Protesters Gather Again in Cairo Streets to Denounce Morsi

CAIRO — Thousands of people flowed into the streets of Cairo, the Egyptian capital, Tuesday afternoon for a day of protest against President Mohamed Morsi’s attempt to assert broad new powers for the duration of the country’s political transition, dismissing his efforts just the night before to reaffirm his deference to Egyptian law and courts.

By early Tuesday afternoon in Cairo, a dense crowd of hundreds had gathered outside the headquarters of a trade group for lawyers, and thousands more had filed in around a small tent city in Tahrir Square. In an echo of the chants against Hosni Mubarak, Egyptian’s ousted president, almost two years ago, they shouted, “Leave, leave!” and “Bring down the regime!” They also denounced the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group allied with Mr. Morsi.

A few blocks away, in a square near the American Embassy and the Interior Ministry headquarters, groups of young men resumed a running battle that began nine days ago, throwing rocks and tear gas canisters at riot police officers. Although those clashes grew out of anger over the deaths of dozens of protesters in similar clashes one year ago, many of the combatants have happily adopted the banner of protest against Mr. Morsi as well.

Egyptian television had captured the growing polarization of the country on Monday in split-screen coverage of two simultaneous funerals, each for a teenage boy killed in clashes set off by disputes over the new president’s powers. Thousands of supporters of Mr. Morsi and his allies in the Muslim Brotherhood marched through the streets of the Nile Delta city of Damanhour to bury a 15-year-old killed outside a Brotherhood office during an attack by protesters. And in Tahrir Square here in Cairo, thousands gathered to bury a 16-year-old killed in clashes with riot police officers and to chant slogans blaming Mr. Morsi for his death. “Morsi killed him,” the boy’s father said in a video statement circulated over the Internet.

“Now blood has been spilled by political factions, so this is not going to go away,” said Rabab el-Mahdi, a professor at the American University in Cairo and a left-leaning activist, adding that these were the first deaths rival factions had blamed on each other and not on the security forces of the Mubarak government since the uprising began last year. Still larger crowds were expected in the evening, as marchers from around the city headed for the square. Many schools and other businesses had closed in anticipation of bedlam, and on Monday, the Brotherhood called off a rival demonstration in support of the president, saying it wanted to avoid violence.

Egypt’s Supreme Judicial Council met again on Tuesday to consider its response to the president, and the leader of Al Azhar, a center of Sunni Muslim learning that is regarded as the pre-eminent moral authority here, met with groups of political leaders in an effort to resolve the battle over the president’s decree and the deadlock in the constitutional assembly, which is trying to draw up a new constitution.

But even as Mr. Morsi met with top judges Monday night in an effort to resolve the crisis, a coalition of opposition leaders held a news conference to declare that preserving the role of the courts was only the first step in a broader campaign against what Abdel Haleem Qandeil, a liberal intellectual, called “the miserable failure of the rule of the Muslim Brothers.” Mr. Morsi “unilaterally broke the contract with the people,” he declared. “We have to be ready to stand up to this group, protest to protest, square to square, and to confront the bullying.”

Mr. Morsi’s effort to remove the last check on his power over the political transition had brought the country’s fractious opposition groups together for the first time in a united front against the Brotherhood. But the show of unity papered over deep divisions between groups and even within them, said Ms. Mahdi of the American University.

“This is not a united front, and I am inside it,” she said. “Every single political group in the country is now divided over this — is this decree revolutionary justice or building a new dictatorship? Should we align ourselves with folool” — the colloquial term for the remnants of the old political elite — “or should we be revolutionary purists? Is it a conflict between the Muslim Brotherhood and the pro-Mubarak judiciary, or is this the beginning of a fascist regime in the making?”

Mayy El Sheikh contributed reporting.

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Nintendo says more than 400,000 Wii Us sold in US

NEW YORK (AP) — Nintendo has sold more than 400,000 of its new video game console, the Wii U, in its first week on sale in the U.S., the company said Monday.

The Wii U launched on Nov. 18 in the U.S. at a starting price of $ 300. Nintendo said the sales figure, based on internal estimates, is through Saturday, or seven days later.

The Wii U is the first major game console to launch in six years. It comes with a new touch-screen controller that promises to change how people play games by offering different people in the same room a different experience, depending on the controller used.

