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The cause was congestive heart failure, said his son Richard, president and chief executive of the company.

Daniel Edelman started the company, Edelman, in a small office in Chicago in 1952. It now has 63 offices in 26 countries with more than 4,600 employees and revenue of $660 million last year.

Steve Barrett, editor of the trade publication PRWeek, called Edelman "easily the biggest agency in the world."

Over the years, Mr. Edelman helped build leading brands like Sara Lee and KFC. The firm's current clients include Microsoft, Pfizer, General Electric, Wal-Mart Stores, Abbott Laboratories, Samsung, Royal Dutch Shell, Kraft, Johnson & Johnson and Unilever.

In the 1950s, Mr. Edelman arranged for Businessweek and Life magazines to publish articles about the manufacturing and distribution processes at Sara Lee, the baked goods company.

When the California wine industry turned to him in 1966 to promote its products nationwide, Mr. Edelman hired Vincent Price as a spokesman and had him appear on "The Tonight Show."

Beyond promoting his clients, Mr. Edelman had a significant influence on the methodology of public relations.

"When I teach the modules on the history of public relations, I tell my students that Mr. Edelman was one of our pioneers," said Maria P. Russell, chairwoman of the public relations department at Syracuse University's S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. "Specifically, he helped public relations professionals move away from being order-takers to respected counselors to business executives and government leaders."

As an example, Richard Edelman cited his father's work in the firm's representation of the Mormon Church for a decade, starting in the mid-1990s. The idea of the publicity campaign, he said, "was that this religion has made a very important contribution to America and had changed from some of its original precepts."

Daniel Joseph Edelman was born in Manhattan on July 3, 1920, one of five children of Selig and Selma Edelman. His father was a lawyer and his mother was a concert pianist. He graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx and from Columbia University in 1940, then earned a master's degree in journalism there.

After a stint as a sports reporter at a newspaper in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., he served in an Army psychological warfare unit in World War II, broadcasting in Europe. After the war, he was a night news reporter for CBS in New York, but he soon took a job as a publicist for Musicraft Records, helping to promote jazz stars like Duke Ellington, Sarah Vaughan and Artie Shaw.

By 1947, Mr. Edelman had moved to Chicago to become public relations director for Toni, a home hair care company. The company had an ad campaign featuring identical twins, one with a beauty salon permanent, the other with curls from a Toni do-it-yourself kit. Women were challenged to determine "which twin had the Toni."

Mr. Edelman's idea was to send six sets of twins on a media tour to 72 cities. After four years at Toni, he started his own public relations company, with Toni as his first client.

Besides his son Richard, he is survived by his wife of 59 years, the former Ruth Ann Rozumoff; another son, John; a daughter, Renee; and three granddaughters.

The 137 passengers and crew used emergency slides to exit the aircraft after possible battery trouble and smoke forced the ANA flight to Tokyo from Ube in western Japan to land at Takamatsu airport in southern Japan instead, according to the public broadcaster, NHK. One elderly passenger suffered a slight hip injury during the evacuation, NHK said.

The emergency landing comes after a string of problems in the last month with the aircraft, including a battery fire, fuel leaks, and a cracked cockpit window.

All Nippon said after Wednesday's incident that it was grounding all 17 of its Dreamliners for inspections. Japan Airlines said it would also temporarily ground the five Boeing 787s it still operates; two others are already undergoing safety checks.

Akihiro Ota, Japan's transportation minister, said the emergency landing raised concerns over the Dreamliner's safety, and that he would dispatch safety officials to investigate. "I see this as a serious incident which could have led to a serious accident," Mr. Ota told reporters in Tokyo.

All Nippon's vice president, Osamu Shinobe, told a reporters at a news conference at Tokyo's Haneda Airport, "I apologize for the grave concern and trouble we have caused our passengers, their families and others." He said the airline was still investigating.

Federal authorities in the United States have also voiced concern about problems the new aircraft has faced but still endorsed it as a safe airplane.

The Federal Aviation Administration last week ordered a comprehensive review of the 787's manufacturing and design, with a special focus on the plane's electrical systems. But in a news conference last Thursday, the Transportation Secretary, Ray LaHood, made no mention of a possible grounding of 787s.

