F-35 Jets Returned to Service by Pentagon

The Pentagon lifted its grounding of the new F-35 jet fighter on Thursday after concluding that a turbine blade had cracked on a single plane after it was overused in test operations.

The office that runs the program said no other cracks were found in inspections of the other engines made so far, and no engine redesign was needed.

It said the engine in which the blade cracked was in a plane that “had been operated at extreme parameters in its mission to expand the F-35 flight envelope.”

The program office added that “prolonged exposure to high levels of heat and other operational stressors on this specific engine were determined to be the cause of the crack.”

All flights were suspended last week for the 64 planes built so far once the crack, which stretched for six-tenths of an inch, was found during a routine inspection.

Pratt & Whitney, which makes the engines, investigated the problem with military experts. The company, a unit of United Technologies, said on Wednesday that the crack occurred after that engine was operated more than four times longer in a high-temperature flight environment than the engines would in normal use.

The F-35, a supersonic jet meant to evade enemy radar, is the Pentagon’s most expensive program and has been delayed by various technical problems. The program could cost $396 billion if the Pentagon builds 2,456 jets by the late 2030s.

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Japan to Begin Restarting Idled Nuclear Plants

Junji Kurokawa/Associated Press

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe delivers his policy speech at the lower house of parliament in Tokyo.

TOKYO -- Japan will begin restarting its idled nuclear plants once new safety guidelines are in place later this year, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Thursday, moving to ensure a stable energy supply despite public safety concerns after the Fukushima disaster.

In a speech to Parliament, Mr. Abe pledged to restart nuclear plants that pass the new guidelines, which are expected to be adopted by a newly created independent watchdog agency, the Nuclear Regulation Authority, as early as July.

All but two of Japan’s 50 operable nuclear reactors were shut down following the March 2011 triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, which spewed radiation across northern Japan after a huge earthquake and tsunami knocked out vital cooling systems. Responding to public safety concerns, leaders from the previous Democratic Party government had vowed to slowly phase out nuclear power by the 2030s in favor of cleaner alternatives like solar and wind.

However, Mr. Abe, who took power after his Liberal Democratic Party won national elections in December, has vowed to scrap that planned phase out, saying that Japan needs stable and cheap electricity from nuclear power to compete economically.

On Thursday, Mr. Abe said that Japan had learned the need for tougher safety standards from the Fukushima accident, which forced more than 100,000 people to evacuate. He said the new safety standards will be enforced "without compromise."

However, he did not specify when plants that meet those new standards will be allowed to resume operations. Mr. Abe also said Japan will continue seeking energy alternatives in order to reduce its dependence on nuclear power, even without going so far as to eliminate it.

In the case of the Fukushima Daiichi meltdown, the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, recently admitted that it had failed to take stronger measures to prevent disasters for fear of inviting lawsuits or protests against its nuclear plants.

In the October 2012 report, Tepco said that before the accident it had been afraid to consider the risk of such a large tsunami, fearing admissions of risk could result in public pressure to shut plants down. The report was intended to showcase internal changes as the government considers when to allow other reactors to resume operation.

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Well: Think Like a Doctor: The Man Who Wobbled

The Challenge: Can you solve the medical mystery of a man who suddenly becomes too dizzy to walk?

Every month, the Diagnosis column of The New York Times Magazine asks Well readers to try their hand at solving a medical mystery. Below you will find the story of a 56-year-old factory worker with dizziness and panic attacks. I have provided records from his two hospital visits that will give you all the information available to the doctor who finally made the diagnosis.

The first reader to offer the correct diagnosis gets a signed copy of my book, “Every Patient Tells a Story,” and the satisfaction of solving a case that stumped a roomful of specialists.

The Patient’s Story:

The middle-aged man clicked his way through the multiple reruns of late-late-night television. He should have been in bed hours ago, but lately he hadn’t been able to get to sleep. Suddenly his legs took on a life of their own. Stretched out halfway to the center of the room, they began to shake and twitch and jump around. The man watched helplessly as his legs disobeyed his mental orders to stop moving. He had no control over them. He felt nauseous, sweaty and out of breath, as if he had been running some kind of race. He called out to his wife. She hurried out of bed, took one look at him and called 911.

The Patient’s History:

By the time the man arrived at Huntsville Hospital, in Alabama, the twitching in his legs had subsided and his breathing had returned to normal. Still, he had been discharged from that same hospital for similar symptoms just two weeks earlier. They hadn’t figured out what was going on then, so they weren’t going to send him home now.

