprietary formulas, rather than specific ingredients, that provide users with physical and mental benefits. But that has not prevented them from implying otherwise.

Consider the case of taurine, an additive used in most energy products.

On its Web site, the producer of Red Bull, for example, states that “more than 2,500 reports have been published about taurine and its physiological effects,” including acting as a “detoxifying agent.” In addition, that company, Red Bull of Austria, points to a 2009 safety study by a European regulatory group that gave it a clean bill of health.

But Red Bull’s Web site does not mention reports by that same group, the European Food Safety Authority, which concluded that claims about the benefits in energy drinks lacked scientific support. Based on those findings, the European Commission has refused to approve claims that taurine helps maintain mental function and heart health and reduces muscle fatigue.

Taurine, an amino acidlike substance that got its name because it was first found in the bile of bulls, does play a role in bodily functions, and recent research suggests it might help prevent heart attacks in women with high cholesterol. However, most people get more than adequate amounts from foods like meat, experts said. And researchers added that those with heart problems who may need supplements would find far better sources than energy drinks.

Hiroko Tabuchi contributed reporting from Tokyo and Poypiti Amatatham from Bangkok.

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Common Sense: Google Finds a Line Between ‘Aggressive’ and ‘Evil’

“Don’t Be Evil,” the founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, proclaimed in their 2004 “Owner’s Manual” for prospective investors in the company. Despite widespread cynicism, criticism and even mockery, the company has never backed down on this core premise, reiterating in its most recent list of the “things we know to be true” that “You can make money without doing evil.”

Yet the company has been dogged for years by widespread allegations that it violates its own pledge by manipulating the search results that remain the core of the company and primary source of its enormous profits.

Google insists that its results have always been “unbiased and objective” and that “our search results are the best we know how to produce.” But for competitive reasons, it never disclosed the secret algorithms that produce those results, so no one outside the company knew for sure. A growing chorus of complaints from companies like Expedia, Yelp and, especially, Microsoft that Google manipulates the results to favor its interests at the expense of competitors led both the United States government and the European Union to take up the issue. On Thursday, after nearly two years of investigation, the Federal Trade Commission rendered a verdict: Google isn’t evil.

It may have been “aggressive,” as the commission delicately put it. But “regarding the specific allegations that the company biased its search results to hurt competition, the evidence collected to date did not justify legal action by the commission,” said Beth Wilkinson, outside counsel to the F.T.C. “The F.T.C.’s mission is to protect competition, and not individual competitors.”

The decision is “a huge victory for Google,” Randal Picker, a professor of commercial law at the University of Chicago Law School and a specialist in antitrust and intellectual property, told me just after this week’s decision. It’s also a vindication of the integrity of Google’s search results and the company’s credibility. “There’s never been any evidence that consumers were harmed by Google’s practices and no evidence that Google ever engaged in any manipulation that violates antitrust law,” Eric Goldman, professor of law and director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University School of  Law, said.

The decision is also likely to set standards for competition on the Internet for years to come. It’s a blow to competitors like Microsoft, which has been stirring up opposition to Google for years, not to mention newer rivals like Facebook, Apple and Amazon. “The gloves will be off,” Professor Picker predicted. “The F.T.C. has indicated it’s going to be taking a very cautious approach toward regulating competition on the Internet.”

But will the decision ultimately prove to be good for consumers?

The F.T.C. did secure some concessions from Google regarding patent licensing and advertiser options. But to call those a slap on the wrist would be an overstatement. What mattered most to both Google users and competitors was Google’s search practices, which had never been put under the regulatory microscope to such a degree and which the F.T.C. left untouched.

Google’s search results have evolved significantly from its early, simpler days. When I typed “flight JFK to LAX” on Google this week, I got three categories of results: paid ads at the top and on the right; a Google-produced chart comparing flight options with the disclaimer, which you need to click on, that “Google may be compensated by these providers”; and so-called organic results below that. The first two organic results were entries for Expedia, a rival to Google’s travel site. But given the layout and size of my screen, none of the organic results were visible unless I scrolled down.

However clearly labeled, the prominence of Google’s own travel results gives pause to some antitrust experts. “Location is important,” Professor Picker said. “No one thinks otherwise. Years ago, it was important for airlines’ reservations systems to be on the first screen. But I’m not sure this is an antitrust problem.” Still, the issue is likely to be a focus of the European Union’s investigation of Google, and the European Union will probably be less sympathetic to unbridled competition on the Internet than the American authorities, and more inclined to protect competitors.