Six years ago, Nintendo Co. sold 475,000 of the original Wii in that console’s first seven days in stores, according to data from the NPD Group. The original Wii remains available, and Nintendo said it sold more than 300,000 of them last week, along with roughly 250,000 handheld Nintendo 3DS units and about 275,000 of the Nintendo DS.

At this early stage, demand isn’t the only factor dictating how many consoles are sold. Supply is, too. This means it’s likely that more people wanted to buy the Wii U in the first week than those who were able to. The original Wii was in short supply more than a year after it went on sale.

As of Monday afternoon, the website of Best Buy Co. was sold out of the Wii U. Video game retailer GameStop Corp. said there was at least a three day wait for a deluxe Wii U, which costs $ 350, has more memory and comes with a game called “Nintendo Land.” GameStop still had the basic, $ 300 version available.

Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter estimates that Nintendo will ship 1 million to 1.5 million Wii Us in the U.S. through the end of January.

Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Eagles lose receiver DeSean Jackson to injury

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The Philadelphia Eagles will place wide receiver DeSean Jackson on injured reserve after he sustained multiple rib fractures in Monday night's loss to Carolina.

Jackson leads the team with 45 catches and 700 yards receiving, but has only two touchdowns. Coach Andy Reid says the injury could take six weeks to heal.

Reid says running back LeSean McCoy remains in phase one of his concussion recovery and Michael Vick is in the fourth of five stages. Vick has missed the last two games and McCoy didn't play against the Panthers.

Defensive tackle Fletcher Cox injured his tailbone and offensive lineman King Dunlap sprained his knee. Neither will practice Wednesday.

The Eagles (3-8) have lost seven straight games. They'll visit Dallas (5-6) next Sunday night.

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Online: http://pro32.ap.org/poll and http://twitter.com/AP_NFL

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Imaging Shows Progressive Damage by Parkinson’s

For the first time, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology report, brain imaging has been able to show in living patients the progressive damage Parkinson’s disease causes to two small structures deep in the brain.

The new technique confirms some ideas about the overall progress of the disease in the brain. But the effects of Parkinson’s vary in patients, the researchers said, and in the future, the refinement in imaging may help doctors monitor how the disease is affecting different people and adjust treatment accordingly.

The outward symptoms and progress of Parkinson’s disease — tremors, stiffness, weakness — have been well known since James Parkinson first described them in 1817. But its progress in the brain has been harder to document.

Some of the structures affected by the disease have been buried too deep to see clearly even with advances in brain imaging. An important recent hypothesis about how the disease progresses was based on the examinations of brains of patients who had died.

Now, a group of scientists at M.I.T. and Massachusetts General Hospital report that they have worked out a way to combine four different sorts of M.R.I. to get clear pictures of damage to two brain structures in people living with Parkinson’s. In doing so, they have added support to one part of the recent hypothesis, which is that the disease first strikes an area involved in movement and later progresses to a higher part of the brain more involved in memory and attention.

Suzanne Corkin, a professor emerita of behavioral neuroscience at M.I.T. and the senior author on the paper published online Monday in The Archives of Neurology, said that this progression was part of the hypothesis put forward in 2003 by Heiko Braak, a German neuroscientist, based on autopsies.

But, she said, because of the limits of brain imaging, “nobody could test this in living patients.”

David A. Ziegler, who was at M.I.T. when the research was done, and is now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, said that the study, of 29 patients with Parkinson’s and 27 healthy patients of roughly the same age, showed that the peanut-sized substantia nigra lost volume first, and another structure called the basal forebrain, involved in memory and attention, was struck later.

Glenda Halliday, a neuroscientist at Neuroscience Research Australia and the University of New South Wales, who was not involved in the study, said the paper confirmed “the progression of degeneration in two important affected brain regions in people with Parkinson’s.”

Dr. Corkin, Dr. Ziegler and their colleagues developed a way to use four different varieties of M.R.I. — each using different settings on the same machine — to come up with four different images that could be used to form one image that showed structures deep in the brain like the substantia nigra, long known to be important in Parkinson’s.

The disease kills brain cells, shrinking the parts of the brain that it affects, and the comparative study showed that the reduction in size of the substantia nigra showed up in early stage Parkinson’s patients, compared with a healthy group.

