Instagram Reversal Doesn’t Appease Everyone

Peter DaSilva for The New York Times

Kevin Systrom, right, co-founder of Instagram, with employees in the company office in San Francisco last year.

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook may have quelled a full-scale rebellion by quickly dumping the contentious new terms of use for Instagram, its photo-sharing service. But even as the social network furiously backpedaled, some users said Friday they were carrying through on plans to leave.

Eric Piermont/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Kevin Systrom, Instagram’s co-founder, said the company would complete its plans, then explain its ad policy.

Ryan Cox, a 29-year-old management consultant at ExactTarget, an Indianapolis-based interactive marketing software company, said he had already moved his photos to Flickr, Yahoo’s photo-sharing app, where he could have better control.

Mr. Cox said the uproar this week over whether Instagram owned its users’ photos was “a wake-up call.”

“It’s my fault,” he continued. “I’m smart enough to know what Instagram had and what they could do — especially the minute Facebook acquired them — but I was a victim of naïve optimism.”

“Naïve optimism” is as good a term as any for the emotion that people feel as they put their private lives onto social networks.

Companies like Google, Twitter, Yelp and Facebook offer themselves as free services for users to store and share their most intimate pictures, secrets, messages and memories. But to flourish over the long term, they need to seek new ways to market the personal data they accumulate. They must constantly push the envelope, hoping users either do not notice or do not care.

So they sell ads against the content of an e-mail, as Google does, or transform a user’s likes into commercial endorsements, as Facebook does, or sell photographs of your adorable 3-year-old, which is what Instagram was accused of planning this week.

“The reality is that companies have always had to make money,” said Miriam H. Wugmeister, chair of Morrison Foerster’s privacy and data security group.

Even as Instagram was pulling back on its changed terms of service on Thursday night, it made clear it was only regrouping. After all, Facebook, as a publicly held corporation, must answer to Wall Street’s quarterly expectations.

“We are going to take the time to complete our plans, and then come back to our users and explain how we would like for our advertising business to work,” Kevin Systrom, Instagram’s youthful co-founder, wrote on the company’s blog.

Instagram’s actions angered many users who were already incensed over the company’s decision earlier this month to cut off its integration with Twitter, a Facebook rival, making it harder for its users to share their Instagram photos on Twitter.

Users were apprehensive that the new terms of service meant that data on their favorite things would be shared with Facebook and its advertisers. Users also worried that their photos would become advertising.

Instagram is barely two years old but has 100 million users. Last spring, Facebook announced plans to buy it in a deal that was initially valued at $1 billion. The deal was closed in September for a somewhat smaller amount.

For some users, Mr. Systrom’s apology and declaration that “Instagram has no intention of selling your photos, and we never did” was sufficient.

National Geographic, which suspended its account in the middle of the uproar, held a conference call with members of Facebook’s legal and policy teams. Afterward, the magazine, which has 658,000 Instagram followers, said it would resurrect its account.

Also mollified was Noah Kalina, who took wedding photographs earlier this year for Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook. In a widely circulated post on Twitter, Mr. Kalina said the new terms of service were “a contract no professional or nonprofessional should ever sign.” His advice: “Walk away.”

On Friday, the photographer said he had walked back. “It’s nice to know they listened.”

Kim Kardashian, the most followed person on Instagram, said on Tuesday that she “really loved” the service — note the past tense — and that the new rules were not “fair.” She had yet to update her 17 million Twitter followers on Friday, but since she is pushing her True Reflection fragrance it is a safe bet that she has forgiven and forgotten.

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Alabama to End Isolation of Inmates With H.I.V.

Jamie Martin/Associated Press

The H.I.V. ward of an Alabama women's prison in 2008. The state was ordered to stop segregating inmates with the virus.

A federal judge on Friday ordered Alabama to stop isolating prisoners with H.I.V.

Alabama is one of two states, along with South Carolina, where H.I.V.-positive inmates are housed in separate prisons, away from other inmates, in an attempt to reduce medical costs and stop the spread of the virus, which causes AIDS.