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South Korean Court Rejects Extradition in Attack on Japanese War Shrine

SEOUL, South Korea — A South Korean court sided with China on Thursday in a fight between Beijing and Tokyo over the custody of a Chinese man accused of an arson attack at the Yasukuni Shrine for Japan’s war dead.

The man, Liu Qiang, 38, completed a 10-month prison term in South Korea in November after hurling four gasoline bombs at the Japanese Embassy in central Seoul. His attack in January last year left burn marks on the embassy wall but hurt no one.

Mr. Liu had told South Korean police that his late maternal grandmother, a Korean, was one of Asia’s “comfort women,” who were forced into sexual slavery for Japan’s Imperial Army during World War II. He said that he attacked the Japanese Embassy to show his anger at Tokyo’s refusal to apologize and compensate properly for the wrongs done against the women.

Even before Mr. Liu was released from a South Korean prison, Tokyo and Beijing had filed competing requests for his extradition.

During the investigation by the South Korean police, Mr. Liu said that he had carried out an arson attack that burned the main wooden gate of the shrine in Tokyo in December 2011. The shrine, which commemorates several Japanese war criminals from World War II, as well as the common war dead, is seen by many Koreans and Chinese as a symbol of Japan’s past aggression, and Japanese politicians’ frequent visits there have prompted anti-Japanese emotions in the neighboring countries.

During his extradition hearings at the Seoul High Court in recent weeks, Mr. Liu argued that his attack should be treated as a political crime and that he would not be given a fair trial in Japan. His lawyers, reportedly hired by the Chinese government, cited a provision at the South Korea-Japan extradition treaty that allowed each country not to extradite people accused of political crimes.

South Korean prosecutors, who sought his extradition to Japan, argued that Japan sought his custody to punish him not for his political opinion but for arson.

On Thursday, the presiding justice, Hwang Han-sik, rejected the request, opening the door for Mr. Liu to leave for China.

In his verdict, Judge Hwang said extraditing Mr. Liu to Japan for his crime, which he termed political, “would be tantamount to denying the political order and Constitutional ideas of South Korea, as well as the universal values of most of the civilized nations.”

He also said the Yasukuni Shrine carried some “political symbolism” even if it was listed as a religious property in Japan.

Mr. Liu’s extradition trial came amid concern in South Korea over the growing political power of right-wing nationalists in Japan, as demonstrated by Shinzo Abe’s return as prime minister.

During Mr. Liu’s hearings, right-wing South Korean activists demonstrated outside the courthouse, opposing his extradition to Japan and calling for South Korea to instead give him an “award.”

At his trial, Mr. Liu appealed to the South Korean judge “to understand, as a fellow Korean who shares the same blood, the anger my grandmother and I felt.” He linked his attack at the shrine to the acts of some South Korean nationalist activists who have in recent years cut their fingertips to show anger at some Japanese politicians’ annual visits to the shrine.

The “comfort women” remain the most emotional issue left unresolved from Japan’s often brutal colonial rule of Korea from 1910 until 1945. Historians say that about 200,000 women from Korea, China, the Philippines and other countries were forced to work in Japanese Army brothels.

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Car Sales End Strong Year on Modest Note

DETROIT – Automakers ended 2012 with modest sales results in the United States, capping a strong year and promising more growth in 2013.

Based on early reports Thursday, analysts predicted a 10 percent increase overall for the industry for December, a gain that would put the year’s sales at about 14.5 million – the best performance since 2007.

The three Detroit car companies all posted sales gains in December, solidifying improvements made throughout year because of consumers replacing their aging cars and trucks.

General Motors, the largest American automaker, said its December sales increased 4.9 percent, primarily because of new products such as the Cadillac ATS sedan and higher incentives on its Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra pickups.

The company had been losing ground in the high-profit pickup truck segment until it added discounts to the Silverado, which posted a 6.1 percent sales increase in December, and the Sierra, which was up 13.4 percent.

For the year, G.M. sold 2.59 million vehicles, an increase of 3.7 percent from 2011. That lagged the overall gains in the market, which were about 14 percent industrywide for the year.

G.M.'s head of United States sales, Kurt McNeil, said the company expects significant growth in 2013, with industry sales as high as 15.5 million. He noted that the resolution of fiscal negotiations in Washington removed some potential concerns for consumers shopping for new vehicles.

