Apple TV Is Running Late

So, Apple‘s big plan to talk cable companies into making the iPod of the television industry thus far involves getting Time Warner to let it put HBO Go on its box (if you buy a cable subscription!), something other similar boxes already do. How very unexciting. It’s surprising that Apple TV doesn’t already offer HBO Go, since its biggest competitors Roku and Xbox 360 have had it for over a year. And it’s not like Apple has spent that time coming up with some innovative arrangement that would that would excite the cord-cutter (and cord-never) set. No, per Bloomberg’s   Edmund Lee and Adam Satariano, by mid-2013, Apple TV owners who also subscribe to cable or satellite TV can watch the premium channel through their TVs via Apple’s box. Yes, if you have an Apple TV, you can watch HBO either on it or through your cable box. The choice is yours!

RELATED: Apple Won’t Be Revolutionizing TV Anytime Soon if Cable Has Their Say

HBO Go is a modest improvement over the HBO On Demand offerings because it offers HBO’s entire library of shows, not just a select few. HBO also puts brand new episodes up right after they air, which is nice for people who forget to set or have a too-full DVR. But, cable subscribers already have access to HBO Go—on their computers. The improvement here is that existing subscribers now have another way to get those shows onto their TV screens.

RELATED: HBO Is Finally OK with Cord Cutting (In Scandinavia)

This too-late move to get Time Warner on its box surfaces a larger problem: Apple TV has very few apps so far, as AllThingsD’s Peter Kafka points out. HBO Go will bring its total outside app count up to 10, a ton fewer than Xbox and Roku. And yet, many have talked about Apple TV as the gadget that will change everything. Perhaps techies overlooked the deficit because the company has been in secret talks with cable companies to supposedly revolutionize TV for years. It’s coming, the Apple rumors promised, fending off any doubts that Apple would deliver something great. But, nothing exceptional has arrived yet, certainly nothing that sounds like the Apple TV code Steve Jobs claimed to have cracked shortly before his death. Rather, this sounds like something Apple should have done years ago. Apple, if anything, is playing catch-up. 

RELATED: Apple Might Be Making Apple TV Content Deals

But maybe Apple isn’t the place to look for the future of television. Elsewhere in TV land, something new, different, and possibly revolutionary is happening. Netflix, an entity that does not require a cable subscription, will release its first big-budget TV drama today. Unlike Apple, Netflix is trying to operate outside of the traditional cable-bundle structure in order to create an alternative for people who don’t want to pay into the old system. Instead of playing by HBO’s rules and selling its shows on its strict terms, Netflix wants to be the HBO of streaming TV, by creating premium shows that will draw people to Netflix for a premium price. Also in an attempt to do things differently, Netflix has released all the episodes at once, to appeal to our binge watching sensibilities. The experiment might not work. But at least, unlike Apple, Netflix is trying. 

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NFL's Goodell aims to share blame on player safety

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell wants to share the blame.

"Safety," he said at his annual Super Bowl news conference, "is all of our responsibilities."

Not surprisingly, given that thousands of former players are suing the league about its handling of concussions, the topics of player health and improved safety dominated Goodell's 45-minute session Friday. And he often sounded like someone seeking to point out that players or others are at fault for some of the sport's problems — and need to help fix them.

"I'll stand up. I'll be accountable. It's part of my responsibility. I'll do everything," Goodell said. "But the players have to do it. The coaches have to do it. Our officials have to do it. Our medical professionals have to do it."

Injuries from hits to the head or to the knees, Goodell noted, can result from improper tackling techniques used by players and taught by coaches. The NFL Players Association needs to allow testing for human growth hormone to go forward so it can finally start next season, which Goodell hopes will happen. He said prices for Super Bowl tickets have soared in part because fans re-sell them above face value.

And asked what he most rues about the New Orleans Saints bounty investigation — a particularly sensitive issue around these parts, of course — Goodell replied: "My biggest regret is that we aren't all recognizing that this is a collective responsibility to get (bounties) out of the game, to make the game safer. Clearly the team, the NFL, the coaching staffs, executives and players, we all share that responsibility. That's what I regret, that I wasn't able to make that point clearly enough with the union."

