Arrests Made in Maple Syrup Theft From Quebec Warehouse

Francis Vachon

Danny Ayotte prepares maple syrup for pasteurization. The authorities are trying to recover six million pounds of stolen syrup.

OTTAWA — It was an inside job of sorts. Thieves with access to a warehouse and a careful plan loaded up trucks and, over time, made off with $18 million of a valuable commodity.

The question is what was more unusual: that the commodity in question was maple syrup, or that it came from something called the global strategic maple syrup reserve, run by what amounts to a Canadian cartel.

On Tuesday, the police in Quebec arrested three men in connection with the theft from the warehouse, which is southwest of Quebec City. The authorities are searching for five others suspected of being involved, and law enforcement agencies in other parts of Canada and the United States are trying to recover some of the stolen syrup.

Both the size and the international scope of the theft underscore Quebec’s outsize position in the maple syrup industry.

Depending on the year, the province can produce more than three-quarters of the world’s supply. And its marketing organization appears to have taken some tips from the producers of another valuable liquid commodity when it comes to exploiting market dominance.

“It’s like OPEC,” said Simon Trépanier, acting general manager of the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers. “We’re not producing all the maple syrup in the world. But by producing 70 to 78 percent, we have the ability to adjust the quantity that is in the marketplace.”

Since 1999, Quebec’s maple syrup industry has used a marketing system found in other Canadian agricultural sectors, particularly dairy and poultry.

Put simply, the supply management system sets strict quotas for producers and, in the case of maple syrup, requires them to sell their product through the federation.

The sap that becomes maple syrup after being boiled down often flows for only a short period each spring. Weather changes can introduce wild fluctuations in how much emerges from sugar maple trees.

To maintain stable and high prices, the federation stockpiles every drop its members produce beyond their quota. During bad seasons, it dips into that supply.

“In the States you have the strategic oil reserve,” Mr. Trépanier said, continuing with his petroleum analogy. “Mother Nature is not generous every year, so we have our own global strategic reserve.”

Mr. Trépanier estimates that the reserve now holds 46 million pounds of syrup.

The spring of 2011 produced so much maple syrup that the federation added a third rented warehouse, in an industrial park alongside a busy highway in Saint-Louis-de-Blandford, to accommodate the overflow. The surplus was pasteurized and packed into 16,000 drums, each holding 54 gallons, and left to rest except for inspections twice a year.

Lt. Guy Lapointe of the Sûreté du Québec, the police force that led the investigation, said that the thieves rented another portion of the warehouse for an unrelated business. That enabled them to drive large trucks into the building.

“They were basically inside guys,” Lieutenant Lapointe said. “The leader wasn’t with the federation, but he had access to the warehouse that would not attract any suspicion.”

When no one else was around, Lieutenant Lapointe said, the thieves gradually began emptying syrup barrels. Some Quebec news reports indicated that they also filled some barrels with water to disguise the theft.

Over time, the thieves helped themselves to six million pounds of syrup. Mr. Trépanier said their work was discovered in July, when inspectors found a few empty barrels. The full extent of the theft, he said, became clear once the police arrived.

The police spared no resources. Lieutenant Lapointe said that about 300 people were questioned and 40 search warrants executed. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement service joined the investigation.

Like many thieves, the maple syrup gang was faced with how to unload a large quantity of a commodity that is not easily moved. But unlike most thieves, Lieutenant Lapointe said, they found a way to get full price on the open market.

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For Modernizing Thais, Monastic Life Loses Allure

Young monks rehearsed an evening candlelight ceremony at the Chedi Luang temple in Chiang Mai, Thailand. The country’s Buddhist temples are as much a part of the landscape as rice paddies and palm trees. But many temples in rural Thailand have fallen quiet.

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Instagram tests new limits in user privacy

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Instagram, which spurred suspicions this week that it would sell user photos after revising its terms of service, has sparked renewed debate about how much control over personal data users must give up to live and participate in a world steeped in social media.

In forcefully establishing a new set of usage terms, Instagram, the massively popular photo-sharing service owned by Facebook Inc, has claimed some rights that have been practically unheard of among its prominent social media peers, legal experts and consumer advocates say.