The patient considered himself pretty healthy, but the past year or so had been tough. In 2011, at the age of 54, he had had a mild stroke. He had no medical problems that put him at risk for stroke — no high blood pressure, no high cholesterol, no diabetes. A work-up at that time showed that he had a hole in his heart that allowed a tiny clot from somewhere in his body to travel to the brain and cause the stroke. He was discharged on a couple of blood thinners to keep his blood from making more clots. He hadn’t really felt completely well, though, ever since. His balance seemed a little off, and he was subject to these weird panic attacks, in which his heart would pound and he would feel short of breath whenever he got too stressed. Mostly he could manage them by just walking away and focusing on his breathing. Still, he never felt as if he was the kind of guy to panic.

And he had always been quick on his feet. The first half of his career he had been in the steel business — building huge metal trusses and supports. He and his team put together 60-plus tons of steel structures every day. For the past decade he had been machining car parts. After his stroke, work seemed to get a lot harder.

The Dizziness:

A few weeks ago, he stood up and wham — suddenly the whole world went off-kilter. He felt as if he was constantly about to fall over in a world that no longer lay down flat. His first thought was that he was having another stroke. He went straight to his doctor’s office. The doctor wasn’t sure what was going on and sent him to that same emergency room at Huntsville Hospital. After three days of testing and being evaluated by lots of specialists, his doctors still were not sure what was going on. He hadn’t had a heart attack; he hadn’t had a stroke. There was no sign of infection. All the tests they could think of were normal.

The only abnormal finding was that when he stood up, his blood pressure dropped. Why this happened wasn’t clear, but the doctors in the hospital gave him compression stockings and a pill — both could help keep his blood pressure in the normal range. Then they sent him home. He was also started on an antidepressant to help with the panic attacks he continued to have from time to time.

You can read the report from that hospital admission below.

You can also read the consultation and discharge notes from that hospital visit here.

He had been home for nearly two weeks and still he felt no better. He tried to go back to work after a week or so at home, but after driving for less than five miles, he felt he had to turn around. He wasn’t sure what was wrong; he just knew he didn’t feel right. Then his legs started jumping around, and he ended up back in the hospital.

The Doctor’s Exam:

It was nearly dawn by the time Dr. Jeremy Thompson, the first-year resident on duty that night, saw the patient. Awake but tired, the patient told his story one more time. He had been at home, watching TV, when his legs started jumping on their own and he started feeling short of breath. His wife sat at the bedside. She looked just as worried and exhausted as he did. She told the resident that when he spoke that night at home, his speech was slurred. And when the ambulance came, he could barely walk. He has never missed this much work, she told the young doctor. It’s not like him. Can’t you figure out what’s wrong?

The resident had already reviewed the records from the patient’s previous hospital admissions. He asked a few more questions: the patient had never smoked and rarely drank; his father died at age 80; his mother was still alive and well. The patient exam was normal, as were the studies done in the E.R.

The first E.R. doctor thought that his symptoms were a result of anxiety, culminating in a full-blown panic attack. The resident thought that was probably right. In any case he would discuss the case with the attending in a couple of hours during rounds on the new patients. Till then, he told the worried couple, they should just try to get a little sleep.

An Important Clue:

Dr. Robert Centor was definitely a morning person. His cheerful enthusiasm about teaching and taking care of patients made him a favorite among residents. At 7:30 that morning, he stood outside the patient’s door as Dr. Thompson relayed the somewhat frustrating case of the middle-aged man with worsening dizziness and panic attacks. Then they went into the room to meet the patient. He was a big guy, tall and muscular with the first signs of middle-aged thickening around his middle. His complexion had the look of someone who spent a lot of time outdoors. Dr. Centor introduced himself and pulled up a chair as the rest of the team watched. He asked the patient what brought him to the hospital.

“Every time I get up, I get dizzy,” the man replied. Sure, he had had some balance problems ever since his stroke, he explained, but this felt different – somehow worse. He could hardly walk, he told the doctor. He just felt too unstable.

“Can you get up and show us how you walk?” Dr. Centor asked.

“Don’t let me fall,” the patient responded. He carefully swung his legs over the side of the bed. The resident and intern stood on either side as he slowly rose. He stood with his feet far apart. When asked to close his eyes as he stood there, he wobbled and nearly fell over. When he took a few steps, his heel and toes hit the ground at the same time, making a strange slapping sound.

Seeing that, Dr. Centor knew where the problem lay and ordered a few tests to confirm his diagnosis.

You can see the review report and notes for the patient’s second hospital visit below.

Solving the Mystery:

What tests did Dr. Centor order? Do you know what is making this middle-aged man wobble? Enter your guesses below. I’ll post the answer tomorrow.

