Recipes for Health: Quinoa and Cauliflower Kugel — Recipes for Health

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times NYTCREDIT: Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

Cauliflower, steamed until tender then finely chopped, combines beautifully here with quinoa and cumin. Millet would also be a good grain choice.

 

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1/2 medium onion, finely chopped

1/2 cup quinoa

1 1/4 cups water

Salt to taste

1 pound cauliflower (1/2 medium head), broken into florets

1 cup low-fat cottage cheese

2 eggs

1 scant teaspoon cumin seeds, lightly toasted and crushed

Freshly ground pepper

 

1. Heat 1 tablespoon of the olive oil in a medium saucepan and add the onion. Cook, stirring, until just about tender, 3 to 5 minutes, and add the quinoa. Cook, stirring, for another 2 to 3 minutes, until the quinoa begins to smell toasty and the onion is tender. Add the water and salt to taste and bring to a boil. Cover, reduce the heat and simmer 15 to 20 minutes, until the quinoa is tender and the grains display a threadlike spiral. If any water remains in the pot, drain the quinoa through a strainer, then return to the pot. Place a dish towel over the pot, then return the lid and let sit undisturbed for 10 to 15 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, steam the cauliflower over 1 inch of boiling water for 10 minutes, or until tender. Remove from the heat.

3. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees and oil a 2-quart baking dish or gratin.

4. Finely chop the steamed cauliflower, either with a chef’s knife or using a food processor fitted with the steel blade. Place in a large mixing bowl. In a food processor fitted with the steel blade, purée the cottage cheese until smooth. Add the eggs and process until the mixture is smooth. Add salt (I suggest about 1/2 teaspoon), pepper and the cumin seeds and mix together. Scrape into the bowl with the cauliflower. Add the quinoa and stir everything together. Scrape into the oiled baking dish. Drizzle the remaining oil over the top and place in the oven.

5. Bake 35 to 40 minutes, until the top is lightly browned. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for at least 15 minutes before serving. Serve warm or at room temperature, cut into squares or wedges.

Yield: 6 servings.

Advance preparation: The quinoa can be prepared through Step 1 up to 3 days ahead (it also freezes well). The kugel will keep for 3 days in the refrigerator. Reheat in a medium oven.

Nutritional information per serving (6 servings): 166 calories; 8 grams fat; 1 gram saturated fat; 1 gram polyunsaturated fat; 4 grams monounsaturated fat; 64 milligrams cholesterol; 15 grams carbohydrates; 3 grams dietary fiber; 151 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste); 10 grams protein

Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health.”

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DealBook Column: The Election Won't Solve All Puzzles

Here comes more uncertainty.

It may sound counterintuitive, but whatever the outcome of the election — whether President Obama or Mitt Romney wins — the economy and markets are likely to face more uncertainty, not less, over the coming year.

“Uncertainty” has become the watchword over the last several years for many chief executives, politicians and economists as an explanation — or perhaps an excuse — for the economy’s slow growth, for the lack of hiring by business and for the volatility in the stock market.

“The claim is that businesses and households are uncertain about future taxes, spending levels, regulations, health care reform and interest rates. In turn, this uncertainty leads them to postpone spending on investment and consumption goods and to slow hiring, impeding the recovery,” a group of professors from Stanford University and the University of Chicago wrote in a study that found “current levels of economic policy uncertainty are at extremely elevated levels compared to recent history.” (The professors have created a Web site, policyuncertainty.com, where you can track the “uncertainty” levels.)

Come Wednesday morning, we should know who our president will be. But the uncertainty hardly ends there.

Almost immediately after the elections, the next big talking point on Wall Street and in Washington is going to be the now infamous “fiscal cliff,” a series of automatic tax increases and spending cuts that was the result of a Congressional compromise reached last summer and is to take effect on Jan. 1, unless Congress finds an alternative. Some economists say the tax increases and spending cuts in the existing agreement could shave as much as 4 percent off G.D.P. if they are not renegotiated. Already, executives say that the uncertainty over the outcome of the fiscal cliff is causing them to hold back from making new investments.

But the greatest likelihood is that the fiscal cliff isn’t going to be resolved soon at all —the betting line of the political cognoscenti is that no matter who wins, Congress will find a way to kick the issue down the road, perhaps as far as the fall of 2013, providing a new cloud of uncertainty over the economy.