Judge Myron H. Thompson of the Middle District of Alabama ruled in favor of a group of inmates who argued in a class-action lawsuit that they had been stigmatized and denied equal access to educational programs. The judge called the state’s policy “an unnecessary tool for preventing the transmission of H.I.V.” but “an effective one for humiliating and isolating prisoners living with the disease.”

After the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s, many states, including New York, quarantined H.I.V.-positive prisoners to prevent the virus from spreading through sexual contact or through blood when inmates tattooed one another. But most states ended the practice voluntarily as powerful antiretroviral drugs reduced the risk of transmission.

In Alabama, inmates are tested for H.I.V. when they enter prison. About 250 of the state’s 26,400 inmates have tested positive. They are housed in special dormitories at two prisons: one for men and one for women. No inmates have developed AIDS, the state says.

H.I.V.-positive inmates are treated differently from those with other viruses like hepatitis B and C, which are far more infectious, according to the World Health Organization. Inmates with H.I.V. are barred from eating in the cafeteria, working around food, enrolling in certain educational programs or transferring to prisons near their families.

Prisoners have been trying to overturn the policy for more than two decades. In 1995, a federal court upheld Alabama’s policy. Inmates filed the latest lawsuit last year.

“Today’s decision is historic,” said Margaret Winter, the associate director of the National Prison Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, which represented the inmates. “It spells an end to a segregation policy that has inflicted needless misery on Alabama prisoners with H.I.V. and their families.”

Brian Corbett, a spokesman for the Alabama Department of Corrections, said the state is “not prejudiced against H.I.V.-positive inmates” and has “worked hard over the years to improve their health care, living conditions and their activities.”

“We will continue our review of the court’s opinion and determine our next course of action in a timely manner,” he wrote.

During a monthlong trial in September, lawyers for the department argued that the policy improved the treatment of H.I.V.-positive inmates. Fewer doctors are needed if specialists in H.I.V. focus on 2 of the 29 state’s prisons.

The state spends an average of $22,000 per year on treating individual H.I.V.-positive inmates. The total is more than the cost of medicine for all other inmates, said Bill Lunsford, a lawyer for the Corrections Department.

South Carolina has also faced legal scrutiny. In 2010, the Justice Department notified the state that it was investigating the policy and might sue to overturn it.

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Alabama to End Isolation of Inmates With H.I.V.

Jamie Martin/Associated Press

The H.I.V. ward of an Alabama women's prison in 2008. The state was ordered to stop segregating inmates with the virus.

A federal judge on Friday ordered Alabama to stop isolating prisoners with H.I.V.

Alabama is one of two states, along with South Carolina, where H.I.V.-positive inmates are housed in separate prisons, away from other inmates, in an attempt to reduce medical costs and stop the spread of the virus, which causes AIDS.

Judge Myron H. Thompson of the Middle District of Alabama ruled in favor of a group of inmates who argued in a class-action lawsuit that they had been stigmatized and denied equal access to educational programs. The judge called the state’s policy “an unnecessary tool for preventing the transmission of H.I.V.” but “an effective one for humiliating and isolating prisoners living with the disease.”

After the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s, many states, including New York, quarantined H.I.V.-positive prisoners to prevent the virus from spreading through sexual contact or through blood when inmates tattooed one another. But most states ended the practice voluntarily as powerful antiretroviral drugs reduced the risk of transmission.

In Alabama, inmates are tested for H.I.V. when they enter prison. About 250 of the state’s 26,400 inmates have tested positive. They are housed in special dormitories at two prisons: one for men and one for women. No inmates have developed AIDS, the state says.

H.I.V.-positive inmates are treated differently from those with other viruses like hepatitis B and C, which are far more infectious, according to the World Health Organization. Inmates with H.I.V. are barred from eating in the cafeteria, working around food, enrolling in certain educational programs or transferring to prisons near their families.

Prisoners have been trying to overturn the policy for more than two decades. In 1995, a federal court upheld Alabama’s policy. Inmates filed the latest lawsuit last year.

“Today’s decision is historic,” said Margaret Winter, the associate director of the National Prison Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, which represented the inmates. “It spells an end to a segregation policy that has inflicted needless misery on Alabama prisoners with H.I.V. and their families.”