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Rules and Regulations: Post your questions and diagnosis in the Comments section below. The correct answer will appear tomorrow on Well. The winner will be contacted. Reader comments may also appear in a coming issue of The New York Times Magazine.

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European Union Agrees on Plan to Cap Banker Bonuses

BRUSSELS — Bankers in Europe face a cap on bonuses as early as next year, after an agreement on Thursday to introduce what would be the world’s strictest pay curbs in a move politicians hope will address public anger at financial-sector greed.

The provisional agreement, announced by diplomats and officials after late-night talks between E.U. member representatives and the bloc’s parliament, means bankers face an automatic cap that sets bonuses at the level of their salaries.

If a majority of a bank’s shareholders vote in favor, that ceiling can be raised to two times a banker’s pay.

“For the first time in the history of E.U. financial market regulation, we will cap bankers’ bonuses,” said Othmar Karas, the Austrian lawmaker who helped negotiate the deal.

The backing of a majority of E.U. states is needed for the deal to be finalized.

Such limits, which are set to enter E.U. law as part of a wider overhaul of capital rules to make banks safer, will be popular on a continent struggling to emerge from the ruins of a 2008 financial crisis.

But it represents a setback for the British government, which had long argued against such absolute limits. The City of London, the region’s financial capital, with 144,000 banking staff and many more in related jobs, will be hit hardest.

As it stands in draft legislation, the cap would also apply to bankers employed by an E.U. institution but based elsewhere globally, for instance in New York, according to one official, who was not authorized to speak to the media.

There are also provisions for adjusting the value of long-term non-cash payments, so more bonuses could be paid that way without breaking through the new ceiling.

Ireland, which holds the rotating E.U. presidency and negotiated what it called a “breakthrough,” will now present the agreement to E.U. countries.

Irish Finance Minister Michael Noonan said he would ask his peers to back it at an EU ministers’ meeting on March 5 in Brussels.

The change in the law is set to be introduced as part of a wider body of legislation demanding banks set aside roughly three times more capital and build up cash buffers to cover the risk of unpaid loans, for example.

Some experts have criticized the E.U., however, for failing to keep to all of the so-called Basel III code of capital standards drawn up by international regulators to reform banking after the financial crash.

The agreement on Thursday will also require banks to outline profits and other details of operations on a country-by-country basis.

A ceiling on bonuses, the only one of its kind globally, is perhaps the most radical aspect of the new rules.

Many in banking argue, however, that such reform will do little to lower pay in finance, where head-hunters say some annual packages in London approach £5 million, or about $7.6 million.

“If the cap is implemented, it could result in significantly more complex pay structures within banks as they try to fall outside the restrictions to remain competitive globally,” said Alex Beidas, a pay specialist with the law firm Linklaters.

An earlier attempt to limit bankers’ pay with an E.U. law forcing financiers to defer bonus payments for up to five years merely prompted lenders to increase base salaries. But it would be harder for banks to raise base pay this time around.

Hedge funds and private equity firms will be excluded from such curbs, although they face restrictions on pay later this year under another E.U. law.

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India Ink: Deadly Fire Breaks Out at Market in Kolkata

KOLKATA, India (AP) — A fire broke out at an illegal six-story plastics market in the Indian city of Kolkata early Wednesday morning, killing at least 19 people, police said.

The blaze, which started before 4 a.m., was likely caused by a short circuit, said West Bengal fire minister Javed Khan. The fire was under control by mid-morning, he said, but toxic gases being released by the blaze were hampering rescue efforts.

A police official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said at least 19 people had died. He said police were looking for the owner of the building, which was filled with dozens of small shops selling various plastic products.

Another 10 people were hospitalized in critical condition and the death toll was expected to rise, Khan said.

He called the scene of the fire "an illegal, unauthorized market."

However, local residents said the market had been operating in the building for nearly 40 years. They said there was only one entrance to the building, which made rescue efforts difficult.

The building housed several warehouses on its upper floors, where chemicals, paper and plastics were stored.

Police said the victims were porters working in the market, who also slept there at night. Eighteen of the dead were men.

Mamata Banerjee, the state's top elected official, who visited the site soon after the blaze was brought under control, issued an ultimatum to the building's owners to install fire safety equipment within two months.

Banerjee said the previous government that ruled the state for more than three decades had allowed the building to operate without any permits or safety measures.

She said she has ordered police, fire service and the city administration to file a report on the cause of the blaze and take steps to prevent the recurrence of such fires.

In December 2011, at least 93 people died in a deadly fire in a hospital in Kolkata. Soon after that, Banerjee had promised that her government would crackdown on lax safety procedures in public buildings.