For investors, the fiscal cliff includes a tax increase on dividends (making them the equivalent of ordinary income, on which rates could rise to as high as 39.6 percent) and capital gains (up to 20 percent from 15 percent). In a note to clients sent out on Sunday night, Goldman Sachs said that it expected the rate for both dividends and capital gains to be negotiated to 20 percent in either a second Obama term or a Romney presidency. But more important, Goldman noted that when similar tax increases were on the table in 1970 and 1986, “the S.& P. 500 posted negative returns in the December prior to implementation as investors locked in the lower rate.” December, the report said, “has the second-highest average monthly return” since 1928.

Many investors have already begun selling stocks and companies in anticipation of tax increases. Speculation was rampant last week that one of the reasons for the timing of the sale of George Lucas’s company, Lucasfilm, to Disney for $4.1 billion in cash and stock, was the impending changes in tax policy. (Mr. Lucas has said that he plans to donate a majority of his wealth to charity.)

Once we get past the fiscal cliff, if we do at all, there is Europe. Remember Europe? The issues in Greece and Spain have managed to stay off the front pages during the election run-up, but they have not gone away. Some economists have argued that things have gotten worse. Angela Merkel, the chancellor of Germany, who will face election in 2013, said on Monday that the fiscal crisis in Europe was likely to last at least five years. “Whoever thinks this can be fixed in one or two years is wrong,” she said.

And don’t forget the Middle East. That “uncertainty” for the world — and the global economy — isn’t going away anytime soon either. Questions about a possible attack on Iran will persist under either candidate.

And finally, there is Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, one of the biggest uncertainties of them all. As I reported in this column two weeks ago, the greatest likelihood is that Mr. Bernanke will step down at the end of his term in early 2014 no matter who wins the election.

It’s possible — though unlikely — that his departure could happen even sooner if Mr. Romney wins. Over the next year and a half, Mr. Bernanke’s future as the Fed chairman will feed a sense of uncertainty among investors who have become accustomed to his easy money policies. If President Obama wins, he is likely to appoint a successor to Mr. Bernanke who is dovish on monetary policy, and more likely to keep printing money as Mr. Bernanke has, a strategy that comes with its own risks. If Mr. Romney wins, he may appoint a more hawkish chairman, a move that could create a different sense of uncertainty about how the Federal Reserve will unwind itself from Mr. Bernanke’s policies.

None of these issues are new. President Obama took office facing a fiscal policy dispute that was not and probably could not be settled given the gridlock in Congress. No solution is in sight for Europe’s problems. Tension in the Middle East is escalating as fast as nuclear technology. And the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy is at its most opaque since the Reagan administration.

All of which shows that the comedian Jon Stewart is more on target than ever with the cheeky title of his election coverage on “The Daily Show” on Comedy Central. Carrying on a tradition, it is known as “Indecision 2012.”

Update that to 2013, and it’s good for another year.

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Coptic Church Chooses Pope Who Rejects Politics

Tara Todras-Whitehill for The New York Times

Coptic clergymen at a ceremony on Sunday for choosing a pope.

CAIRO — A blindfolded 6-year-old reached into a glass bowl on Sunday to pick the first new Coptic pope in more than 40 years, a patriarch who promises a new era of integration for Egypt’s Christian minority as it grapples with a wave of sectarian violence, new Islamist domination of politics, and internal pressures for reform.

Tara Todras-Whitehill for The New York Times

The acting Coptic pope, before a banner of Bishop Tawadros, held up the names of other candidates to show that the selection was fair.

Speaking to the television cameras that surrounded him at his monastery in a desert town, the pope-designate, Bishop Tawadros, indicated that he planned to reverse the explicitly political role of his predecessor, Pope Shenouda III, who died in March. For four decades, Shenouda acted as the Copts’ chief representative in public life, won special favors for his flock by publicly endorsing President Hosni Mubarak, and last year urged in vain that Copts stay away from the protests that ultimately toppled the strongman.