He addressed other subjects, such as a "new generation of the Rooney Rule" after none of 15 recently open coach or general manager jobs went to a minority candidate, meaning "we didn't have the outcomes we wanted"; using next year's Super Bowl in New Jersey as a test for future cold-weather, outdoor championship games; and saying he welcomed President Barack Obama's recent comments expressing concern about football's violence because "we want to make sure that people understand what we're doing to make our game safer."

Also:

— New Orleans will not get back the second-round draft pick Goodell stripped in his bounty ruling;

— Goodell would not give a time frame for when the NFL could hold a game in Mexico;

— next season's games in London — 49ers-Jaguars and Steelers-Vikings — are sellouts.

Goodell mentioned some upcoming changes, including the plan to add independent neurologists to sidelines to help with concussion care during games — something players have asked for and the league opposed until now.

"The No. 1 issue is: Take the head out of the game," Goodell said. "I think we've seen in the last several decades that players are using their head more than they had when you go back several decades."

He said one tool the league can use to cut down on helmet-to-helmet hits is suspending players who keep doing it.

"We're going to have to continue to see discipline escalate, particularly on repeat offenders," Goodell said. "We're going to have to take them off the field. Suspension gets through to them."

The league will add "expanded physicals at the end of each season ... to review players from a physical, mental and life skills standpoint so that we can support them in a more comprehensive fashion," Goodell said.

With question after question about less-than-light matters, one reporter drew a chuckle from Goodell by asking how he's been treated this week in a city filled with supporters of the Saints who are angry about the way the club was punished for the bounty system the NFL said existed from 2009-11.

"My picture, as you point out, is in every restaurant. I had a float in the Mardi Gras parade. We got a voodoo doll," Goodell said.

But he added that he can "appreciate the passion" of the fans and, actually, "couldn't feel more welcome here."

___

Follow Howard Fendrich on Twitter at http://twitter.com/HowardFendrich

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Ferrol Sams, Doctor Turned Novelist, Dies at 90

Ferrol Sams, a country doctor who started writing fiction in his late 50s and went on to win critical praise and a devoted readership for his humorous and perceptive novels and stories that drew on his medical practice and his rural Southern roots, died on Tuesday at his home in Lafayette, Ga. He was 90.

The cause, said his son Ferrol Sams III, also a doctor, was that he was “slap wore out.”

“He lived a full life,” his son said. “He didn’t leave anything in the tank.”

Dr. Sams grew up on a farm in the rural Piedmont area of Georgia, seven mud-road miles from the nearest town. He was a boy during the Depression; books meant escape and discovery. He read “Robinson Crusoe,” then Mark Twain and Charles Dickens. One of his English professors at Mercer University, in Macon, suggested he consider a career in writing, but he chose another route to examining the human condition: medical school.

When he was 58 — after he had served in World War II, started a medical practice with his wife, raised his four children and stopped devoting so much of his mornings to preparing lessons for Sunday school at the Methodist church — he began writing “Run With the Horsemen,” a novel based on his youth. It was published in 1982.

“In the beginning was the land,” the book begins. “Shortly thereafter was the father.”

In The New York Times Book Review, the novelist Robert Miner wrote, “Mr. Sams’s approach to his hero’s experiences is nicely signaled in these two opening sentences.”

He added: “I couldn’t help associating the gentility, good-humored common sense and pace of this novel with my image of a country doctor spinning yarns. The writing is elegant, reflective and amused. Mr. Sams is a storyteller sure of his audience, in no particular hurry, and gifted with perfect timing.”

Dr. Sams modeled the lead character in “Run With the Horsemen,” Porter Osborne Jr., on himself, and featured him in two more novels, “The Whisper of the River” and “When All the World Was Young,” which followed him into World War II.

Dr. Sams also wrote thinly disguised stories about his life as a physician. In “Epiphany,” he captures the friendship that develops between a literary-minded doctor frustrated by bureaucracy and a patient angry over past racism and injustice.

Ferrol Sams Jr. was born Sept. 26, 1922, in Woolsey, Ga. He received a bachelor’s degree from Mercer in 1942 and his medical degree from Emory University in 1949. In his addition to his namesake, survivors include his wife, Dr. Helen Fletcher Sams; his sons Jim and Fletcher; a daughter, Ellen Nichol; eight grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren.

Some critics tired of what they called the “folksiness” in Dr. Sams’s books. But he did not write for the critics, he said. In an interview with the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame, Dr. Sams was asked what audience he wrote for. Himself, he said.