Safety regulations are routinely ignored in India, where fire stairways and evacuation drills are rare. Even if fire extinguishers are present, they are commonly several years old and almost never serviced.

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Media Decoder Blog: SFX Entertainment Buys Electronic Dance Music Site

SFX Entertainment, the company led by the media executive Robert F. X. Sillerman, has agreed to buy the music download site Beatport, part of the company’s plan to build a $1 billion empire centered on the electronic dance music craze.

Mr. Sillerman declined on Tuesday to reveal the price. But two people with direct knowledge of the transaction, who were not authorized to speak about it, said it was for a little more than $50 million.

Beatport, founded in Denver in 2004, has become the pre-eminent download store for electronic dance music, or E.D.M., with a catalog of more than one million tracks, many of them exclusive to the service. It says it has nearly 40 million users, and while the company does not disclose sales numbers, it is said to be profitable.

The site has also become an all-purpose online destination for dance music, with features like a news feed, remix contests and D.J. profiles. Those features, and its reach, could help in Mr. Sillerman’s plan to unite the disparate dance audience through media.

“Beatport gives us direct contact with the D.J.’s and lets us see what’s popular and what’s not,” Mr. Sillerman said in an interview. “Most important, it gives us a massive platform for everything related to E.D.M.”

Since the company was revived last year, SFX has focused mostly on live events, with the promoters Disco Donnie Presents and Life in Color; recently it also invested in a string of nightclubs in Miami and formed a joint venture with ID&T, the European company behind festivals like Sensation, to put on its events in North America.

In the 1990s, Mr. Sillerman spent $1.2 billion creating a nationwide network of concert promoters under the name SFX, which he sold to Clear Channel Entertainment in 2000 for $4.4 billion; those promoters are now the basis of Live Nation’s concert division.

Matthew Adell, Beatport’s chief executive, said that being part of SFX could help the company extend its business into live events, and also into countries where the dance genre is exploding, like India and Brazil.

“We already are by far the largest online destination of qualified fans and talent in the market,” Mr. Adell said, “and we can continue to grow that.”

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India Ink: What, No Trishna’s?

Is a pricy Japanese restaurant one of India’s best places to eat? Does southern Indian cuisine pale in comparison to Northern Indian food?

That’s what a recent list of the “50 Best Restaurants in Asia” would have you believe.

The list, organized by William Reed media, a British trade publishing house, ranks Dum Pukht, the Nawab-style cuisine in the ITC hotel in Delhi, as the top restaurant in India, and ranking No. 17 on the Asia-wide ranking.

A close second is Wasabi by Morimoto, the Japanese restaurant in Mumbai’s Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, at No. 20.

Other Indian restaurants that make the cut include Bukhara, the ITC’s ever-popular dhaba-style kebab restaurant, Indigo, a European fusion staple in Mumbai, Varq and Indian Accent, two Indian fusion spotsin Dehli, and Karavalli, Bangalore’s southwest specialist.

Conspicuous by its absence is Trishna’s, the Mumbai  seafood staple that the former New York Times journalist R.W. “Johnny” Apple put on his list of “10 restaurants outside the United States that would be worth boarding a plane to visit.” In fact, Karavalli is the only Southern Indian cuisine that gets a mention.

The list of Asia’s best restaurants was voted for by The World’s 50 Best Restaurants Academy, made up of 936 voters from the hospitality industry, including 36 from India, who each submit a list of their seven top restaurants in the world. Rashmi Uday Singh, the television host and author, was the chair of the India panel this year.

At least India’s restaurants fared better than South Korea’s – there isn’t a single Korean entry on the list.

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Horse Meat in European Beef Raises Questions on U.S. Exposure

The alarm in Europe over the discovery of horse meat in beef products escalated again Monday, when the Swedish furniture giant Ikea withdrew an estimated 1,670 pounds of meatballs from sale in 14 European countries.

Ikea acted after authorities in the Czech Republic detected horse meat in its meatballs. The company said it had made the decision even though its tests two weeks ago did not detect horse DNA.

Horse meat mixed with beef was first found last month in Ireland, then Britain, and has now expanded steadily across the Continent. The situation in Europe has created unease among American consumers over whether horse meat might also find its way into the food supply in the United States. Here are answers to commonly asked questions on the subject.

Has horse meat been found in any meatballs sold in Ikea stores in the United States?

Ikea says there is no horse meat in the meatballs it sells in the United States. The company issued a statement on Monday saying meatballs sold in its 38 stores in the United States were bought from an American supplier and contained beef and pork from animals raised in the United States and Canada.

“We do not tolerate any other ingredients than the ones stipulated in our recipes or specifications, secured through set standards, certifications and product analysis by accredited laboratories,” Ikea said in its statement.

