DealBook: Choice for S.E.C. Is Ex-Prosecutor, in Signal to Wall St.

2:48 p.m. | Updated President Obama tapped Mary Jo White, a former United States attorney turned white-collar defense lawyer, to be the next chairwoman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Mr. Obama announced the nomination at the White House on Thursday afternoon. As part of the event, the White House also renominated Richard Cordray to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a role he has held for the last year under a recess appointment.

In its choice of Ms. White and Mr. Cordray, the White House is sending a signal about the importance of holding Wall Street accountable for wrongdoing. Both picks are former prosecutors.

Regulatory chiefs are often market experts or academics. But Ms. White spent nearly a decade as United States attorney in New York, the first woman named to this post. Among her prominent cases, she oversaw the prosecution of the mafia boss John Gotti as well as the people responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. She is now working the other side, defending Wall Street firms and executives as a partner at Debevoise & Plimpton.

As the attorney general of Ohio, Mr. Cordray made a name for himself suing Wall Street companies in the wake of the financial crisis. He undertook a series of prominent lawsuits against big names in the finance world, including Bank of America and the American International Group.

The White House expects Ms. White, 65, and Mr. Cordray, 53, to draw on their prosecutorial backgrounds while carrying out a broad regulatory agenda under the Dodd-Frank Act. Congress enacted the law, which mandates a regulatory overhaul, in response to the 2008 financial crisis.

Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said Ms. White has “an incredibly impressive resume” and that her appointment along with the renomination of Mr. Cordray sends an important signal.

“The president believes that appointment and the renomination he’s making today demonstrate the commitment he has to carrying out Wall Street reform, making sure we have the rules of the road that are necessary and that are being enforced in a way” to avoid a crisis like that of 2008, Mr. Carney said.

Another White House official added that Ms. White and Mr. Cordray will “serve in top enforcement roles” in part so that “Wall Street is held accountable and middle-class Americans never again are harmed by the abuses of a few.”

Ms. White will succeed Elisse B. Walter, a longtime S.E.C. official, who took over as chairwoman after Mary L. Schapiro stepped down as the agency’s leader in December. Mr. Cordray joined the consumer bureau in 2011 as its enforcement director.

The nominations could face a mixed reception in Congress. The Senate already declined to confirm Mr. Cordray, with Republicans vowing to block any candidate for the consumer bureau, a new agency created to rein in the financial industry’s excesses. It is unclear whether the White House and Mr. Cordray will face another standoff the second time around.

Mr. Carney argued that there were no substantive objections to Mr. Cordray’s confirmation, only political ones. “He is absolutely the right person for the job,” Mr. Carney said.

Ms. White is expected to receive broader support on Capitol Hill. Senator Charles E. Schumer, a New York Democrat, declared that Ms. White was a “tough-as-nails prosecutor” who “will not shy away from enforcing the laws to ensure that markets operate fairly.”

But she could face questions about her command of arcane financial minutiae. She was a director of the Nasdaq stock market, but has otherwise built her career on the law-and-order side of the securities industry.

People close to the S.E.C. note, however, that her husband, John W. White, is a veteran of the agency. From 2006 through 2008, he was head of the S.E.C.’s division of corporation finance, which oversees public companies’ disclosures and reporting.

Some Democrats also might question her path through the revolving door, in and out of government. While seen as a strong enforcer as a United States attorney, she went on in private practice to defend some of Wall Street’s biggest names, including Kenneth D. Lewis, a former head of Bank of America. She also represented JPMorgan Chase and the board of Morgan Stanley. Last year, the N.F.L. hired her to investigate allegations that the New Orleans Saints carried out a bounty system for hurting opponents.

Consumer advocates generally praised her appointment on Thursday. “Mary Jo White was a tough, smart, no-nonsense, broadly experienced and highly accomplished prosecutor,” said Dennis Kelleher, head of Better Markets, the nonprofit advocacy group. “She knew who the bad guys were, went after them and put them in prison when they broke the law.”

The appointment comes after the departure of Ms. Schapiro, who announced she would step down from the S.E.C. in late 2012. In a four-year tenure, she overhauled the agency after it was blamed for missing the warning signs of the crisis.

Since her exit, Washington and Wall Street have been abuzz with speculation about the next S.E.C. chief. President Obama quickly named Ms. Walter, then a Democratic commissioner at the agency, but her appointment was seen as a short-term solution. It is unclear if she will shift back to the commissioner role if Ms. White is confirmed.

