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The conviction of Abul Kalam Azad was the first verdict handed down by a controversial tribunal trying people accused of committing crimes during the war.

Azad, a member of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, was tried in absentia after he reportedly fled to Pakistan last April upon being charged.

Jamaat-e-Islami campaigned in 1971 against Bangladesh's war of separation from Pakistan. The party stands accused of supporting or in some cases taking part in atrocities committed by Pakistani troops.

Bangladesh says that during the nine-month war, Pakistani troops, aided by their local collaborators, killed 3 million people and raped about 200,000 women.

International human rights groups have raised questions about the conduct of the tribunals set up by the government to prosecute those accused of war crimes.

New York-based Human Rights Watch has complained about flaws in the process — including the disappearance of a defense witness outside the courthouse gates.

The judge presiding over another tribunal resigned last month after the British publication The Economist reported that it had conversations of Skype and email conversations between him and a Belgium-based Bangladeshi lawyer that raised serious questions about the workings of the tribunal.

The courtroom was packed Monday as Obaidul Hassan, the head judge of a separate, three-member tribunal, pronounced Azad guilty Monday of crimes including murder, abduction and looting.

Hassan said Azad was "guilty of crimes against humanity beyond a reasonable doubt."

Other top leaders of Jamaat-e-Islami also face prosecution.

Jamaat-e-Islami — a partner in opposition leader Khaleda former government — says the charges are politically motivated. Authorities deny the claim.

Zia, the longtime political rival of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, has called the tribunal a farce. Hasina, in turn, has urged Zia to stop backing those she says fought the nation's quest for independence.

Two insurgents were shot during an initial gun battle before 6 a.m., the police said, and at least one traffic police officer was killed. Another traffic officer wounded in the firefight managed to call for help from his cellphone, according to a police official.

Explosions and gunfire continued to ring out from the compound, where a battery of Afghan security forces assembled to defend the lightly armed traffic police. From the street, police officers could be seen firing on insurgents from the rooftop of the facility's main building.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, the second one it has carried out in less than a week.

"Our target was a special police training unit where foreign instructors and trainers train," said a Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid. "We inflicted heavy casualties to the enemy so far and that is a part of our routine operations against the enemy."

On Wednesday, heavily armed bombers blew up the gate to an Afghan intelligence facility, killing at least one security agent and injuring numerous civilians. The consecutive attacks have rattled the relative security Kabul has experienced compared with other areas of the country.

But now a new generation of beer halls dedicated to something beyond the cash register is cropping up around the nation and the world, with proceeds going not into an owner's wallet but to charity, and bending elbows may never be the same.

"More people will want to support your business than if you're just doing it to pay for your second home," said Ryan Saari, a minister and a board member of the Oregon Public House, which is preparing to open here as soon as next month in a residential neighborhood, pledged by its charter to donating all profits to charity.

The place already has a slogan outside on the century-old red brick facade, "Have a pint, change the world," and a painting on the back wall of St. Nicholas, the patron saint of giving.

The beer-for-charity movement, like the microbrew phenomenon that preceded it, is different depending on where you look. In Houston, for example, where a group of giving-minded bar owners opened a place called the Okra Charity Saloon last month, patrons get a vote with every drink as to which charity should receive the next month's profits. A project in Melbourne, Australia, plans to put geography into the equation — sale of a beer from Africa, for example, will be linked to microloans or charities in the country of the beer's origin.

Other projects are in some stage of development, in cities from Hyderabad, India, to San Francisco.

People who track philanthropic trends said the number of upstarts going full tilt toward a charity-driven business model, especially in the viciously competitive food and beverage industry, remained small. But in the post-recession landscape, they say, a ferment of experimentation is clearly in the air, as many private charities continue to struggle for funds.

Giving by individual Americans, while up from the nadir reached in 2009 during the recession, was still lower in 2011 than in 2000, according to the most recent figures from Giving USA.

"It's a clever idea and certainly a noble ambition," said Patrick Rooney, the associate dean at Indiana University's School of Philanthropy, referring to the charity pub concept. His advice for drinkers? Ask questions like an accountant, about a place's overhead and expenses, and who actually receives the money. "Frankly, there are some charities I would support and some I would not," he said.

Mr. Saari at the Oregon Public House agreed that success or failure would hinge on the transparency of the economics. If customers suspect, even for a moment, that what smells like good works is really just a clever business model to attract customers, the effort is doomed, he said.