“We are especially pleased that the politicians on both sides of the aisle in Washington were able to compromise,” Mr. McNeil said in a conference call with analysts and media Thursday. “The short-term crisis has passed.”

Ford Motor Company reported a slight sales increase of 1.9 percent in December as safety recalls for its new Escape SUV and Fusion sedan depressed results.

Ford said that sales of the Fusion dropped 10.8 percent during the month and Escape sales slid 21.3 percent. The company has been plagued with multiple recalls on engines and other parts on the vehicles, which are usually among its strongest sellers.

The drop was mitigated by strong results for Ford’s two smallest cars, the Focus, which increased in sales by 58.3 percent, and the Fiesta, which was up by 52.8 percent.

For all of 2012, Ford’s United States sales increased 4.7 percent to 2.25 million vehicles. Ken Czubay, head of Ford’s domestic sales and marketing, said the company’s small-car sales were its best in more than a decade.

Ford predicted that industry sales in 2013 could reach 16 million vehicles, as more Americans replace older models with new, more fuel-efficient ones.

Chrysler, the smallest of the Detroit companies, was again the star performer in December, with a 10 percent increase.

The company’s new compact car, the Dodge Dart, showed improvement with a 36 percent gain from the prior month. In fact, much of Chrysler’s lineup – ranging from Jeep SUVs to the tiny Fiat 500 micro-car – posted sales records for the month of December.

For the year, Chrysler sold 1.65 million vehicles, a 21 percent increase from 2011.

The major foreign automakers were expected to report results later in day. In a partial report, Toyota, the biggest of the Japanese manufacturers, said that it sold 2 million vehicles in the United States during 2012, a 26.6 percent increase from the year before.

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The Long Life of the ‘Perfect’ Woman

What did happen to Elsie Scheel, the “perfect” woman mentioned in an article in Wednesday’s New York Times that described how people considered overweight had a slightly lower risk of dying than those of normal weight?

A century ago, at age 24, Miss Scheel was the subject of a spate of news media coverage after the “medical examiner of the 400 ‘co-eds’ ” at her college, Cornell University, described her as the epitome of “perfect health,” according to a 1912 New York Times article. That article and others also gave her dimensions: 5-foot-7 and 171 pounds, which would have corresponded to a body mass index of 27, putting Miss Scheel in the overweight category. Miss Scheel, it turns out, lived a long life, dying in 1979 in St. Cloud, Fla., three days shy of her 91st birthday.

But though it may be tempting to conclude that Miss Scheel’s longevity exemplifies the benefits of a not-too-low B.M.I, her case is only one anecdote, of course. And, according to family members and to hints provided in early articles, she was a person who valued being active and athletic, had a strong and confident attitude, and, as a daughter of a doctor and a mother of a doctor, may have been steeped in healthy habits that were much more relevant to her survival than her weight.

“She never took an aspirin or a Tylenol,” a granddaughter, Karen Hirsh Meredith, of Broken Arrow, Okla., said in an interview Wednesday. She kept up hobbies like stamp collecting and wrote pieces for the St. Cloud newspaper. And, Ms. Meredith said, “she was still driving late in life.”

Ms. Meredith said she did not recall her grandmother having any illnesses or being hospitalized except for shortly before she died, when she went into the hospital with stomach pain. She ended up having surgery for a perforated bowel and died the next day, Ms. Meredith said.

A death notice said Miss Scheel, who was Mrs. Hirsh when she died, had been a “practical nurse,” although Ms. Meredith said the family believed she did not work after she had children. In 1918 she married Frederick Rudolph Hirsh, an architect who supervised the building of the New York Public Library and who was a widower with two children, Frederick Jr. and Mary. He died in 1933 at 68, leaving his wife to raise a son, John, and a daughter, Elise. She moved to Florida from Mount Vernon, N.Y., in the 1940s and never remarried.

Miss Scheel’s mother, Sophie Bade Scheel, a physician educated at New York Medical College, maintained an active medical practice at a time when relatively few women did. And Miss Scheel may have benefited from good genes: her three siblings were 79, 88 and 93 when they died.

Published reports from 1912 and 1913 provide glimpses of the type of person Miss Scheel was and of her immediate-post-"perfect” experience.

She participated in many sports, playing basketball at Cornell. “I play a guard, where my weight helps,” she told a newspaper. She was a suffragette and, the Times article said, “doesn’t know what fear is.”