In the wake of Ms. Schapiro’s exit, several other contenders surfaced, including Sallie L. Krawcheck, a longtime Wall Street executive. Richard G. Ketchum, chairman and chief executive of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Wall Street’s internal policing organization, was also briefly mentioned as a long-shot contender.

Peter Baker and Kitty Bennett contributed reporting

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House approves short-term suspension of debt ceiling

WASHINGTON – House Republicans approved a temporary suspension of the $16.4-trillion ceiling on the nation’s debt Wednesday, allowing the federal government to continue borrowing through spring while Washington shifts to more ambitious budget battles.

Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) convinced his rebellious majority to go along with the new strategy by promising them the opportunity in the months ahead to extract deep spending cuts to Medicare and other domestic programs.

The approach was a seismic political shift for Republicans who in the past had pressed for simultaneous cuts, which House Democrats dismissed as “irresponsible” and a “gimmick.”

The vote was 285-144, and despite the robust support it would not have passed without Democrats -- 33 Republicans opposed it.

QUIZ: Test your knowledge about the debt limit

“We know with certainty that a debt crisis is coming to America,” said Rep. Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), the former vice presidential nominee, who helped lead the debate on the House floor as chairman of the House Budget Committee. “We have a moral obligation to fix that.”

Republicans are preparing an extraordinary fiscal plan, due in April, that would bring federal budgets into balance in 10 years – an austerity measure far more severe than last year's budget from Ryan that slashed the safety net.

After President Obama won modest tax hikes on the wealthy in the year-end "fiscal cliff" deal, Republicans say the next round of savings must come from the spending side of the ledger.

“Whatever new taxes the president is going to get, he got,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican, said this week. “We’re now going to focus on the real problem, which is not that we tax too little, but that we spend too much.”

The White House, and Democrats in Congress, disagree and say more tax hikes – especially closing corporate tax loopholes – must be part of the equation. Two deadlines in March will force the issue.

Complete coverage of the 2013 inauguration

“Democrats are eager to contrast our pro-growth, pro-middle class-budget priorities with the House Republicans,” said Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. She said the GOP budget under Ryan “would end Medicare as we know it, gut investments in jobs and programs middle-class families depend on, and cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations.”

The vote Wednesday puts the White House and Congress on another collision course in the budget battles that are expected to consume the first months of Obama’s second term.

On March 1, the federal budget faces $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts that both sides want to alter. Later, on March 27, Congress will need to approve funding for routine government operations, or risk a shutdown.

By May 18, the debt ceiling would need to be raised again after this suspension expires, though the Treasury Department could take measures to extend borrowing into summer.

Failure to raise the debt limit to cover the nation’s already accrued bills would send the country into a large-scale default – what Obama has compared to dining and dashing out on the bill.

PHOTOS: President Obama’s second inauguration

Democrats in the House complained that Republicans were simply setting up another "fiscal cliff."

“House Republicans continue to play with economic fire,” said Rep. Sander Levin (D-Mich.)

The bill approved Wednesday now goes to the Senate, and the White House has said the president would not oppose it.

Even though conservatives off Capitol Hill remain divided over raising the debt limit, Boehner sweetened the legislation to attract Republican support by attaching a provision that would temporarily withhold the pay of senators or representatives if their chamber fails to produce an annual budget by the mid-April deadline.

The “no budget, no pay” provision was particularly popular with conservatives, and was aimed squarely at Senate Democrats, who have declined to approve a formal budget in recent years.

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Coming This Year to Afghanistan: Way More Artillery Strikes

As the U.S. tries to hand over responsibility for the Afghan war to the new Afghan military it’s built, some very old weapons systems are poised to become crucial: the mortar and the howitzer.

The plan for 2013 is for the 66,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan to draw down to an as-yet-undecided size at an as-yet-undecided pace. Those that remain will take a back seat to Afghans by the spring, as the Afghans plan and execute their own operations, a subtle shift from the “partnered” patrols the U.S. emphasized in 2012. Only the Afghans don’t yet have some of the crucial equipment, particularly fighter aircraft and attack helicopters, to help units that come under fire.

