State of the Art: Android Cameras From Nikon and Samsung Go Beyond Cellphones - Review

60 Seconds With Pogue: Android Cameras:
David Pogue reviews the Nikon Coolpix S800C and the Samsung Galaxy Camera.

“Android camera.” Wow, that has a weird ring, doesn’t it? You just don’t think of a camera as having an operating system. It’s like saying “Windows toaster” or “Unix jump rope.”

But yes, that’s what it has come to. Ever since cellphone cameras got good enough for everyday snapshots, camera sales have been dropping. For millions of people, the ability to share a fresh photo wirelessly — Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, text message — is so tempting, they’re willing to sacrifice a lot of real-camera goodness.

That’s an awfully big convenience/photo-quality swap. A real camera teems with compelling features that most phones lack: optical zoom, big sensor, image stabilization, removable memory cards, removable batteries and decent ergonomics. (A four-inch, featureless glass slab is not exactly optimally shaped for a hand-held photographic instrument.)

But the camera makers aren’t taking the cellphone invasion lying down. New models from Nikon and Samsung are obvious graduates of the “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” school. The Nikon Coolpix S800C ($300) and Samsung’s Galaxy Camera ($500 from AT&T, $550 from Verizon) are fascinating hybrids. They merge elements of the cellphone and the camera into something entirely new and — if these flawed 1.0 versions are any indication — very promising.

From the back, you could mistake both of these cameras for Android phones. The big black multitouch screen is filled with app icons. Yes, app icons. These cameras can run Angry Birds, Flipboard, Instapaper, Pandora, Firefox, GPS navigation programs and so on. You download and run them exactly the same way. (That’s right, a GPS function. “What’s the address, honey? I’ll plug it into my camera.”)

But the real reason you’d want an Android camera is wirelessness. Now you can take a real photo with a real camera — and post it or send it online instantly. You eliminate the whole “get home and transfer it to the computer” step.

And as long as your camera can get online, why stop there? These cameras also do a fine job of handling Web surfing, e-mail, YouTube videos, Facebook feeds and other online tasks. Well, as fine a job as a phone could do, anyway.

You can even make Skype video calls, although you won’t be able to see your conversation partner; the lens has to be pointing toward you.

Both cameras get online using Wi-Fi hot spots. The Samsung model can also get online over the cellular networks, just like a phone, so you can upload almost anywhere.

Of course, there’s a price for that luxury. Verizon charges at least $30 a month if you don’t have a Verizon plan, or $5 if you have a Verizon Share Everything plan. AT&T charges $50 a month or more for the camera alone, or $10 more if you already have a Mobile Share plan.

If you have a choice, Verizon is the way to go. Not only is $5 a month much more realistic than $10 a month, but Verizon’s 4G LTE network is far faster than AT&T’s 4G network. That’s an important consideration, since what you’ll mostly be doing with your 4G cellular camera is uploading big photo files. (Wow. Did I just write “4G cellular camera?”)

These cameras offer a second big attraction, though: freedom of photo software. The Android store overflows with photography apps. Mix and match. Take a shot with one app, crop, degrade and post it with Instagram.

Just beware that most of them are intended for cellphones, so they don’t recognize these actual cameras’ optical zoom controls. Some of the photo-editing apps can’t handle these cameras’ big 16-megapixel files, either. Unfortunately, you won’t really know until you pay the $1.50 or $4 to download these apps.

E-mail: pogue@nytimes.com

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Grand jury probes L.A. County sheriff's handling of FBI informant

When Los Angeles County jail officials learned last year that one of their inmates was a secret FBI informant, they launched a plan.

Sheriff's officials moved the inmate from the downtown lockup, where he was surreptitiously collecting information on allegedly abusive and corrupt deputies, to a cell in a patrol station in San Dimas. Jailers kept him under constant watch, sources said, and listed the informant, a convicted bank robber, under a series of aliases — including Robin Banks.

Now, a federal grand jury is investigating whether sheriff's officials moved the informant to hinder an FBI investigation into alleged jail abuses.