She ate only three meals every two days, loved beefsteak and shunned candy and caffeine. An article in The Oregonian asked her about her advice for healthy living, reporting that “Miss Scheel feels that the average girl does too much of the wrong sort of thing — too many dances and not enough good bracing tramps. I just got back from a 25-mile tramp to Enfield Falls.”

Some of the news media coverage was catty, even brutal. And it was extremely detailed. Her particulars — the size of her chest, waist and hips — were compared to the Venus de Milo.

A day after the Times article, The New York Herald ran a story about Miss Scheel above the fold on its front page: “Brooklyn Venus Much Too Large is Verdict of Physical Culturists.” These “physical culturists” claimed that Miss Scheel’s weight and height “cannot be reconciled with the accepted ideal of female beauty.”

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The Long Life of the ‘Perfect’ Woman

What did happen to Elsie Scheel, the “perfect” woman mentioned in an article in Wednesday’s New York Times that described how people considered overweight had a slightly lower risk of dying than those of normal weight?

A century ago, at age 24, Miss Scheel was the subject of a spate of news media coverage after the “medical examiner of the 400 ‘co-eds’ ” at her college, Cornell University, described her as the epitome of “perfect health,” according to a 1912 New York Times article. That article and others also gave her dimensions: 5-foot-7 and 171 pounds, which would have corresponded to a body mass index of 27, putting Miss Scheel in the overweight category. Miss Scheel, it turns out, lived a long life, dying in 1979 in St. Cloud, Fla., three days shy of her 91st birthday.

But though it may be tempting to conclude that Miss Scheel’s longevity exemplifies the benefits of a not-too-low B.M.I, her case is only one anecdote, of course. And, according to family members and to hints provided in early articles, she was a person who valued being active and athletic, had a strong and confident attitude, and, as a daughter of a doctor and a mother of a doctor, may have been steeped in healthy habits that were much more relevant to her survival than her weight.

“She never took an aspirin or a Tylenol,” a granddaughter, Karen Hirsh Meredith, of Broken Arrow, Okla., said in an interview Wednesday. She kept up hobbies like stamp collecting and wrote pieces for the St. Cloud newspaper. And, Ms. Meredith said, “she was still driving late in life.”

Ms. Meredith said she did not recall her grandmother having any illnesses or being hospitalized except for shortly before she died, when she went into the hospital with stomach pain. She ended up having surgery for a perforated bowel and died the next day, Ms. Meredith said.

A death notice said Miss Scheel, who was Mrs. Hirsh when she died, had been a “practical nurse,” although Ms. Meredith said the family believed she did not work after she had children. In 1918 she married Frederick Rudolph Hirsh, an architect who supervised the building of the New York Public Library and who was a widower with two children, Frederick Jr. and Mary. He died in 1933 at 68, leaving his wife to raise a son, John, and a daughter, Elise. She moved to Florida from Mount Vernon, N.Y., in the 1940s and never remarried.

Miss Scheel’s mother, Sophie Bade Scheel, a physician educated at New York Medical College, maintained an active medical practice at a time when relatively few women did. And Miss Scheel may have benefited from good genes: her three siblings were 79, 88 and 93 when they died.

Published reports from 1912 and 1913 provide glimpses of the type of person Miss Scheel was and of her immediate-post-"perfect” experience.

She participated in many sports, playing basketball at Cornell. “I play a guard, where my weight helps,” she told a newspaper. She was a suffragette and, the Times article said, “doesn’t know what fear is.”

She ate only three meals every two days, loved beefsteak and shunned candy and caffeine. An article in The Oregonian asked her about her advice for healthy living, reporting that “Miss Scheel feels that the average girl does too much of the wrong sort of thing — too many dances and not enough good bracing tramps. I just got back from a 25-mile tramp to Enfield Falls.”

Some of the news media coverage was catty, even brutal. And it was extremely detailed. Her particulars — the size of her chest, waist and hips — were compared to the Venus de Milo.

A day after the Times article, The New York Herald ran a story about Miss Scheel above the fold on its front page: “Brooklyn Venus Much Too Large is Verdict of Physical Culturists.” These “physical culturists” claimed that Miss Scheel’s weight and height “cannot be reconciled with the accepted ideal of female beauty.”

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Tool Kit: Facebook’s Latest Mobile Interface Expands Features

The only thing constant about Facebook is that it keeps changing. Just when you think you’ve figured out the interface to the world’s biggest social network, the engineers there update it again.