Users who decline to accept Instagram’s new privacy policy have one month to delete their accounts, or they will be bound by the new terms. Another clause appears to waive the rights of minors on the service. And in the wake of a class-action settlement involving Facebook and privacy issues, Instagram has added terms to shield itself from similar litigation.

All told, the revised terms reflect a new, draconian grip over user rights, experts say.

“This is all uncharted territory,” said Jay Edelson, a partner at the Chicago law firm Edelson McGuire. “If Instagram is to encourage as many lawsuits as possible and as much backlash as possible then they succeeded.”

Instagram’s new policies, which go into effect January 16, lay the groundwork for the company to begin generating advertising revenue by giving marketers the right to display profile pictures and other personal information such as who users follow in advertisements.

The new terms, which allow an advertiser to pay Instagram “to display your username, likeness, photos (along with any associated metadata)” without compensation, triggered an outburst of complaints on the Web on Tuesday from users upset that Instagram would make money from their uploaded content.

The uproar prompted a lengthy blog post from the company to “clarify” the changes, with CEO Kevin Systrom saying the company had no current plans to incorporate photos taken by users into ads.

Instagram declined comment beyond its blog post, which failed to appease critics including National Geographic, which suspended new posts to Instagram. “We are very concerned with the direction of the proposed new terms of service and if they remain as presented we may close our account,” said National Geographic, an early Instagram adopter.

PUSHING BOUNDARIES

Consumer advocates said Facebook was using Instagram’s aggressive new terms to push the boundaries of how social media sites can make money while its own hands were tied by recent agreements with regulators and class action plaintiffs.

Under the terms of a 2011 settlement with the Federal Trade Commission, Facebook is required to get user consent before personal information is shared beyond their privacy settings. A preliminary class action lawsuit settlement with Facebook allows users to opt-out of being included in the “sponsored stories” ads that use their personal information.

Under Instagram’s new terms, users who want to opt-out must simply quit using the service.

“Instagram has given people a pretty stark choice: Take it or leave, and if you leave it you’ve got to leave the service,” said Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a Internet user right’s group.

What’s more, he said, if a user initially agrees to the new terms but then has a change of mind, their information could still be used for commercial purposes.

In a post on its official blog on Tuesday, Instagram did not address another controversial provision that states that if a child under the age of 18 uses the service, then it is implied that his or her parent has tacitly agreed to Instagram’s terms.

“The notion is that minors can’t be bound to a contract. And that also means they can’t be bound to a provision that says they agree to waive the rights,” said the EFF’s Opsahl.

BLOCKING CLASS ACTION SUITS

While Facebook continues to be bogged in its own class action suit, Instagram took preventive steps to avoid a similar legal morass.

Its new terms of service require users with a legal complaint to enter arbitration, rather than take the company to court. It prohibits users from joining a class action lawsuit unless they mail a written “opt-out” statement to Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park within 30 days of joining Instagram.

That provision is not included in terms of service for other leading social media companies like Twitter, Google, YouTube or even Facebook itself, and it immunizes Instagram from many forms of legal liability, said Michael Rustad, a professor at Suffolk University Law School.

Rustad, who has studied the terms of services for 157 social media services, said just 10 contained provisions prohibiting class action lawsuits.

The clause effectively cripples users who want to legally challenge the company because lawyers will not likely represent an individual plaintiff, Rustad argued.

“No lawyers will take these cases,” Rustad said. “In consumer arbitration cases, everything is stacked against the consumer. It’s a pretense, it’s a legal fiction, that there are remedies.”

Instagram, which has 100 million users, allows consumers to tweak the photos they take on their smartphones and share the images with friends. Facebook acquired Instagram in September for $ 715 million.

Instagram’s take-it-or-leave-it policy pushes the envelope for how social networking companies treat user privacy issues, said Marc Rotenberg, the executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

“I think Facebook is probably using Instagram to see how far it can press this advertising model,” said Rotenberg. “If they can keep a lot of users, then all those users have agreed to have their images as part of advertising.”

(Additional reporting by Dan Levine; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)

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The Voice Crowns a Winner!