The reduction in size in the basal forebrain, compared with the healthy group, did not show up in the patients in the early stage, but was clear in patients in the later stage.

“This is a project we’ve been working on in our lab for years,” she said. A next step, already in progress, is to correlate damage to specific brain structures with symptoms.

Parkinson’s, she said, is a disease that shows the same broad outlines of development in most patients, but with considerable variation. Dementia may arrive early or may not appear. The M.R.I. technique described in the paper, she said, might help tease out what is going on in the brain in subgroups of Parkinson’s patients that show different symptoms and could influence treatment.

One important difference between the two brain structures is that damage to the substantia nigra decreases production of the neurotransmitter dopamine, while a smaller basal forebrain would reduce the production of a different chemical, acetylcholine.

The research is just one step, Dr. Ziegler said. One of the “big outstanding questions,” he said, is whether all patients will eventually get dementia.

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News Analysis: St. Jude Medical Suffers for Redacting a Product Name

Peter Muhly for The New York Times

Dr. Ernest Lau holds a Durata lead from a St. Jude Medical Fortify ICD, an implanted heart defibrillator.

IS covering a product’s name in a public document a sign that a company has something to hide? And how should doctors, patients and investors react if the product at issue is one on which peoples’ lives and a company’s fortunes depend?

Such questions now loom over St. Jude Medical after the disclosure last week that its executives had blacked out the name of a heart device component when they released a critical federal report involving the product. The value of St. Jude has since plummeted more than $1 billion, or 12 percent. But the company’s actions may have a more lasting impact on its reputation and the health of patients, some experts say.

Last week’s incident was the latest development in a controversy involving the component, an electrical wire that connects an implanted defibrillator to a patient’s heart. St. Jude officials say the wire, which is known as the Durata, is safe. But uncertainty about the company’s statements is growing, underscored by its handling of the report, which involved a Food and Drug Administration inspection of a plant that makes the Durata.

St. Jude released that report in October as part of a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The F.D.A. provides device makers with the reports in an unaltered form, and they may contain criticisms of a company’s procedures.

But the version of the report that St. Jude filed with the S.E.C. left some doctors and analysts uncertain about which company product or products were at issue for a simple reason — St. Jude had redacted, or blocked out, all 20 references to the Durata in it.

Company executives said they had done so based on their “good faith” interpretation of how the F.D.A. would act if it publicly released the report under the Freedom of Information Act. But both an F.D.A spokeswoman and a lawyer who specializes in medical devices took exception with that view, saying that names of approved products typically do not qualify as the type of confidential business information that the F.D.A. would redact.

Among other things, F.D.A. inspectors found significant flaws in the company’s testing and oversight of the Durata. It was those revelations and the implications that the problems could lead to further F.D.A. action against St. Jude that led to the sharp fall last week in its stock price.

In 2005, Guidant, a device maker that no longer exists, also found itself under scrutiny. Back then, its executives decided not to tell doctors that one of its defibrillators could short-circuit when a patient needed an electrical jolt to save a life. The expert who brought the Guidant problem to light, Dr. Robert Hauser, a heart specialist in Minnesota, has also raised concerns about the St. Jude wires, adding that he believes that its executives have been less than forthright.

“Patients and physicians would appreciate more information,” Dr. Hauser said.

In an earlier interview, St. Jude’s chief executive, Daniel J. Starks, said the company had hidden nothing about the Durata or another heart wire named the Riata, which it stopped selling in 2010.

“We’ve been more transparent than others,” said Mr. Starks, referring to company competitors like Medtronic.

Still, some Wall Street analysts share Dr. Hauser’s view. And if one St. Jude executive can claim credit for shaping their opinion, it would be Mr. Starks.

Earlier this year, he sought, among other things, to have a medical journal retract an article written by Dr. Hauser that was critical of the Riata. The publication refused.

Now, after St. Jude’s latest misfire, Wall Street analysts, who usually agree more than disagree, are placing wildly differing bets on St. Jude, with some valuing it at $48 a share and others at $30. On Monday, St. Jude closed at $31.86 on the New York Stock Exchange.

One of those bearish analysts, Matthew Dodds of Citigroup, said he thought the Food and Drug Administration might act soon on Durata. “I believe that a lot of their actions have made the situation worse, ” he said of the company’s executives.