With the Afghans’ relative absence of close air support, “what we must do, then, is bring the surface fire capability to fruition, and that’s the indirect fire, observed indirect fire,” Army Lt. Gen. James L. Terry, the day-to-day commander of the war, told reporters at the Pentagon on Wednesday. Chief among them: the D-30 howitzer, a Russian-built 12 mm gun, and 60 mm mortars.

“So now instead of calling back up into the air, they have those organic capabilities inside those formations,” Terry said.

Pentagon officials cautioned that that doesn’t mean the U.S. air war is going to come to an end in 2013. But it’s on a downward trajectory. According to U.S. Air Force statistics, in 2012, U.S. warplanes fired their weapons 4,095 times, the lowest level recorded since 2009′s pre-surge 4,165 weapons releases. Close air support sorties in total were down to 28,471 last year — higher than in 2009, but still lower than their 2010 and 2011 levels.

But the whole idea is to shift the burden of the war onto the nascent Afghan forces. And with Afghan air power running behind Afghan ground forces, protecting Afghan forces under attack is going to be largely a ground responsibility. Terry praised “Afghan solutions” like the rise of a “mobile strike force, an armored wheeled-based platform” that seven Afghan battalions will use. As of now, it’s unarmed, so its purpose is to help Afghan troops survive an attack rather than repel one, but “potentially we’ll look at if we need to put a gun system on one of those platforms.”

Less clear is what the smaller complement of U.S. troops in Afghanistan in 2013 will do in their forthcoming “security force assistance” formations, of which there will be over 400. Their mission will be to train, advise and assist the Afghans as the Afghan troops plan and execute their own fights. But Terry signaled that U.S. forces won’t just be sitting on their bases and advising headquarters staffs.

“This is not simply about doing less,” Terry said, but rather about giving the “right resources” to the Afghans, at the battalion-level and above, so they can hold territory from insurgents.

“Those [U.S.] organizations are not purely headquarters focused, but they are focused, then, on increasing the capability with the Afghans. It doesn’t mean they won’t be going out on patrol with them, either,” Terry said, adding that “some of this training will obviously have to be done in contact” with insurgents — especially providing some of the “enabling capabilities,” like the air support that only the U.S. can provide for now.

Until the Afghans build up their own air force and air-attack specialties, Afghanistan’s soldiers are about to launch a lot more artillery strikes.

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Shia LaBeouf’s “Charlie Countryman” finds love in gritty Romania

Park City, Utah (Reuters) – Shia LaBeouf and Evan Rachel Wood spin a twist on classic fairytales in their new film “The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman,” a modern day love story that swaps castles in the sky for the underbelly of Romania’s capital, Bucharest.

The film, which premiered at Sundance Film Festival this week, is a dark story of love unfolding between two unlikely people against the backdrop of a violent and crime-filled eastern European city.

Charlie (LaBeouf), an American, finds himself on a journey of self-discovery that takes him to Bucharest, where he meets the mysterious and captivating Gabi (Evan Rachel Wood), and puts his life on the line for love.

“Love is always the easiest answer, but somehow it’s the hardest place to get for some people. I love the contrast of this world, which is filled with violence and hatred and crime, and above all there’s love,” Wood said.

Director Fredrick Bond picked Bucharest because he was looking for a place that has not been captured in film prominently, and would compliment the complex nature of Charlie and Gabi’s story.

“Charlie has to go through quite a tough journey and a very romantic journey, so I needed a city that had an edge,” he said.

Wood, 25, said the connection that Charlie and Gabi feel the moment they meet resonated with her because that is what she felt for her husband, actor Jamie Bell, when they first met at Sundance and started dating in 2005.

“It’s almost this karmic connection, this kindred spirit, this soulmate of some sort, where he looks at her and he immediately falls in love. He’s never said a word to her – that really happens. That’s how I met my husband,” Wood said.

“We fell in love immediately, because it was almost meant to be, it was fate.”

FINDING TRUTH IN LOVE

“Charlie Countryman” is the feature film debut from Swedish director Bond, an award-winning creator of commercials. Bond said he was eager to work with LaBeouf and Wood, calling them the “most talented young actors of their generation.”

“They have such a sense of truthfulness,” Bond said. “It’s a wild, crazy journey, I needed actors who could ground their performances … Evan and Shia are about truth.”