Mona Liss, a spokeswoman for Ikea, said by e-mail that all of the businesses that supply meat to its meatball maker  issue letters guaranteeing that they will not misbrand or adulterate their products. “Additionally, as an abundance of caution, we are in the process of DNA-testing our meatballs,” Ms. Liss wrote. “Results should be concluded in 30 days.”

Does the United States import any beef from countries where horse meat has been found?

No. According to the Department of Agriculture, the United States imports no beef from any of the European countries involved in the scandal. Brian K. Mabry, a spokesman for the department’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, said: “Following a decision by Congress in November 2011 to lift the ban on horse slaughter, two establishments, one located in New Mexico and one in Missouri, have applied for a grant of inspection exclusively for equine slaughter. The Food Safety and Inspection Service (F.S.I.S.) is currently reviewing those applications.”

Has horse meat been found in ground meat products sold in the United States?

No. Meat products sold in the United States must pass Department of Agriculture inspections, whether produced domestically or imported. No government financing has been available for inspection of horse meat for human consumption in the United States since 2005, when the Humane Society of the United States got a rider forbidding financing for inspection of horse meat inserted in the annual appropriations bill for the Agriculture Department. Without inspection, such plants may not operate legally.

The rider was attached to every subsequent agriculture appropriations bill until 2011, when it was left out of an omnibus spending bill signed by President Obama on Nov. 18. The U.S.D.A.  has not committed any money for the inspection of horse meat.

“We’re real close to getting some processing plants up and running, but there are no inspectors because the U.S.D.A. is working on protocols,” said Dave Duquette, a horse trader in Oregon and president of United Horsemen, a small group that works to retrain and rehabilitate unwanted horses and advocates the slaughter of horses for meat. “We believe very strongly that the U.S.D.A. is going to bring inspectors online directly.”

Are horses slaughtered for meat for human consumption in the United States?

Not currently, although live horses from the United States are exported to slaughterhouses in Canada and Mexico. The lack of inspection effectively ended the slaughter of horse meat for human consumption in the United States; 2007 was the last year horses were slaughtered in the United States. At the time financing of inspections was banned, a Belgian company operated three horse meat processing plants — in Fort Worth and Kaufman, Tex., and DeKalb, Ill. — but exported the meat it produced in them.

Since 2011, efforts have been made to re-establish the processing of horse meat for human consumption in the United States. A small plant in Roswell, N.M., which used to process beef cattle into meat has been retooled to slaughter 20 to 25 horses a day. But legal challenges have prevented it from opening, Mr. Duquette said. Gov. Susana Martinez of New Mexico opposes opening the plant and has asked the U.S.D.A. to block it.

Last month, the two houses of the Oklahoma Legislature passed separate bills to override a law against the slaughter of horses for meat but kept the law’s ban on consumption of such meat by state residents. California, Illinois, New Jersey, Tennessee and Texas prohibit horse slaughter for human consumption.

Is there a market for horse meat in the United States?

Mr. Duquette said horse meat was popular among several growing demographic groups in the United States, including Tongans, Mongolians and various Hispanic populations. He said he knew of at least 10 restaurants that wanted to buy horse meat. “People are very polarized on this issue,” he said. Wayne Pacelle, chief executive of the Humane Society of the United States, disagreed, saying demand in the United States was limited. Italy is the largest consumer of horse meat, he said, followed by France and Belgium.

Is horse meat safe to eat?

That is a matter of much debate between proponents and opponents of horse meat consumption. Mr. Duquette said that horse meat, some derived from American animals processed abroad, was eaten widely around the world without health problems. “It’s high in protein, low in fat and has a whole lot of omega 3s,” he said.

The Humane Society says that because horse meat is not consumed in the United States, the animals’ flesh is likely to contain residues of many drugs that are unsafe for humans to eat. The organization’s list of drugs given to horses runs to 29 pages.

“We’ve been warning the Europeans about this for years,” Mr. Pacelle said. “You have all these food safety standards in Europe — they do not import chicken carcasses from the U.S. because they are bathed in chlorine, and won’t take pork because of the use of ractopamine in our industry — but you’ve thrown out the book when it comes to importing horse meat from North America.”

The society has filed petitions with the Department of Agriculture and Food and Drug Administration, arguing that they should test horse meat before allowing it to be marketed in the United States for humans to eat.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 25, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated how many pounds of meatballs Ikea was withdrawing from sale in 14 European countries. It is 1,670 pounds, not 1.67 billion pounds.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 25, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the last year that horses were slaughtered in the United States. It is 2007, not 2006.