“The most important thing is for the church to go back and live consistently within the spiritual boundaries because this is its main work, spiritual work,” the bishop said, and he promised to begin a process of “rearranging the house from the inside” and “pushing new blood” after his installation later this month as Pope Tawadros II. Interviewed on Coptic television recently, he struck a new tone by including as his priorities “living with our brothers, the Muslims” and “the responsibility of preserving our shared life.”

“Integrating in the society is a fundamental scriptural Christian trait,” Bishop Tawadros said then. “This integration is a must — moderate constructive integration,” he added. “All of us, as Egyptians, have to participate.”

Coptic activists and intellectuals said the turn away from politics signaled a sweeping transformation in the Christian minority’s relationship to the Egyptian state but also addressed a firm demand by the Christian laity to claim a voice in a more democratic Egypt.

“It can’t continue the way it used to be,” said Youssef Sidhom, editor of the Coptic newspaper Watani. “It is not in the interests of the Copts, if they are trying to speak for themselves as full and equal citizens, to have an intermediary speaking for them, and especially if he is a religious authority. I think the church has gotten this message loud and clear.”

In Egypt’s first free elections for Parliament and president, Christians voted overwhelmingly along sectarian lines, seeking to pool their votes around the most secular candidates — only to see their favorites fall under the Islamist tide. After the Muslim Brotherhood’s political party won parliamentary leadership and then the presidency, many Egyptians joked that the group put a candidate up for Coptic pope, too.

In recent interviews, intellectuals and activists, and churchgoers leaving Mass after the selection of the pope, all said they had concluded that Christians would have to build alliances with Muslims who shared their goal of nonsectarian citizenship.

“We are not the Muslim Brotherhood,” said Tarek Samir, a sales manager leaving the cathedral after the selection of Bishop Tawadros. “Politics is a dirty word to us, and we do not think it should be mixed with religion. But there are moderate Muslims who live the same life we do, who go to work with us, who live together with us, and if I am in trouble they will help me.”

Copts, often estimated to make up about 10 percent of Egypt’s 80 million people, trace their roots here to centuries before the birth of the Prophet Muhammad. They consider St. Mark their first pope; Tawadros II will be the 118th. In some ways, they are now at the spearhead of a challenge confronting Christian minorities across the region amid the tumult of the Arab Spring. In Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and elsewhere, Christian minorities had made peace with authoritarian rulers in the hope of protection from the Muslim majorities. But now the old bargains have broken, leaving Christians to fend for themselves.

In Egypt, the revolution last year coincided with by far the deadliest 12 months of sectarian violence in decades, including the bombing of an Alexandria church weeks before the revolt, the destruction of at least three churches in sectarian feuds, and the killing of about two dozen Coptic demonstrators by Egyptian soldiers squashing a protest — the single bloodiest episode of sectarian violence in at least half a century.

Known as the Maspero massacre after a nearby television building, the slaughter elicited attempts by top generals to blame the Copts and scant sympathy from the main Islamist groups, crystallizing Coptic anxieties.

Mayy El Sheikh and Mai Ayyad contributed reporting.

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Google's Android software in 3 out of 4 smartphones

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Steelers rally past Giants 24-20

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. (AP) — The Pittsburgh Steelers tried to beat themselves before they beat the New York Giants.

Overcoming unusual sloppiness, the Steelers dominated the second half for a 24-20 victory Sunday as Isaac Redman rushed for 147 yards and the winning touchdown from 1 yard with 4:02 to go.

Temporary relief from the destruction of Superstorm Sandy was what New York's fans sought, and the Giants provided it for a while. But they couldn't stop Redman, who had little relief with Pittsburgh's other two main backs injured.

The Steelers (5-3) arrived in New Jersey hours before the game, which might have accounted for their carelessness. They had the fewest giveaways in the NFL entering the game, but were neglectful with the ball and in pass coverage; cornerback Keenan Lewis had 87 yards on two pass interference penalties. They wasted some great kick returns, too.

It all added up to a pleasant couple of hours for locals, who packed MetLife Stadium despite the difficulties caused by a lack of power in many homes, long gas lines and, of course, severe damage throughout the region.

But when Pittsburgh came on relentlessly, the one-quarter of the 80,991 seats occupied by Terrible Towel-waving Steelers faithful could celebrate an impressive comeback victory, coach Mike Tomlin's 60th win. This is one of the oldest rivalries in the NFL, although the teams have met only five times in 18 years. It had to feel weird for the Giants to have the ballpark rock when the visitors took charge.