Still, the review is unusual and comes 15 months after the 787 entered service after a lengthy certification process by the F.A.A. It comes during a formal investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board into what caused a battery fire in a Japan Airlines plane that had flown to Boston from Tokyo last week.

Late Tuesday in Tokyo, the N.T.S.B. said it was "currently in the process of gathering information about the B-787 emergency landing in Japan earlier today."

Eight airlines now fly the 787: All Nippon Airways and Japan Airlines in Japan currently own 24 of the 50 delivered by Boeing since November 2011. The other operators are Air India, Ethiopian Airlines, Chile's LAN Airlines, Poland's LOT, Qatar Airways and United Airlines.

Boeing has sought to ease concerns about the plane's design and reliability, and insisted it was no more trouble-prone than other new commercial airplane programs. The 787 relies more on electrical systems than previous generations of airplanes. Electrical systems, not mechanical ones, operate hydraulic pumps, de-ice the wings, pressurize the cabin and handle other tasks. The plane also has electric brakes instead of hydraulic ones.

While problems are common with early models — including with the first Airbus A380, the Boeing 777 or even the first 747s — analysts say the issue could become a growing embarrassment for Boeing if travelers or airlines begin to lose confidence in the plane.

So far, safety experts said that the problems with the 787 pointed more to teething problems than structural faults. But the problem is more than just one of reputation for Boeing: the plane maker has said it expects to sell 5,000 787s in the next 20 years, but analysts believe it will be years before it breaks even because of delays.

That hard fact drives the public longing for a mental health system that produces clear warning signals and can somehow stop the violence. And it is now fueling a surge in legislative activity, in Washington and New York.

But these proposed changes and others like them may backfire and only reveal how broken the system is, experts said.

"Anytime you have one of these tragic cases like Newtown, it's going to expose deficiencies in the mental health system, and provide some opportunity for reform," said Richard J. Bonnie, a professor of public policy at the University of Virginia's law school who led a state commission that overhauled policies after the 2007 Virginia Tech shootings that left 33 people dead. "But you have to be very careful not to overreact."

New York State legislators on Tuesday passed a gun bill that would require therapists to report to the authorities any client thought to be "likely to engage in" violent behavior; under the law, the police would confiscate any weapons the person had.

And in Washington, lawmakers said that President Obama was considering a range of actions as part of a plan to reduce gun violence, including more sharing of records between mental health and law enforcement agencies.

The White House plan to make use of mental health data was still taking shape late Tuesday. But several ideas being discussed — including the reporting provision in the New York gun law — are deeply contentious and transcend political differences.

Some advocates favored the reporting provision as having the potential to prevent a massacre. Among them was D. J. Jaffe, founder of the Mental Illness Policy Org., which pushes for more aggressive treatment policies. Some mass killers "were seen by mental health professionals who did not have to report their illness or that they were becoming dangerous and they went on to kill," he said.

Yet many patient advocates and therapists strongly disagreed, saying it would intrude into the doctor-patient relationship in a way that could dissuade troubled people from speaking their minds, and complicate the many judgment calls therapists already have to make.

The New York statute requires doctors and other mental health professionals to report any person who "is likely to engage in conduct that would result in serious harm to self or others."

Under current ethical guidelines, only involuntary hospitalizations (and direct threats made by patients) are reported to the authorities. These reports then appear on a federal background-check database. The new laws would go further.

"The way I read the new law, it means I have to report voluntary as well as involuntary hospitalizations, as well as many people being treated for suicidal thinking, for instance, as outpatients," said Dr. Paul S. Appelbaum, director of the Division of Law, Ethics, and Psychiatry at Columbia University's medical school. "That is a much larger group of people than before, and most of whom will never be a serious threat to anyone."

One fundamental problem with looking for "warning signs" is that it is more art than science. People with serious mental disorders, while more likely to commit aggressive acts than the average person, account for only about 4 percent of violent crimes over all.