TV Watch

By Julia Haskins

12/18/2012 at 11:20 PM EST

From left: Terry McDermott, Cassadee Pope, Nicholas David and host Carson Daly

Tyler Golden/NBC

The Voice has a new winner!

After several powerful performances the night before, the top three singers – Nicholas David (of Team Cee Lo) and Terry McDermott and Cassadee Pope (of Blake Shelton's team) – faced the music on Tuesday during the final results show of season 3.

Which one was the winner? Keep reading to find out ...

Cassadee Pope was named the winner of The Voice!

Pope thanked her fans who supported her throughout the competition. She was joined onstage by McDermott, who was the runner-up, and David, who came in third place.

It was a night of music as Rihanna, newly engaged Kelly Clarkson, Bruno Mars and the Killers celebrated with the finalists by displaying their talents.

Season 4 of The Voice premieres March 25, 2013, with Shakira and Usher stepping in to take over for Christina Aguilera and Cee Lo Green.

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California's marine reserve network now complete

Surviving budget cuts, mobs of angry fishermen and death threats, California officials today completed the largest network of undersea parks in the continental United States — 848 square miles of protected waters that reach from the Oregon state line to the Mexican border.

The final segment of marine reserves, along the state's north coast, becomes official today. Its 137 square miles of protected waters reflect an unusual agreement reached among Native American tribes, conservation groups and fishermen to preserve tribal traditions while protecting marine life from exploitation.

All told, the dozen-year effort has set aside 16% of state waters as marine reserves, including 9% that are off-limits to fishing or gathering of any kind.

State officials got to work shortly after the Legislature passed the Marine Life Protection Act in 1999. It directed them to consider a statewide network of protected waters, modeled after a familiar strategy on land — setting up parks and refuges to conserve wildlife, said Michael Sutton, a California Fish and Game commissioner.

"It's not rocket science," Sutton said. "If you protect wildlife habitat and you don't kill too many, wildlife tends to do well. We've done that on land with the waterfowl population. Now, we've done it in the ocean for fish."

Marine reserves have proliferated in the last decade, particularly in remote areas such as the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, the Phoenix Islands and the Northern Mariana Islands.

But California's network of reserves is the only one established near a heavily populated coastline. The state issues 2 million fishing licenses a year.

The network got its start from the late Jim Donlon, an avid sport fisherman from Oxnard who lamented the disappearance of the big fish he used to catch around the Channel Islands off Santa Barbara. He set in motion a first round of public meetings that resulted in protecting certain rocky reefs, sandy bottoms and other areas around the islands to allow fish populations to recover.

Initially, these reserves were seen as "an insurance policy" against inadequate fisheries management that had allowed rockfish and other marine life populations to plunge to record lows, said Steve Gaines, dean of the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management at UC Santa Barbara.

The idea: Protected waters would allow some fish to reach full size, and when they swam out of the reserve they would benefit local fishermen by getting caught.

Now, he said, scientists realize that marine reserves, if in the right places, can become a source of providing larvae to reseed larger regions and benefit entire fisheries.

"That's what's exciting about California's network," Gaines said. "It's big enough that it's going to benefit the species that occur all along the coast."

The size of the network is exactly what filled auditoriums with red-shirted, shouting fishermen, angry at impending closures of favored fishing spots. The fight has continued in the courts. So far, none of the lawsuits has prevailed.

The American Sportfishing Assn., the Virginia-based trade group of the tackle and sport fishing industry, hired Sacramento lobbyists and public relations firms, and organized anglers by the busload to try to derail the process.

The organization was delighted when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced in 2004 that budget shortfalls required an indefinite postponement of the plan, said the association's vice president, Gordon Robertson. But what happened next, he said, outflanked the sportfishing industry.

Michael Mantell, a Sacramento lawyer who coordinates philanthropy and conservation, organized the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Marisla Foundation and two others to pick up the state's costs, including paying for panels of local leaders to take testimony and make recommendations. So far, the foundations have spent more than $23 million.

"The environmental community poured far more resources than the recreational fishing did," Robertson said. He vowed not to let that happen in other states.