For the 600 million or so people who use their smartphones to stay on top of Facebook friends, recent weeks have been especially anxiety-producing. Recognizing some time ago that for many mobile users their Facebook phone app is their primary or only way of access, the company unveiled a barrage of new features that bring the mobile apps in line with the desktop browser version of Facebook.

Facebook created new versions of its official apps for Android and Apple phones and revamped its mobile-optimized Web site, m.facebook.com, which works for most other smartphones. Facebook says the mobile site actually has more users than the Android and Apple apps combined.

Some new features are easy to spot. Friends’ posts now include a Share option so you can repost their updates, pictures and links to your own timeline. But other features are more subtle, and take some poking around to figure out. I’m here to help.

The most significant change to Facebook’s mobile apps is that the News Feed, the real-time stream of updates from your Facebook friends, now provides the same sorting options as the desktop version: Top Stories and Most Recent. If you go a while without logging in, the app will set the sorting to Top Stories, which floats the updates from the friends with whom you interact the most to the top of the feed. If you’d rather see posts sorted with the newest always on top, tap the gear icon next to News Feed on the app’s main left-hand menu. (It can take a little practice to tap the gear rather than another control.) A menu will pop up that lets you choose your sorting preference.

Your photos now have a Make Profile Picture option, so you don’t need to go back to a full-size computer to turn a photo taken on your phone into your identifying image. With an iPhone, press and hold the picture to bring up the command; in Android phones, it’s an option in the overflow menu.

Facebook has also built its chat function into the mobile apps. Rather than the e-mail-like Message utility, Chat is designed for conversations in which both parties tap back and forth at the same time. To start a chat session, tap the human-silhouette icon in the upper right corner of the app. That will bring up a list of your friends who are available right now to start a chat session, either on their phones (indicated by a phone icon) or on their desktops (indicated by a green dot). There’s a Favorites list you can edit to list only the friends you message most, so you don’t have to pore through your entire list of available friends to find them every time.

Do you upload lots of photos to Facebook from your smartphone? You have two new options. First, you can now select more than one photo by tapping, to upload them together. You can also configure the app to automatically upload every image you shoot to a private album from which you can later share them with a couple of taps. To turn on this feature, called Photo Sync, go to your timeline and tap your Photos icon.

At the bottom right, look for the Synced button. Tap this, and the app will walk you through configuration of Photo Sync. Once you’ve enabled it, tapping Synced will display those photos that have been auto-uploaded from your phone to your account. You can choose at your leisure which ones to share, and they will be posted to your Facebook timeline instantly, rather than requiring you to wait through the upload process for each one separately as you go.

There are several new features for mobile status updates, too. You can tag friends in a post, just as on the desktop version of Facebook. Begin typing a friend’s name as it appears on a Facebook account, and the app will produce a list of friends’ names that match what you’re writing. Select the name, and Facebook will insert a blue link to the friend’s own page and also alert the subject.

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Afghan War Commander Gives Options for After 2014

WASHINGTON — Gen. John R. Allen, the senior American commander in Afghanistan, has submitted military options to the Pentagon that would keep 6,000 to 20,000 American troops in Afghanistan after 2014, defense officials said on Wednesday.

General Allen offered Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta three plans with different troop levels: 6,000, 10,000 and 20,000, each with a risk factor probably attached to it, a senior military official said. An option of 6,000 troops would probably pose a higher risk of failure for the American effort in Afghanistan, 10,000 would be medium risk and 20,000 would be lower risk, the official said.

But the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the options, said that a more important factor in the success of any post-2014 American mission was how well — or whether — an Afghan government known for corruption could deliver basic services to the population.

General Allen’s options offer ascending levels of American involvement in guarding against the expansion of terrorist groups in Afghanistan and advising an Afghan military that has limited air power, logistics, leadership and ability to evacuate and treat its wounded.

With 6,000 troops, defense officials said, the American mission would largely be a counterterrorism fight of Special Operations commandos who would hunt down insurgents. There would be limited logistical support and training for Afghan security forces. With 10,000 troops, the United States would expand training of Afghan security forces. With 20,000 troops, the Obama administration would add some conventional Army forces to patrol in limited areas.

Defense officials said it was unclear whether President Obama had studied the options, although they said he was expected to discuss them at the White House next week when President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan visits. About 66,000 American troops are now in Afghanistan.

Under an agreement between NATO and the Afghan government, the NATO combat mission in Afghanistan is to end on Dec. 31, 2014, when the Afghan Army and the police are to have full responsibility for their country’s security. But in recent months the Obama administration has been debating the size and mission of a residual American force that would remain after 2014 to increase Afghan stability.