A St. Jude spokeswoman, Amy Jo Meyer, reiterated the company’s stance that it had interpreted agency rules in “good faith” when releasing the redacted report about the Durata. An F.D.A. spokeswoman, Mary Long, said the agency did not consider the names of approved products to be confidential. And a lawyer, William Vodra, said that while device makers try to make a confidentiality argument for product data they consider embarrassing, like injury reports, they rarely succeed.

“In my experience, the F.D.A. consistently rejects” such arguments, Mr. Vodra wrote in an e-mail.

For patients, the dilemma may become more excruciating. The company’s earlier heart wire, the Riata, has begun failing prematurely in some of the 128,000 patients worldwide who received it. And those patients and their doctors face a difficult decision: whether to leave it in place or have it surgically removed, a procedure that carries significant risks.

St. Jude executives say that the Durata, which uses a different type of insulation than the Riata, is not prone to such problems.

And with the Durata already implanted in 278,000 people, many heart specialists certainly hope they are right.

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Rebels Claim They Seized Air Bases and a Dam in Syria

Reuters

The bodies of Syrian civilians in a street in the northern city of Aleppo on Sunday, after opposition activists said they were shot by government forces.

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Fresh from declaring that they had seized an important military airport and an air defense base just outside Damascus, Syrian rebels on Monday said they overran a hydroelectric dam in the north of the country, adding to a monthlong string of tactical successes — capturing bases, disrupting supply routes and seizing weaponry — that demonstrate their ability to erode the government’s dominance in the face of withering aerial attacks.

The battlefield advances coincided with fresh claims of bloody events on the ground, with rebels saying a government airstrike on Sunday killed several schoolchildren in a playground. Video from the playground, which activists said was taken in the village of Dayr al-Asafir close to the Marj al-Sultan air base, showed at least half a dozen children who were dead or wounded from what activists said was a cluster bomb. The asphalt was pockmarked and littered with bomb casings.

On the ground lay two children: a young girl, identified as Anoud Mohammed, in a purple sweatsuit, and a child who appeared to be a toddler in a red sweater, their eyes open and staring. Around them people were carrying the limp bodies of other children whose bare feet were smeared with blood, as a woman knelt beside Anoud and screamed at the sky. In a later video, Anoud lay dead in a hospital.

“What’s her fault, this child?” a man’s voice shouted. “What’s her fault, Bashar, this little girl?”

On Monday, the conflict was reported once again to have spilled beyond Syria’s border, drawing in Turkish antiaircraft gunners who were said by the insurgents to have opened fire on a government warplane that appeared to have entered Turkish airspace as it attacked rebel positions in the Syrian town of Atma, just across the 550-mile Turkish-Syrian border.

According to two antigovernment Syrian opposition groups — the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Local Coordinating Committees — and a fighter on the ground, who gave his name only as Saado, the Turkish fire deterred an attack on an area that includes a rebel headquarters and a camp for internally displaced Syrians. But there was no confirmation of the episode from Turkey, and the Syrian state news agency did not refer to the rebels’ claims.

Government warplanes also attacked the Bab al-Hawa border crossing at the Turkish border, an area where rebels have enjoyed control for several months, according to an antigovernment activist in Turkey. Many internally displaced Syrians have taken refuge in the area and fled in terror from the fighting, said the activist, who gave his name as Abu Zaki. The strike showed the government’s ability to strike at will from the air even in rebel-held territory where it has no control on the ground.

Syria and Turkey have exchanged mortar fire on numerous occasions in recent months, and Turkey, a NATO member, has requested that the alliance provide it with Patriot antimissile batteries, a possible step toward creating a de facto no-fly zone in northern Syria to protect rebels from Syrian government air attacks. Turkey has come under criticism from Russia and others for the request.

On Monday, Turkey’s military insisted that the Patriot missiles would be used only to defend Turkish territory. “Deployment of air and missile defense systems is a measure solely against potential air and missile threats that might come from Syria,” said a statement posted on the Turkish Army’s Web site. “It is out of question for it to be used either for a ‘no fly zone’ or an offensive operation.”

A group of NATO experts was expected to start assessing Turkey’s 550-mile southern border with Syria to identify sites for possible bases, and determine staffing and other technical details. The foreign troops that would accompany the Patriot systems would be subject to a special agreement, the statement said.