Brian Corbett, a spokesman for the Alabama Department of Corrections, said the state is “not prejudiced against H.I.V.-positive inmates” and has “worked hard over the years to improve their health care, living conditions and their activities.”

“We will continue our review of the court’s opinion and determine our next course of action in a timely manner,” he wrote.

During a monthlong trial in September, lawyers for the department argued that the policy improved the treatment of H.I.V.-positive inmates. Fewer doctors are needed if specialists in H.I.V. focus on 2 of the 29 state’s prisons.

The state spends an average of $22,000 per year on treating individual H.I.V.-positive inmates. The total is more than the cost of medicine for all other inmates, said Bill Lunsford, a lawyer for the Corrections Department.

South Carolina has also faced legal scrutiny. In 2010, the Justice Department notified the state that it was investigating the policy and might sue to overturn it.

Read More..

Instagram Reversal Doesn’t Appease Everyone

Peter DaSilva for The New York Times

Kevin Systrom, right, co-founder of Instagram, with employees in the company office in San Francisco last year.

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook may have quelled a full-scale rebellion by quickly dumping the contentious new terms of use for Instagram, its photo-sharing service. But even as the social network furiously backpedaled, some users said Friday they were carrying through on plans to leave.

Eric Piermont/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Kevin Systrom, Instagram’s co-founder, said the company would complete its plans, then explain its ad policy.

Ryan Cox, a 29-year-old management consultant at ExactTarget, an Indianapolis-based interactive marketing software company, said he had already moved his photos to Flickr, Yahoo’s photo-sharing app, where he could have better control.

Mr. Cox said the uproar this week over whether Instagram owned its users’ photos was “a wake-up call.”

“It’s my fault,” he continued. “I’m smart enough to know what Instagram had and what they could do — especially the minute Facebook acquired them — but I was a victim of naïve optimism.”

“Naïve optimism” is as good a term as any for the emotion that people feel as they put their private lives onto social networks.

Companies like Google, Twitter, Yelp and Facebook offer themselves as free services for users to store and share their most intimate pictures, secrets, messages and memories. But to flourish over the long term, they need to seek new ways to market the personal data they accumulate. They must constantly push the envelope, hoping users either do not notice or do not care.

So they sell ads against the content of an e-mail, as Google does, or transform a user’s likes into commercial endorsements, as Facebook does, or sell photographs of your adorable 3-year-old, which is what Instagram was accused of planning this week.

“The reality is that companies have always had to make money,” said Miriam H. Wugmeister, chair of Morrison Foerster’s privacy and data security group.

Even as Instagram was pulling back on its changed terms of service on Thursday night, it made clear it was only regrouping. After all, Facebook, as a publicly held corporation, must answer to Wall Street’s quarterly expectations.

“We are going to take the time to complete our plans, and then come back to our users and explain how we would like for our advertising business to work,” Kevin Systrom, Instagram’s youthful co-founder, wrote on the company’s blog.

Instagram’s actions angered many users who were already incensed over the company’s decision earlier this month to cut off its integration with Twitter, a Facebook rival, making it harder for its users to share their Instagram photos on Twitter.

Users were apprehensive that the new terms of service meant that data on their favorite things would be shared with Facebook and its advertisers. Users also worried that their photos would become advertising.

Instagram is barely two years old but has 100 million users. Last spring, Facebook announced plans to buy it in a deal that was initially valued at $1 billion. The deal was closed in September for a somewhat smaller amount.

For some users, Mr. Systrom’s apology and declaration that “Instagram has no intention of selling your photos, and we never did” was sufficient.

National Geographic, which suspended its account in the middle of the uproar, held a conference call with members of Facebook’s legal and policy teams. Afterward, the magazine, which has 658,000 Instagram followers, said it would resurrect its account.

Also mollified was Noah Kalina, who took wedding photographs earlier this year for Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook. In a widely circulated post on Twitter, Mr. Kalina said the new terms of service were “a contract no professional or nonprofessional should ever sign.” His advice: “Walk away.”