The rate is higher when it comes to rampage or serial killings, closer to 20 percent, according to Dr. Michael Stone, a New York forensic psychiatrist who has a database of about 200 mass and serial killers. He has concluded from the records that about 40 were likely to have had paranoid schizophrenia or severe depression or were psychopathic, meaning they were impulsive and remorseless.

"But most mass murders are done by working-class men who've been jilted, fired, or otherwise humiliated — and who then undergo a crisis of rage and get out one of the 300 million guns in our country and do their thing," Dr. Stone said.

The sort of young, troubled males who seem to psychiatrists most likely to commit school shootings — identified because they have made credible threats — often do not qualify for any diagnosis, experts said. They might have elements of paranoia, of deep resentment, or of narcissism, a grandiose self-regard, that are noticeable but do not add up to any specific "disorder" according to strict criteria.

But another proposal that Mr. Obama is expected to make could well have slowed Mr. Lanza's rampage: banning high-capacity magazines, like the 30-round magazines that the police said Mr. Lanza used, which have been factors in several other recent mass shootings.

Those shootings, whose victims have included a member of Congress in Arizona, moviegoers in Colorado and first graders in Connecticut, have horrified the country and inspired Washington to embark on the most extensive re-examination of the nation's gun laws in a generation. But some of the proposals that Mr. Obama is expected to make at the White House on Wednesday, which are likely to include a call for expanded background checks, a ban on assault weapons and limits on high-capacity clips, will be intended not only to prevent high-profile mass shootings, but also to curb the more commonplace gun violence that claims many thousands more lives every year.

"The president has made clear that he intends to take a comprehensive approach," Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said Tuesday. Mr. Carney said the proposals were aimed, broadly, at what he called "the scourge of gun violence in this country."

While semiautomatic rifles were used in several recent mass shootings, including those in Newtown and in Aurora, Colo., where 12 people were killed at a movie theater in July, a vast majority of gun murders in the United States are committed with handguns.

In 2011, 6,220 people were killed by handguns, and 323 by rifles, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. So while the administration is expected to try to restrict some types of assault weapons, it is also focusing on ways to keep more commonly used firearms out of the hands of dangerous criminals and people with mental illness.

Of course, the administration must keep political realities in mind as it drafts its proposals: getting any new gun regulations through Congress, particularly through the Republican-controlled House, is seen as difficult. So the White House must not only weigh the effectiveness of its proposals, but also their political feasibility.

The top priority of many gun control groups is to expand the background checks so that they apply to all buyers. All federally licensed firearms dealers are required to run background checks through the computerized databases that comprise the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. But the requirement does not cover guns that are sold at gun shows and in other private sales, which account for about 40 percent of gun purchases in the country.

Better background checks would have had little effect on several recent mass shootings — both Mr. Lanza, in Connecticut, and Jacob T. Roberts, who opened fire on a mall full of Christmas shoppers a few days earlier in Clackamas, Ore., were using weapons that they did not buy. But gun control groups say that expanded background checks would help keep guns out of the hands of dangerous criminals and people with mental illness, and would go a long way toward increasing public safety and could help prevent mass shootings.

Gun control groups have encouraged the administration to look beyond mass shootings. When the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, a leading gun control group, issued its recommendations to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who has been developing the administration's proposals, it urged him to develop ideas that could help curb everyday gun violence as well.

"Every death is a tragedy, whether in a mass shooting that horrifies our entire nation, or one of the 32 gun murders or 90 gun deaths in our communities and homes every day," it wrote.

With many of the proposals in Washington expected to be somewhat limited in scope, some public health researchers and gun control advocates said it was difficult to know what impact the recommendations might have.

"He's a good kid," she said. "But he is used to his routine."

That routine, like those of about 150,000 schoolchildren, many of them with special needs, will be severely disrupted starting Wednesday morning, when drivers who belong to New York City's largest union of school bus drivers go on strike — the first such strike in more than three decades.

At issue is Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's decision to solicit bids for 1,100 of the city's 7,700 bus routes. He will not require that the winning companies hire the most experienced unionized drivers — a protection that workers have enjoyed for decades and that the union is demanding be included in the bids.

The mayor said that a ruling by New York's highest court, the Court of Appeals, forbid the city from including the requirements, known as "employee protection provisions." The union argues that the mayor is misreading the decision.