"In our cynical society, people will immediately say, 'O.K., how much is the president making?' " he said. So the pub's books will be open for the checking, he said, and customers will be able to choose from a menu on the wall exactly where they want their contribution to go as part of the order itself. About a dollar on a locally brewed draft costing $4.50 to $5 a pint is profit, as it turns out.

The Public House's charter prohibits any member of the board, including Mr. Saari, from drawing a salary, he said, though it will have a paid staff for the bar and kitchen of perhaps seven or eight. Through grants from the city and private donations — about 30 people have given between $1,500 to $2,500, support levels that come with a free beer a day, or a week, for life, and their own mug — the bar will also open with no loans or capital to pay back, Mr. Saari said.

In Washington, D.C., supporters of Cause, which calls itself a "philanthropub," in the trendy U Street Corridor, said their business model is based on research that says young people give less to charity than their elders — busy with careers and maybe burdened by college debt — but are still willing to chip in under the right circumstances.

"Everything is competing for their attention, and this is another way for people to combine charitable giving with something they're doing anyway," said Raj Ratwani, a cognitive psychologist and a founder of Cause, which opened last fall, describing the young professional the bar is aiming for. "They're going to find time to go out and drink no matter how busy they are."

Here in Portland, which prides itself on its variety of local brews and a culture of social consciousness, the Oregon Public House — which Mr. Saari believes was a speakeasy in Prohibition days based on the latched peepholes on some of the upstairs doors — is expected to be the first local bar departing from the traditional commercial form, but not the last.

Another group here is considering opening a worker-run, collectively managed brew pub for "people who resist patriarchy and oppression on all levels, unrepresented and unwaged workers," and "people who face and are against police brutality," said Stephanie Phillips, one of the organizers, in an e-mail.

The city's economic development arm, the Portland Development Commission, which also works with traditional companies like Nike, has backed the Oregon Public House with more than $50,000 in grants, about a quarter of the start-up costs. Stephen Green, a business analyst with the commission and an adviser to the bar, said he fantasizes about a national chain of public houses based on the Oregon model that raises money for local charities.

Mr. Saari said his next step, once the bar is open, is an in-house brewery. Eventually, he hopes to see bottled Oregon Public House beers in local stores, with each type of beer dedicated to a specific cause, so that someone buying a six-pack of say, Oregon Public House Education Ale, a tentative name and product, would know the proceeds were going to an education charity supported by the pub.

But as so many failed entrepreneurs can attest, operating a small food and drink business has never been an easy road to riches — or now, donations. "The failure rate is about as high as any business you could start," said Daniel Borochoff, the president of Charitywatch, a nonprofit watchdog and information service in Chicago.

John and Jim, the younger one, now have more in common than differences. They are the first brothers to be N.F.L. head coaches, and last season they said they each sent game film to their adored father, Jack, a former college coach who inspired their careers. And on Sunday, the brothers, separated in age by 15 months, grew that much closer, leading their teams — John's Baltimore Ravens and Jim's San Francisco 49ers — to conference championship victories on the road just hours apart, setting up a family feud twist on the Super Bowl in two weeks — the HarBowl.

The Ravens' 28-13 victory over the heavily favored New England Patriots was their first win in three A.F.C. championship game appearances in the last five years, and it returned them to the Super Bowl for the first time since the 2000 season, when they trounced the Giants for the franchise's only title. Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis was at the height of his career then, the defensive player of the year and the unquestioned leader of a defense-dominated team that dragged the offense behind it to the championship. Several weeks ago, Lewis announced that this season would be his last, and so his career will end on a fitting stage for one of the N.F.L.'s greatest defensive players ever, who has watched the transformation of the Ravens from a team that struggled to score touchdowns during its first championship run to one that outdueled the N.F.L.'s best offense Sunday.

Last week, Lewis, in a passing-the-torch moment, said that quarterback Joe Flacco had grown up after he had beaten Peyton Manning and the Denver Broncos in a double-overtime divisional-round upset. This time, Flacco outshone Tom Brady, who was hoping to become the first quarterback to reach six Super Bowls. Brady and the Patriots have won three of them, but none since 2004. They lost their last two to the Giants, and now, with the rise of the Ravens, the Patriots' dominance over the A.F.C. has succumbed to a new challenger. It was the first time in 68 games that Brady started and the Patriots lost a game at home after leading at halftime.

To do that, Flacco led three sustained scoring drives — including one of 90 yards and another of 87 yards — with a mixture of no-huddle passing and timely runs by Ray Rice. But in a nod to the glorious defensive past, a tip of a fourth-quarter Brady pass by defensive end Pernell McPhee — launching it into the air, where it descended into the hands of linebacker Dannell Ellerbe — that effectively ended the Patriots' season.