Several sheriff's employees have testified at recent grand jury hearings about the handling of the informant, sources said. At least one witness testified that moving the inmate and changing his name was an attempt to hide him from federal agents, and that top officials, including the department's second in command, Undersheriff Paul Tanaka, played a role in the plan, according to a source familiar with the testimony.

Sheriff's officials insist that they were not hiding the informant, Anthony Brown, from the FBI but protecting him from other deputies.

Department spokesman Steve Whitmore said Brown wrote a letter after his identity was discovered, complaining that he feared for his life and felt abandoned by the FBI.

"He was frightened not of inmates but of deputies because he was snitching on deputies," Whitmore said. "We were moving him around to protect him from any kind of retaliation."

The grand jury investigation underscores the rift that developed last year between the Sheriff's Department and federal authorities after deputies discovered the FBI had cultivated an inmate informant as part of a wide-ranging inquiry into the department's jails.

After news broke about the incident, Sheriff Lee Baca publicly accused an FBI agent of possibly committing a crime by smuggling a phone to the informant. He dispatched investigators to the agent's home before determining the case was "not worthy of pursuing."

The grand jury hearings suggest that the federal investigation extends beyond alleged jailhouse abuses by deputies to include the actions of high-ranking members of the department. So far, the U.S. attorney's office has brought charges against only one deputy, who pleaded guilty to bribery for taking money to smuggle the cellphone to the informant.

Laurie Levenson, a professor at Loyola Law School and a former federal prosecutor, said obstruction of justice cases typically involve intimidation or violence against potential witnesses. But she said prosecutors could build a criminal case against sheriff's officials if they can prove the department's goal in moving Brown was to hinder the FBI's investigation of the jails.

"The biggest challenge is probably to show... the purpose of that was to interfere with the investigation as opposed to other legitimate purposes," she said. "If they can show that there was a conspiracy to hide the informant, they'll find a statute that fits."

Sheriff's officials discovered the informant's identity after jail deputies found his phone during a cell search in August 2011. The phone included calls to the FBI. In an interview with The Times earlier this year, the informant said he had been using his phone to take photos and document excessive force inside Men's Central Jail. Brown said FBI agents regularly visited him in court and at jail, where he supplied them with the names of corrupt and abusive deputies.

Brown said FBI agents rushed into the jail to visit him soon after they learned his cover had been blown. But as the meeting began, Brown said, a sheriff's investigator came in and ended it. "This…visit is over," the official said, according to Brown.

Brown said sheriff's officials moved him, changed his name several times and grilled him about what he knew and whether he would testify in the federal investigation.

"I didn't know it then, but they were hiding me from the feds," said Brown, who is serving 423 years to life in prison for armed robbery.

Whitmore, the sheriff's spokesman, disputed Brown's account of the FBI visit, saying it never happened. Federal agents, he said, never asked to visit Brown and would have been given access to the inmate had they requested it.

Sources who were briefed on the department's handling of the informant said the decision to move Brown was made at a meeting attended by Tanaka. One sheriff's employee testified that supervisors made it clear after the meeting that the intent of moving Brown was to hide him from the FBI, according to a source.

Whitmore said Tanaka played no role in Brown's move.

"That is an absurd allegation," he said. "Were the higher-ups briefed about this? Absolutely. But he had nothing to do with this decision other than the fact that he was aware of it."

In the year since the jail abuse scandal erupted, Tanaka has come under heavy criticism. A county commission created to examine the jails accused Tanaka of exacerbating problems in the lockups by encouraging deputies to push legal boundaries and discouraging supervisors from disciplining deputies involved in misconduct.

The undersheriff admitted some fault, but denied that he turned a blind eye to abuse. In testimony before the commission, he accused his detractors of having personal agendas and trying to discredit him by misinterpreting his actions.

At least one witness has told the grand jury that another top sheriff's official — Lt. Greg Thompson, formerly in charge of the jailhouse intelligence team — was also involved in hiding Brown, according to the source.