All 8,800 drivers in the union will strike, said Michael Cordiello, the president of the union, Local 1181 of the Amalgamated Transit Union.

"We want to provide the safest possible transportation to the kids of the City of New York, and we want to save the jobs of the experienced drivers of New York," Mr. Cordiello said.

The city has put in place measures to help parents manage without buses.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has issued MetroCards for children who are normally taken by bus to school, and 30-day MetroCards for parents who have to accompany them. The transportation agency will bill the Education Department for the number of rides used.

Hiccups are expected. The MetroCards should work on the subways on Wednesday, but may not work on buses immediately because the readers on every bus must be reprogrammed to accept them. The "vast majority" of buses should accept them by Thursday, said Adam Lisberg, a spokesman for the authority. In some situations, the Education Department will reimburse parents for mileage on their cars or for the cost of livery cabs or taxis.

Confusion may be compounded because a small fraction of drivers, who are not members of the union, will not be on strike.

Sue Pugliese, who has two daughters with autism, said their driver will not be on strike, but because the bus matron, who is a member of Local 1181, will be on strike, the bus cannot pick up the children, who take it to Public School 37 on Staten Island. The Education Department has suggested that parents call 311 or look on its Web site for information on which buses will be running.

Ms. Pugliese's daughters take the bus even though they live close to the school. It offers consistency, she said. She will walk her girls to school on Wednesday, though she finds the prospect daunting, because one runs away frequently and the other is prone to tantrums, she said. "Parents are panicked," she said. "We have enough stress dealing with these children."

The strike will also alter parents' routines. Ms. Passante, whose son Derek struggled with going to school in the car, said her husband would work from home Wednesday to help out.

Michael Walker, a hair stylist in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, said he would probably lose 60 to 90 minutes of his workday, which would cost him $50 to $100, as he would have to leave early to pick up at least one of his three daughters.

But Mr. Walker said he supported the strike. "I want the people in charge of getting my kids to school to feel secure," he said. "They deserve job security."

But instead of scaling back, major automakers are eager to bring more battery-powered models to their showrooms.

Two of the biggest producers, General Motors and Nissan, served notice at the annual Detroit auto show that they are in the electric-car business for the long haul.

G.M., the biggest American automaker, on Tuesday said it would begin production later this year of the Cadillac ELR, a luxury version of the Chevrolet Volt, the company's current extended-range plug-in hybrid sedan.

Nissan, the Japanese automaker, is taking a different approach to lift sales of its all-electric Leaf sedan. Rather than turn more upscale, it will offer a new base-model Leaf that is $6,000, or 18 percent, cheaper than the current car.

Both strategies have the same intent — to lure a wider range of consumers to electric cars.

"We think the Volt is very much a success story for General Motors and that the ELR will feed off that success," said Robert E. Ferguson, head of G.M.'s Cadillac brand.

Despite Mr. Ferguson's expression of confidence, it's debatable whether the Volt, which runs primarily on battery power but has a small gasoline engine to extend its driving range, has truly been a hit.

Last year, G.M. sold 23,000 Volts in the United States, less than 1 percent of its overall sales and well below the expectations set by the company. Much of the Volt's volume was attributed to cut-rate lease deals that made it decidedly more affordable than its $39,000 sticker price. (Volts, Leafs and other electric cars typically qualify for a $7,500 federal tax credit and sometimes state credits that lower the effective purchase price.)

"Even with $199-a-month leases, the Volt is still barely making a dent," said Larry Dominique, president of the auto-leasing research firm ALG. "With gas prices moderating, it's tough to make an economic argument to buy a plug-in hybrid."

G.M. is hopeful that its new Cadillac plug-in will attract affluent consumers who want an eco-friendly car but don't want to scrimp on luxury options like a suede interior and a powerassisted cup holder.

"There are wealthy people who don't consider price to be an obstacle when buying electric," said Joseph Phillippi, head of the market-research firm AutoTrends. "In Silicon Valley, they'd write a check for the ELR without thinking about it."