The Ravens were leading by 15 points, but the Patriots were driving into their territory. Brady looked stunned as he walked off the field, and that was to be expected. For most of his career, those are the kinds of mistakes the Patriots usually force on their opponents. Instead, their offense sputtered throughout the night, with dropped passes, bad throws and stalled drives.

On paper, New England owned the first half, rolling up 48 plays to Baltimore's 27. But thanks to a bit of botched clock management at the end of the first half — Brady scrambled with time ticking away, then waited too long to take a timeout — the Patriots had to settle for a field goal that gave them just a 6-point lead at halftime, 13-7.

In the third quarter, the Ravens started a drive that lasted nearly four minutes, and included no third downs. The Ravens specialized in a deep strike offense this season, but this was the kind of clock-chewing drive they needed — to give the tired defense a rest, and to keep Brady off the field. But the time Brady got the ball back, the Patriots were trailing — a short Flacco pass to Dennis Pitta on the right side of the end zone did the job — and the Patriots didn't score again, allowing the Ravens to lengthen their lead in the fourth quarter and then to let the defense take over, same as it ever was.

The Patriots' final gasp, long after the stands had emptied, ended with Brady intercepted in the end zone with about a minute to play. Brady trudged off the field and, with Patriots' fans having fled to their cars, the seats closest to the field were left to the thousands of purple-clad Ravens fans who had made the trip. Ravens players sprinted onto the field jubilantly. Flacco walked along the side of the Gillette Stadium field, greeting fans. Brady was long gone into the locker room. The Patriots' dynasty of the last decade seemed, at that moment, to be in decline. The Harbaugh family, their fights long behind them, might be about to begin one of their own.

On Sunday, Harbaugh showed off his entire repertory. He frowned, several times, when the 49ers fell behind by 17 points early. He combined a hangdog shake of the head with a sort of disappointed-teacher expression when kicker David Akers bounced a field-goal attempt off the upright. And he grimaced, then threw a temper tantrum that would have made a toddler proud, when the officials ruled that Atlanta receiver Harry Douglas had, in fact, maintained control of a controversial catch late in the fourth quarter.

After all of that, however — and after one final last-second Atlanta pass came up short — Harbaugh allowed himself what must sometimes seem like a novelty: a smile.

It was well-deserved. One year after falling a game short of the Super Bowl with a brutal loss to the Giants, Harbaugh and the 49ers did not stumble again with the most meaningful prize in sight. They will play for the Vince Lombardi trophy this time, after rallying to beat the Falcons, 28-24, in the N.F.C. championship game, and will face either New England or Baltimore in Super Bowl XLVII on Feb. 3 in New Orleans.

Colin Kaepernick, the rookie quarterback who was given the starting job by Harbaugh in Week 11 of this season, continued his rapid ascent to stardom, completing 16 of 21 passes for 233 yards and a touchdown. Running back Frank Gore rushed for 90 yards and 2 touchdowns, including a 9-yard surge to give San Francisco its first lead of the game with just over eight minutes to play. Unlike last week, when the Falcons lost a big lead but recovered in time to beat Seattle, quarterback Matt Ryan could not summon the requisite last-minute dramatics.

That reality left the Falcons, who were the top seed in the N.F.C., ruing another disappointing finish to a season. Atlanta got over one hump last week when it won its first playoff game in five chances under Coach Mike Smith but failed to reach its first Super Bowl since the 1998 season.

Ryan finished the game 30 of 42 passing for 396 yards and 3 touchdowns, but he also threw an interception and lost a fumble that cut short critical drives in the second half. Julio Jones recorded 182 receiving yards, Roddy White had 100 and Tony Gonzalez tallied 78 as the Falcons moved the ball at will for much of the game but stalled when it mattered most. Their running back, Michael Turner, totaled just 30 yards and left the game in the third quarter with an ankle injury.

For all the scoring, the game was a strange one. There was the read-option quarterback, Kaepernick, who hardly ran the read-option at all and finished with just 2 carries for 21 yards. There was little defense played for much of the game, except for a few moments of sheer brilliance, like when Falcons cornerback Dunta Robinson jarred the ball loose with Michael Crabtree just inches from the goal line. There was, of course, Akers's field goal that doinked off the left upright. And there was, in the end, a team that once trailed by 17 points looking like it was, clearly, the superior outfit.