The Giants (6-3) saw their four-game winning streak end. They seemed in control as Michael Boley sprinted 70 yards with a fumble recovery in the second quarter.

Ben Roethlisberger cocked his arm to throw and defensive end Osi Umenyiora hit it. The ball came loose and while the quarterback signaled that his arm was coming forward, Boley sped down the right sideline for the score. Video replay upheld the touchdown for a 14-7 New York lead.

The Steelers' long day began with a plane ride to New Jersey, a short side trip to their team hotel — they couldn't get enough rooms to stay in the area on Saturday night and needed a league travel waiver to arrive on game day — then on to the stadium. Outside, folks tailgated and tried to blunt some of the devastation from the week's superstorm. As Giants fan Courtney Davis, whose town of Sea Bright was washed away by Hurricane Sandy, said in response to holding the game: "We need this."

Pittsburgh needed to straighten itself out and did just in time.

Among the gaffes: a fake field goal from the New York 3 early in the fourth quarter on which kicker Shaun Suisham lost a yard. That wasted a 63-yard punt return by Sanders on his first such runback all season.

Eli Manning threw for only 125 yards in one of the worst games of his career.

Ike Taylor's interception of Manning's pass for Victor Cruz into double coverage set up Pittsburgh's 58-yard drive to Sanders' leaping 4-yard catch in the back of the end zone for a 7-0 lead.

Back immediately came the Giants, helped by a 41-yard interference call on Lewis. Andre Brown powered in from the 1 a play after Pittsburgh safety Ryan Clark's late hit on Cruz in the end zone gave New York a first down.

Then Umenyiora and Boley made their huge play.

Lewis wasn't through contributing to New York's yardage. He also had a 46-yard interference penalty guarding Cruz, but Lawrence Tynes' field goal try was short from 51 yards. In the final 31 seconds of the half, Roethlisberger hit Jerricho Cotchery for 24 yards, Heath Miller for 23, and Suisham nailed a 30-yard field goal.

Tynes matched that with a 50-yarder in the third quarter set up by Martellus Bennett's 33-yard reception. Tynes later made a 23-yarder for a 20-10 lead.

Wallace's weaving dash across half the field for a 51-yard score that made it 20-17.

Pittsburgh lost leading receiver Antonio Brown in the first half with a left ankle injury and kick returner Chris Rainey in the third quarter with a rib injury.

___

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Chelation Therapy Shows Slight Benefit in Heart Disease Clinical Trial

LOS ANGELES — To the surprise of many cardiologists, a controversial alternative therapy proved beneficial to people with heart disease, reducing the rate of death and cardiovascular problems in a clinical trial, researchers said on Sunday.

The benefit of the treatment, known as chelation therapy, barely reached statistical significance, and there were questions about the reliability of the study. Even the investigators in the trial said the results were insufficient by themselves to justify recommending use of the treatment.

Still, the unexpected finding should provide some vindication to the National Institutes of Health for sponsoring the $30 million study, which was plagued by delays and problems.

“There may be a biological effect and that biological effect should be taken seriously,” and “pursued with additional research,” Dr. Gervasio A. Lamas of Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami, the lead investigator, said at a news conference here at the annual scientific meeting of the American Heart Association.

Dr. Elliott Antman, representing the heart association, applauded the National Institutes of Health for sponsoring the study while also expressing caution. “Intriguing as these results are, they are unexpected and should not be interpreted as an indication to adopt chelation therapy into clinical practice,” said Dr. Antman, a cardiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

Chelation therapy involves the infusion of agents that remove metals from the bloodstream.

More than 100,000 Americans with heart disease undergo chelation therapy each year, at a cost of about $5,000 per course of treatment, experts here said. The hypothesis is that chelation can remove the calcium that is a contributor to arterial plaques.

But skeptics said there was not enough evidence backing chelation therapy to even begin a clinical trial. Proponents of the study said that since chelation therapy was already widely used, it should be subject to the same rigorous scientific testing used to study conventional pharmaceuticals.