Richard B. Rogers, a lifelong recreational fisherman and scuba diver, said the science won him over on the issue. After Schwarzenegger appointed him to the Fish and Game Commission, his work to help establish the reserves was, as he put it, "the single most important thing I've done in life, other than marrying my wife and raising my five kids."

Yet it also put him in an awkward position: vilified as an enemy of his fellow fishermen.

"We got death threats," Rogers said. "There were threats of physical violence."

He remains annoyed that some question his allegiance to the sport, ignoring that he owns a boat, as well as many rods and reels. He supported the reserves for one reason, he said: "I want to make sure my grandchildren have some fish to catch."

ken.weiss@latimes.com

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Experts: Kids are resilient in coping with trauma

WASHINGTON (AP) — They might not want to talk about the gunshots or the screams. But their toys might start getting into imaginary shootouts.

Last week's school shooting in Connecticut raises the question: What will be the psychological fallout for the children who survived?

For people of any age, regaining a sense of security after surviving violence can take a long time. They're at risk for lingering anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder.

But after the grief and fear fades, psychiatrists say most of Newtown's young survivors probably will cope without long-term emotional problems.

"Kids do tend to be highly resilient," said Dr. Matthew Biel, chief of child and adolescent psychiatry at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital.

And one way that younger children try to make sense of trauma is through play. Youngsters may pull out action figures or stuffed animals and re-enact what they witnessed, perhaps multiple times.

"That's the way they gain mastery over a situation that's overwhelming," Biel explained, saying it becomes a concern only if the child is clearly distressed while playing.

Nor is it unusual for children to chase each other playing cops-and-robbers, but now parents might see some also pretending they're dead, added Dr. Melissa Brymer of the UCLA-Duke National Center for Child Traumatic Stress.

Among the challenges will be spotting which children are struggling enough that they may need professional help.

Newtown's tragedy is particularly heart-wrenching because of what such young children grappled with — like the six first-graders who apparently had to run past their teacher's body to escape to safety.

There's little scientific research specifically on PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, in children exposed to a burst of violence, and even less to tell if a younger child will have a harder time healing than an older one.

Overall, scientists say studies of natural disasters and wars suggest most children eventually recover from traumatic experiences while a smaller proportion develop long-term disorders such as PTSD. Brymer says in her studies of school shootings, that fraction can range from 10 percent to a quarter of survivors, depending on what they actually experienced. A broader 2007 study found 13 percent of U.S. children exposed to different types of trauma reported some symptoms of PTSD, although less than 1 percent had enough for an official diagnosis.

Violence isn't all that rare in childhood. In many parts of the world — and in inner-city neighborhoods in the U.S., too — children witness it repeatedly. They don't become inured to it, Biel said, and more exposure means a greater chance of lasting psychological harm.

In Newtown, most at risk for longer-term problems are those who saw someone killed, said Dr. Carol North of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, who has researched survivors of mass shootings.

Friday's shootings were mostly in two classrooms of Sandy Hook Elementary School, which has about 450 students through fourth-grade.

But those who weren't as close to the danger may be at extra risk, too, if this wasn't their first trauma or they already had problems such as anxiety disorders that increase their vulnerability, she said.

Right after a traumatic event, it's normal to have nightmares or trouble sleeping, to stick close to loved ones, and to be nervous or moody, Biel said.

To help, parents will have to follow their child's lead. Grilling a child about a traumatic experience isn't good, he stressed. Some children will ask a lot of questions, seeking reassurance, he said. Others will be quiet, thinking about the experience and maybe drawing or writing about it, or acting it out at playtime. Younger children may regress, becoming clingy or having tantrums.

Before second grade, their brains also are at a developmental stage some refer to as magical thinking, when it's difficult to distinguish reality and fantasy. Parents may have to help them understand that a friend who died isn't in pain or lonely but also isn't coming back, Brymer said.

When problem behaviors or signs of distress continue for several weeks, Brymer says it's time for an evaluation by a counselor or pediatrician.

Besides a supportive family, what helps? North advises getting children back into routines, together with their friends, and easing them back into a school setting. Studies of survivors of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks found "the power of the support of the people who went through it with you is huge," she said.

