Rangers’ Desperate Playoff Moments Feel Familiar, as Does Their Relief

Abstract: Still wearing his goaltender’s pads, Henrik Lundqvist leaned back in his locker, exhausted and soaked with perspiration as he replenished himself with fluids. The moment of respite was a chance to savor yet another improbable comeback playoff victory by the Rangers. Friday night’s 2-1 win in overtime against the Capitals had a similar finish to another Game 5 at Madison Square Garden against Washington, a 2012 game in which Brad Richards tied the score in the waning seconds and Marc Staal scored the overtime winner. On Friday, the stars were Chris Kreider, whose goal late in the third period tied the score, and the captain Ryan McDonagh, who had the winner in overtime. Derek Stepan set up both goals as the Rangers — who, despite their improbable victory, still trail the series, three games to two — rescued their season and forced Game 6 in Washington on Sunday night. “We kept working until the end even though the goals haven’t come easy for us,” said Lundqvist, who won his ninth straight elimination game at home since 2008. “We just have to continue to stay positive and play our game.” That has been the mantra for the Rangers, who have played the most postseason games of any team over the past four years: 67. With a chance to reach the conference finals for the first time since the 1997-98 season, the Capitals led by 1-0 with less than two minutes remaining in Game 5. But as Lundqvist skated hard toward the bench so the Rangers could send out an extra attacker, Kreider whipped the puck past Braden Holtby at 18 minutes 19 seconds. Lundqvist did a U-turn of pure elation after the Rangers finally solved Holtby, who until then had held them to two goals since the first period of Game 2. A victory by the Capitals would have put them in the third round of the playoffs for the first time in Alex Ovechkin’s career. It also would have been the first time since 2007 that the Rangers were eliminated at home. But neither happened, as McDonagh’s shot through traffic at 9:37 of overtime sent the Garden crowd into a frenzy and the Capitals heading home for a game they may feel they have to win, given Lundqvist’s record at the Garden. “Of course you want to close out the series,” said Ovechkin, who led the league with 53 goals this season and has four goals in the playoffs, but none in the past three games. “You have to forget about it and move forward.” The Capitals beat the Rangers, 1-0 and 2-1, at Verizon Center in Games 3 and 4 after the teams split the first two contests at the Garden. Every game in the series has been decided by one goal. Indeed, all 10 of the Rangers’ games this postseason have had a one-goal margin, and they have played 12 straight one-goal playoff games, an N.H.L. record, dating to the finals last June. The Rangers’ penchant for razor-thin margins may have a lot to do with Lundqvist, who has allowed two or fewer goals in eight straight playoff games and continues to save his team in crucial moments. He has won 19 times, with a 1.77 goals-against average, in 30 games immediately after playoff losses since the start of the 2012 playoffs. “It’s definitely a challenge not to get frustrated, and I’m just a goalie,” he said of his team’s struggle to score against the Capitals. “We felt like it was a matter of time before we’d get rewarded. It’s just a big relief.” For Rangers defenseman Marc Staal, a veteran of 78 playoff games starting in 2007-8, overtime was a chance to remain calm. “We weren’t too riled up,” said Staal, who scored 1:35 into overtime of Game 5 against Washington in 2012. “We went out and did the job.” The Rangers’ methodical plan worked Friday night. They limited Washington to two shots on Lundqvist in overtime, keeping Washington’s top line of Ovechkin, Nicklas Backstrom and Joel Ward at bay as they pressed the Capitals to make a mistake. That happened when Curtis Glencross — who had scored the Capitals’ only goal — gave away the puck near his team’s blue line. Jesper Fast raced down the right wing and passed the puck to his left to Stepan, who dropped it back to McDonagh. “Obviously, we know the building is loud and the tension is rising, but at the same time you’ve got to be able to make plays and have poise with the puck,” said McDonagh, the first defenseman in Rangers history to score an overtime goal to stave off elimination. “It’s a good sign for us that we found a way to win this game under immense pressure.” When the Rangers and Capitals met in the first round in 2013, the Rangers trailed by three games to two before Lundqvist recorded shutouts in the final two games. In 2012, the Rangers won Game 7, 2-1, at the Garden. Lundqvist knows that the Capitals, with their many veterans, will be an especially difficult opponent in Washington, where they have lost only once in six games this postseason. But after needing seven games to oust the Islanders in the opening round, the Capitals could be weary and fearing a Game 7 on the road against Lundqvist. “We’ll try to play our best game of the series, and we expect they will, too,” Lundqvist said. “There’s a lot of pressure for them. I know for sure they don’t want to come back here for another game.”