And some skeptics were not persuaded at all. Dr. Steven Nissen, head of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, said the study was “fatally flawed,” with many of the doctors involved being on the fringes of medicine and many patients dropping out of the trial. He said if people got the mistaken idea from the study that chelation was beneficial “it would be a public health catastrophe.”

The study, which began enrolling patients in 2003, was plagued by problems from the start. It fell way behind its goal of recruiting nearly 2,400 patients in three years. The trial was also suspended in 2008 for investigations by government agencies, one over conduct at trial sites and the other about whether patients were being adequately informed that chelation can cause death. The study was allowed to resume the next year, after some changes were made.

The trial ended up with 1,708 patients at 134 centers in the United States and Canada. The patients all had had previous heart attacks.

Half the patients received the chelation therapy, a synthetic amino acid called disodium ethylene diamine tetra acetic acid, or EDTA, as well as other substances. These were given by infusion every week for 30 weeks, followed by 10 more infusions at intervals of two to eight weeks. The other half received infusions of placebo.

After a follow-up of 55 months, 26 percent of those who received chelation therapy had died, suffered a heart attack or stroke, had a procedure to reopen a coronary artery or had been hospitalized for angina. That was less than the 30 percent for those who received a placebo, a difference that was barely statistically significant.

Doctors said there were reasons for caution.

Virtually all the of difference between the treatment and the placebo groups occurred in the third of patients who had diabetes. The placebo contained some sugar, which conceivably could have harmed the diabetics. Also, at least within the first two years, the chelation therapy did not improve physical functioning or psychological well being, according to surveys of the patients.

Dr. Mark A. Creager, a cardiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital who was not involved in the study, said the chelation infusion also contained a high dose of vitamin C and the blood thinner heparin. It could be that one of those ingredients, not the chelation agent, were responsible for any benefit, he said.

Dr. Lamas, the lead investigator, said the chelation treatment was well tolerated. But he said investigators did not yet know why some patients receiving the therapy dropped out of the trial.

Another study presented at the heart meeting on Sunday found coronary bypass surgery superior to the use of stents for patients with diabetes and multiple heart blockages.

The trial involved 1,900 patients followed for five yeas. About 27 percent of those who received stents either died or had a heart attack or stroke, compared with about 19 percent of those undergoing bypass surgery. There was an increase in stroke risk with surgery, but that was outweighed by fewer deaths and heart attacks.

Previous studies had already suggested that surgery was better for diabetic patients with severe coronary disease, and practice guidelines already say it is “reasonable” to choose surgery. But the new study, sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, shows the same result even using modern drug-covered stents.

About 700,000 Americans undergo artery opening procedures for more than one blood vessel each year, and about 25 percent of them have diabetes, according to the investigators.

The study results were also published online by the New England Journal of Medicine. Johnson & Johnson and Boston Scientific provided the stents used in the study.

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Fight Growing Over Online Royalties

The debate playing out in Washington has echoes of a presidential race. One side says businesses will suffer unless the government steps in to lower costs. The other accuses jet-set industrialists of a ploy that will cheat the middle class.

These attacks, however, are not between candidates for the White House. They are being made in a battle over the obscure but increasingly vital issue of royalty rates for streaming music online. The issue pits the survival of Pandora Media and other Internet radio services against the diminished paychecks of musicians in the digital age.

This fight has raged on and off for more than a decade, and it was renewed recently with a bill in Congress that would change the way digital royalty rates are set. But with streaming music starting to account for a significant chunk of the music industry’s revenue, and Pandora now a scrutinized public company, the issue has touched a nerve as never before.

“This is not just about our present; it is about our future, our ability to make it in the digital age,” said Cary Sherman, chief executive of the Recording Industry Association of America. “Artists and labels and the entire music community need to earn a fair return on the creative works that are the reason companies like Pandora exist.”

Tim Westergren, the founder and public face of Pandora, has denounced the current system’s “discrimination” and urged the service’s 175 million users to contact their representatives in Washington. Music industry groups and labor unions have also gone public, casting it as a fair-pay issue.

Rates are set by three judges on the federal Copyright Royalty Board, but they apply a different standard to Internet radio services like Pandora than they do to satellite and cable radio outlets like Sirius XM and Music Choice.

