Latest News

Navy officials responded that no drones had been downed by enemy fire, although the Pentagon acknowledged that it had lost a small number of ScanEagles, likely to engine malfunction, over Afghanistan and in the Persian Gulf region. The drone that the Iranians showcased appeared cobbled together after a crash — thus earning the nickname "FrankenEagle" across the Navy.

Regardless, the loss was hardly an intelligence coup for Iran, since ScanEagle carries only off-the-shelf video equipment with less computing power than can be found in a smartphone.

"They could have gone to Radio Shack and captured the same 'secret' technology," said Vice Adm. Mark I. Fox, the Navy's deputy chief for operations, plans and strategy.

The minor diplomatic contretemps over the fallen drone did, however, shine an unwanted light on the growing role of these relatively low-cost, nearly expendable unmanned surveillance aircraft in military operations over the Persian Gulf, as well as in North Africa and the Horn of Africa, and in the Asia-Pacific region.

A ScanEagle flying off the deck of the destroyer Bainbridge is credited with providing images critical to the ability of Navy SEAL snipers to identify and kill three hijackers holding hostage the captain of the Maersk Alabama off the coast of Africa in 2009. And a ScanEagle flying from the destroyer Mahan provided images of Libya in the first 72 hours of a North Africa mission by American and NATO forces in 2011 to protect civilians and then support rebels who overthrew Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.

Most ScanEagles are owned and flown by contractors; some of these private crews are even based aboard American warships. The drones are considered an important addition in the military's surveillance architecture, which ranges from very costly spy satellites to advanced drones like Predators and Reapers, which carry advanced surveillance systems and can be armed with missiles, and down to the low-tech ScanEagle.

ScanEagles fly from two Navy ships in the Persian Gulf area, the Ponce and the Gunstan Hall, both amphibious support and staging vessels; they also fly from one ground operations center in the region established when a ScanEagle unit serving in Iraq was withdrawn as the mission there ended.

Since it can be launched on short notice, ScanEagle's value is in allowing local commanders the ability to gather close-in, live and real-time images of an immediate target.

"Anybody who goes to sea is interested in having an understanding of the environment in which they are operating," Admiral Fox said. "These low-end assets give you an ability to have a much better understanding of what's going on around you. Who's in that dhow? What flag is it flying? But we are still in an early stage of it."

Navy officers say that adding another layer of surveillance aircraft to the American fleet also has a deterrent effect on Iran.

"The fact that we are physically present with more and more intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets — the Iranians know we are out there watching," said one officer familiar with ScanEagle deployments. "We are flying in international airspace and over international waters. But these assets give us ground truth on what everybody is doing in the gulf."

But the increased surveillance flights do carry a risk of provoking Tehran at a time of increased international tensions over its disputed nuclear program.

Last November, Iranian warplanes shot at an Air Force surveillance drone flying over the Persian Gulf. Pentagon officials said the Predator was in international airspace and was not hit, and that the episode prompted a strong protest to the Iranian government. Iran said the Predator had violated its airspace.

And in late 2011, an RQ-170 surveillance drone operated by the C.I.A. rather than the military crashed deep inside Iranian territory while on a mission that is believed to have been intended to map suspected nuclear sites. That episode came to light only after Iran bragged that it had hacked into the drone's controls and guided it to a landing inside its borders. American officials said the drone had crashed after a technical malfunction.

"Foreign policy is economic policy," he said. "It is urgent that we show people in the rest of the world that we can get our business done in an effective and timely way."

Mr. Kerry, a Democrat and long-standing member of the Senate from Masschusetts, also staked out a firm position on Iran, saying that he was committed to seeking a diplomatic solution over Iran's nuclear program, but alluding to the option to use military force if a negotiated solution could not be reached.

"Our policy is not containment," he said. "It is prevention, and the clock is ticking."

Mr. Kerry received a friendly reception from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a panel he has led for the past four years.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who on Wednesday delivered an impassioned defense of her handling of a deadly attack in September on the American mission in Benghazi, Libya, returned to the committee to introduce her likely successor.

"John is the right choice," Mrs. Clinton said. "He has been a valued partner to this administration and to me personally."

Republicans and Democrats endorsed Mr. Kerry's nomination before he even began to testify. Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican, underscored the role Mr. Kerry had played as a senator in the normalization of relations with Vietnam.