Thompson was placed on leave last month. Sheriff's officials are investigating whether Thompson had his son, who is also a deputy, confront another jailer to find out what he had told the grand jury about the elder Thompson, according to several sources who asked to remain anonymous because the investigation is ongoing.

Representatives for the FBI and the U.S. attorney's office declined to comment. Whitmore said that Tanaka and Thompson also declined to comment.

jack.leonard@latimes.com

robert.faturechi@latimes.com

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Army Says This General Sexually Abused an Officer, Then Threatened Her Career

An Army general isn’t just accused of sexually assaulting a female subordinate. According to newly released military documents, the one-star general ”threaten[ed] to use his rank, position, and authority to damage or ruin [the captain's] military career if she ended their sexual relationship.” And he disobeyed a direct order from his superior officer to leave the female officer alone.

Army Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sinclair, the former deputy commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, “received a lawful command from Major General (O-8) James L. Huggins,” then Sinclair’s superior officer, to cease contact with an unnamed female Army captain that Sinclair stands accused of sodomizing “without [her] consent.” That’s according to Sinclair’s official charge sheet, which Danger Room has acquired. Sinclair “attempt[ed] to willfully disobey the same by calling her cell phone” in March 2012. That attempted contact occurred after Sinclair allegedly sexually abused the captain.

It is unclear from the charge sheet if Huggins knew that Sinclair had forced himself on the captain, who apparently maintained a sexual relationship with Sinclair for years. Huggins recently completed a tour as the 82nd’s commanding officer and commander of U.S. forces in southern Afghanistan. He is slated for a promotion to lieutenant general.

On Tuesday, officials at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, announced that Sinclair will definitely face a court-martial on charges of forcible sodomy, sexual misconduct, conduct unbecoming an officer, and other charges. Sinclair’s arraignment at Fort Bragg is scheduled for Jan. 22.

According to the charge sheet, the married Sinclair displayed “pornographic and sexually explicit photographs and movies” while serving in both Iraq and Afghanistan; used his government charge card for personal uses; and carried “inappropriate relationship[s]” with at least two other female officers, one a major and the other a lieutenant. The charge sheet does not accuse Sinclair of abusing those officers.

Sinclair is also charged with covering up his abuse of the female captain. In March of 2012, while he was serving in Kandahar, the charge sheet alleges Sinclair “wrongfully endeavor[ed]] to impede an investigation in the case of himself, by deleting nude photographs” and the e-mail account that either sent or received them.

As has been previously reported, when criticized for using “derogatory and demeaning words to refer to female staff officers,” Sinclair allegedly responded, “I’m a general, I’ll say whatever the [redacted] I want,” according to the charge sheet, which calls that “conduct unbecoming an officer and gentleman.” The female captain allegedly abused by Sinclair testified at a pre-trial hearing at Fort Bragg in November.

Secrecy has surrounded the Sinclair case since it became public in September that Sinclair faced potential prosecution. It’s unusual for the sheet listing the charges facing an accused servicemember to be delayed for so long. Retired Air Force Col. Morris Davis, a former chief prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay, told Danger Room in November that it smelled of favoritism shown to a general officer that an enlisted soldier wouldn’t enjoy. The Army insists that’s flat wrong.

“We did not initially release the charge sheets because the Article 32 investigating officer needed to decide if the evidence presented was sufficient to bring forward to the General Court Martial Convening authority for his action,” says Col. Kevin Arata, the spokesman for the XVIII Airborne Corps at Fort Bragg. “Now that the GCMCA has made a decision on those charges, and the accused is being arraigned, we know explicitly what charges are being referred against the accused, thus the release of the redacted charge sheets at this time.”

Gary Solis, a military law scholar at Georgetown University, considers that a credible explanation. “There is much to criticize, when it comes to public access to disciplinary matters denied by the military, but this is not such a case,” Solis tells Danger Room. “To have publicly announced un-investigated charges in the case of a general officer, even this one, would have been a miscarriage of justice, had any of the charges been demonstrated at the 32 to be groundless.”