“If you lose your sense of awe, or if you lose your sense of the ridiculous, you’ve fallen into a terrible pit,” he added. “The only thing that’s worse is never to have had either.”

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Media Decoder Blog: In Wake of Restructuring, NBC News President Quits

8:30 p.m. | Updated

The longest-serving president of any of the three network news divisions, Steve Capus of NBC News, stepped down from his position on Friday, six months after Comcast restructured its news units in a way that diminished his authority.

Pat Fili-Krushel, chairwoman of the NBCUniversal News Group, said in a brief telephone interview on Friday that she would “cast a wide net” while searching for a successor to Mr. Capus. In the interim, the leaders of the news division will report directly to her.

Ms. Fili-Krushel became Mr. Capus’s boss last July when Steve Burke, the chief executive of NBCUniversal, consolidated all of NBC’s news units — NBC News, the cable news channels MSNBC and CNBC, and its stake in the Weather Channel — under a new umbrella, the NBCUniversal News Group. Mr. Burke asked Ms. Fili-Krushel, one of his most trusted lieutenants, to run it, while keeping Mr. Capus and the heads of the other units in place.

Ms. Fili-Krushel worked early in her career at HBO and Lifetime. A veteran of the Walt Disney Company, where she helped program ABC, and  Time Warner, where she was an administrator, she is by her own admission not a journalist.  But now she is, by default, the highest-ranking woman in the American television news industry — not just at the moment, but in the history of the medium. The heads of the news divisions at ABC and CBS are men, as are the heads of the Fox News Channel, CNN, and Bloomberg.

Ms. Fili-Krushel has kept a low public profile, but has been a forceful presence behind the scenes, recently moving from her office on the 51st floor of 30 Rockefeller Center, near Mr. Burke’s, to a new one on the third floor, where NBC News is based. On Friday, she said she had spent her first six months “learning, listening and getting to know the players here.” She called the News Group an “unbelievably strong organization.”

Though Mr. Capus’s exit saddened many at NBC News on Friday, it came as little surprise. He had previously reported directly to Mr. Burke, but after the restructuring he reported to Ms. Fili-Krushel, and he made no secret of his unhappiness with the change. His contract had a clause that allowed him to leave in the event that he no longer reported to Mr. Burke, according to two people with direct knowledge of the arrangement at NBC, and he decided to exercise that right after months of contemplation. The people insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized by the network to speak publicly.

Mr. Capus told Ms. Fili-Krushel of his intent to leave last Friday. It is likely that he would have left sooner, but a series of major news stories kept him busy late last year — including Hurricane Sandy, the presidential election and the school shooting in Newtown, Conn. Mr. Capus also oversaw the network’s response to the kidnapping of Richard Engel and an NBC News crew in Syria last month.

“It has been a privilege to have spent two decades here, but it is now time to head in a new direction,” he wrote in an e-mail to staff members on Friday afternoon.

Mr. Capus guided NBC through a revolutionary time in news-gathering and distribution. He maintained the news division’s profitability, managed tensions between NBC News and its increasingly liberal cable channel MSNBC, and fostered new business ventures like an in-house production company and an annual education summit. Last year, he unwound an old deal with Microsoft to give the news division complete control over its Web site, now named NBCNews.com, for the first time.

Ms. Fili-Krushel wrote in a separate e-mail to staff members that “NBC News is America’s leading source of television news and Steve has been a big part of that success.”

NBC News is the producer of the most popular evening newscast in the country. But its single biggest source of profits, the morning show “Today,” fell to second place last year, behind ABC’s “Good Morning America,” for the first time since the 1990s. The decline caused widespread anxiety inside the news division and speculation that Mr. Capus would be relieved of his duties.

Inside NBC, both Mr. Capus and the executive producer of “Today,” Jim Bell, received much of the blame for the botched removal of Ann Curry from “Today” last June, which worsened the show’s already tenuous position in the ratings. Ms. Fili-Krushel was put in charge just a few weeks later.

Mr. Bell was replaced at “Today” last fall and is now the executive producer for NBC Olympics. Savannah Guthrie is now the co-host of “Today,” and Ms. Curry is a national and international correspondent for the network, but is rarely seen. Mr. Capus’s exit was seen by some at the network as the last shoe that had to drop.