On Friday, the photographer said he had walked back. “It’s nice to know they listened.”

Kim Kardashian, the most followed person on Instagram, said on Tuesday that she “really loved” the service — note the past tense — and that the new rules were not “fair.” She had yet to update her 17 million Twitter followers on Friday, but since she is pushing her True Reflection fragrance it is a safe bet that she has forgiven and forgotten.

Read More..

North Korea Says It Has Detained an American Citizen

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea said on Friday that it had detained an American citizen on charges of committing “hostile acts against the republic,” a crime punishable by years in prison in the isolated country.

The North’s state-run Korean Central News Agency said the American, Bae Jun-ho, had entered the country on Nov. 3 through a port city near the Russian border. Human rights activists in South Korea said they believed Mr. Bae to be Kenneth Bae, 44, who they said earlier this month had been detained in the North.

The North Korean report said, without elaborating, that an investigation had established Mr. Bae’s guilt and that he had confessed. It said he had been allowed to meet with officials from the Swedish Embassy in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang. The Swidish Embassy intervenes on Washington’s behalf on issues involving American citizens in North Korea. Washington has no diplomatic relations with the North.

The charge comes at a sensitive time for Washington, which is trying to rally support for a new round of penalties against North Korea over its launch of a long-range rocket earlier this month. In recent years, North Korea has detained several Americans, in some cases agreeing to let them go only after high-profile American figures visited Pyongyang to seek their release. Analysts have suspected North Korea of trying to use such arrests to counter Washington’s diplomatic pressure over its nuclear and missile programs and force it to engage with the regime.

The human rights activists in South Korea said Mr. Bae ran a travel company that specialized in taking tourists and prospective investors to North Korea. Mr. Bae, a naturalized American citizen born in South Korea, was detained after escorting five European tourists into the North, said Do Hee-youn, who heads the Citizens’ Coalition for the Human Rights of North Korean Refugees, based in Seoul. The Europeans were allowed to leave the country, Mr. Do said.

The South Korean daily newspaper Kookmin Ilbo earlier cited an unnamed source as saying that Mr. Bae was detained after North Korean security officials found a computer hard disk in his possession that they believed contained sensitive information about the country. Mr. Do said that Mr. Bae may have taken pictures of North Korean orphans he wanted to help and that the authorities may have considered that an act of anti-North Korean propaganda.

In 2009, North Korea arrested two American journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, and sentenced them to 12 years of hard labor for illegally entering the North and committing “hostile acts against the Korean nation.” But the women were pardoned and released five months later, after former President Clinton visited Pyongyang and met with Kim Jong-il, North Korea’s leader at the time.

In 2010, North Korea released Robert Park, a Korean-American Christian activist who entered the country in December 2009 to draw international attention to the North’s poor human rights record. Another American, named Aijalon Mahli Gomes, was arrested the same year in North Korea and was sentenced to eight years of hard labor for illegal entry and “hostile acts.” He was freed after former President Carter visited Pyongyang and, according to North Korea, “apologized” for the man’s crime.

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Gadgetwise Blog: App Smart Extra: More Holiday Apps

As befits the date, this week’s App Smart column was about Christmas-related apps. We talked about a variety of them, like photo effects or storytelling ones.

My favorite book at this time of year has always been “The Night Before Christmas,” and there’s a fabulous interactive e-book version on iTunes free (Peter, Paul and Mary’s “The Night Before Christmas”). It’s great to read with your kids, letting them tap on the screen to activate the hidden special effects in the images — like jingling the stockings hung by the fire. You can also let the app run by itself, reading the story aloud. Older children will be able to work out how to tap the right icon to turn the page.

Fitting for a year where the “Gangnam Style” video became the biggest YouTube hit, there’s a free Gangnam SantaBooth app on iOS that may tickle you. It does exactly what you think it does, placing a photo of your head (sporting a Santa hat) into an animation of a character dancing just like the music video. It’s great for mates, but perhaps not for sending seasonal messages to grandma. For your grandmother, you might find the $2 iOS app Vintage Christmas Cards a suitable alternative; it has a hundred classic greeting card designs to download. You can e-mail them or print them out, personalize them and send them.