Davis, unconvinced, adds: “I can’t recall a case where there was public interest where the charges were withheld from public disclosure until after the Convening Authority decided to refer the case to trial.”

Sinclair is one of a number of prominent generals whose ethical lapses have prompted Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to launch an inquiry into whether the military needs to review its ethics training. (Dempsey’s initial findings, delivered last Friday, are that general and flag officers could benefit from ethics refreshers.)

But those other generals either misused small amounts of their official salaries for personal benefit, like Army Gen. William “Kip” Ward and Navy Adm. James Stavridis, or may have had “flirtatious” relationships over e-mail, like Marine Gen. John Allen. Sinclair stands accused of sexually assaulting, harassing and humiliating one of the officers under his command. It’s hard to imagine that a general officer needs a refresher course to understand how wrong that is.

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Newsman’s disappearance largely kept secret

NEW YORK (AP) — NBC was able to keep the abduction of chief Middle East correspondent Richard Engel in Syria largely a secret until he escaped late Monday because it persuaded some of this country’s most prominent news organizations to hold back on the story.

Otherwise, the disappearance of Engel — probably the most high-profile international television reporter on a U.S. network — would have been big news.

Engel and three colleagues, producers Ghazi Balkiz and Aziz Akyavas and photographer John Kooistra, escaped during a firefight between rebels and their captors, forces sympathetic to the Syrian government. The journalists were dragged from their cars, kept bound and blindfolded and threatened with death.

NBC said it did not know what had happened to the men until after their escape. The first sign of trouble came last Thursday, when Engel did not check back with his office at an agreed-upon time.

The Associated Press learned of Engel’s disappearance independently and was asked to keep the news quiet upon contacting NBC, said John Daniszewski, the AP’s vice president and senior managing editor.

“A general principle of our reporting is that we don’t want to write stories that are going to endanger the lives of the people that we are writing about,” Daniszewski said. The first few days after an abduction are often crucial to securing the captive’s release.

CBS News also said that it had honored NBC’s request, but a spokeswoman declined to discuss it. ABC, Fox News and CNN were also contacted by NBC.

CNN, in an editor’s note affixed to a website story on Engel’s escape, noted NBC’s request. CNN said it complied to allow fact-finding and negotiations to free the captors before it became a worldwide story.

“Hostage negotiators say that once the global spotlight is on the missing, the hostages’ value soars, making it much harder to negotiate their freedom,” CNN said.

For similar reasons, the AP did not report its own news several years ago when a photographer was kidnapped in the Gaza Strip, securing his release within a day. In one celebrated case of secrecy, The New York Times withheld news that reporter David Rohde was kidnapped while trying to make contact with a Taliban commander in Afghanistan. Rohde escaped after seven months in captivity.

It wasn’t clear whether Engel’s abductors knew what they had at the time. That knowledge, CNN argued, could have greatly complicated any negotiations. In this case, the captors did not make any ransom demands during the time he was missing.

This isn’t simply a professional courtesy; the AP has withheld news involving overseas contractors in the past, Daniszewski said. For similar reasons, the organization does not reveal details of military or police actions it learns about beforehand if the news will put people at risk, and doesn’t write about leaders heading into war zones until they are safely there.

Still, it’s not a decision lightly taken by news organizations. “The obligation of journalists is to report information, not withhold it, except in exceptional circumstances,” said Robert Steele, a journalism ethics professor at DePauw University.

The news that Engel was missing was first reported Monday by Turkish journalists who had heard about Akyavas’ involvement, and was picked up by the U.S. website Gawker.com. In explaining why the news was reported, Gawker’s John Cook wrote that no one had told him of a specific or even general threat to Engel’s safety.

“I would not have written a post if someone had told me that there was a reasonable or even remote suspicion that anything specific would happen if I wrote the post,” Cook wrote.

He also noted that China’s Xinhua News Agency and the Breitbart website had also reported on Engel’s disappearance. Breitbart’s John Nolte attached a note to his report saying that he wasn’t even aware of any news embargo until after hearing that Engel had been released.

The news was also tweeted by a small number of journalists, apparently unaware of the embargo request.