Rangers
Playoffs
Ice hockey
Washington Capitals


Jeff Fluhr of Spreecast, on Finding Employees Who Fit

Abstract: This interview with Jeff Fluhr , chief executive of Spreecast, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant. Q. Did you have the entrepreneurial itch when you were a kid? A. The first thing I did as an entrepreneur was during middle school. I started selling candy to other students, which was not O.K. from the principal’s perspective. I would go to this wholesale candy distributor, buy a bunch of candy in large boxes, and then sell it at marked-up prices. Q. Are there entrepreneurs in your family? A. My grandfather started a women’s clothing store in Manhattan that is still around today, and now my mother runs that store. I always looked up to my grandfather, and how he was controlling his own destiny. My father took an early retirement package from his job as an engineering executive at AT&T, and he’s since started a couple of companies as well. Q. What was your first job after college? A. I worked at the Blackstone Group in New York. I was 22, and working on these deals where we were buying big manufacturing companies. I spent a few years doing that, and I learned a lot. I had a dual degree from Penn in engineering and finance, and I focused more on the finance side when I went to Blackstone. But I wanted to work with higher-growth technology companies. Q. That’s quite a first job out of college. What else did you learn from that time? A. I learned a lot that’s valuable in the start-up world. One is understanding the inner workings of financial modeling. With the companies I’m involved with, I’m generally the only finance person for a while until the company starts to scale. But it also taught me how to look at businesses, and see how certain shifts in industries create opportunities. I also learned about the discipline of hard work. It was an intense first job, with 80-hour weeks, and being at the office until midnight and sometimes working on weekends. I just saw the value of hard work and the importance of putting in the time. Q. So your first company was StubHub. A. I went to Stanford Business School because I wanted to either join a start-up or start my own company. It’s a great institution, but I dropped out because I started StubHub in the middle of my first year. We incorporated the company in March 2000, and then the Internet bubble burst in April 2000. That was an interesting dynamic in terms of raising our first round of capital. Image Jeff Fluhr, chief executive of Spreecast, a social video platform, says he thinks that the work background of job candidates is less important than their “softer characteristics,” like “the cultural fit, the chemistry fit, their personality traits, their level of optimism.” Credit Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times Q. You ran StubHub for seven years before selling it to eBay. What were some lessons you took away from that experience? A. It was the first time I had an operating role. It was definitely a jump-in-the-deep-end experience. In retrospect, the way we recruited the first handful of people had a lot of positives, but there are probably multiple schools of thought on this. I basically brought in a number of friends — people I knew from college or high school, and others with one degree of separation from those people. Q. And your thinking was...? A. One, I have access to them and I know who they are. Two, I respect them and trust them and think they’re smart. And they were interested and available. I’m sure there are people who say you shouldn’t hire your friends. Having said that, one of the huge advantages of doing that is there was instant trust. And hiring people is tough, and there’s a high failure rate in hiring at early-stage companies. With people I already knew, there’s obviously a failure rate there, too. But some of the potential issues were nonissues, like trust and really knowing the person. Q. Tell me about your approach to hiring at your current company. A. I’ve found that the softer characteristics of a person — the cultural fit, the chemistry fit, their personality traits, their level of optimism — are far more important than somebody’s experience. What I was often doing at StubHub as the company grew was to say, “O.K., we need a V.P. of marketing and we want somebody who’s been a V.P. marketing at another consumer Internet company, and hopefully, they’ve done these certain things because that’s what we need.” But the reality is that if you get somebody who’s smart, hungry and has a can-do attitude, they can figure out how to do A, B and C, because there’s really no trick to most of these things. Q. So how do you interview now? A. I always ask people why they’re thinking about leaving their current job, and why it isn’t fulfilling what they’re looking for. Part of that conversation is about what they’re looking for, and their goals for the next step of their career. Understanding that helps create a picture of whether they’re going to be a good fit. Q. What else about the culture at your current company? A. We’ve always done “hack days,” where the engineers basically can build whatever they want for a full day, and then present what they’ve done to the company. But recently we’ve started doing “hack weeks.” So we basically let the engineers build whatever they want for a week, and then present their ideas to the whole company. And all of the nonengineers are also asked to come up with ideas for what features they want to see on Spreecast, or it could even be on some parallel initiative. It allows us to innovate completely out of the box. Motivating engineers and keeping them excited and engaged is something we’re obviously very interested in. We’re trying to create a sense of empowerment and autonomy where they can kind of do what they want, and they don’t just always have to do the next batch of work that’s on the priority list. Q. What career advice would you give to a graduating class of college seniors? A. One of the things I tell people is that experience is overrated. I still sometimes find myself falling into the trap of thinking, when I’m trying to fill a role, “Has the person done the work that the role requires?” That’s the wrong question. It should be, “Let’s find a person who has the right chemistry, the right intellect, the right curiosity, the right creativity.” If we plug that person into any role, they’re going to be successful.