On Monday, amateur video, which could not be verified, showed what was purported to be rebel soldiers ransacking boxes of captured weapons, including hand grenades and rocket-propelled grenades at the Tishreen Dam near the town of Menbej. “Here are your spoils, Bashar,” a voice can be heard saying, referring to President Bashar al-Assad. “Here are your weapons, Bashar. God is great,” a rebel exclaims as two men are filmed carrying off a trunk of munitions.

Rebel forces had been besieging the dam’s defenses on the Euphrates River for days.

Anne Barnard reported from Beirut, C.J. Chivers from the United States, and Alan Cowell from Paris. Reporting was contributed by Hwaida Saad, Hania Mourtada and Hala Droubi from Beirut

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Nokia unveils 2 new cellphone models, priced at $62

HELSINKI (Reuters) – Struggling Finnish cellphone maker Nokia unveiled on Monday two new cellphone models, the Asha 205 and the Asha 206, pricing both models at around $ 62, excluding subsidies and taxes.

Both models will go on sale this quarter.

Nokia unveiled a new Slam feature which allows consumers to share multimedia content like photos and videos with nearby friends almost instantly through Bluetooth connection.

(Reporting By Tarmo Virki)

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Longoria agrees to deal adding $100 million

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — Tampa Bay Rays third baseman Evan Longori has agreed to a new contract through 2022 that adds six guaranteed seasons and $100 million.

The agreement announced Monday with the three-time All-Star incorporates the remainder of the 27-year-old's existing contract, which called for him to earn $36.6 million over the next four seasons. The new deal includes a team option for 2023.

"We drafted Evan in 2006 with the belief that he and the organization would grow with each other and together accomplish great things," Rays principal owner Stuart Sternberg said in a statement. "That is why the Rays and Evan signed a long-term contract in 2008, and it is why we are extending our commitments. Evan has clearly become a cornerstone player and a fixture in our organization. We are proud of what we have accomplished these past seven years, and I expect the best is yet to come."

Just six games into his major league career, Longoria agreed in April 2008 to a $17.5 million, six-year contract that included club options potentially making the deal worth $44 million over nine seasons.

"Evan has all of the attributes we seek in a player," Rays executive vice president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said. "His determination and work ethic inspire others around him. He is devoted to his craft and strives to improve himself every year, and he defines success in terms of team performance and achievement. It's exciting to know that Evan will be manning third base for the Rays for many years to come."

Tampa Bay selected Longoria as the third overall pick in the 2006 amateur draft, making him the first player drafted under Sternberg and Friedman.

Longoria played in just 74 games in 2012 because of a partially torn left hamstring. He underwent a minor procedure on the hamstring Nov. 20 and is expected to be ready for spring training.

Tampa Bay was 41-44 during Longoria's absence, and 47-27 with him in the starting lineup.

The two-time AL Gold Glove winner and 2008 AL Rookie of the Year ranks second on the Rays career list with 130 home runs, third with 456 RBIs and fourth with 161 doubles. Longoria is one of 11 active players to average at least 25 homers and 90 RBIs during his first five seasons.

Longoria will donate more than $1 million during the contract to the Rays Baseball Foundation, the team's charitable foundation.

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Chia Seeds Gain Popularity for Nutritional Benefits

First there were Chia Pets; now there are chia people.

Ubiquitous in television ads that began 30 years ago, Chia Pets were called “the pottery that grows.” Mixing chia seeds and water on the outside of an animal-shaped terra-cotta figurine produces a plant resembling green hair almost overnight.

Now, chia is having a second life as a nutritional “it” item. Whole and ground chia seeds are being added to fruit drinks, snack foods and cereals and sold on their own to be baked into cookies and sprinkled on yogurt. Grown primarily in Mexico and Bolivia, chia, like fish, is rich in omega-3 fatty acids, though of a different sort. It also has antioxidants, protein and fiber. Recognition of its nutritional value can be traced as far back as the Aztecs.

Companies like Dole and Nature’s Path have introduced chia products, which have begun showing up on shelves in mainstream grocery stores like Ralphs, Vons and Albertsons. Mintel, a market research firm, counted 100 products containing chia in a presentation it did in March on the potential of increasing the use of the seeds in dairy products.