Android device owners can customize their devices with live wallpapers. And there are a lot of seasonal options, including another amusing animated Gangnam Santa one. One of the more elegant apps is the Christmas Tree Live Wallpaper app. It’s clever enough to let you customize various aspects of the tree to suit your taste. It’s free on Google Play.

If you want to track Santa on his speedy journey around the planet delivering gifts, an alternative to the popular NORAD app is Santa Tracker Christmas Free (on iOS or Android). This app graphically maps the sleigh’s flight at the right time. But until then it has a lovely 3-D animated graphic of the Earth. And it follows Santa as he prepares, either organizing at the North Pole or flying to check if children have been naughty or nice. Since the animation zips to different parts of the globe, it may be a neat trick for teaching children some geography.

Quick Call

The fun app maker Toca Boca has a new $1 app for iOS and Kindle Fire: Toca Hair Salon 2, successor to the successful first edition. Like the original, but with some new tricks like better graphics and extra styling tools, the light-hearted app is about styling and preparing the hair of some cartoonish characters.

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Boehner Tax Plan in House Is Pulled, Lacking Votes

Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times

Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio leaving a meeting Thursday with fellow House Republicans on talks over the “fiscal cliff.”

WASHINGTON — Speaker John A. Boehner’s effort to pass fallback legislation to avert a fiscal crisis in less than two weeks collapsed Thursday night in an embarrassing defeat after conservative Republicans refused to support legislation that would allow taxes to rise on the most affluent households in the country.

House Republican leaders abruptly canceled a vote on the bill after they failed to rally enough votes for passage in an emergency meeting about 8 p.m. Within minutes, dejected Republicans filed out of the basement meeting room and declared there would be no votes to avert the “fiscal cliff” until after Christmas. With his “Plan B” all but dead, the speaker was left with the choice to find a new Republican way forward or to try to get a broad deficit reduction deal with President Obama that could win passage with Republican and Democratic votes.

What he could not do was blame Democrats for failing to take up legislation he could not even get through his own membership in the House.

“The House did not take up the tax measure today because it did not have sufficient support from our members to pass,” Mr. Boehner said in a statement that said responsibility for a solution now fell to the White House and Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, the majority leader. “Now it is up to the president to work with Senator Reid on legislation to avert the fiscal cliff.”

The stunning turn of events in the House left the status of negotiations to head off a combination of automatic tax increases and significant federal spending cuts in disarray with little time before the start of the new year.

At the White House, the press secretary, Jay Carney, said the defeat should press Mr. Boehner back into talks with Mr. Obama.

“The president will work with Congress to get this done, and we are hopeful that we will be able to find a bipartisan solution quickly that protects the middle class and our economy,” he said.

The refusal of a band of House Republicans to allow income tax rates to rise on incomes over $1 million came after Mr. Obama scored a decisive re-election victory campaigning for higher taxes on incomes over $250,000. Since the November election, the president’s approval ratings have risen, and opinion polls have shown a strong majority not only favoring his tax position, but saying they will blame Republicans for a failure to reach a deficit deal.

With a series of votes on Thursday, the speaker, who faces election for his post in the new Congress next month, had hoped to assemble a Republican path away from the cliff. With a show of Republican unity, he also sought to strengthen his own hand in negotiations with Mr. Obama. The House did narrowly pass legislation to cancel automatic, across-the-board military cuts set to begin next month, and shift them to domestic programs.

But the main component of “Plan B,” a bill to extend expiring Bush-era tax cuts for everyone with incomes under $1 million, could not win enough Republican support to overcome united Democratic opposition. Democrats questioned Mr. Boehner’s ability to deliver any agreement.

“I think this demonstrates that Speaker Boehner has a real challenge,” said Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 House Democrat. “He hasn’t been able to cut any deal, make any agreement that’s balanced. Even if it’s his own compromise.”

Representative Rick Larsen of Washington accused Republicans of shirking their responsibility by leaving the capital. “The Republicans just picked up their toys and went home,” he said.