LaBeouf, a former child star who became a box office staple as the lead in the “Transformers” franchise, has been taking on grittier roles more recently, such as a bootlegger in gangster drama “Lawless.”

The 26-year-old actor said he had been drawn to the role of Charlie when he read the script three years ago.

“It spoke honestly to me, it was really original. It had a Zsa Zsa Gabor narrative and it just read like ‘The Graduate’ with a bloody nose,” he said.

Wood, who shot to fame as the troubled young lead of teen drama “Thirteen” in 2003, said she had wanted to work with LaBeouf for a long time.

For the role of Gabi, a complex Romanian cellist who has a penchant for bad boys, Wood had to perfect a Romanian accent without the help of a dialect coach, turning to her surroundings in Bucharest to draw inspirations.

“It’s very stressful because you want to do it justice, and I wanted it to be spot-on because a lot of times, it can be very distracting. You can overdo the accent,” the actress said.

The film co-stars Mads Mikkelsen and Til Schweiger as Romanian mobsters, with British actors Rupert Grint, best known as Ron Weasley in the “Harry Potter” movies, and James Buckley as Charlie’s errant friends.

Bond said the biggest filming challenges were the action-packed fight scenes, especially because LaBeouf did his own stunts.

“Shia wants to do everything for real, so he takes hits for real … which is fantastic, because it gives a reality to it, but you also have only so many takes, you have to be really well prepared to do it,” Bond said.

“Charlie Countryman” may defy the archetype of a traditional love story with its fierce characters in a harsh yet beautiful setting, but LaBeouf and Wood said they hoped audiences would take away messages of honesty in love from the film.

(Reporting By Piya Sinha-Roy; Editing by Patricia Reaney and Mohammad Zargham)

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Well: Can You Read the Face of Victory?

Picture a tennis player in the moment he scores a critical point and wins a tournament. Now picture his opponent in the instant he loses the point that narrowly cost him the title. Can you tell one facial expression from the other, the look of defeat from the face of victory?

Try your hand at the images below, of professional tennis players at competitive tournaments. All were included in a new study that suggests that the more intense an emotion, the harder it is to distinguish it in a facial expression.

The researchers found that when overwhelming feelings set in, the subtle cues that convey emotion are lost, and facial expressions tend to blur. The face of joy and celebration often appears no different from the look of grief and devastation. Winning looks like losing. Pain resembles pleasure.

But that is not the case when it comes to body language. In fact, the new study found, people are better able to identify extreme emotions by reading body language than by looking solely at facial expressions. But even though we pick up on cues from the neck down to interpret emotion, we instinctively assume that it is the face that tells us everything, said Hillel Aviezer, a psychologist who carried out the new research with colleagues at Princeton University.

“When emotions run high, the face becomes more malleable: it’s not clear if there’s positivity or negativity going on there,” he said. “People have this illusion that they’re reading all this information in the face. We found that the face is ambiguous in these situations and the body is critical.”

Dr. Aviezer and his colleagues, who published their work in the journal Science, carried out four experiments in which subjects were asked to identify emotions by looking at photographs of people in various situations. In some cases, the subjects were shown facial expressions alone. In others, they looked at body language, either alone or in combination with faces. The researchers chose photographs taken in moments when emotions were running high – as professional tennis players celebrated or agonized, as loved ones grieved at funerals, as needles punctured skin during painful body piercings.

According to classic behavioral theories, facial expressions are universal indicators of mood and emotion. So the more intense a particular emotion, the easier it should be to identify in the face. But the study showed the exact opposite. As emotions peaked in intensity, expressions became distorted, similar to the way cranking up the volume on a stereo makes the music unrecognizable.

“When emotions are extremely high, it’s as if the speakers are blaring and the signal is degraded,” said Dr. Aviezer, who is now at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. “When the volume is that high, it’s hard to tell what song is playing.”

In one experiment, three groups of 15 people were shown photographs of professional tennis players winning and losing points in critical matches. When the subjects were shown the players’ expressions alone — separated from their bodies — they correctly identified their emotion only half of the time, which was no better than chance. When they looked at images of just the body with the face removed — or the body with the face intact — they were far more accurate at identifying emotions. Yet when asked, 80 percent said they were relying on the facial expressions alone. Twenty percent said they were going by body and facial cues together, and not a single one said they were looking only for gestures from the neck down.