Sirius, for example, pays 8 percent of its revenue to record companies and artists. Pandora pays a fraction of a cent each time a song is streamed, which last year amounted to about 54 percent of its revenue, or $149 million.

“The rate being too high dramatically depresses how much music gets played,” Mr. Westergren said in a recent interview. “It has really suffocated the industry.”

The Internet Radio Fairness Act, introduced in September, would move Internet radio companies from their “willing buyer, willing seller” standard — which critics like Pandora say results in an unrealistically high rate — to the one used for satellite and cable radio. To determine a fair rate, that standard directs the judges to consider factors including whether the prices will have a “disruptive impact” on the industry.

Music industry groups also want one standard, but one that keeps rates high. For years they have also been pushing for laws that would require terrestrial stations to pay royalties to labels and artists. (In the United States — and almost nowhere else in the world — radio stations pay royalties only to music publishers.)

Representative Jason Chaffetz, a Republican of Utah who co-sponsored the bill, said in a phone interview that the bill was meant to encourage growth in the streaming business. But when Mr. Chaffetz, whose campaign committee has received $2,000 from Pandora, was asked to respond to complaints that the changes would hurt musicians, he could not resist taunting a bit.

“The old-school dinosaurs are trying to help, but they’re stuck in the tar,” he said. “They can go talk to the pterodactyls.”

Pandora has been down this road before, and in 2009 reached an agreement for a temporary discount of about 40 percent off the royalty board’s rates; that deal expires in 2015.

This time Pandora is a different beast: a company with a $1.4 billion market capitalization. Each month, 58 million people use it to stream more than 1.1 billion hours of music.

Streaming is now on every horizon in the music industry. SoundExchange, which collects royalties from Internet and satellite radio, recently announced that it had crossed the $1 billion benchmark in payments to labels and artists.

The royalties issue, Mr. Westergren said, has become a question about the wider health of the streaming business, which he believes has been stunted by royalties.

“This is not an argument about going out of business,” he said. “A fix here would be for the whole industry.”

But there is wide anger in the music industry that the bill would enrich technology companies at the expense of musicians. MusicFirst Coalition, which includes the recording industry association, SoundExchange and others, says it believes that if Pandora gets everything it wants, it could cut its royalty bill by up to 85 percent.

For Pandora, the critical question is whether streaming businesses can be successful at all in the current system. Digital music services have proliferated over the years, but just as many have died, and popular arrivals like Spotify have yet to turn a profit.

Clear Channel Communications, the radio giant, has recently moved more aggressively into streaming with its iHeartRadio app. Robert W. Pittman, its chief executive — who has been outspoken on the royalty issue — said in an interview that a change could generate more money for the music industry by allowing streaming businesses to thrive.

“It’s not so much about rates as about how much dollars you spend,” Mr. Pittman said. “The amount of dollars to artists is rate times volume. If the rate suppresses the volume, there’s less money. If it encourages volume, there’s more money.”

Mr. Westergren is revered as a self-made success with real musical bona fides; he is fond of telling stories about his years of scraping by as a touring musician. But the controversy over the Internet Radio Fairness Act threatens to tarnish that image.

The music industry says that if Pandora needs to improve its bottom line, it should sell more ads. When asked to respond, Mr. Westergren makes a gesture of banging his head on a table.

“It’s an easy thing to say,” he said. “But no one has yet explained to us why Internet radio is under a different standard. No one responds to that fundamental premise.”

Advertising sales, which make up almost 90 percent of Pandora’s revenue, doubled in the company’s last fiscal year.

For Mr. Westergren, though, the most difficult aspect of this battle has been the accusation that Pandora wants to take advantage of musicians.

“This adversarial reaction toward Internet radio is counterproductive,” he said. “It’s causing other businesses to sit on the sidelines, and that is hurting musicians. Ultimately, you want to have many boats in the harbor.”

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Benghazi Attack Raises Doubts About U.S. Abilities in Region

Esam Omran Al-Fetori/Reuters

The attack at the American Mission on Sept. 11, seen here, and an annex in Benghazi, Libya, points to a limitation in the capabilities of the American military command responsible for countries swept up in the Arab Spring.