Futures contracts on indexes of United States stock listings and shares in Asia fell sharply after Mr. Boehner conceded that his bill lacked the votes to pass.

The point of the Boehner effort was to secure passage of a Republican plan, then demand that the president and the Senate to take up that measure and pass it, putting off the major fights until early next year when Republicans would conceivably have more leverage because of the need to increase the federal debt limit. It would also allow Republicans to claim it was Democrats who had caused taxes to rise after the first of the year had no agreement been reached.

That strategy lay in tatters after the Republican implosion.“Some people don’t know how to take yea for an answer,” said Representative Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania, a Republican who supported the measure and was open about his disappointment with his colleagues.

Opponents said they were not about to bend their uncompromising principles on taxes just because Mr. Boehner asked.

“The speaker should be meeting with us to get our views on things rather than just presenting his,” said Representative Justin Amash of Michigan, who recently lost a committee post for routinely crossing the leadership.

Jeremy W. Peters contributed reporting.

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IHT Rendezvous: In London for the Holidays? Theatrical Gifts for Everyone on Your List

So who needs more possessions? The holidays afford the chance to give the gift of theatergoing, the kind of present that will be remembered (one hopes) throughout the year. With that in mind, what follows is a handful of London theater suggestions for the festive season.
Enjoy, and curtain up!

For parents (or grandparents)

“Singin’ in the Rain” at the Palace Theater should fit the bill, whether or not your grandparents (or parents, even) first saw the 1952 MGM film musical at the time of its release. Set against the backdrop of the uneasy transition in moviedom from silent pictures to the talkies, the Gene Kelly film has spawned multiple stage versions on both sides of the Atlantic, of which the director Jonathan Church’s current incarnation is by some measure the best of the three that I have seen.

Inheriting Kelly’s role as silent film star Don Lockwood, onetime Tony nominee Adam Cooper (“Swan Lake”) makes as charming and insouciant a leading man as you could wish for, and his own family must thrill at the larger-than-life facsimile of Mr. Cooper (sporting an umbrella, ‘natch) on view to passers-by in front of the playhouse. The production has time-honored songs (“Good Morning,” “Moses Supposes,” and the title number among them), nifty choreography from Andrew Wright and lashings of real rain. Go and get soaked! And I don’t just mean over that extra intermission gin and tonic.

Is that just too familiar a title, or you would you rather give the family a taste of next year’s likely Broadway biggie? In that case, the Royal Shakespeare Company’s buoyant and witty “Matilda” is a good bet, continuing strong in London at the Cambridge Theater even as its New York bow gets nearer. A child-oriented piece that possibly means even more to adults, Matthew Warchus’s production also offers a prime man-as-woman star turn, more on which below.

For lovers

“The Effect,” running in repertory at the National Theater’s Cottesloe auditorium through Feb. 23, represents an intriguing date-night theatrical prospect largely because it places the speedy bloom of passion at its feverishly pulsating heart. One frequently hears the term “meet cute” to describe (often sniffily) an adorable if unlikely impromptu meeting.

But initial concerns that this play’s Connie and Tristan might not rise above the shopworn cliché inherent in the above phrase are soon dispelled by the unexpected path forged by Lucy Prebble’s play, which lands its newfound couple in the world of pharmaceutical research where desire is not to be trusted. Is romance actually having its day, the play asks, or are such reactions merely drug-induced? Ms. Prebble seems to come down on something resembling the primacy of truly authentic feeling, but not before taking her audience on a wild emotional ride. What more could you ask from the theater – well, that and Billie Piper’s gorgeous portrayal of Connie, which ranks among the year’s best performances.

For students

You don’t have to be engaged in academia, of course, to enjoy the current Royal Court mainstage entry, “In the Republic of Happiness,” but it helps to be alive and alert to theatrical form when taking in the playwright Martin Crimp’s latest. And if students don’t fit that bill, who does? And as London’s – some would say the English-speaking theater’s – premier playhouse for new writing, the Court has the added appeal of the “cool” factor, and the further attractions of the downstairs café/bar don’t hurt, either.