Mr. Ferguson declined to say how many ELRs that G.M. planned to build, or what the price would be. The vehicle will be built in limited numbers alongside the Volt at a plant in the Detroit area.

"We haven't decided on the price yet," he said. "But the car and the value it provides will be compelling."

Analysts said G.M. would most likely build 2,000 to 3,000 ELRs a year, which represents an incremental increase in its plug-in production.

Nissan is faced with the more serious challenge of spurring demand for the Leaf at the same time that it opens a new assembly plant for the car in Tennessee.

Last year, Nissan sold only about 9,800 Leafs in the United States, less than half of what it had originally projected. Now, with a new factory producing the car, the company needs a major increase in sales to justify the costs.

Nissan's chief executive, Carlos Ghosn, said at the Detroit show that a new, more modestly equipped Leaf would go on sale in February for $28,800, before federal and state tax credits.

That is a large reduction from the $35,000 sticker price for what previously was the car's base model.

It is rare for an auto company to slash prices so drastically. But Nissan made the move because it fell far short of its goal of increasing global sales of the Leaf by 50 percent last year.

"We got 22 percent," Mr. Ghosn said. "It was a disappointment for us."

Despite the slow sales, Mr. Ghosn has hardly backed off his belief that electric cars can account for 10 percent of all Nissan sales by 2020.

"Zero emissions are here to stay," he said.

G.M. and Nissan have placed the biggest bets on battery power among the major automakers. But they are not alone.

Barging into some of the mud-brick houses in the battle zone and ejecting residents, they have sought to implant themselves in the local population and add to the huge challenges facing the French military campaign to loosen their grip on Mali.

"They are in the town, almost everywhere in the town," said Bekaye Diarra, who owns the pharmacy in Diabaly, which experienced French bombing well into the morning on Tuesday but remained under the control of the insurgents. "They are installing themselves."

Benco Ba, a parliamentary deputy there, described residents in fear of the conflict that had descended on them. "The jihadists are going right into people's families," he said. "They have completely occupied the town. They are dispersed. It's fear."

Just five days into the French military campaign, it was becoming clear that airstrikes alone will probably not be enough to root out these battle-hardened fighters, who know well the harsh grassland and desert terrain of Mali and have spent months accumulating arms, constructing defenses in their northern strongholds and reinforcing their ranks with children as young as 12 years old.

Containing their southern advance toward Bamako, the capital, is proving more challenging than anticipated, French military officials acknowledged Tuesday. And with the Malian Army in disarray and no outside African force yet assembled, displacing the rebels from the country altogether appears to be an elusive, long-term challenge.

The jihadists are "dug in" at Diabaly, Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian of France said Tuesday at a news conference. From that strategic town, they "threaten the south," he said, adding: "We face a well-armed and determined adversary."

Mr. Le Drian also acknowledged that the Malian Army had not managed to retake the town of Konna, whose seizure by the rebels a week ago provoked the French intervention. "We will continue the strikes to diminish their potential," the minister said.

Using advanced attack planes and sophisticated military helicopters, the French campaign has forced the Islamists from important northern towns like Gao and Douentza. But residents there say that while the insurgents suffered losses, many of them had simply gone into the nearby bush.

"Bombing will weaken them, and it will stop their advance," said Djallil Lounnas, an expert on the region at the University of Montreal who has written widely on Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, one of the main extremist groups in northern Mali. "But as soon as the bombing stops, they'll come back."

Since the French started bombing, he said, "the situation has changed slightly, but not fundamentally."

Other analysts said that while forcing the insurgents from the cities was achievable, eliminating them altogether would require considerable additional effort.

"You can't launch a war of extermination against a very tenacious and mobile adversary," said Col. Michel Goya of the French Military Academy's Strategic Research Institute. "We are in a classic counterinsurrectionary situation. They are well armed, but the weapons are not sophisticated. A couple of thousand men, very mobile."

And they have been preparing for battle for months.

One resident of Gao who accompanied Islamist fighters to a desert hide-out in recent months described a vast system of underground caves big enough to drive cars into, said Corinne Dufka, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch.