Jeff Fluhr
Spreecast
StubHub
Job Recruiting and Hiring
Management


Claremont Prep School Leadership Changes Hands

Abstract: Claremont Preparatory School, a for-profit school founded in Lower Manhattan in 2005, has abruptly changed its leadership, telling parents by e-mail on Wednesday that its headmaster was not returning and that an interim replacement had been appointed. The message, also posted on the school’s Web site , said that the headmaster, Irwin Shlachter, “will no longer be with us” and that Kenneth Wrye, a former head of the United Nations International School, will fill in while the school searches for a permanent leader. Dr. Wrye will be the third head of school since Claremont’s founding. The school, one of very few for-profit schools in the city, has quickly expanded but has been plagued with high staff turnover, an ugly lawsuit brought by a former school psychologist and complaints from parents about the quality of the education and poor communication. Several parents said they were upset that the school had waited until after June 1 — at which point tuition for the following year is nonrefundable — to inform them that Mr. Shlachter was leaving. (The school costs $33,000 a year.) Mr. Shlachter, who did not respond to calls seeking comment, left the building a week ago, and word circulated that he would not be returning. Michael C. Koffler, executive director of the school and the chief executive of MetSchools , the company that runs Claremont and nine other schools, said Mr. Shlachter was being replaced to take the school in a “new direction.” “Our school has a substantial international component and diversity, and we wanted to expand on that,” he said. He attributed the turnover in leadership to “growing pains” and said he did not think it was higher than at other schools. In addition to the changes at the top, in its short existence the school has had three heads of admissions, two lower school heads and two middle school heads. Parents have been told that 12 teachers will not be returning for the next school year. “Due to all the unfortunate changes at the school, families don’t feel settled,” said Dana Haddad, a former director of admissions at Claremont, whom the school forced to leave last year. “I have been and will continue to help Claremont families in their quest to find new schools,” added Ms. Haddad, who is now an educational consultant. Claremont began with 54 students in kindergarten through seventh grade. This past year, 512 children attended the school, which now starts with a program for 3-year-olds and offers classes through the ninth grade. It owns a 125,000-square-foot building on Broad Street and has bought an additional 200,000 square feet close by to house the middle and upper schools. Richard Roberts, whose daughter Eva attended kindergarten at Claremont in 2008-9, said he liked the school but took his daughter out because it was not challenging enough. “When a new school gets started, naturally at the very beginning they are not as selective as they are as time goes on,” Mr. Roberts said. His daughter now attends the Speyer Legacy School, a new private school for gifted students . Mr. Koffler said that Claremont accepted 50 percent of its applicants and that 45 percent of those accepted choose to attend. He said about 8 percent of children leave every year, which he described as being standard. Mr. Shlachter was seen as a strict boss to many on the staff but also as someone whom many parents connected with. He greeted the children by name at the door every morning, and when parents expressed concern to him in recent months that his contract might not be renewed, he did not divulge anything. David Lamar, a member of the Claremont Prep Association, a parents’ group, distributed a letter Wednesday morning expressing concern about the “rumors” of Mr. Shlachter’s departure. “All of us want to see stability and strength at our school. We feel there has been a great deal of turnover, and most importantly none of us want to learn of things through gossip, rumors and surprise,” Mr. Lamar’s letter said. “A tremendous amount of us came to Claremont Prep because of Irwin’s warmth and plan for the school. I believe it clear that news of his departure would be extremely unsettling to most of us.” Mr. Koffler said he had not gotten the impression that parents were upset. “They didn’t telegraph that to me,” he said. Mr. Koffler called a meeting at the school for Thursday to discuss the changes. He also said that there had been no time for transparency and that parents would have a say in the choice of a permanent leader. Earlier this year, Claremont and Mr. Shlachter were placed in an uncomfortable light when a former school psychologist, Gabriella Johr, sued the school, saying Mr. Shlachter had fired her because she reported to child-welfare authorities that a student had said his mother had hit him. In its response to the suit, Claremont denied Ms. Johr’s accusations and said she had breached her contract and failed to use her training to properly evaluate the situation. Mr. Koffler said his decision to replace Mr. Shlachter was not a result of the lawsuit, though he did say, “It resulted in a lawsuit, and we’re not accustomed to lawsuits.”