Told across three scenes, the shifts between visual environments managed with characteristically easeful dazzle by the designer Miriam Buether, Mr. Crimp here anatomizes a world given over to self-obsession and self-improvement whereby our constant quest for happiness has resulted only in hollowing us out. Brainiacs in the house will enjoy making clear the connections that are implicit in writing that asks the audience to do some work and then pays off with an ending that recalls (in tone if not content) the finale to Robert Altman’s seminal film, “Nashville,” as a requiem for a benumbed society. Dominic Cooke, artistic director of the Court, has done a tricky piece proud, and those who don’t walk out – as quite a few did at the performance I caught – will stay to cheer and possibly even book to see the show again.

For gender-benders

You thought cross-dressing was confined to the British tradition of the seasonal pantomime, which demands that a leggy young woman play the principal boy and usually casts a man of some seniority as the principal dame? (Ian McKellen, of all distinguished folk, filled that latter bill for two consecutive seasonal runs of “Aladdin” at the Old Vic.)

Pantos continue to proliferate on cue across the capital, but the so-called “legit” theater, too, seems to have gone cross-dressing mad. Consider for starters Miss Trunchbull that armor-plated harridan of a headmistress in “Matilda.” David Leonard is doing the honors now, while original leading man (um, woman?) Bertie Carvel readies for his New York debut. Not to be outdone are Mark Rylance and the cast of the all-male productions of “Twelfth Night” and “Richard III,” now at the Apollo Theater following sellout engagements at Shakespeare’s Globe last summer, and Simon Russell Beale in “Privates On Parade” at the Noel Coward Theater sporting baubles, bangles and sometimes not much at all as Terri Dennis, the campest – and most irresistible – of military captains.

Too many men, what about the women? Get in line for return tickets for Phyllida Lloyd’s all-female “Julius Caesar” at the Donmar: the London play that boasts by some measure the most swagger in town.

For someone you hope never to see again

“Viva Forever!”, at the Piccadilly Theater: Gift this one, scored to the back catalog of the Spice Girls, to someone from whom you hope to part company: trust me, they’ll never speak to you again.

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DealBook: Upstart Exchange in $8.2 Billion Deal for N.Y.S.E.

8:39 a.m. | Updated The owner of the 220-year-old New York Stock Exchange on Thursday agreed to an $8.2 billion deal that would give control of the longstanding symbol of American capitalism to an upstart competitor.

NYSE Euronext said that it would sell itself to the IntercontinentalExchange for about $33.12 a share in cash and stock. The combined company would have headquarters in both ICE’s home of Atlanta and in New York.

The takeover signals the revival of consolidation within the world of market operators, after a wave of deals dissipated amid concerns over antitrust and nationalist sentiment. ICE itself had partnered with NYSE Euronext’s main rival, the Nasdaq OMX Group, in an $11 billion hostile bid for the Big Board’s parent, only to see that offer blocked by the Justice Department.

NYSE Euronext itself had sought to combine with Deutsche Börse, creating a global giant in the trading of derivatives. But that merger was stymied by European antitrust regulators.

Thursday’s deal is expected to run into fewer problems. ICE and NYSE Euronext have little overlap: the former focuses on the trading of commodities like energy products, the latter on stocks and derivatives.

Indeed, while the New York Stock Exchange, with its opening bell and floor traders, has been the public image of a stock market for two centuries, it is NYSE Euronext’s businesses in the over-the-counter trading of derivatives — including the Liffe market in London — that is the main attraction in the merger talks.

As part of the deal, ICE will consider spinning off NYSE Euronext’s European stock market operations.

Shareholders of NYSE Euronext would own about 36 percent of the combined company.

ICE’s chief executive, Jeffrey C. Sprecher, would keep that role in the newly enlarged market operator. NYSE Euronext’s chief, Duncan L. Niederauer, would be president.

Both companies relied on armies of advisers. ICE was advised by Morgan Stanley; BMO Capital Markets; Broadhaven Capital Partners; JPMorgan Chase; Lazard; Societe Generale; and Wells Fargo. It received legal counsel from Sullivan & Cromwell and Shearman & Sterling.