Whether a disappearance has become widely known could influence a decision by AP on whether to withhold the news, Daniszewski said. In this case, it wasn’t clear that it had been widely circulated, he said.

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Attackers in Pakistan Kill Anti-Polio Workers

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A Pakistani mother mourned her daughter, who was killed on Tuesday in an attack on health workers participating in a drive to eradicate polio from Pakistan.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Gunmen shot dead five female health workers who were immunizing children against polio on Tuesday, causing the Pakistani government to suspend vaccinations in two cities and dealing a fresh setback to an eradication campaign dogged by Taliban resistance in a country that is one of the disease’s last global strongholds.

“It is a blow, no doubt,” said Shahnaz Wazir Ali, an adviser on polio to Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf. “Never before have female health workers been targeted like this in Pakistan. Clearly there will have to be more and better arrangements for security.”

No group claimed responsibility for the attacks, but most suspicion focused on the Pakistani Taliban, which has previously blocked polio vaccinators and complained that the United States is using the program as a cover for espionage.

The killings were a serious reversal for the multibillion-dollar global polio immunization effort, which over the past quarter century has reduced the number of endemic countries from 120 to just three: Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria.

Nonetheless, United Nations officials insisted that the drive would be revived after a period for investigation and regrouping, as it had been after previous attacks on vaccinators here, in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Pakistan has made solid gains against polio, with 56 new recorded cases of the diseases in 2012, compared with 192 at the same point last year, according to the government. Worldwide, cases of death and paralysis from polio have been reduced to less than 1,000 last year, from 350,000 worldwide in 1988.

But the campaign here has been deeply shaken by Taliban threats and intimidation, though several officials said Tuesday that they had never seen such a focused and deadly attack before.

Insurgents have long been suspicious of polio vaccinators, seeing them as potential spies. But that greatly intensified after the C.I.A. used a vaccination team headed by a local doctor, Shakil Afridi, to visit Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, reportedly in an attempt to obtain DNA proof that the Bin Laden family was there before an American commando raid on it in May 2011.

In North Waziristan, one prominent warlord has banned polio vaccinations until the United States ceases drone strikes in the area.

Most new infections in Pakistan occur in the tribal belt and adjoining Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province — some of the most remote areas of the country, and also those with the strongest militant presence. People fleeing fighting in those areas have also spread the disease to Karachi, the country’s largest city, where the disease has been making a worrisome comeback in recent years.

After Tuesday’s attacks, witnesses described violence that was both disciplined and well coordinated. Five attacks occurred within an hour in different Karachi neighborhoods. In several cases, the killers traveled in pairs on motorcycle, opening fire on female health workers as they administered polio drops or moved between houses in crowded neighborhoods.

Of the five victims, three were teenagers, and some had been shot in the head, a senior government official said. Two male health workers were also wounded by gunfire; early reports incorrectly stated that one of them had died, the official said.

In Peshawar, the capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, gunmen opened fire on two sisters participating in the polio vaccination program, killing one of them. It was unclear whether that shooting was directly linked to the Karachi attacks.

In remote parts of the northwest, the Taliban threat is exacerbated by the government’s crumbling writ. In Bannu, on the edge of the tribal belt, one polio worker, Noor Khan, said he quit work on Tuesday once news of the attacks in Karachi and Peshawar filtered in.

“We were told to stop immediately,” he said by phone.

Still, the Pakistani government has engaged considerable political and financial capital in fighting polio. President Asif Ali Zardari and his daughter Aseefa have been at the forefront of immunization drives. With the help of international donors, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, they have mounted a huge vaccination campaign aimed at up to 35 million children younger than 5, usually in three-day bursts that can involve 225,000 health workers.

The plan seeks to have every child in Pakistan immunized at least four times per year, although in the hardest-hit areas one child could be reached as many as 12 times in a year.

Declan Walsh reported from Islamabad, and Donald G. McNeil Jr. from New York. Salman Masood contributed reporting from Islamabad, and Zia ur-Rehman from Karachi, Pakistan.