Then, the researchers scrambled the photos, mixing faces and bodies together. The upset faces of players were randomly spliced onto the bodies of celebrating players, and vice versa.

When asked to judge the emotions, the subjects answered according to the body language. The facial expression did not seem to matter. If a losing face was spliced onto a celebrating body, the subjects tended to guess victory and jubilation. If they were looking at the face of an exuberant player placed on the body of an anguished player, the subjects guessed defeat and disappointment.

Although they were not aware of it, the subjects were clearly looking at body language, Dr. Aviezer said. Clenched fists, for example, suggested victory and celebration, while open or outstretched hands indicated a player’s disappointment.

In another experiment, the researchers looked at four other emotional “peaks.” For pain, they used the faces of men and women undergoing piercings. Grief was captured in images of mourners at a funeral. For joy, they used images of people on the reality television show “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition,” capturing their impassioned faces at the very moment they were shown their beautiful, brand new homes. And for pleasure, they went with a rather risqué option: images from an erotic Web site that showed faces at the height of orgasm.

Once again, the subjects could not correctly guess the emotions by looking at facial expressions alone. In fact, they were more likely to interpret “positive” faces as being “negative” more than the actual negative ones. When faces showing pleasure were spliced onto the body of someone in pain, for example, the subjects relied on body language and were often unaware that the facial expression was conveying the opposite emotion.

“There’s this point on ‘Extreme Makeover’ where people see their new house for the first time and the camera is on their face, so we have these wonderful photos of their expressions,” Dr. Aviezer said. “At that moment, they look like the most miserable people in the world. For a few seconds, it’s as if they are seeing their house burn down. They don’t look like you would expect.”

The researchers noted that they were not suggesting that facial expressions never indicate specific feelings – only that when the emotion is intense and at its peak, for those first few seconds, the expression is ambiguous. Dr. Aviezer said the facial musculature simply might not be suited for accurately conveying extremely intense feelings – in part because in the real world, so much of that is conveyed through situational context.

And this may not be limited to facial cues.

“Consider intense vocal expressions of grief versus joy or pleasure versus pain,” the researchers wrote in their paper. For example, imagine sitting in a coffee shop and hearing someone behind you shriek. Is it immediately obvious whether the emotion is a positive or negative one?

“When people are experiencing a very high level of excitation,” Dr. Aviezer said, “then we see this overlap in expressions.”

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DealBook: Live Q. & A. on Wall Street's Untouchables

On Tuesday, “Frontline” investigated why the leaders of Wall Street had escaped prosecution for their role in the country’s financial crisis.

Peter Eavis of DealBook is moderating a conversation beginning at 2 p.m. Eastern time with the show’s producer, Martin Smith. Watch the show above and submit your questions now.

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Shooting reported at Houston college, at least two wounded

Shooting at Lone Star College Raw

By Matt Pearce

January 22, 2013, 11:37 a.m.

At least two people were wounded in a Tuesday shooting at Lone Star College in north Houston, according to initial reports.

Helicopter video, carried by CNN, showed at least one victim wearing a neck brace being wheeled on a stretcher to an ambulance.

CNN reported that a suspect was in custody but that could not be immediately confirmed.

TIMELINE: U.S. mass shootings 

Students were shown jogging away, with their hands up, as police entered a building on or near the campus. Students were later shown walking calmly as police vehicles remained massed around the campus.

KTRK-TV reported that officials were focusing on the campus' library. The station showed a victim being wheeled into Ben Taub General Hospital after the shooting.

"We know that shots have been fired and we are in a shelter-in-place situation on the campus," Vicki Cassidy, manager of media relations for Lone Star College System, told the Houston Chronicle. "It's a pretty chaotic scene at this point in time."

An alert posted on the school's website at 12:47 p.m. advised students, faculty and staff "to take immediate shelter where you are."

The Harris County Sheriff's Office said it would post more information on its Facebook account as it becomes available.

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From Death Star Petitions to AMAs: Great Moments of Obama's Meme Presidency

Even when he was running for president before his first term, many geeks speculated that Barack Obama was, well, One of Us. In the intervening four years since his election, this has proven to be all too true. Occasionally Vice President Joe Biden even gets in on the fun.