Children as young as first-graders can benefit from cognitive-behavioral therapy, Georgetown's Biel said. They can calm themselves with breathing techniques. They also can learn to identify and label their feelings — anger, frustration, worry — and how to balance, say, a worried thought with a brave one.

Finally, avoid watching TV coverage of the shooting, as children may think it's happening all over again, Biel added. He found that children who watched the 9/11 clips of planes hitting the World Trade Center thought they were seeing dozens of separate attacks.

___

EDITOR'S NOTE — Lauran Neergaard covers health and medical issues for The Associated Press in Washington.

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Hard Times in Spain Force Feuding Couples to Delay Divorce

SABADELL, SPAIN — Esther Fernández, 45, was desperate for a divorce. A hairdresser, she had fallen in love with another man, who was dying of cancer.

Her husband, Gaby Cuadrado, 47, had lost his factory job. Selling their house in a depressed market in this sleepy city outside Barcelona was impossible. Neither could afford a second home. They were already struggling to pay their mortgage. An expensive divorce was out of the question.

So for two years she stuck it out, leaving before dawn, hiding from Mr. Cuadrado, who said he became so obsessed with his wife that he would spy on her from his car. She had panic attacks. “I felt trapped,” she said.

It was even worse for him. The situation, Mr. Cuardado said, pushed him to the brink of suicide. “Being forced to live with a woman I loved who had rejected me was psychological torture,” he said. They finally divorced in November, after moving to tiny apartments in bad parts of town.

If marriage is for better or worse, richer or poorer, then these are the worst of times for a poorer Spain. Couples are paying the emotional price, especially when they cannot afford the price of divorce.

Fewer of them can. Accounts from judges, divorce lawyers and therapists — as well as couples themselves — indicate that many Spaniards are staying in troubled relationships longer as a result of an economic crisis that has ground on for nearly five years.

Last year, the number of divorces in Spain dropped 17 percent compared with 2006, according to the Spanish Judicial Council, a national association that represents the country’s judges. The divorce rate jumped in 2006 after changes to the divorce law made it easier to split up in 2005, but it has fallen with the crisis in Spain’s economy, according to the council.

“There is no doubt that the crisis is pushing people to stay together,” said José María Redondo, the council’s spokesman, who attributed the drop in the divorce rate to a burst housing bubble and hard economic times.

The crisis is not only slowing divorces but also transforming the process, according to divorce lawyers. Judges are reducing alimony payments and dueling spouses have moved from fighting over property to sparring over the critical issue of who assumes debts.

Some couples are literally dividing their homes in two, by sticking tape across the floor, said Álvaro Cavia, a leading Barcelona-based divorce lawyer. Unable to afford a divorce, other couples live together even as they engage openly in other romantic relationships.

Squabbles over money — or the lack of it — are the biggest source of contention among couples seeking to mend fraying relationships, according to Myka Pedrero, a family psychologist in a suburb of Barcelona, who counseled Ms. Fernández, her sister.

It is worst for jobless couples, she said, not just because of the money strains, but because they often spend all day together at home, treading on each others’ nerves. When warring couples share the same quarters it is especially confusing for children unable to accept their parents’ break-ups, she said.

“The crisis makes things worse as it adds huge pressures to marriages when you don’t have a job and can’t pay the bills,” she said. “When people who want to split are forced to stay together it pollutes the whole ecosystem that is the family and drives both the man and the woman crazy.”

Until the crisis exploded, legal experts say, divorce was widely accepted as the easiest exit from a bad marriage after decades during which it was prohibited during the Franco dictatorship.

Divorce was first legalized in Spain 1981 but the law required couples to legally separate first, a period of reflection aimed at safeguarding the family in a socially conservative, Catholic country. The change in the law in 2005 has allowed couples to get “express divorces” without any separation. Couples need to have been married for at least three months to qualify.

Even when couples can afford a divorce, the economic crisis has added new complications.

Silvia Taulés contributed reporting from Barcelona.