Claremont Preparatory School
Irwin Shlachter
Private and Sectarian Schools
Manhattan (NYC)
Suits and Litigation
Suspensions Dismissals and Resignations


Villanova Serves Notice With Romp Over Seton Hall

Abstract: VILLANOVA, Pa. — After Monday night’s game at the Pavilion, Villanova Coach Jay Wright and Seton Hall Coach Kevin Willard exchanged back slaps and compliments. Willard laughed at a joke by Wright but then turned serious. “Keep it rolling,” Willard told him. “You’ve got a Final Four team here.” Willard’s team was dismantled by No. 6 Villanova, 80-54, as the Wildcats gained some revenge for a loss to the Pirates on Jan. 3. Five Villanova players scored in double figures on Monday, led by the senior Darrun Hilliard, who had 18 points. Not many teams in N.C.A.A. Division I have more victories than Villanova (24-2, 11-2 Big East). Yet the Wildcats, one of the top-ranked teams for the entire season, have attracted little national attention. As the N.C.A.A. tournament approaches, Villanova is expected to do what it did last season — win nearly 30 games and earn a top-three seed. Sometimes, even when a team is winning as much as Villanova is these days, a compliment like the one from Willard is just nice to hear. “Our staff works very hard to make sure that we all don’t take that for granted,” Wright said later. “Now fans do sometimes. Fans get to experience it over a long period of time. I want to make sure that the players here don’t ever get burdened with the past. That they get to enjoy their experiences here.” While Villanova has built a successful national program, it remains at a level below that of universities like Kentucky and Duke. It has a reputation as a very good college basketball team, not an elite one. Image Darrun Hilliard, who led Villanova with 18 points, defending Isaiah Whitehead of Seton Hall. Credit Matt Slocum/Associated Press “That’s all right,” Wright said. “We just know, because we have a group of older guys, that we have to prove ourselves at the end anyway.” Wright is in his 14th season on the Main Line. In 10 of those seasons, he has won 20 or more games. He has had nine N.C.A.A. appearances, making the Final Four in 2009. He does not doubt the success at Villanova, nor do his players. But because there has not been a national championship to go along with all those wins, the Wildcats have been kept a step below. The Wildcats, though, appreciate where they are. “I think you can ask a lot of other teams and players, ‘Would you rather be 24-2 and 11-2 in the Big East — or would you rather be what your record is?’ ” said Randy Foye, a former Villanova all-American who is now in the N.B.A. Foye’s point was proved down the hall from Villanova’s locker room, where a Seton Hall team reeling from its fifth straight loss continued to wonder how its season had unraveled. A month ago, after the victory over Villanova, the Pirates surged into the Associated Press Top 25, at No. 19. But internal strife — some players had a verbal altercation during a timeout in last week’s loss to Georgetown, and the sophomore guard Jaren Sina left the program — has compounded the losing. On Monday, Seton Hall fell to 15-11, 5-9 in the conference. Wright knows that part of the winning equation is that he has a veteran team; Willard’s is made up mainly of freshmen and sophomores. Seton Hall’s leading upperclassman, Sterling Gibbs, scored only 12 points and was ejected in the second half for striking Villanova’s Ryan Arcidiacono in the head. It mattered little. At the end of the night, it was one more Villanova win — not flashy, but efficient. “They are just a really good basketball team, top to bottom,” Willard said of the Wildcats. “They play great; they play together; they play hard. I think you think of them as a team. Like you think of the San Antonio Spurs. The Spurs have great players, but they’re a team.”