From inviting Wookiees to the White House to throwing up the Vulcan salute in the Oval Office, America's first Meme President has geek-fu for days – as do the people he puts in various positions of power (or at least in a position to run a Tumblr or Twitter feed). So at the start of his administration's second term, it seemed like a good time to reflect on the four years of nerdery Obama has already given the American population and relive the geekiest moments of Obama's first term. (Seriously, this guy might like Star Wars more than we do.)

Above:

After a petition to the White House for the U.S. to build a Death Star got more than 25,000 signatures, the administration was obligated to respond. The bad news: America would not be building a Death Star. The good news: The title of the response was, "This Isn't the Petition Response You Are Looking For."

Screengrab: Wired

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Walters expects to leave hospital soon

NEW YORK (AP) — Barbara Walters says she expects to be home from the hospital soon after taking a spill at a Saturday night party at the British ambassador’s home in Washington.

The veteran ABC newswoman thanked people who expressed concern in a statement read Monday on “The View.”

She says she’s running a low-grade fever and doctors don’t want to release her until her temperature is normal. She says things are going in the right direction and she expects to be home soon.

Her colleagues at “The View” wished her well on the air, although comic Joy Behar couldn’t resist a joke.

Behar urged Walters to get well and to “lay off the Grey Goose” vodka.

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Well Pets: Holly the Cat's Incredible Journey

Nobody knows how it happened: an indoor house cat who got lost on a family excursion managing, after two months and about 200 miles, to return to her hometown.

Even scientists are baffled by how Holly, a 4-year-old tortoiseshell who in early November became separated from Jacob and Bonnie Richter at an R.V. rally in Daytona Beach, Fla., appeared on New Year’s Eve — staggering, weak and emaciated — in a backyard about a mile from the Richters’ house in West Palm Beach.

“Are you sure it’s the same cat?” wondered John Bradshaw, director of the University of Bristol’s Anthrozoology Institute. In other cases, he has suspected, “the cats are just strays, and the people have got kind of a mental justification for expecting it to be the same cat.”

But Holly not only had distinctive black-and-brown harlequin patterns on her fur, but also an implanted microchip to identify her.

“I really believe these stories, but they’re just hard to explain,” said Marc Bekoff, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Colorado. “Maybe being street-smart, maybe reading animal cues, maybe being able to read cars, maybe being a good hunter. I have no data for this.”

There is, in fact, little scientific dogma on cat navigation. Migratory animals like birds, turtles and insects have been studied more closely, and use magnetic fields, olfactory cues, or orientation by the sun.

Scientists say it is more common, although still rare, to hear of dogs returning home, perhaps suggesting, Dr. Bradshaw said, that they have inherited wolves’ ability to navigate using magnetic clues. But it’s also possible that dogs get taken on more family trips, and that lost dogs are more easily noticed or helped by people along the way.

Cats navigate well around familiar landscapes, memorizing locations by sight and smell, and easily figuring out shortcuts, Dr. Bradshaw said.

Strange, faraway locations would seem problematic, although he and Patrick Bateson, a behavioral biologist at Cambridge University, say that cats can sense smells across long distances. “Let’s say they associate the smell of pine with wind coming from the north, so they move in a southerly direction,” Dr. Bateson said.

Peter Borchelt, a New York animal behaviorist, wondered if Holly followed the Florida coast by sight or sound, tracking Interstate 95 and deciding to “keep that to the right and keep the ocean to the left.”

But, he said, “nobody’s going to do an experiment and take a bunch of cats in different directions and see which ones get home.”

The closest, said Roger Tabor, a British cat biologist, may have been a 1954 study in Germany in which cats placed in a covered circular maze with exits every 15 degrees most often exited in the direction of their homes, but more reliably if their homes were less than five kilometers away.

New research by the National Geographic and University of Georgia’s Kitty Cams Project, using video footage from 55 pet cats wearing video cameras on their collars, suggests cat behavior is exceedingly complex.

For example, the Kitty Cams study found that four of the cats were two-timing their owners, visiting other homes for food and affection. Not every cat, it seems, shares Holly’s loyalty.

KittyCams also showed most of the cats engaging in risky behavior, including crossing roads and “eating and drinking substances away from home,” risks Holly undoubtedly experienced and seems lucky to have survived.

But there have been other cats who made unexpected comebacks.

“It’s actually happened to me,” said Jackson Galaxy, a cat behaviorist who hosts “My Cat From Hell” on Animal Planet. While living in Boulder, Colo., he moved across town, whereupon his indoor cat, Rabbi, fled and appeared 10 days later at the previous house, “walking five miles through an area he had never been before,” Mr. Galaxy said.