"It was an impressive performance to say the least," Mr. McCain said.

In an episode that appeared to capture the mood, Senator Robert Menendez, the New Jersey Democrat who led the hearing, mistakenly referred to Mr. Kerry as "Mr. Secretary."

At that point, Mr. Kerry jokingly rose as if he was preparing to leave. "I thought this could be quick," he said, before sitting down to resume answering questions.

On other issues, Mr. Kerry made clear that the he thought a proposal to eliminate all nuclear weapons was a "goal" that could take centuries to achieve and that the United States had no choice but to rely on nuclear deterrence in the meantime.

Mr. Kerry defended his effort to engage the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, during the early months of the Obama administration, asserting that Syria's burgeoning population gave it a reason to seek better ties with the United States.

"He wanted to be able to find some way to reach out to the West," Mr. Kerry said. "History caught up with us."

Mr. Kerry said that he thought Mr. Assad would not survive as Syria's leader much longer.

Mr. Kerry would be the first member of the committee to directly ascend to the Secretary of State post since John Sherman served beginning in 1897 under President William McKinley.

Travel advice updated by the British Foreign Office also warned against "all but essential travel" to several other Libyan cities, citing a "high threat from terrorism" and a possibility of retaliatory attacks targeting Western interest in the region after the French military intervention in Mali, which preceded last week's Islamist attack on a remote Algerian gas field near the Libyan border.

The Foreign Office did not describe the nature of the reported threat in Benghazi, where an attack on the United States diplomatic compound in September killed four Americans including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.

Since September, the British authorities have warned against all travel to Benghazi.

Earlier this week, a senior Algerian official said that several Egyptian members of the squad that attacked the Algerian gas complex were also among those who had attacked the American mission in Benghazi.

The Egyptians were among 29 kidnappers killed by Algerian forces during the four-day siege of the gas plant in which at least 37 foreign hostages and one Algerian died. Three militants were captured alive and one of them, under interrogation by Algerian security forces, recounted the Egyptians' involvement in both attacks, the Algerian official said.

"We are aware of a specific, imminent threat to Westerners in Benghazi," the Foreign Office advisory said. "We advise against all travel to Benghazi and urge any British nationals who are there against our advice to leave immediately."

In other Libyan places, it said, "there is a high threat from terrorism. Attacks could be indiscriminate, including in places frequented by expatriates and foreign travelers." The advisory did not specifically link its warnings to the kidnappings in Algeria.

Foreign Office officials declined to elaborate on the warnings.

As the crisis in Algeria unfolded, Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain repeatedly warned that Al Qaeda-linked extremists and other Islamist militants in North Africa presented a growing threat to Western interests.

"Just as we have reduced the scale of the Al Qaeda threat in other parts of the world, including in Pakistan and Afghanistan, so it has grown in other parts of the world," he said. "We need to be equally concerned about that, and equally focused on it."

During the Algerian hostage crisis, the kidnappers depicted their attack as linked to the French intervention in Mali, in turn provoked by a lightning advance south by Islamists who have turned Mali's desert north into a separatist redoubt.

But the measure faces resistance in the State Senate and its fate is uncertain. Teresa Paiva-Weed, a Democrat who is the Senate president, opposes same-sex marriage but has said she would allow a vote on it in committee. Supporters say that if it gets to the Senate floor, the measure will pass, but opponents are skeptical and state senators are being lobbied heavily by both sides.

Supporters of same-sex marriage have sought to build on the momentum from last year's elections, when voters in Maine, Maryland and Washington State approved it at the ballot box. Rhode Island is one of several states, including Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Minnesota and New Jersey, where supporters of gay marriage are trying to make legislative gains this year.

Of the nine states where gay marriage is already legal, five — Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont — are in New England. (The other four are Maryland, Iowa, New York and Washington, as well as the District of Columbia.) If the measure passes here, New England would become the first solid block of states in the country to allow gay marriage, underscoring the region's reputation as the nation's most liberal, and perhaps its least religious. A Gallup survey found that all six New England states rank among the bottom 10 states for weekly church attendance.

And yet Rhode Island has seemed out of step with the rest of New England in not embracing gay marriage sooner. It was only on Tuesday that the House Judiciary Committee approved a same-sex marriage bill, albeit unanimously. It had come up in committee once before, in 2001, but only one person supported it.