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How to turn an old Kindle Fire into a Nexus 7 with Android 4.2.1 Jelly Bean [video]

Title Post: How to turn an old Kindle Fire into a Nexus 7 with Android 4.2.1 Jelly Bean [video]
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Newport Beach dock renters may withhold holiday love

Marcy Cook embraces the holiday season. The tell? Start with the teddy bears dressed as Santa. More than 1,500 stand sentry around and inside her Newport Beach waterfronthome. Garland and strings of lights threaten to strangle the place like kudzu.

"We decorate a little bit, if you haven't noticed," said Cook, 69. "It's the highlight of the year for us."

Each Christmas, Newport Harbor is ablaze in lights as homeowners go to extraordinary lengths to complement the city's annual Christmas Boat Parade — an indelible tradition that renews itself Wednesday night and continues through Sunday.

But this has been a stressful season here along the tranquil waterfront lined with multimillion-dollar homes.

An increase in city rental fees for residential docks that protrude over public tidelands created a furor when it was approved last week by the City Council.

It also prompted a call to boycott the boat parade and festival of lights by a group calling itself "Stop the Dock Tax."

"It costs us thousands of dollars to voluntarily decorate our homes and boats to bring holiday smiles to nearly 1 million people," organization Chairman Bob McCaffrey wrote to the city. "This year, we are turning off our lights and withdrawing our boats in protest of the massive new dock tax we expect the City Council to levy."

Pete Pallette, a fellow boycott proponent and harbor homeowner, told city leaders the group would call off the boycott only if the council delayed voting on the rent hike. "Otherwise," he vowed, "game on."

In a place where homes come with names and mega-yachts bob in the harbor, it might appear the wealthy are wielding a weapon most often reserved for the masses. A holiday blackout, proponents say, will underscore their displeasure.

Newport's dock fee, which has stood at $100 a year for the last two decades, will now be based on a dock's size. The city says rents will increase to about $250 for a small slip to $3,200 annually for a large dock shared by two homeowners.

"People have been paying $8 a month all these years to access what is public waters," said Newport Beach City Manager Dave Kiff. "That's a pretty good deal. The City Council didn't think the increase it approved was too extreme."

Many did.

They packed council meetings when the hike was discussed, accusing the city of an excessive money grab.

They brushed aside the city's rationale: Statelawmandates cities charge fair market rents for the private use of public lands, and Newport Beach was only now catching up.

And they were unmoved by arguments that the extra revenue will go exclusively to badly needed repairs to a harbor that, despite outward appearances, needs a lot of work.

The city's five-year plan for the harbor calls for $29 million in long-overdue maintenance. Its silt-filled channels haven't been fully dredged since the Great Depression. Ancient, leaky sea walls protecting neighborhoods need to be repaired or replaced.

"We have the makings of a perfect storm like they did on the East Coast" during Superstorm Sandy, said Chris Miller, the city's harbor resources manager. "The sea walls are nearing the end of their useful life."

Even with the rent increases, Newport's dock owners will contribute a tiny fraction of that cost — the rest coming from the federal government and the city's general operating fund.

As dock owners fumed over having to pay more, others recoiled at the proposed boycott of the boat parade, which dates to 1908 when a single gondola led eight canoes illuminated by Japanese lanterns around the harbor. It has now swelled to a decent-sized armada of dozens of boats — some carrying paying customers — that circle past the decorated harbor-front homes.

"The boycott is ridiculous," said Shirley Pepys, whose frontyard on Balboa Island has been taken over by a family of penguins dressed for a Hawaiian luau.

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Obama Expected to Name Kerry as Secretary of State

WASHINGTON — President Obama is leaning strongly toward naming John Kerry, the Massachusetts senator and unsuccessful Democratic nominee for president eight years ago, to succeed Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state, according to administration officials and friends of Mr. Kerry.

But the announcement will be delayed, at least until later this week and maybe beyond, because of the Connecticut school shooting and what one official called “some discomfort” with the idea of Mr. Obama’s announcing a national security team in which the top posts are almost exclusively held by white men.

The American ambassador to the United Nations, Susan E. Rice, who is black and was considered Mr. Obama’s leading candidate for the job, withdrew her name from consideration last week after opposition to her nomination grew in the Senate.