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Girl, 13, gets Hasbro to make gender-neutral Easy-Bake oven

McKenna Pope, the 13-year-old girl who petitioned toy maker Hasbro for an Easy-Bake oven suitable for both girls and boys, will get what she’s been asking for.

After meeting with the New Jersey girl at its Rhode Island headquarters Monday, Hasbro said it will offer a new black-and-silver oven design in fall 2013. The company said the prototype, which it showed to Pope, has been in development for 18 months and will debut at the New York Toy Fair in February.

Since 1963, a dozen different Easy-Bake models have been introduced in colors including teal, green, yellow, silver, blue and purple, Hasbro said.

The packaging for the new oven will feature boys and girls, according to Change.org, where Pope launched her petition recently. More than 44,000 people have since signed the petition.

Pope’s effort also scored support from some major male bakers and chefs, including “Top Chef” star Manuel Trevino, who was featured in a YouTube video backing her cause.

ALSO:

Hasbro to meet with girl, 13, on gender-neutral Easy-Bake ovens

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Cosmo the God Hijacks Twitter Account of Hateful 'Church'

The 15-year-old hacker known as Cosmo the God was behind the takeover of a Westboro Baptist Church member’s Twitter feed, a source with direct knowledge of the attack confirmed to Wired on Monday.

Cosmo gained access to the @DearShirley Twitter account via an e-mail account, and from there was able to leverage control of the Twitter feed itself, according to the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity. As of this writing, the account remains up and operating, and seemingly beyond the control of its owner.

Westboro Baptist Church is notorious for picketing funerals of American soldiers killed in action in Iraq and Afghanistan. Last week the organization apparently announced its intention to protest at the funerals of the children killed at Sandy Hook, with spokewoman Shirley Lynn Phelps-Roper tweeting the following: “Westboro will picket Sandy Hook Elementary School to sing praise to God for the glory of his work in executing his judgment.”

The sentiment was echoed on Westboro Baptist Church’s website, which included the line “God sent the shooter to Newton, CT.”

The announcement triggered astonished outrage from observers, and the hacker group Anonymous declared open season on the group, publishing contact information for many of its members, including Phelps-Roper. Phelps-Roper’s Twitter account @DearShirley was then taken over early Monday morning.

Cosmo the God has been able to keep control of the account using a flaw in Twitter’s Zendesk system that allows an attacker to close an account support ticket before it’s acted on, according to the source, who demonstrated inside knowledge of the account takeover.

Cosmo and his group UG Nazi took part in many of the highest-profile hacking incidents of 2012, including taking down websites for NASDAQ, CIA.gov, and UFC.com, redirecting 4Chan’s DNS to point to its own Twitter feed, and defeating CloudFlare CEO Matthew Prince’s Google two-step authentication.

The teen’s social-engineering techniques allowed him to gain access to user accounts at Amazon, PayPal and a slew of other companies. He was arrested in June, as part of a multi-state FBI sting and was recently sentenced to probation until his 21st birthday, during which time he is prohibited from using the internet without supervision and prior consent.

The latest hack would seem to violate those terms. But it’s garnered Cosmo an unending stream of Twitter praise. “I love that @cosmothegod hacked @DearShirley!! I’m glad that there is one less hateful twitter account,” wrote one fan. “I think @cosmothegod deserves a medal for hacking @DearShirley and making everyone’s day,” another tweeted.

Wired sought to reach Westboro Baptist Church for comment, but its phone line was consistently busy.

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Amazon adds episodes of alt-comedy show “UnCabaret”

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Amazon Instant Video has added four exclusive episodes of “UnCabaret,” an alt-comedy showcase for the likes of Margaret Cho and Andy Dick, to its Prime Instant Video service.

The show was created and hosted by comedian and entertainer Beth Lapides and features performances by such comedy stars as Sandra Bernhard, Garfunkle and Oates, Greg Fitzsimmons and Rob Delaney. Instead of punch-line driven sets, performers are encouraged to show off story-based stream-of-consciousness acts.