“About two years ago, our retailers came to us and said, ‘We need you to be in this business everyone is talking about, the business of chia seeds,’ ” said Michael P. Hirsch, vice president of Joseph Enterprises, which sells Chia Pets and other novelty products and has now added chia seeds and milled chia called — what else? — Ch-Ch-Ch-Chia Omega.

Last spring, high demand collided with weather patterns that depressed production, raising prices and the awareness that chia had moved beyond the realm of health food stores into the broader market.

Janie Hoffman, founder of Mamma Chia fruit juices, was one of the first people to recognize chia’s potential as a food. She was complaining about flax seed — “I hate how you have to grind it and then it goes rancid” — to a friend, who asked why she wasn’t using chia instead. “She said it had no taste, it’s high in antioxidants, huge in omega-3, a far superior seed,” Ms. Hoffman said. “In short, she made me feel like an idiot — no one was using flax seed anymore.”

So she bought some chia seeds online and was quickly sold on their benefits. “I started incorporating it into everything I was eating,” she said. “Stir fries, yogurt, beverages — there really wasn’t anything in my kitchen that didn’t have chia in it.”

In 2009, Ms. Hoffman developed fruit juices with chia seeds suspended in them. (Exposure to liquid gives the seeds a sticky, gelatinous coating, which is how they bond to the terra-cotta pets.)

“My first sales call a year and a half later was to Whole Foods in the southern Pacific region,” she said. “I walked in to meet the buyer and presented this chia beverage and said I would like it to go into a few stores. She said, ‘No, I want you in all of them’ ” — about 40 stores — “and that was that.”

Within 11 months, Mamma Chia products were in Whole Foods stores across the nation, as well as in hundreds of bodegas and health and natural foods stores. They are now sold in Ralphs and Vons stores and will soon be in Albertsons.

“I personally think demand for it will grow for sure, though how big it will get is still a question,” said Brad C. Bartlett, president of Dole Food Company’s packaged foods business.

Dole chose chia as the first ingredient it would promote in its new Nutrition Plus line of products, which aim to provide a functional benefit to consumers. It won out over other candidates, Mr. Bartlett said, because of its long history as a source of nutrition — the Aztecs used it for many purposes — and because it does not require much processing to confer its benefits.

The company does independent clinical testing on each product in the Nutrition Plus line to back up claims it makes about their health benefits, and it was surprised by one finding: significantly more alpha-linolenic acid in omega-3 reached the bloodstream and was converted into eicosapentaenoic acid, a long-chain fatty acid considered good for the heart, when the seeds were milled rather than whole.

“That came as quite a surprise, and we stopped the rollout and reformulated our clusters to use milled chia instead of whole seeds,” Mr. Bartlett said, referring to Dole’s Chia & Fruit Clusters.

Nature’s Path, an organic cereal company, introduced its first chia-laced cereal, Apple Crumble Love Crunch, last December, and now has eight products that include the seed in some form. “Business has been great with these products — overwhelmingly positive and, perhaps surprisingly, not just in health food stores but also in regular grocery stores,” said Arjan Stephens, executive vice president of sales and marketing at Nature’s Path.

Mr. Stephens said chia’s nutritional attributes, along with its many uses in food processing, could turn it into a staple. “It can be used in gluten-free breads or waffles to add fluffiness or to replace eggs in vegan products,” he said. “It offers an alternative to those with nut allergies.”

Mr. Hirsch, the Joseph Enterprises vice president, was less certain that chia would be a blockbuster, even though his company is adding protein bars to its line of edible chia products, which are sold in Walgreens, CVS and other drugstores. He said he was concerned about the supply of chia seeds, which are harvested once a year and grown in rotation, usually with corn.

Australia has recently joined Mexico and Bolivia in the chia-production act with its own type of seed that is grown somewhat differently, Mr. Hirsch said. But it is a difficult crop to grow outside of the traditional areas, and the market is tiny, about $70 million.

“Everybody is looking at this because everybody is always looking for something new,” Mr. Hirsch said. “I also know from the sales at this point it’s a niche market still, and we don’t know how big the niche is yet.”

If that niche fails to expand, there will always be another Chia Pet. This year, Chia Hello Kitty is joining the lineup.