For Mr. Kerry, 69, the appointment would fulfill an ambition that dates back many years. He had hoped for the post when Mr. Obama was first elected in 2008; since then, he has shepherded the passage of a critical arms-control treaty and conducted a series of quiet missions on behalf of the president, notably at moments of crisis with Afghanistan and Pakistan.

But he would be entering an administration whose primary foreign policy strategies are already set, even as it tries to use American leverage in dealing with a Middle East that is veering toward hard-line Islamist governments and an Iran that is getting perilously close to a nuclear capability.

With Ms. Rice out of the running, Mr. Kerry’s appointment “is the working presumption,” said a senior State Department official who has been preparing for the transition to a new secretary. But White House officials said the deal was not entirely done, because the lineup currently envisioned — with former Senator Chuck Hagel to head the Defense Department and the acting C.I.A. director, Michael J. Morell, likely to be named to the post permanently — looks a bit too much like national security teams of a previous era.

For Mr. Obama, a national security team led by Mr. Kerry and Mr. Hagel, and their longtime colleague in the Senate, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., would be deeply experienced but also, in many ways, deeply conventional. All three were in the Senate during the cold war, long before Mr. Obama came on the political scene. All describe themselves as pragmatists rather than ideologues, and all became skeptics, then critics, of the American experiment in Iraq from the early days of the war.

Still, administration officials said, for now there are no serious candidates for the State Department job other than Mr. Kerry. He would be the first white man to serve in the post since Warren Christopher left the job in early 1997. His successors have been Madeleine K. Albright, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and Mrs. Clinton.

Mr. Kerry’s colleagues in the Senate have said that he would sail through confirmation hearings. Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, has already begun jokingly calling Mr. Kerry “Mr. Secretary.” Both men are veterans of the Vietnam War and worked together to provide President Bill Clinton with political cover to grant diplomatic recognition to Vietnam. Mr. McCain said of Mr. Kerry recently that he would most likely win a large number of Republican votes for confirmation.

The issue of the composition of Mr. Obama’s team arose anew when Ms. Rice withdrew. If she keeps her current post as ambassador to the United Nations, she will remain in Mr. Obama’s cabinet and on his national security team. She is also considered the likely successor to Thomas E. Donilon as national security adviser. But Mr. Donilon does not intend to leave that post for a year or two, his friends say, unless he is named White House chief of staff.

Michèle A. Flournoy, a former under secretary of defense for policy, remains a candidate to become the first female defense secretary. But in internal discussions, White House officials have said that the challenge of the next few years will be working with Congress to shrink the defense budget and kill some major cold war-era weapons systems. For that, Mr. Hagel, a Republican from Nebraska, is seen as better able to win votes from his former colleagues.

Ms. Flournoy has also been mentioned as a possible C.I.A. director, but Mr. Morell, who ran the analysis division of the agency, is the favorite of C.I.A. officials. “Mike has been concerned about the over-militarization of the C.I.A.,” a senior military officer who has dealt with him said recently. “And so are many at the agency, who fear they have wandered too far from the job of analyzing trends and obtaining secrets.”

John Brennan, a close aide to Mr. Obama and a former agency station chief in Saudi Arabia who has directed counterterrorism activity from his basement White House office, is also a candidate for C.I.A. director. But officials note that his current post already gives him sway over all 18 intelligence agencies.

Mr. Kerry has worked hard to deepen his relationship with Mr. Obama. The president has at times considered him long-winded and a throwback to a previous generation of diplomats, aides said. But Mr. Kerry impressed Mr. Obama and Mr. Donilon when he was sent to deal with Hamid Karzai, the famously unpredictable president of Afghanistan, after Mr. Karzai’s supporters rigged a presidential election in 2009 and refused a second round of voting.

Mr. Kerry also visited Pakistan several times to try to ease recurrent tensions, including a two-week visit after the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Pakistani officials tried to get Mr. Kerry to write what they called a “blood oath” that the United States would never take action to seize Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. Mr. Kerry found a diplomatic way out, saying the United States had no “designs” on Pakistan’s weapons.

“It meant nothing,” a member of Mr. Obama’s national security team said later. “And it solved the crisis. Quite artfully.”

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