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India Ink: On Kissing, Bollywood, and Rebellion

Gardiner Harris’s recent piece in the New York Times made me do a double take, not just because of the attachment of the word “bombshell” before Katrina Kaif, which to me is somewhat like using “razor-sharp” as the defining adjective for President George W. Bush, but because of the cultural “Rubicon-crossing” significance attributed to a scene in “Jab Tak Hai Jaan:”

A pivotal screen kiss reflected the changing romantic landscape here. Kissing scenes were banned by Indian film censors until the 1990s, and Shah Rukh Khan, a Bollywood heartthrob who is one of the world’s biggest movie stars, has been teasing Indian audiences in dozens of films since then by bringing his lips achingly close to those of his beautiful co-stars. But his lips never touched any of theirs until he kissed the Bollywood bombshell Katrina Kaif in “Jab Tak Hai Jaan,” which was released in December 2012.

Mr. Khan tried to soften the impact by saying in a published interview that his director made him do it. But the cultural Rubicon had been crossed.

As a longtime pop culture buff and dispassionate observer of screen-kisses, while I may agree with the author’s observation of Shah Rukh Khan’s lips historically tending toward those of his heroine’s but never quite getting there, like the limit of a function, I firmly dispute the notion that Mr. Khan’s tepid liplock has given the kiss the acceptability it did not have before. That’s because kisses have been in mainstream Indian movies since the late 1920s with reigning screen diva, Devika Rani’s kiss with her off-screen husband, Himanshu Rai, for a full four minutes in “Karma” (1933) being the veritable stuff of legends.

It is true, of course, that Indian movies have had far more people chasing each other around the trees than kissing, and that is primarily because of the dictates of the dreaded censor board, the cheerless cinematic embodiment of the Nehruvian ideal of big-government intruding into every aspect of national life, which made directors move the camera away at strategic moments to two flowers touching each other.

But around the time when I started watching movies, which was the mid-1980s, kisses and intimacy were very much part of big-banner Bollywood, be it in “Ram Teri Ganga Maili” (1985) or “Janbaaz” (1986) or “Qayamat Se Qayamat Se Tak” (1986) and the truly shuddering scene in “Dayavan” (1988) between the venerable Vinod Khanna and an upcoming actress by the name of Madhuri Dixit, a sequence responsible for many VCRs getting jammed due to excessive pausing and replaying (or so my unscientific survey tells me).

Then of course, there was Aamir Khan establishing his reputation for commitment to detail and the embracing of variety by kissing Juhi Chawla in “Qayamat Se Qayamat” (1986) and “Love Love Love” (1986), Pooja Bhatt in “Dil Hai Ki Manta Naheen” (1991), Pooja Bedi in “Jo Jeeta Hai Sikander” (1992) and then Karishma Kapoor in “Raja Hindustani” (1997) for a full 40 seconds, if experts are to be believed.

In the 2000s, there were movies that had 17 kissing scenes in them, and an actor by the name of Emran Hashmi had made kissing a calling card in each of his movies, earning the sobriquet “serial kisser.”

I don’t want to keep on inserting citations to prior art — after all, this is not a journal paper — but my point is that by 2012, when “Jab Tak Hai Jaan” came to pass, Indian audiences had been quite desensitized to on-screen kissing.

In other words, it is no big whoop. Or should I say, no big “mwah.”

So if it’s not the influence of movies, why then do we see more public displays of affection (of which kissing is but one manifestation) in Indian cities today than say 10 or 20 years ago?

Here is my explanation: The last decade or so has seen a social revolution in urban India. More men and more women are working together. There are more coeducational institutions than ever before. Social media have allowed people to find others with similar interests and points of view, subverting traditional social walls that prevent free interaction, and then they could keep in touch discreetly, through cellphones and instant messaging. (In my day, we had to use the single rotary phone kept in the living room, making it impossible to have a secret conversation.)

As a result, there are more opportunities for meeting people and maintaining relationships. This naturally leads to more unmarried couples or couples that are not married to each other.

Getting a room every time one wants to kiss one’s partner or hold hands is neither financially viable nor practically feasible. Budget hotels are loath to rent rooms to couples without proof of “marriage” because of the fear of police raids. Some even collude with crooked cops to do a bit of extortion, since couples are willing to pay to avoid being hauled to the police station. Being outside, in parks and deserted spaces, does not totally protect couples from the police, but at least it is better than being busted at a hotel.

Hence what one sees as increased public displays of affection is merely the inevitable effect of an increasing number of young couples in urban India, who, because of an antiquated legal system with ill-defined notions of “public decency,” unfortunately find themselves unable to have safe spaces of their own.