The help is sorely needed, according to the most recent Pentagon report on the state of the 11-year-old war. In an assessment released last month that covers April through September 2012, the Pentagon found that only one of the Afghan Army’s 23 brigades was able to operate independently without air or other military support from the United States or its NATO partners.

Defense officials said that General Allen’s recommendations did not include options for the pace of withdrawals of the remaining 66,000 troops, although American officials say he wants to keep a large majority — perhaps as many as 60,000 — through the fighting season next fall.

Military officials anticipate that the White House will push for a more rapid withdrawal.

General Allen’s recommendations come as he and Mr. Panetta are soon due to leave their jobs. General Allen is to be replaced in February by Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., and Mr. Panetta is expected to step down after Mr. Obama nominates a successor.

General Allen, who is under investigation for a series of e-mails he exchanged with a socialite in Tampa, Fla., Jill Kelley, is to become the NATO supreme allied commander in Europe, but his nomination is delayed until the investigation concludes.

Pentagon officials said Wednesday that he had long planned to leave Afghanistan in February and that the inquiry had not accelerated his departure.

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Bigger Tax Bite for Most Households Under Senate Plan

WASHINGTON — Only the most affluent American households will pay higher income taxes this year under the terms of a deal that passed Congress on Tuesday, but most households will face higher payroll taxes because the deal does not extend a two-year-old tax break.

The legislation, which was forged in the Senate and overcame resistance in the House late Tuesday will grant most Americans an instant reversal of the income tax increases that took effect with the arrival of the new year. Only about 0.7 percent of households will be subject to an income tax increase this year, according to the Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan research group in Washington. The increases will apply almost exclusively to households making at least half a million dollars, the center estimated in an analysis published Tuesday.

But lawmakers’ decision not to reverse a scheduled increase in the payroll tax that finances Social Security, while widely expected, still means that about 77 percent of households will pay a larger share of income to the federal government this year, according to the center’s analysis.

The tax this year will increase by two percentage points, to 6.2 percent from 4.2 percent, on all earned income up to $113,700.

Indeed, for most lower- and middle-income households, the payroll tax increase will most likely equal or exceed the value of the income tax savings. A household earning $50,000 in 2013, roughly the national median, will avoid paying about $1,000 more in income taxes — but pay about $1,000 more in payroll taxes.

Sabrina Garcia, a 35-year-old accounting assistant from Quincy, Mass., who together with her husband made about $102,000 last year, said the payroll tax increase equated to “about $200 a month for my family.”

“That’s a lot of money for us,” Ms. Garcia said. “It means we will have to cut back.” She said in an e-mail exchange that she will most likely will postpone buying a new computer. “And forget about being able to save money,” she added.

The deal will impose larger tax increases on those who make the most. It will raise taxes in two ways: by restoring limits on the amount of income affluent Americans can shelter from federal taxation, and by returning to a top marginal tax rate of 39.6 percent. The current rate is 35 percent.

For married couples filing jointly, the deduction limits apply to income above $300,000, while the top tax rate kicks in above $450,000. But both numbers are somewhat misleading, because “income” in this context is a technical term, referring only to the portion of income subject to taxation after exemptions and deductions.

Few households with actual incomes of less than half a million dollars will face a tax increase. The Tax Policy Center calculated that less than 5 percent of families earning $200,000 to $500,000 will actually pay more.

The size of those increases will be much smaller than President Obama originally proposed. The net effect, according to the center’s estimates, is that the top 1 percent of households will see an average income tax increase this year of $62,000 rather than $94,000. “The high-income people really are doing very well in this compared to what the president wanted to do,” said Roberton Williams, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center.

The deal passed by the Senate and the House will impose fewer limits on deductions than the White House plan. It will also tax income from dividends at a flat rate of 20 percent, rather than the same marginal rate as earned income. And there is another important point, often misunderstood: Affluent households will pay the new 39.6 percent rate only on income above $450,000. They and everyone else will still will pay lower rates on income below that threshold.

Households making $500,000 to $1 million will pay an additional $6,700 in taxes on average. Those making more than $1 million will pay an additional $123,000 on average.

Changes in the estate tax will also benefit affluent families. The tax will not apply to the first $5 million of an inheritance, extending the current exclusion rather than reverting to the $3.5 million threshold that President Obama initially favored. However, wealth above that amount will be taxed at a rate of 40 percent rather than the previous rate of 35 percent.

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