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DealBook: S.E.C. Chief Who Overhauled Agency to Step Down

11:42 a.m. | Updated

Mary L. Schapiro, who overhauled the Securities and Exchange Commission after the financial crisis, announced Monday that she was stepping down as chairwoman of the agency.

In recent days, the S.E.C. informed the White House and Treasury Department that Ms. Schapiro planned to leave Dec. 14, becoming the first major departure from the Obama administration’s team of financial regulators. Ms. Schapiro will also relinquish her position as one of the five members of the agency’s commission, the group that oversees Wall Street and the broader financial markets.

The White House announced on Monday that President Obama was naming Elisse B. Walter, a commissioner at the S.E.C., as the new chairwoman. In a somewhat surprising move, Ms. Walter will not step into an interim post, but will take over the top spot for the foreseeable future.

Ms. Walter’s appointment does not require Congressional approval because the Senate previously confirmed her as a commissioner. Eventually, the White House is expected to nominate another agency chief, according to a person briefed on the matter.

Ms. Schapiro’s departure, which follows a bruising four-year tenure, was widely telegraphed. Ms. Schapiro, 57, has confided in staff members for more than a year that she was exhausted and hoped to leave after the November elections.

“It has been an incredibly rewarding experience to work with so many dedicated S.E.C. staff who strive every day to protect investors and ensure our markets operate with integrity,” Ms. Schapiro said in a statement. “Over the past four years we have brought a record number of enforcement actions, engaged in one of the busiest rule-making periods, and gained greater authority from Congress to better fulfill our mission.”

In 2008, Mr. Obama nominated Ms. Schapiro, a political independent, to head the S.E.C. at a time when extreme economic turmoil had shaken investor confidence in the country’s securities regulators.

The agency was faulted for its lax oversight of brokerage firms like Lehman Brothers, which failed in 2008 and contributed to the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Just weeks before Ms. Schapiro started as chairwoman, the Wall Street investor Bernard L. Madoff was accused of running a large Ponzi scheme, further damaging the credibility of regulators like the S.E.C., which missed crucial warning signs about the fraud.

“When Mary agreed to serve nearly four years ago, she was fully aware of the difficulties facing the S.E.C. and our economy as a whole,” Mr. Obama said in a statement. “But she accepted the challenge, and today, the S.E.C. is stronger and our financial system is safer and better able to serve the American people – thanks in large part to Mary’s hard work.”

Ms. Schapiro, a lifelong regulator who previously ran the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, quickly gained a reputation as a consensus builder determined to repair the agency’s reputation. A tireless preparer and self-described pragmatist, Ms. Schapiro overhauled the agency’s management ranks, revived the enforcement unit and secured more money and technology at a time when other agencies were being asked to cut back. She also helped craft new rules for Wall Street oversight, as part of the Dodd-Frank regulatory overhaul.

“The S.E.C. came back from the brink,” said Harvey L. Pitt, a former chairman of the agency under President George W. Bush. “I give her enormous credit for that.”

Consumer advocates and other critics, however, say she failed to grab the bully pulpit at a time the country needed a vocal critic of Wall Street. Since the financial crisis, the agency brought few enforcement cases against the Wall Street executives at the center of the crisis.

The S.E.C. notes it has brought a record number of cases over the last two years. While no top banking executives have been charged, the agency has filed actions against 129 people and firms tied to the crisis.

Ms. Walter, a Democrat who became an S.E.C. commissioner in 2008 and briefly served as the agency’s acting leader a year later, is a longtime ally of Ms. Schapiro. They overlapped at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Finra, where Ms. Walter was a senior regulator and lawyer. At the S.E.C., Ms. Walter was often the only reliable vote for Ms. Schapiro’s rule-making efforts and is now expected to carry out a similar agenda as chairwoman.

While Ms. Walter will take over, she may not serve the whole term. Among the other people that Mr. Obama may consider naming as agency chief include Mary J. Miller, a senior Treasury Department official, a person briefed on the matter said. Sallie L. Krawcheck, a former top executive at Citigroup and Bank of America, is also in the running, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The agency’s enforcement chief, Robert Khuzami, is a long-shot contender.

As for Ms. Schapiro, few expect her to follow her predecessors and move into private legal practice, where she would defend the banks she has spent years regulating. Instead, they say she is more likely to seek out a position at a university or research group.

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