The biggest threat to their safety is not the police but young men described in Mr. Harris’s piece, those who “often sit and stare hungrily at kissing couples,” India’s increasingly angry and volatile class of getting-it-nots, those that desperately wish to have but do not, who see these displays of affection as arrogant flaunting of privilege. Many of these frustrated young men coalesce to form mobs of moral police, who then attack couples, especially women, in public places under the comforting banner of protecting Indian tradition.

And so an important cultural battle rages on, in the parks and in pubs and in other common spaces, one that reflects one of modern India’s defining conflicts, that between ordinary people in pursuit of individual happiness and a legal and social system that insists on imposing, interfering and getting in their way — where a kiss is no longer just a kiss but a small symbol of unintentional rebellion.

By the light of day, Arnab Ray is a research scientist at the Fraunhofer Center For Experimental Software Engineering and also an adjunct assistant professor at the Computer Science department of the University of Maryland at College Park. Come night, he metamorphoses into blogger, novelist (“May I Hebb Your Attention Pliss” and “The Mine”) and columnist. He is on Twitter at @greatbong.

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Johnson wins 2nd Daytona 500; Patrick finishes 8th

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (AP) — A big first for Danica Patrick, but an even bigger second for Jimmie Johnson.

Patrick made history up front at the Daytona 500 Sunday, only to see Johnson make a late push ahead of her and reclaim his spot at the top of his sport.

It was the second Daytona 500 victory for Johnson, a five-time NASCAR champion who first won "The Great American Race" in 2006.

"There is no other way to start the season than to win the Daytona 500. I'm a very lucky man to have won it twice," said Johnson, who won in his 400th career start. "I'm very honored to be on that trophy with all the greats that have ever been in our sport."

It comes a year after Johnson completed only one lap in the race because of a wreck that also collected Patrick, and just three months after Johnson lost his bid for a sixth Sprint Cup title to go two years without a championship after winning five straight.

Although he didn't think he needed to send a message to his competitors — "I don't think we went anywhere; anybody in the garage area, they're wise to all that," Johnson said — the win showed the No. 48 team is tired of coming up short after all those years of dominance.

"Definitely a great start for the team. When we were sitting discussing things before the season started, we felt good about the 500," Johnson said, "but we're really excited for everything after the 500. I think it's going to be a very strong year for us."

Patrick is hoping for her own success after a history-making race.

The first woman to win the pole, Patrick also became the first woman to lead the race. She ran inside the top 10 almost the entire race, kept pace with the field and never panicked on the track.

Her only mistakes were on pit road, where she got beat on the race back to the track, and on the final lap, when she was running third but got snookered by the veterans and faded to eighth. That's going to stick with Patrick for some time.

"I would imagine pretty much anyone would be kicking themselves about what they coulda, shoulda have done to give themselves an opportunity to win," she said. "I think that's what I was feeling today, was uncertainty as to how I was going to accomplish that."

There were several multicar crashes, but no one was hurt and none of them approached the magnitude of the wreck that injured more than two dozen fans in the grandstand at the end of the second-tier Nationwide Series race on the same track a day earlier. Daytona International Speedway workers were up until 2 a.m repairing the fence that was damaged in the accident, and track officials offered Sunday morning to move any fans who felt uneasy sitting too close to the track.

Several drivers said the accident and concern for the fans stuck with them overnight and into Sunday morning, and Johnson was quick to send his thoughts from Victory Lane.

"I just want to give a big shout-out to all the fans, and I also want to send my thoughts and prayers out to everybody that was injured in the grandstands," Johnson said.

Dale Earnhardt Jr., whose father was killed in this race 12 years ago, was involved in Saturday's accident but refocused and finished second to Johnson, his Hendrick Motorsports teammate.

"Me personally, I was just really waiting to get the news on how everybody was, how all the fans were overnight, just hoping that things were going to improve," Earnhardt said, adding that he "wasn't really ready to proceed until you had some confirmation that things were looking more positive."

The race itself, the debut for NASCAR's new Gen-6 car, was quite similar to all the other Cup races during Speedweeks in that the cars seemed to line up in a single-file parade along the top groove of the track. It made the 55th running of the Daytona 500 relatively uneventful.

When the race was on the line, Johnson took off.

The driver known as "Five-Time" raced past defending NASCAR champion Brad Keselowski on the final restart and pulled out to a sizable lead that nobody challenged over the final six laps.

Johnson and Keselowski went down to the wire last season in their race for the Sprint Cup title, with Johnson faltering in the final two races as Keselowski won his first Cup championship.

Although it was a bit of an upset that stuck with Johnson into the offseason, it gave him no extra motivation when he found himself racing with Keselowski late Sunday for the Daytona 500.