Villanova
Seton Hall
Jay Wright
Kevin Willard
College basketball


Democrats Seek Issues to Lure Midterm Votes After Races Buoy G.O.P.

Abstract: WASHINGTON — With Tuesday’s primaries reinforcing the strength of the Republican establishment , House Democrats are reassessing their electoral strategy based on a major internal research project that shows their candidates stand a better chance when they portray Republicans as uncaring toward working-class Americans while they continue to back policies favoring the wealthy and corporate America. Democrats could build on this distrust, the research showed, by emphasizing support for policies such as equal pay for men and women, ensuring that corporations pay a fair share of taxes, and increased job opportunities in the United States. The research also found that an effort to increase the minimum wage — a recent top priority of congressional Democrats and the White House — is not by itself enough to motivate swing voters to go to the polls and back Democrats in the fall. “It concerns voters but doesn’t necessarily motivate them to vote in the midterms,” said Representative Steve Israel of New York, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee . Mr. Israel presented the extensive findings to a meeting of House Democrats on Wednesday morning, the day after six states — Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Oregon and Pennsylvania — held primaries. The primaries showed that incumbent Republicans in the House and Senate are beating back challenges from the right in this election cycle, leaving Democrats fewer opportunities to take on either weakened incumbents or more conservative contenders who can be vulnerable in the general election. If the pattern continues, it will reduce the playing field for Democrats and increase the need for them to make their strongest case in races where they are competitive. Following the presentation to Democrats, some incumbents pressed for more guidance on how to move ahead with the strategy, while others expressed their belief that the minimum wage increase needed to remain a central part of their appeal. The Democrats’ six-figure research project, begun to help the party find a way to spur midterm turnout, will shape the party’s strategy over the coming months. It involved four separate pollsters and included a special focus on Hispanic and African-American voters, going well beyond previous efforts by the campaign organization. It covered 67 House districts, included 16 focus groups, and tested various advertising attacks and themes. The research illustrates clearly that Democrats, trying to prevent any loss of seats, recognize that they face a special challenge in again turning out Democrat-leaning voters who gave President Obama a victory in 2012 . Democrats say the most heartening finding was that economic themes that rally committed Democratic voters also serve to encourage unaffiliated voters and the so-called drop-off Democrats, those who voted in the presidential election but might not vote this year. In contrast, the research suggested to Democrats that the conservative issues that stir committed Republican voters tend to turn off centrist voters both parties are fighting over. “We are fortunate that we can use messages to both universes of people,” said Jefrey Pollock, the president of the Global Strategy Group, a Democratic pollster who worked on the project, noting that Republicans “can’t talk to their right wing” without alienating independent voters. Republicans say that they believe they have the upper hand in the overall battle for the House and that Democrats remain on the defensive over the Affordable Care Act and the continuing slow recovery of the employment market. This week, Representative Greg Walden of Oregon, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee , set a goal of gaining 12 seats in the election to bring the Republican majority to 245, an outcome that even Republicans acknowledged seemed ambitious. “I’m confident that with so many outstanding recruits in districts all across the country, and with the wind at our backs, that we will continue to expand the playing field and rise to this challenge,” Mr. Walden said. Democrats expressed surprise that he would put down such a definitive marker months before the election and said that their new data helped them formulate a game plan that should keep them competitive, given some advantages at the field organizing level and in party fund-raising. Democrats this week reported again that they had outraised House Republicans and that they retain an edge of more than $11 million in available cash. Republicans have their own research programs, and on Thursday, a group of conservative scholars and writers are to present a manifesto in Washington in an effort to prod the party into offering policies that are more attractive to middle-class voters. Democratic consultants, in their research, tested several advertisements with voters and found that the most effective one featured a fictitious Republican congressman who backed the government shutdown but continued to collect his check while the House gym remained open. It accused the make-believe House member of being more interested in the perquisites of office than representing his constituents. Democrats said the advertising response showed that while the shutdown seems like history in current political terms, it remains a powerful negative for Republicans when it is linked to the benefits of office. “You can expect to see a pairing of the two, Republicans protecting their perks while turning their backs on the middle class,” Mr. Israel said.While the minimum wage was not a driver for swing voters, the polling of Hispanic voters showed that a wage increase was a winning issue with that constituency, which saw the economy as its most important issue. On health care, Democrats said the research reinforced their view that Republicans have been unable to make it the defining issue of the campaign.