There was also an odd sense of déjà vu early on. After sprinting to an early lead, blowing it, and then coming back to beat Seattle in the final seconds of their divisional round victory, the Falcons managed to encapsulate that entire game in the first half Sunday. Yet again they blasted the opponent in the opening quarter, sending the Georgia Dome crowd into frequent — and joyous — conniptions as the Atlanta offense whizzed up and down the field.

Last week Ryan found White for a big scoring play and this time it was Jones doing the heavy running as he caught 2 touchdown passes in the game's first 16 minutes. The first came less than four minutes in when Jones bounced off defenders as he sprinted through the San Francisco secondary, then turned up his speed even more to catch up with Ryan's floating pass over the top.

As graceful as that 46-yard touchdown catch was, however, it was surpassed in quality by Jones's second scoring play, when he battled with cornerback Tarell Brown — who was actually doing an above-average job in coverage — on his way downfield, then leapt to pull in a laser from Ryan that he juggled (and then possessed) while tapping his feet inbounds at the end edge of the end zone. While the Falcons celebrated the 20-yard score, Brown and his teammates in the 49ers' secondary just shook their heads in frustration. In the first quarter alone, Jones tallied 100 receiving yards on five catches — one, perhaps, for each draft pick the Falcons traded to Cleveland to move into position to select him in 2011.

Dominant as the Falcons were, however — and at one point, the Falcons had recorded 202 total yards to San Francisco's minus-2 — it was hard to envision the 49ers fading away. Seattle quarterback Russell Wilson led the Seahawks all the way back from a pair of 20-point deficits last week so Kaepernick certainly had plenty of inspiration, and he slowly worked his team back into the game with a mix of runs and passes that lulled the once-boisterous home fans into a quiet discomfort.

There were few scrambles from Kaepernick — he did not really show his speed until a 23-yard scamper late in the second quarter — but much of the damage came from tight end Vernon Davis, who no doubt saw how Seattle's Zach Miller shredded the Atlanta defense last week.

As with Miller, the Falcons seemingly could not cover Davis and he caught four passes for 75 yards in the opening half including a 4-yard touch throw from Kaepernick that cut the San Francisco deficit to 17-14 with just under two minutes remaining. Davis finished the game with 5 catches for 106 yards.

Unmoved, Ryan — working with 115 seconds instead of the 25 he had on last week's final drive — quickly pushed the Falcons back and ultimately found his own tight end, Tony Gonzalez, on a 10-yard touchdown pass to make the score 24-14 at the half.

MAALE ADUMIM, West Bank — From the deck of a swank new cafe at the edge of this sprawling Jewish settlement, customers gaze out at a large patch of desert that is the latest point of contention in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. People here, and in the Israeli leadership, hope that the land will soon become an unbroken chain of roads and homes linking their community to Jerusalem. But Palestinians — along with much of the world — see it as a critical part of their future state.

Yet a few days before the Israeli national elections on Tuesday, many of the settlers here said the existential question of what would happen in the West Bank was not their top concern. In this campaign, voters here and elsewhere said, the issues that have been staples of Israeli politics for generations have been largely invisible, and social values or pocketbook concerns have been front and center. "Sometimes you have to know there is no solution right now, put that aside and think of other things," said Shlomo Cohen, 46, a landscaper who wears the signature knitted skullcap of the so-called national-religious sector.

If there is a consensus among voters and analysts alike of what by most accounts has been a moribund campaign, it is that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to win a third term — despite a gaping deficit, despite a stalemated peace process, despite having a political partner indicted on fraud charges and even though he waged a war with Gaza to mixed reviews.

The headlines from Israel's 2013 campaign have been about the failure of a fragmented center and left to field a credible challenger to Mr. Netanyahu, and the emergence of an emboldened national-religious party with a hard-line position on the Palestinian conflict. As the Middle East's most stable democracy turns inward, experts say a growing majority of Israelis have given up on the land-for-peace paradigm that has defined the debate for decades, cementing the country's shift to the right in politics, policy and public discourse. That promises to complicate Mr. Netanyahu's already strained relations with President Obama, as Israel faces international condemnation for its continued expansion of settlements in the West Bank.

"Israeli society today is in despair," said Yossi Klein Halevi, a journalist and senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. "And despair is a dangerous political place, because despair can yield extreme temptations."

It has been the least competitive election in memory, and the least substantive; one columnist wrote Sunday that "an indifferent and yawning Israel" was heading to the polls. Each party seems to be on a different playing field, in terms of priorities, as Mr. Netanyahu's dominant Likud-Beiteinu faction has campaigned neither on issues nor accomplishments, failing to even produce a formal platform, but on the simple theme of strength. Experts say there is an unusually high percentage of undecided voters in the campaign's final days.