Amazon Prime members will get free access to the titles. The episodes will be available for rental or purchase for Amazon Instant Video customers on an a la carte basis.

Amazon Prime costs $ 79 annually and gives members free two-day shipping as well as streaming access to movies and shows from the likes of Paramount and Disney-ABC. The catalog of titles grew a little larger Monday. In addition to “UnCabaret,” Amazon announced an exclusive content licensing agreement with Turner Broadcasting System and Warner Bros. TV to add two TNT shows, “Falling Skies” and “The Closer” to its service.

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Philippine Lawmakers Pass Reproductive Health Bill

MANILA — After a ferocious national debate that pitted family members against one another, and some faithful Catholics against their church, the Philippine Congress passed legislation on Monday to help the country’s poorest women gain access to birth control.

Jay Directo/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Supporters of a landmark reproductive health bill celebrated as the Philippine Congress passed legislation on Monday to help the country’s poorest women gain access to birth control. 

Jay Directo/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Opponents of a reproductive health bill, including a Catholic nun, looked at portraits of Philippine legislators as they passed a landmark measure Monday.

“The people now have the government on their side as they raise their families in a manner that is just and empowered,” said Edwin Lacierda, a spokesman for President Benigno S. Aquino III, who pushed for passage.

Each chamber of the national legislature passed its own version of the measure — by 13 to 8 in the Senate and 133 to 79 in the House of Representatives — and minor differences between the two must be reconciled before the measure goes to Mr. Aquino for his signature.

The measure had been stalled for more than a decade because of determined opposition from the Roman Catholic Church. Roughly four-fifths of Filipinos are Catholic.

Birth control is legal and widely available in the Philippines for people who can afford it, particularly those living in cities. But condoms, birth control pills and other methods can be difficult to find in rural areas, and their cost puts them out of reach for the very poor.

“Some local governments have passed local ordinances that banned the sale of condoms and contraceptives and forbid their distribution in government clinics, where most poor Filipinos turn for health care,” Human Rights Watch said in a statement on the issue, adding that the new bill would override such ordinances.

The measure passed on Monday would stock government health centers, including those in remote areas, with free or subsidized birth control options for the poor. It would require sex education in public schools and family-planning training for community health officers. The Philippines has one of the highest birthrates in Asia, but backers of the legislation, including the Aquino administration, have said repeatedly that its purpose is not to limit population growth. Rather, they say, the bill is meant to offer poor families the same reproductive health options that wealthier people in the country enjoy.

The United Nations Population Fund estimates that half of the 3.4 million pregnancies in the Philippines each year are unintended, and that there are 11 pregnancy-related deaths in the country each day, on average. Most of those could be avoided, the organization says, through improved maternal health care, a need that proponents say the new legislation will directly address.

Catholic Church officials took a hard line against the measure, saying it was out of line with the beliefs of most religious Filipinos. The church equated contraception with abortion, which is illegal in the Philippines.

“These artificial means are fatal to human life, either preventing it from fruition or actually destroying it,” the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines said in a statement on the eve of the votes in Congress.

The statement cited health risks associated with some forms of birth control, but the bishops’ strongest objections have been lodged on moral rather than medical grounds. In a pastoral letter, they said: “The youth are being made to believe that sex before marriage is acceptable, provided you know how to avoid pregnancy. Is this moral? Those who corrupt the minds of children will invoke divine wrath on themselves.”

The legislation prompted a heated national debate in the Philippines over the role that government should play in family planning and women’s health.

“This bill no doubt has inflicted a very wide chasm of division in our society,” said Juan Ponce Enrile, the president of the Senate. “Families are even divided, mother and daughter differing in their views, husband and wife differing in their views.” Mr. Enrile opposed the bill; his son, Juan, a congressman, voted in favor of it.

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Sasol Betting Big on Gas-to-Liquid Plant in U.S.

Oryx

The Oryx natural gas processing plant in Qatar, where Sasol is converting natural gas to diesel fuel.