Around 100 Islamist fighters, many of them bearded foreigners speaking Arabic, had gathered inside, stockpiling weapons, vehicles, generators and scores of barrels of gasoline, the resident said. The bunker was well camouflaged, almost invisible from the rugged roads, and had long been used by bandits in the area. But the Islamists were expanding the tunnels and, even before the French campaign, had been gathering in them from towns across the north.

While striking the Islamists from the air, France was steadily building up its forces on the ground: 200 more soldiers and 60 armored vehicles arrived in Mali overnight on Tuesday from Ivory Coast, bringing the total to nearly 800 soldiers. The French Defense Ministry said the force would soon number 2,500, in the vicinity of its peak Afghanistan deployment. Late Tuesday, a French convoy was heading north from Bamako; a military spokesman refused to disclose its destination.

The aid package passed 241 to 180, with 49 Republicans joining 192 Democrats to approve it. It now goes to the Senate, where it is expected to pass. President Obama has expressed support for the measure.

The $50.7 billion — along with a nearly $10 billion aid package that Congress approved about a week ago — seeks to provide for the huge needs that have arisen since the hurricane struck more than two months ago in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and other states.

The emergency aid measure would help homeowners whose homes have been damaged or destroyed, provide assistance to business owners who experienced losses as well as reinforce shorelines, repair subway and commuter rail systems, fix bridges and tunnels, and reimburse local governments for emergency expenditures.

Though the package does not cover the entire $82 billion in damage identified by the governors of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, leaders from the storm-ravaged region expressed relief over the action in the Republican-controlled House, where storm aid had become ensnared in the larger debate over spending and deficits.

Representative Peter T. King, a Republican from Long Island who helped press his party's leadership into holding the vote, hailed the package's passage as a victory for storm victims but expressed disappointment over the House's failure to act earlier.

"It is unfortunate that we had to fight so hard to be treated the same as every other state has been treated," he said.

Senator Charles E. Schumer, the New York Democrat who is part of the chamber's leadership, said he would urge the Senate to approve the House bill even though he believed it fell short of what the Senate approved last year. "It is certainly close enough," he said, comparing the bills.

The developments in the House settle, at least for now, an issue that had become an embarrassment for the chamber's Republican leadership and had pit Northeastern Republicans eager to help their constituents against fiscal conservatives bent on taming the nation's deficits.

The vote was scheduled over a week ago by Speaker John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, after he came under intense criticism for concluding the business of the previous Congress without taking up a $60.4 billion hurricane-aid bill that the Senate had approved.

His critics included influential Republicans in and out of Congress, including Mr. King and Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey.

In a statement, Mr. Christie joined with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York and Dannel P. Malloy of Connecticut, both Democrats, to express gratitude to the Congress for providing the relief to hurricane victims.

The total $50.7 billion package was presented on the floor in a carefully structured legislative approach that reflected the political sensitivities surrounding the issue. House leaders first offered a spartan $17 billion bill and then a $33.7 billion amendment that was written by New Jersey and New York Republicans. The approach allowed House conservatives to vote for some of the assistance while lowering the total cost. The bulk of the money, contained in the amendment, ultimately needed Democratic votes to be tacked onto the final package and then passed.

In the debate leading up to passage of the aid package, Representative Carolyn Maloney, a Democrat from New York, argued that House should have acted sooner. "Residents have been suffering for two-and-a-half months," she said. "We need the aid. We need it now."

As the debate unfolded, lawmakers from the region found themselves on the defensive at times, forced to beat back a barrage of amendments that sought to cut items out of the overall package or that demanded cuts in other programs to pay for the package.

The most controversial of the amendments was offered by a group of conservative lawmakers who sought to pay for the aid package with across-the-board spending cuts to a variety of programs in the 2013 federal budget.

Critics called the amendment a poison pill, given that it would almost certainly doom the overall package's prospects of passage in the Democrat-controlled Senate. But the amendment's backers insisted that it was merely meant to clamp down on runaway spending and deficits.

"This amendment is not about offering a poison pill," said Representative Mick Mulvaney, a Republican from South Carolina and the amendment's author. "I want the money to go where it needs to go."

The amendment was defeated 258 to 162; 70 Republicans joined 188 Democrats to beat it back.