Democrats
Primaries
Election
Polls
House of Representatives
Congress
US
US Politics
Income Inequality


Chinese Official Sentenced to 13 Years in Sex Scandal That Was Exposed on Internet

Abstract: HONG KONG — Lei Zhengfu, a Chinese official who became a symbol of corruption, was convicted of taking bribes and sentenced to 13 years in prison on Friday in a scandal that exposed the sordid deal-making in Communist Party politics. The conviction of Mr. Lei was the culmination of a fall that began when video images spread on the Internet in November showing him with an 18-year-old woman. The images, and ensuing accusations of graft and extortion, made him a much-mocked exhibit in the newly appointed Communist Party leadership’s efforts to persuade citizens that it was stamping out official graft and depravity, which have stoked deepening public ire. Mr. Lei was sentenced days after President Xi Jinping made a new call to halt bureaucratic corruption and bribe-taking. A court in Chongqing, the municipality in southwest China where Mr. Lei once worked, dismissed his argument that a payoff of $488,000, or 3 million renminbi, he had arranged through an associate was a legitimate loan, not hush money to keep secret the video showing him with the young woman. The court said the money amounted to a bribe. “The sums involved were massive, and the effects were malign,” said the verdict read to Mr. Lei in the courtroom, according to Xinhua, China’s state-run news agency. “This should be sternly punished according to the law.” China’s leaders have vowed to get rid of corrupt officials, however low or high. Before his dismissal in November, Mr. Lei was the party secretary of Beibei, a district of Chongqing. Critics said the spectacle of his trial did not make up for Mr. Xi’s failure thus far to take down senior officials, despite widespread speculation about corruption investigations in the government and the military involving powerful figures and large amounts of money. “Lei Zhengfu was not a high-level official,” Zhu Ruifeng, the muckraking blogger who first publicized the lurid images of Mr. Lei, said in a telephone interview from Beijing. “I don’t see much hope of the party and government really taking on corruption. Image Lei Zhengfu, center, the party secretary of Beibei, a district of Chongqing, China, attended his trial on corruption charges in June. Credit Chinatopix, via Associated Press “Each generation of leaders vows to do that, but the results are plain to see. We don’t hold much hope.” The verdict drew avid interest from the Chinese news media and on Web sites. On Friday, another court in Chongqing convicted Xiao Ye, the businessman who had orchestrated the “honey trap” and threatened to expose video from 2008 that showed Mr. Lei, now 55, and the young woman having sex. Mr. Xiao was sentenced to 10 years in prison on extortion charges, and the woman, Zhao Hongxia, received a sentence of two years. On the Internet in China, some voiced wry sympathy for Mr. Lei. “Lei Zhengfu was given a sentence of 13 years. He was in bed for 12 seconds, which makes one year for each second, with a year to spare,” said one of many similar jests on Sina.com’s Weibo, China’s most popular equivalent of Twitter. After his sentence was announced, Mr. Lei did not say whether he would appeal, said Xinhua. China’s party-run courts rarely decide in favor of defendants, especially in politically charged cases like this one, and appeals courts overturn guilty verdicts even less. Mr. Xi, who is the party chief, has started a “rectification” drive intended to clean up official ranks. During a recent meeting that lasted four days, he and other leaders denounced “hedonism, extravagance” and other bureaucratic sins, and took turns chastising themselves and others, state news media reported. “Strictly manage your own families and personal staff,” Mr. Xi said. “Don’t abuse power for selfish gain, don’t seek special privileges.” Mr. Lei was among the first of a succession of party officials whose misdeeds were exposed on the Internet, leading to their downfalls, after Mr. Xi became the party leader in November. The hunger for exposing wayward officials has encouraged an underground trade of extortionists who concoct pictures of lurid encounters. But Mr. Zhu, the blogger, said the party authorities in recent months have tightened restrictions on using the Internet to publicize accusations of corruption. “At the time of the leadership handover, when we exposed Lei Zhengfu, the censorship was not so tough, but now it is again,” Mr. Zhu said. “Our working environment is worsening.”