RAS LAFFAN INDUSTRIAL CITY, Qatar — The compact assembly of towers, tubes and tanks that make up the Oryx natural gas processing plant is almost lost in a vast petrochemical complex that rises here like a hazy mirage from a vast ocean of sand.

A blog about energy and the environment.

ORYX GTL

The Sasol plant in Qatar makes 32,000 barrels of liquid fuels daily. Experts say the economics of the process are challenged.

But what is occurring at Oryx is a particular kind of alchemy that has tantalized scientists for nearly a century with prospects of transforming the energy landscape. Sasol, a chemical and synthetic fuels company based in South Africa, is converting natural gas to diesel fuel using a variation of a technology developed by German scientists in the 1920s.

Performing such chemical wizardry is exceedingly costly. But executives at Sasol and a partner, Qatar’s state-owned oil company, are betting that natural gas, which is abundant here, will become the dominant global fuel source over the next 50 years, oil will become scarcer and more expensive and global demand for transport fuels will grow.

Sasol executives say the company believes so strongly in the promise of this technology that this month, it announced plans to spend up to $14 billion to build the first gas-to-liquids plant in the United States, in Louisiana, supported by more than $2 billion in state incentives. A shale drilling boom in that region in the last five years has produced a glut of cheap gas, and the executives say Sasol can tap that supply to make diesel and other refined products at competitive prices.

Marjo Louw, president of Sasol Qatar, says that his company can produce diesel fuel that burns cleaner, costs less and creates less greenhouse gas pollution than fuel derived from crude oil.

“We believe the planets are aligned for G.T.L.,” Mr. Louw said during a recent tour of the Oryx plant. “Other players — much bigger players — will follow.”

Perhaps. So far, however, the record for converting gas to liquids is spotty.

The newest and largest plant in operation, Royal Dutch Shell’s giant Pearl plant, also in Qatar, cost the leviathan sum of $19 billion, more than three times its original projected cost, and has been plagued with unexpected maintenance problems. BP and ConocoPhillips built and briefly operated demonstration plants in Alaska and Oklahoma, but stopped short of full development of the technology. Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips announced plans to build giant plants in Qatar, but backed out, putting their capital instead into terminals to export liquefied natural gas.

Today only a handful of gas-to-liquids plants operate commercially, in Malaysia, South Africa and Qatar. Together they produce only a bit more than 200,000 barrels of fuels and lubricants a day — equivalent to less than 1 percent of global diesel demand.

“The reason you see so few G.T.L. plants is the economics are challenged at best,” said William M. Colton, Exxon Mobil’s vice president of corporate strategic planning. “We do not see it being a relevant source of fuels over the next 20 years.”

Many analysts and industry insiders say the technology makes sense only when oil and gas supplies and prices are far out of balance, as they are today in Qatar and the United States. When oil and gas come into alignment, gas-to-liquids ventures will become white elephants, these skeptics say. Environmentalists also say that the huge energy inputs required to transform natural gas into diesel or other fuels negate any greenhouse gas benefits.

Until recently, the method used to convert natural gas or coal to liquid fuel — known as the Fischer-Tropsch process after the Germans who invented it — had been used only by pariah nations desperate for transportation fuels when they had little or no oil available. For decades, South Africa defended its system of apartheid from international oil embargoes by producing synthetic oil from its rich coal resources. Nazi Germany did the same to fuel its military machine in World War II.

But with North Africa and the Middle East chronically unstable and natural gas cheap and plentiful in the United States, some say the technology is now an enticing option to produce various fuels without importing a drop of oil.

Shell may soon announce a tentative site for a gas-to-liquids plant on the Gulf Coast of the United States. Given what the company learned from its Qatar plant, executives say it would reduce costs in any new one by using different types of valves and alloys.

But Ken Lawrence, Shell’s vice president for investor relations in North America, said the company was still two years away from a final decision on an American plant.

That leaves Sasol in the forefront of the gas-to-liquids effort.

John M. Broder reported from Ras Laffan Industrial City, Qatar, and Clifford Krauss from Houston.

John M. Broder reported from Ras Laffan Industrial City, Qatar, and Clifford Krauss from Houston.

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