The voting here comes almost a decade after same-sex marriage became legal in neighboring Massachusetts.

"There was deep-rooted religious opposition," said state Representative Frank G. Ferri, a Democrat who is the deputy majority leader, and who is gay. "Even though we're mostly Democrats, we had many conservative Democrats who have kept this at bay."

Perhaps the biggest reason for the turnabout is that supporters of gay marriage made an effort last year to elect sympathetic candidates to the General Assembly.

"We began planning for that by reaching out to pro-equality candidates and working with pro-equality incumbents," said Ray Sullivan, campaign director for Rhode Islanders United for Marriage.

As a result, he said, they helped elect nine of the 10 new House members and the five new senators who support gay marriage. They have been joined by a broad-based coalition of religious, labor and civic groups and numerous elected officials, including the House speaker, Gordon D. Fox, who is gay, and the governor, Lincoln Chafee, an independent, who is now a strong proponent of same-sex marriage.

Governor Chafee has made appeals for the bill on the grounds of religious tolerance, invoking the spirit of Roger Williams, who founded Rhode Island, which became a haven from religious persecution.

He has also said gay marriage could help the state's lagging economy. "We are at an economic disadvantage with our neighboring states when we do not have the welcome mat out for all those who want to work here and contribute to our economy," Mr. Chafee said after the vote on Tuesday.

The driving force against gay marriage is the National Organization for Marriage Rhode Island, an offshoot of the national group that has worked against it in several other states. It objects, among other things, to the suggestion that Rhode Island has some kind of obligation to go along with the rest of New England.

"We belong to the United States of America, not to the United States of New England," said Christopher Plante, the executive director. "Rhode Island stands with the vast majority of Americans in understanding that marriage is the union of one man and one woman." Thirty states have constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage.

Opponents say that Rhode Island never considered the issue before because most voters, most legislators and previous governors were against it.

"Today, Rhode Island has a more liberal governor and a House speaker wielding much political influence who has made it a personal mission to pass this legislation," said Darrell Lee, a founding member of the Faith Alliance of Rhode Island, a group of religious and civic leaders against the bill.

Standing in the Judiciary Committee hearing room after Tuesday's vote, Mr. Lee said that gay-marriage advocates "have done a good job at putting pressure on the Legislature, and what you saw today was the Legislature caving into the pressure of these organized groups."

But, he said, their efforts had also "awakened the faith community beyond that previously represented primarily by the Catholic Church." The Faith Alliance brought out hundreds of opponents at a hearing last week that lasted more than six hours; many were Latino members of Pentecostal churches.

Still, the religious community here is deeply split. Bishop Thomas Tobin of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence strongly opposes the measure and last week called gay marriage "immoral and unnecessary."

Rhode Island's Episcopal bishop, W. Nicholas Knisely, supports it, saying gays and lesbians deserve the same rights as any other couple. "Christ welcomed all to his table," said the Rev. Gene Dyszlewski, chairman of the Rhode Island Religious Coalition for Marriage Equality. "We hope to follow his example."

But before Senator Joe Manchin III invited a group of 15 businessmen and community leaders to lunch last week to discuss the topic, he had only a vague idea of how anxious many of his supporters were.

"How many of you all believe that there is a movement to take away the Second Amendment?" he asked.

About half the hands in the room went up.

Despite his best attempts to reassure them — "I see no movement, no talk, no bills, no nothing" — they remained skeptical. "We give up our rights one piece at a time," a banker named Charlie Houck told the senator.

If there is a path to new gun laws, it has to come through West Virginia and a dozen other states with Democratic senators like Mr. Manchin who are confronting galvanized constituencies that view any effort to tighten gun laws as an infringement.

As Congress considers what, if any, laws to change, Mr. Manchin has become a barometer among his colleagues, testing just how far they might be able to go without angering voters.

On Thursday a group of Democratic senators led by Dianne Feinstein of California plans to introduce a bill that would outlaw more than 100 different assault weapons, setting up what promises to be a fraught and divisive debate over gun control in Congress in the coming weeks. But a number of centrist lawmakers like Mr. Manchin have already thrown the measure's fate into question, saying that all they are willing to support for now is a stronger background check system.

As a hunter with an A rating from the National Rifle Association, Mr. Manchin gave advocates for new weapons laws reason for optimism after he said last month that gun firepower and magazine capacity might need to be limited.