Professor Tabor cited longer-distance reports he considered credible: Murka, a tortoiseshell in Russia, traveling about 325 miles home to Moscow from her owner’s mother’s house in Voronezh in 1989; Ninja, who returned to Farmington, Utah, in 1997, a year after her family moved from there to Mill Creek, Wash.; and Howie, an indoor Persian cat in Australia who in 1978 ran away from relatives his vacationing family left him with and eventually traveled 1,000 miles to his family’s home.

Professor Tabor also said a Siamese in the English village of Black Notley repeatedly hopped a train, disembarked at White Notley, and walked several miles back to Black Notley.

Still, explaining such journeys is not black and white.

In the Florida case, one glimpse through the factual fog comes on the little cat’s feet. While Dr. Bradshaw speculated Holly might have gotten a lift, perhaps sneaking under the hood of a truck heading down I-95, her paws suggest she was not driven all the way, nor did Holly go lightly.

“Her pads on her feet were bleeding,” Ms. Richter said. “Her claws are worn weird. The front ones are really sharp, the back ones worn down to nothing.”

Scientists say that is consistent with a long walk, since back feet provide propulsion, while front claws engage in activities like tearing. The Richters also said Holly had gone from 13.5 to 7 pounds.

Holly hardly seemed an adventurous wanderer, though her background might have given her a genetic advantage. Her mother was a feral cat roaming the Richters’ mobile home park, and Holly was born inside somebody’s air-conditioner, Ms. Richter said. When, at about six weeks old, Holly padded into their carport and jumped into the lap of Mr. Richter’s mother, there were “scars on her belly from when the air conditioner was turned on,” Ms. Richter said.

Scientists say that such early experience was too brief to explain how Holly might have been comfortable in the wild — after all, she spent most of her life as an indoor cat, except for occasionally running outside to chase lizards. But it might imply innate personality traits like nimbleness or toughness.

“You’ve got these real variations in temperament,” Dr. Bekoff said. “Fish can be shy or bold; there seem to be shy and bold spiders. This cat, it could be she has the personality of a survivor.”

He said being an indoor cat would not extinguish survivalist behaviors, like hunting mice or being aware of the sun’s orientation.

The Richters — Bonnie, 63, a retired nurse, and Jacob, 70, a retired airline mechanics’ supervisor and accomplished bowler — began traveling with Holly only last year, and she easily tolerated a hotel, a cabin or the R.V.

But during the Good Sam R.V. Rally in Daytona, when they were camping near the speedway with 3,000 other motor homes, Holly bolted when Ms. Richter’s mother opened the door one night. Fireworks the next day may have further spooked her, and, after searching for days, alerting animal agencies and posting fliers, the Richters returned home catless.

Two weeks later, an animal rescue worker called the Richters to say a cat resembling Holly had been spotted eating behind the Daytona franchise of Hooters, where employees put out food for feral cats.

Then, on New Year’s Eve, Barb Mazzola, a 52-year-old university executive assistant, noticed a cat “barely standing” in her backyard in West Palm Beach, struggling even to meow. Over six days, Ms. Mazzola and her children cared for the cat, putting out food, including special milk for cats, and eventually the cat came inside.

They named her Cosette after the orphan in Les Misérables, and took her to a veterinarian, Dr. Sara Beg at Paws2Help. Dr. Beg said the cat was underweight and dehydrated, had “back claws and nail beds worn down, probably from all that walking on pavement,” but was “bright and alert” and had no parasites, heartworm or viruses. “She was hesitant and scared around people she didn’t know, so I don’t think she went up to people and got a lift,” Dr. Beg said. “I think she made the journey on her own.”

At Paws2Help, Ms. Mazzola said, “I almost didn’t want to ask, because I wanted to keep her, but I said, ‘Just check and make sure she doesn’t have a microchip.’” When told the cat did, “I just cried.”

The Richters cried, too upon seeing Holly, who instantly relaxed when placed on Mr. Richter’s shoulder. Re-entry is proceeding well, but the mystery persists.

“We haven’t the slightest idea how they do this,” Mr. Galaxy said. “Anybody who says they do is lying, and, if you find it, please God, tell me what it is.”

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