Bambi Sheleg, a religious former settler who now runs a centrist magazine, Eretz Acheret, said the campaign is "like a plaster over the real issues." David Makovsky of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy said the 2013 vote was Israel's "Seinfeld election" — about nothing — and said it would yield no clear policy mandate, giving the new government "maximum flexibility." Etgar Keret, a celebrated Tel Aviv short story writer and filmmaker, lamented a lack of "urgency or passion" among the candidates.

"In a metaphorical way, we are choosing the new captain of the Titanic," Mr. Keret said. "When you say to them, 'What about the fact that there is water coming in,' they say, 'You know, I really don't want to talk about that.' Right now we really don't need a prime minister who will continue sailing our ship to the horizon, we need somebody who will know what to do when our ship hits an iceberg."

One immediate challenge for the new government will be a $10 billion deficit. The divisive matter of whether ultra-Orthodox Jews and Arab citizens should go into the military or perform national service, punted by Mr. Netanyahu last summer, is also looming. The prime minister has said the time to decide whether to strike Iran's nuclear program is this spring or summer. And then there is the perennial Palestinian question, with European leaders promising renewed pressure to return to negotiations even as the militant Hamas faction seems to be gaining strength.

An average of the public polls published Thursday and Friday suggests that candidates from Likud-Beiteinu will win 35 of Parliament's 120 seats, down from its current 42. The next largest party looks like left-leaning Labor, with average 16 seats, followed by 14 for the new Jewish Home party, whose charismatic leader and hawkish stance on the Palestinians have been the most dynamic aspects of the campaign.

Perhaps more important, the bloc of right-wing and religious parties are expected to total 62 to 71 seats, according to the polls, leaving Mr. Netanyahu in a strong position to form the next government, though it remains unclear whether he will reach out to the center or stick with staunch conservatives.

"Now's the time to come together to tackle the big issues," said David M. Weinberg, a Likud supporter who helps run the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies. He suggested that Mr. Netanyahu begin by inviting Tzipi Livni, the centrist former foreign minister, into his government, saying that by doing so he "would recapture his place as one of Israel's strongest leaders."

Many analysts see the campaign as a watershed on two fronts: the collapse of the center-left and the rise of the national-religious community — also called religious Zionists — mainly through Jewish Home, which advocates annexing the swath of the West Bank where most settlers live.

In the face of Mr. Netanyahu's strength, the opposition failed to unite behind a single candidate, or even agree on an agenda. Instead, the center-left leaders spent much of their time discussing whether they would join a Netanyahu-led coalition.

"From my point of view, it's worse than the right," said Tzaly Reshef, a Jerusalem lawyer who helped found the Peace Now movement. "With the right what you see is what you get."

On the right, Naftali Bennett of Jewish Home emerged as the darling of the campaign, attracting voters with his hawkish policies and his persona: he is 40, wears a knitted skullcap, was an officer in an elite army unit and made millions in high-tech before entering politics.

Rabbi Benny Lau, a prominent national-religious leader, said Mr. Bennett echoes the secular kibbutz pioneers who built Israel in the 1950s, "but with kippa, with yarmulke on the head."

"This is the new population of the religious Zionists: a new generation grew up and said, 'We don't want to be secondary, we want to lead,' " Rabbi Lau said. "It's a question of self-identity, not the policy but the place they want to take on the stage. This is why so many young people want to vote for that. They want to be proud."

Yedidia Z. Stern, a law professor and vice president of the Israel Democracy Institute, said that another way to understand Israel's shift is to look at the probable makeup of the next Parliament, which is expected to have 40 to 50 new members, the largest turnover in its history. About 40 lawmakers will be Orthodox, Mr. Stern said, nearly half of them living in West Bank settlements. Only one kibbutz resident, himself a former settler, is expected to make it.

"This Parliament will be populated by many extremists," Mr. Stern said. "The politics of identity are becoming more and more sharp. Every sector wants to rule, not just survive. Everyone thinks their way is the best for all the Jews."

Over cappuccinos and fruit shakes at the cafe here in Maale Adumim on Friday, Yafit Hayon, 43, who works for the Jerusalem municipality, said she is ardently supporting Mr. Netanyahu because "he will take care of Maale Adumim; he won't return it."

But at the next table, Rivi and Yedidya Zuntz, teachers who backed Mr. Netanyahu in 2009, are moving further to the right to support Mr. Bennett. "He reflects my religious side more," said Mr. Zuntz, 40. "Bennett's values are important to me."