In his e-mail to staff members, Mr. Capus called it an “extremely difficult decision to walk away,” noting that he started at NBC as a producer 20 years ago this month. He did not make any mention of what he would do next. “Journalism is, indeed, a noble calling, and I have much I hope to accomplish in the next phase of my career,” he wrote.

“Today” continues to lose to ABC’s “Good Morning America” among total viewers, but lately it has won a few weeks in the 25- to 54-year-old demographic that advertisers covet.

“NBC Nightly News” has more successfully fended off ABC’s “World News,” despite an aggressive push by ABC. Mr. Capus said, “NBC News has grown in all key metrics — from ratings and reputation to profitability.”

A version of this article appeared in print on 02/02/2013, on page B2 of the NewYork edition with the headline: In Wake of Restructuring, NBC News President Quits.

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The Lede Blog: Video Shows Aftermath of U.S. Embassy Bombing in Turkey

Associated Press video showing the damage to the perimeter of the United States Embassy in Turkey after a suicide bombing in Ankara on Friday.

As my colleagues Sebnem Arsu and Rick Gladstone report, a suicide bomber attacked the American Embassy in the Turkish capital Ankara on Friday, in a blast that officials said killed at least one Turkish citizen and wounded another at a side entrance to the compound.

A cameraman for the Turkish news agency Ihlas Haber Ajansı rushed to the scene, capturing raw video of the damage to the embassy’s perimeter and a brief glimpse of what appeared to be human flesh on the pavement. Some of that I.H.A. footage was used in a video report broadcast on Turkish television, showing a wounded person being loaded into an ambulance as police officers tried to cordon off the area.

Video broadcast on Turkish television on Friday showed the aftermath of a bombing at the U.S. Embassy in Ankara. (Via Telegraph TV)

As the blogger Serhatcan Yurdam reports, a woman named EsmaDinmezer posted a collection of photographs uploaded to Facebook showing first responders, officials and reporters outside the embassy later.

Photos from US Embassy after the explosion… http://t.co/hc5YvoDZ

— Serhatcan Yurdam (@syurdam) 1 Feb 13

Another Turkish channel, TRT Haber, broadcast remarks by the United States ambassador, Francis J. Ricciardone Jr., as he stood in front of the building beside Alaattin Yuksel, the governor of Ankara. (Readers can click ahead to about the 1:30 mark of the TRT report to hear the ambassador’s remarks, in Turkish and English.)

Speaking after the governor, the American ambassador thanked the authorities for their prompt response, expressed sorrow at the death of a Turkish security guard and said his prayers were with the Turkish employee who was being treated for his wounds.

In his remarks, the Turkish official told reporters the explosion “happened inside the American Embassy.”

Tulin Daloglu, a Turkish columnist for the news site Al Monitor, reported on Twitter and Vine that a large number of reporters and officers were still gathered outside the embassy hours after the bombing.

Hours after the suicide bombing at #US Embassy #Ankara, the scene is packed by police…Chilling day in Ankara!

— Turkey Pulse (@TurkeyPulse) 1 Feb 13

[VIDEO] Tulin Daloglu on the scene at the US Embassy in #Ankara RT @TurkeyPulse http://t.co/xxSflDr6

— cale salih (@callysally) 1 Feb 13

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Google moves closer to resolving EU investigation

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Google has offered to take specific steps to allay competition regulators’ concerns about its business practices, in a major move towards ending a two-year investigation and avoiding billions of dollars in fines.

The European Commission said on Friday it had received detailed proposals from the world’s most popular search engine, which has been under investigation following complaints from more than a dozen companies, including Microsoft, that Google has used its market power to block rivals.

If the commission accepts the proposals under its settlement procedure, it would mean no fine and no finding of wrongdoing against Google.

Companies found to be in breach of EU rules can be fined as much as 10 percent of global turnover, which could mean up to $ 4 billion if there is no satisfactory resolution in Google’s case.

EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia told Reuters he had received Google’s submission, but declined to give details of the proposal.

“We are analyzing it,” he said.

Google spokesman Al Verney said the group continues to work cooperatively with the commission.

The company ranks first in Internet searching in Europe, with an 82 percent market share, versus 67 percent in the United States, according to research firm comScore.

Lobbying group ICOMP, whose members include complainants Microsoft, Foundem, Hot-map, Streetmap and Nextag, said any solution should include measures ensuring that rivals could compete on a level playing field with Google.