But now, Mr. Manchin, who affirmed his support for gun rights by running a campaign commercial in 2010 showing him firing a rifle into an environmental bill, says he is not so sure. One of his local offices has been picketed, and even some of his most thoughtful supporters are cautioning him that stronger background checks are about all the gun control they can stomach. 

And on the afternoon the 15 residents met with Mr. Manchin in the conference room of a local arts center, they told him that going after guns and ammunition capacity would be much like banning box cutters after the Sept. 11 attacks, or limiting whiskey and six-pack sales to cure alcoholism.

"It takes about a second and a half to change a clip," said Frank Jezioro, a former special agent with the Office of Naval Intelligence and now director of the state Division of Natural Resources.

Mr. Jezioro likened gunmen in mass shootings to suicide bombers: they will always find a way. "A guy can walk through this door right here with your Beretta five-shot automatic, and cut the barrel off at 16 inches, and put five double-ought buckshots in there and kill everybody in here in a matter of seconds," he said. "And you don't have to aim it."

As it happened, there were at least two guns in the room. One was on the hip of a Beckley police detective who was invited to the lunch, the other at the side of the West Virginia state trooper who stood guard at the door.

Others at the lunch said that laws did little to help even the most violent societies. "Mexico, for instance, has got some of the strictest gun control laws in North America," said Rick Johnson, the owner of a river expedition company. "They'll put you in jail for a bullet in Mexico. And look how well it's worked."

"I can take my A.R.," Mr. Johnson said, referring to his assault rifle, "load it, put one in the chamber and throw it up on this table, and the only way it's going to hurt anybody is if I miss and hit someone in the head. The gun doesn't hurt anybody. It's the person pulling the trigger."

After talking with the group for nearly two hours, Mr. Manchin left the meeting saying he was not at all comfortable with supporting the assault weapons ban favored by many of his colleagues in Congress.

"I'm not there," he said, adding that he was leaning toward strengthening screening gun purchases instead. "I'm definitely more inclined to be very supportive of background checks."

Mr. Manchin is just the beginning of gun control advocates' worries. Of far greater concern are Democrats who are up for re-election in 2014. Those include senators like Max Baucus of Montana, who was awarded an A+ rating from the N.R.A. Mr. Baucus has worded his comments on the subject carefully, bracketing them with gun rights-friendly language, like saying the "culture of violence" needs to be seriously examined along with any changes to the law.

There is Senator Mark Begich of Alaska, who has said flatly that he would not support a new assault weapons ban, and Senator Mark Udall of Colorado, who initially came out in support of the ban but has been more circumspect recently, saying in an interview last week that he would want to see the language of any such legislation first.

"I think for some of my colleagues, that's a tougher debate," Mr. Udall said of outlawing any individual weapons.

Senator Al Franken of Minnesota, one of the Senate's most reliable liberals, has not said definitively whether he would vote for the ban, instead signaling only his support for "the principle" of one.

For some, there is something else to consider in addition to voters who are fervently supportive of Second Amendment rights: jobs. North Carolina is where the rifle-maker Remington has its headquarters. One of the state's senators, Kay Hagan, is a Democrat also up for re-election next year.

Another is Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, who said she had been hearing from all corners of the state on the issue, including police chiefs, mothers with young children and people whose jobs are tied to local gunmakers like Sturm, Ruger & Company and Sig Sauer.

"Clearly they're going to be concerned about restrictions, because it's going to affect the sales they do," Ms. Shaheen said. "But it seems to me there are places where we can come to an agreement."

Those areas of agreement, she said, are the need for stronger background checks and better mental health care, not weapons bans.

Even before people on opposite sides of the gun control question start debating the merits of new laws, there are vast cultural divides that threaten to stand in the way of any compromise. In West Virginia, Mr. Manchin's constituents shook their heads at the mere mention of the term assault weapon, which they consider pejorative.

"Do you know where that phrase came from?" said Roger Wilson, a river tour operator and an amateur gun historian. Its origin, he said, came from Hitler, who named a new German weapon Sturmgewehr, literally "storm rifle," which in English became "assault rifle."

During the lunch, Mr. Manchin shared a recent conversation he had with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Obama administration's point person on gun control.

"I said, 'Mr. Vice President, with all due respect, I don't know how many people who truly believe that you would fight to protect their rights.' "

The senator added, "That's what we're dealing with."