WASHINGTON — About three hours after the American diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, came under attack, the Pentagon issued an urgent call for an array of quick-reaction forces, including an elite Special Forces team that was on a training mission in Croatia.

The team dropped what it was doing and prepared to move to the Sigonella naval air station in Sicily, a short flight from Benghazi and other hot spots in the region. By the time the unit arrived at the base, however, the surviving Americans at the Benghazi mission had been evacuated to Tripoli, and Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were dead.

The assault, on the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, has already exposed shortcomings in the Obama administration’s ability to secure diplomatic missions and act on intelligence warnings. But this previously undisclosed episode, described by several American officials, points to a limitation in the capabilities of the American military command responsible for a large swath of countries swept up in the Arab Spring.

At the heart of the issue is the Africa Command, established in 2007, well before the Arab Spring uprisings and before an affiliate of Al Qaeda became a major regional threat. It did not have on hand what every other regional combatant command has: its own force able to respond rapidly to emergencies — a Commanders’ In-Extremis Force, or C.I.F.

To respond to the Benghazi attack, the Africa Command had to borrow the C.I.F. that belongs to the European Command, because its own force is still in training. It also had no AC-130 gunships or armed drones readily available.

As officials in the White House and Pentagon scrambled to respond to the torrent of reports pouring out from Libya — with Mr. Stevens missing and officials worried that he might have been taken hostage — they took the extraordinary step of sending elite Delta Force commandos, with their own helicopters and ground vehicles, from their base at Fort Bragg, N.C., to Sicily. Those troops also arrived too late.

“The fact of the matter is these forces were not in place until after the attacks were over,” a Pentagon spokesman, George Little, said on Friday, referring to a range of special operations soldiers and other personnel. “We did respond. The secretary ordered forces to move. They simply were not able to arrive in time.”

An examination of these tumultuous events undercuts the criticism leveled by some Republicans that the Obama administration did not try to respond militarily to the crisis. The attack was not a running eight-hour firefight as some critics have contended, questioning how an adequate response could not be mustered in that time, but rather two relatively short, intense assaults separated by a lull of four hours. But the administration’s response also shows that the forces in the region had not been adequately reconfigured.

The Africa Command was spun off from the European Command. At the time it was set up, the Pentagon thought it would be devoted mostly to training African troops and building military ties with African nations. Because of African sensitivities about an overt American military presence in the region, the command’s headquarters was established in Stuttgart, Germany.

While the other regional commands, including the Pacific Command and the Central Command, responsible for the Middle East and South Asia, have their own specialized quick-reaction forces, the Africa Command has had an arrangement to borrow the European Command’s force when needed. The Africa Command has been building its own team from scratch, and its nascent strike force was in the process of being formed in the United States on Sept. 11, a senior military official said.

“The conversation about getting them closer to Africa has new energy,” the military official said.

Some Pentagon officials said that it was unrealistic to think a quick-reaction force could have been sent in time even if the African Command had one ready to act on the base in Sicily when the attack unfolded, and asserted that such a small force might not have even been effective or the best means to protect an embassy. But critics say there has been a gap in the command’s quick-reaction capability, which the force would have helped fill.

A spokesman for the command declined to comment on how its capabilities might be improved.

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Yeldon TD leads No. 1 Alabama past LSU 21-17

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — With Alabama's hopes of a second straight national title hanging by a thread, A.J. McCarron shook off a dismal second half and guided the Crimson Tide right down the field.

Talk about a Saturday night stunner in Death Valley.

McCarron read an LSU blitz and flipped a swing pass to T.J. Yeldon, who did the rest on a 28-yard touchdown with 51 seconds remaining that gave the top-ranked Crimson Tide a 21-17 victory over No. 5 LSU.

Alabama (9-0, 6-0 Southeastern Conference) now has a clear path to the league championship game in Atlanta, and remains solidly on course to defend its national title in Miami.

But this one was a struggle. Led by embattled quarterback Zach Mettenberger, LSU (7-2, 3-2) fought back from a 14-3 halftime deficit with an offensive performance that was nothing like their dismal showing against the Tide in last season's BCS championship game.