The FairSearch coalition, whose members include online travel agencies and complainants Expedia and TripAdvisor, said a third-party monitor should be appointed to ensure that Google lives up to any promises.

The commission, which acts as competition regulator in the 27-member European Union, is now expected to seek feedback from Google’s rivals and other interested parties, before launching an official market test.

Last month, Google won a major victory when U.S. antitrust regulators ended their investigation, saying the company had not manipulated its web search results to block rivals.

The commission has said Google may have favored its own search services over those of rivals, and copied travel and restaurant reviews from competing sites without permission.

The EU executive is also concerned the company may have put restrictions on advertisers and advertising to prevent them from moving their online campaigns to competing search engines.

(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; Editing by Rex Merrifield and Hans-Juergen Peters)

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Goodell says he welcomes Obama's remarks on safety

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell says the league will look at eliminating certain low blocks and improve the quality of playing fields as part of a program to improve player safety.

In his annual message on the state of the league two days before Sunday's Super Bowl, Goodell said neurosurgeons will also be added to game day medical staffs.

Goodell pledged to pioneer new approaches to safety and will continue to make it a priority.

He said he welcomed recent comments by President Barack Obama about football safety, and said there are improvements constantly in treating head injuries. He said the game can be made safer while making football better.

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SciTimes Update: Recent Developments in Science and Health News

Michael Probst/Associated Press

Baby hedgehogs in Germany.

Friday in science, clues to owls’ backwardness, fresh dangers to the seas and the launch of a giant kite. Check out these and other headlines from around the Web.

Phil Marino for The New York Times

Physicists monitored data from heavy ion collisions in the control room at Brookhaven National Laboratory particle collider in 2007.

Felix Ordonez/Reuters

A snowy owl.

Hedgehog Bacteria: Sonic the Hedgehog may have a dark side. The Associated Press reports that in the last year, 20 people in the United States were infected, and 1 person died, from “a rare but dangerous” type of salmonella bacteria. All the cases, health officials said, were linked to hedgehogs that were kept as pets.

More Bad News for the Seas: National Geographic reports that buried beneath the waves are rich deposits of “gold, copper, zinc, and other valuable minerals,” and that is attracting the attention of the humans on the land above. Mining the minerals is not easy, but one company has already obtained an extraction contract for the waters off Papua, New Guinea, the magazine says.

Less Money for Science: Lean days are ahead for recipients of federal government contracts, and that knowledge is having an impact on physics research. Scientific American reports that a federal advisory panel has recommended closing a particle collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, N.Y.

Spinning Heads: Owls are able to do something that parents only dream about: swivel their heads completely around to see what is going on behind them. An illustrator and a physician at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine discovered that they can do so without severing their arteries or preventing blood from reaching their brains because of holes in their neck bones, which may hold air sacks that cushion the movement of the head, and because the vertebral artery is able to expand and hold reservoirs of blood for the brain, a LiveScience video explains.

Setting Sail in Space: A new solar sail, the largest yet, will be launched by NASA in 2014. Looking very much like a gigantic kite, it will eventually reach 2 million miles from Earth (that’s a lot of string!), Popular Science reports. And besides blazing the way for further research of this type, the mission has another purpose: “Sunjammer will be carrying the cremated remains of various individuals, including the creator of Star Trek,Gene Roddenberry, and his wife Majel Barrett Roddenberry. It is not exactly the Enterprise, but Sunjammer will be boldly going where no solar sailing spacecraft has gone before,” Popular Science says.

Video by NASAMarshallTV

Solar Sail Readies for Early Warning Mission

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DealBook: Capital One Hires Centerview Executive as Finance Chief

Capital One Financial said on Friday that it had hired Stephen S. Crawford, a top executive of the boutique investment bank Centerview Partners, as its chief financial officer.

He will join Capital One on Monday as chief financial officer designate, and on May 24 will formally replace Gary L. Perlin, who will retire. Upon joining the bank, Mr. Crawford will report to its chairman and chief executive, Richard D. Fairbank.

It is a return to the world of big banks for Mr. Crawford, a former chief financial officer and eventually co-president of Morgan Stanley. He made his mark as an adviser to financial institutions, helping orchestrate deals like Fleet Bank’s $49 billion sale to Bank of America.

At Centerview, he advised Capital One on its $9 billion purchase of the American online banking arm of ING.