NYSE Euronext was advised by Perella Weinberg Partners; BNP Paribas; the Blackstone Group; Citigroup; Goldman Sachs; and Moelis & Company. It was counseled by Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz; Slaughter & May; and Stibbe N.V.

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Letter from India: What Saves India — and Holds It Back

NEW DELHI — The Election Commission of India is a very serious body that does not believe the world will end this Friday, a workday. The commission is instead preparing for a more certain event in 2014: the general elections that will place a new government in Delhi, an event that has the potential to be cataclysmic to some. Recently I heard a financial adviser who was recording a group of children singing Christmas carols in a beautiful garden warn an insurance executive: “The stock market will collapse.”

His is a common view. With the reputation of every major political party battered in the public imagination following a string of corruption scandals, he predicted that the next government would be an unstable coalition assembled by too many political parties, with nearly everyone having a say.

There are more political parties in India than there are models of automobiles, which is a reason why the job requirements of a political journalist here do not include an ability to name all the parties. The 2009 general elections were contested by more than 364 parties. It would seem that such a situation is a problem, and it is. Yet it answers, to some extent, the frequent questions of the urban elite: What saves India? Why is there no violent revolution on the streets with angry young men cutting down the rich and burning the silver sedans? Considering the oceanic gap between the middle class and the poor that makes even the act of eating a burger in public somewhat embarrassing, how is it that the elite have never been separated from their heads?

Could it be that what saves India is politics? Can this be true even though every incident of large-scale violence in the country has been politically ordained? The nation gives its citizens plenty of reasons to take to the streets and disrupt what the wealthy regard as normal life. But the fact that most Indians have political representation has denied them the critical mass of excuses to release their rage through sustained violence. The nation’s politicians are the inadvertent but effective shock absorbers of Indian society.

All political parties claim to represent the poor, and they really do, because the poor are the most enthusiastic voters. But the poor are not a monolithic group. There are groups, grouses, castes and rivalries within them, and they are each represented in Indian politics in very specific ways.

The Dalits, who were once considered the untouchable caste and are now called “scheduled castes and tribes,” are represented by several parties. The most influential in northern India is headed by a woman who squandered her extraordinary popularity by amassing unexplained wealth and through a penchant for commissioning statues of herself. Her archrival is a party that represents the rural and semi-urban upper castes. And then there are parties for socialists who are afraid of foreign companies, communists who are Marxists, communists who are not Marxists and communists who don’t want “communist” in their party’s name.

Muslims, Sikhs and Christians all have their parties. Affluent farmers in the western state of Maharashtra also are represented. So are, even more specifically, sugar-cane farmers. Young people of Maharashtra who think migrants in the state capital, Mumbai, should be thrashed occasionally to keep them in their place have representation in a new political outfit. Their parents who agree vote for an older party.

A few decades ago in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, a party was formed for atheists, which naturally could not remain purely atheistic as it grew in numbers. Then a popular film actor broke away and started a party, ostensibly for the poor, that governed the state for many years. Then another film actor started a party, also for the poor. The interests of eunuchs in Tamil Nadu are represented by several parties.

A man in the same state has started a party for “lovers,” since they face harassment from conservative society, especially when they try to fondle behind catamarans on the beach. But he has yet to contest an election.

There is, of course, a powerful right-wing party for the Hindu business community and patriotic urban middle class, who have long wished for a “benign dictator” who will make the trains run on time, which they do anyway these days.

If none of these parties serves, there is of course the grand old Indian National Congress, which stands for everything and nothing. If the Congress isn’t good enough, either, there is a new organization that has risen from the rage of the educated middle class against political corruption.

But in this entire assembly of parties none represents the interests of women, who constitute more than half the population in a country where an unknown number of girls are killed in the womb and men deal with their loss of social power by committing violence against women. Substantial gender reforms cannot be enacted in India without antagonizing Indian men, and female politicians in major parties are reluctant to take that professional risk. Only a party willing to bet everything on women and uninterested in appeasing the men might stir the nation. Even some fathers of daughters might vote for it.

Manu Joseph is editor of the Indian newsweekly Open and author of the novel “The Illicit Happiness of Other People.”

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