"As far as racing with Brad out there, you really lose sight of who is in what car," Johnson said. "It's just somebody between you and the trophy. It could have been anybody."

Once Johnson cleared Keselowski on the last restart he had a breakaway lead with Greg Biffle and Patrick behind him. But as the field closed in on the checkered flag, Earnhardt finally made his move, just too late and too far behind to get close enough to the lead.

Earnhardt wound up second for the third time in the last four years. But with all the crashes the Hendrick cars have endured in restrictor-plate races — teammate Kasey Kahne was in the first accident Sunday — team owner Rick Hendrick was just fine with the finish.

"We have a hard time finishing these races. Boy, to run 1-2, man, what a day," Hendrick said. Jeff Gordon, who was a contender early, faded late to 20th.

And Johnson considered himself lucky to be the one holding the trophy at the end.

"Man, it's like playing the lottery; everybody's got a ticket," he said. "I've struck out a lot at these tracks, left with torn-up race cars. Today we had a clean day."

Mark Martin was third in a Michael Waltrip Racing Toyota. Keselowski, who overcame two accidents earlier in the race, wound up fourth in Penske Racing's new Ford. Ryan Newman was fifth in a Chevy for Stewart-Haas Racing and was followed by Roush-Fenway Racing's Greg Biffle, who was second on the last lap but was shuffled back with Patrick to finish sixth.

Regan Smith was seventh for Phoenix Racing, while Patrick, Michael McDowell and JJ Yeley rounded out the top 10.

Patrick was clearly disappointed with her finish. When the race was on the line, she was schooled by Earnhardt, who made his last move and blocked any chance she had.

Still, Patrick became the first woman in history to lead laps in the 500 when she passed Michael Waltrip on a restart on Lap 90. She stayed on the point for two laps, then was shuffled back to third. She ended up leading five laps, another groundbreaking moment for Patrick, who as a rookie in 2005 became the first woman to lead the Indianapolis 500 and now is the 13th driver to lead laps in both the Daytona 500 and the Indy 500.

"Dale did a nice job and showed what happens when you plan it out, you drop back and get that momentum. You are able to go to the front," Patrick said. "I think he taught me something. I'm sure I'll watch the race and there will be other scenarios I see that can teach me, too."

Earnhardt was impressed, nonetheless.

"She's going to make a lot of history all year long. It's going to be a lot of fun to watch her progress," said Earnhardt Jr. "Every time I've seen her in a pretty hectic situation, she always really remained calm. She's got a great level head. She's a racer. She knows what's coming. She's smart about her decisions. She knew what to do today as far as track position and not taking risks. I enjoy racing with her."

Johnson, one of three heavyweight drivers who took their young daughters to meet Patrick — "the girl in the bright green car" — after she won the pole in qualifications, tipped his cap, too.

"I didn't think about it being Danica in the car," Johnson said. "It was just another car on the track that was fast. That's a credit to her and the job she's doing."

The field was weakened by an early nine-car accident that knocked out race favorite Kevin Harvick and sentimental favorite Tony Stewart.

Harvick had won two support races coming into the 500 to cement himself as the driver to beat, but the accident sent him home with a 42nd place finish.

Stewart, meanwhile, dropped to 0-for-15 in one of the few races the three-time NASCAR champion has never won.

"If I didn't tell you I was heartbroken and disappointed, I'd be lying to you," Stewart said.

That accident also took former winner Jamie McMurray, his Chip Ganassi Racing teammate Juan Pablo Montoya, and Kasey Kahne out of contention.

The next accident — involving nine cars — came 105 laps later and brought a thankful end to Speedweeks for Carl Edwards. He was caught in his fifth accident since testing last month, and this wreck collected six other Ford drivers.

The field suddenly had six Toyota drivers at the front as Joe Gibbs Racing and Michael Waltrip Racing drivers took control of the race. But JGR's day blew up — literally — when the team was running 1-2-3 with Matt Kenseth, Denny Hamlin and Kyle Busch setting the pace.

Kenseth, who led a race-high 86 laps, went to pit road first with an engine problem, and Busch was right behind him with a blown engine. Busch was already in street clothes watching as Hamlin led the field.

"It's a little devastating when you are running 1-2-3 like that," Busch said.

Hamlin's shot disappeared when he found himself in the wrong lane on the final restart. He tried to hook up with Keselowski to get them back to Johnson, but blamed former teammate Joey Logano for ruining the momentum of the bottom lane.

Hamlin offered a backhanded apology to Keselowski on Twitter, posting that he couldn't get close enough because "your genius teammate was too busy messing up the inside line 1 move at a time."

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