“I have watched the transformation of Capital One over the last decade and have the greatest admiration for Rich and his strategic vision for the company,” Mr. Crawford said in a statement. “It is an honor to take on this important role and I look forward to continuing to help create a great company and bring value to our investors.”

Mr. Crawford isn’t the only deal-making investment banker to make the jump to the chief financial officer position of a client. In 2011, NBC Universal named Stuart J. Epstein, a top media banker at Morgan Stanley and a longtime adviser to corporate parent Comcast, as its chief financial officer.

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Hagel Offers Endorsement of U.S. Military Might

Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times

Chuck Hagel arrived for his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday.

WASHINGTON — Chuck Hagel, President Obama’s nominee to be secretary of defense, engaged in a sharp exchange with his old friend, Senator John McCain, at the opening of his confirmation hearing on Thursday when Mr. McCain, Republican of Arizona, pressed him on his opposition to the escalation, or surge, of American forces in Iraq in 2007.

Mr. Hagel dodged a direct answer as Mr. McCain asked him repeatedly if history would judge whether Mr. Hagel was right or wrong to oppose the surge in forces when he was a Republican senator from Nebraska. The escalation, along with other major factors, is credited in helping quell the violence in Iraq at the time. When Mr. Hagel said he wanted to explain, Mr. McCain bore in.

“Are you going to answer the question, Senator Hagel, the question is whether you were right or wrong,” Mr. McCain said.

“I’m not going to give you a yes or no answer,” Mr. Hagel replied.

Mr. McCain did not let up.

"I think history has already made a judgment about the surge sir, and you’re on the wrong side of it,” Mr. McCain said, then seemed to threaten that he would not vote for Mr. Hagel if he did not answer the question.

It took the next questioner, Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida, to draw out Mr. Hagel out on the subject. “I did question the surge,” Mr. Hagel said. “I always asked the question, is this going to be worth the sacrifice?” He said 1,200 American men and women lost their lives in the surge. “I’m not certain it was required,” Mr. Hagel said. “Now, it doesn’t mean I was right.”

Mr. McCain, like many Republicans, was furious at Mr. Hagel’s skepticism about the Iraq War. It led to a falling-out between the two men, both Vietnam veterans, that appeared to have been patched up when the two met last week after Mr. Hagel was nominated for the Pentagon job. Mr. McCain described their discussion as a “frank and candid” exchange between two “old friends.”

But Mr. McCain was only one of the Republicans who pressed Mr. Hagel at hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Before he even made his opening statement, Mr. Hagel faced a blast of objections from the ranking Republican on the committee, Senator James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, who told Mr. Hagel that he would not vote for him because of his position of “appeasing” America’s adversaries.

“His record demonstrates what I view as a steadfast opposition to policies that diminish U.S. power and influence throughout the world, as well as a recent trend of policy reversals that seem based on political expediency rather than on core beliefs,” Mr. Inhofe said.

But even a reliable yes vote, Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who serves as the committee’s chairman, said in his opening statement that Mr. Hagel had made “troubling” statements about Israel and had expressed a willingness to negotiate on Iran on issues that Mr. Levin viewed as nonnegotiable. Mr. Levin said he expected Mr. Hagel to address those issues during the hearing.

Under aggressive but at times disjointed questioning from Mr. Inhofe, Mr. Hagel was asked why he thought the Iranian Foreign Ministry so strongly supported his nomination as defense secretary. Mr. Hagel swiftly replied, “I have a difficult time enough with American politics.” He then said, “I have no idea.”

Under more gentle but persistent questioning from Mr. Levin, Mr. Hagel said that he had voted against some unilateral American sanctions against Iran in 2001 and 2002 because it was a different era. “We were at a different place with Iran at that time,” he said.

Mr. Hagel faltered at one point, saying shortly before noon that he strongly supported the president’s policy on “containment” of Iran. He was quickly handed a note, which he read and then said to correct himself, “Obviously, we don’t have a position on containment.”

At that point Mr. Levin interjected, “We do have a position on containment, which is we do not favor containment.” The Obama administration’s policy on Iran remains prevention of its efforts to obtain nuclear weapons. Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.

In his opening statement, Mr. Hagel said that the United States must lead other nations in confronting threats, use all tools of American power in protecting its people and “maintain the strongest military in the world.”

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