Jeremy Hill scored on a 1-yard run late in the third quarter, LSU's first TD against Alabama since 2010 — a span of nearly three full games. Then Mettenberger threw perhaps the best pass of his LSU career, hooking up with Jarvis Landry on a 14-yard touchdown that put the Tigers ahead 17-14 with just under 13 minutes remaining.

LSU was on the verge of putting the game away, driving into Alabama territory and forcing coach Nick Saban to call his remaining timeouts. But Drew Alleman missed a 38-yard field goal, and McCarron took over from there.

He completed three straight passes to put Alabama in scoring position. Then, when LSU brought a corner blitz, he got the ball away quickly to Yeldon. The freshman running back broke one tackle and faked out another defender, racing to the end zone for the winning score.

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Resilient Romania Finds a Currency Advantage in a Crisis

BUCHAREST, Romania — When German de Marco’s work dried up in beleaguered Spain earlier this year, the high-powered civil engineer never imagined that Romania, the European Union’s second-poorest country, would provide his economic lifeline.

Cristian Movila for the International Herald Tribune

German de Marco, center, moved to Bucharest from Spain for an engineering project.

But after the Spanish government ran out of money and halted construction of the high-speed railway he was working on, Mr. De Marco, a 34-year-old Spaniard, found a job here supervising the building of a $90 million tramline. The rent on his apartment in an elegant neighborhood in the Romanian capital is half what it was in Barcelona, helping him save an extra $1,300 a month.

“When my boss suggested transferring me to Romania, I initially thought, ‘You must be kidding,’ ” Mr. de Marco said. Yet, after eight months here, he does not want to leave.

Mr. de Marco’s unlikely pilgrimage eastward underscores how many of the European Union’s former Communist states are proving remarkably resilient in weathering the crisis. Those newcomers to the union have been conditioned by decades of hardship under the Kremlin’s rule. But as the euro crisis has deepened, it has also helped that Romania and the others have kept their own currencies.

That has given these still-developing countries a host of advantages, while many economists believe the euro zone’s one-size-fits-all monetary policy has hampered Ireland, Greece and Spain in restarting their moribund economies. Indeed, many of the post-Communist states are having strong second thoughts about their long-running goal of joining the euro.

Mugur Isarescu, the governor of the National Bank of Romania, said in an interview that maintaining its own currency had given Romania the flexibility to set interest rates, control liquidity and allow the currency to depreciate to help rein in the deficit. In the absence of control over monetary policy, he noted, euro zone countries like Greece are forced to rely primarily on fiscal policy: taxing and spending.

“Of course there is a backlash and disappointment because E.U. accession was seen as a panacea,” he said. “The dreams were too high.”

In Romania’s case, maintaining its cheaper currency, the lei, has made its exports — two-thirds of which go to the euro zone — more competitive and given it a lower cost of living that has made the country a sudden draw for highly qualified workers from struggling euro zone countries.

Though millions of Romanians were streaming into Spain and Italy in search of economic opportunity only a few years ago, today Spanish unemployment hovers near 25 percent, while in Romania it is about 7 percent.

Seven of the 10 former Communist countries in the European Union have yet to adopt the euro. The Czech Republic, which uses the koruna, wants a referendum before joining and has cited 2020 as the earliest target date. Hungary has stuck with its currency, the forint, and said it would not adopt the euro before 2018. In Poland, Prime Minister Donald Tusk recently deemed the euro “completely unattractive.”

Romania’s previous target for joining the euro zone, in 2015, is now “out of the question,” Mr. Isarescu said. Nevertheless, he argued that trying to meet the criteria to join — including keeping budget deficits below 3 percent of gross domestic product — was good discipline.

Though buffeted by the crisis, some countries in Eastern and Central Europe are holding up better than their neighbors to the west that have been joined at the hip by the euro. Poland’s economy was the only one in the European Union to grow in 2009, the year the financial crisis exploded. The Baltic states of Latvia and Lithuania, which underwent painful austerity, are booming again. Even in growth-starved countries like the Czech Republic, the social upheaval has been tame compared with the likes of Greece, with Czechs far more likely to vent their frustrations in the pub than on the street.

“We in this region are used to living through difficult times,” said Tomas Sedlacek, a leading Czech economist who was an adviser to former President Vaclav Havel. “We still remember Communism when we were poor and miserable and far worse off than Greece.”

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