Lei Zhengfu
Politics
China
Communist Party of China
Bribery and Kickbacks


Asus Eee Box Desktop Computer

Abstract: The laptop’s assault on the desktop PC continues. Asus has announced it is repacking its ultra-light, ultra-cheap notebook PC, the Eee, into a slim box for the office. The new version, named Eee Box, is only an inch thick and takes up less than 9 by 7 inches of desk space. Like the laptop, the Eee Box is missing a CD/DVD drive, but it can be purchased with a 250-gigabyte disk drive. (The smallest drive available is 80 gigabytes.) The company gives customers a choice of operating systems, either Windows XP or its stripped-down version of Linux. But customers have to find their own monitors. The machine, with Intel’s new Atom processor, will not be appealing to gamers who need fast and powerful computers. But Asus traded computing power for miserly electricity consumption. It says the design decisions that extend battery life in its notebooks could cut the power consumption by 90 percent from that of a typical desktop. As power prices soar, the machine’s frugality coupled with its low price of about $300 may make it even more appealing. PETER WAYNER

Asus
Computers and the Internet
Software
Energy Efficiency


Where Corn Is King, a New Regard for Grass-Fed Beef

Abstract: BASSETT, Neb. — Isolation comes with the territory in the Sandhills of Nebraska, where grassy dunes laced with wet meadows undulate above the Ogallala Aquifer, and the thinning towns are few and far between. In the four years since he settled here, Prescott Frost has found himself set apart more than most. In a state where corn is king, he is on a quest to breed a better cow for the grass-fed beef industry — one that can thrive without chemical pesticides, antibiotics, hormones and, the clincher, grain — and to market his own brand of artisanal meat. A great-grandson of the poet Robert Frost, who tended Ayrshire cattle in Vermont, the Connecticut-born Mr. Frost has spent a lifetime taking the road less traveled by. He put down roots on 7,000 acres in what he calls the Napa Valley of ranchland, home to more than 700 species of native grasses and forbs: bluestem, buffalo, reed canary, brome — the salad bar on which grass-fed beef is raised. “If change is going to come to the cattle industry, it’s got to come from educated people from the outside,” Mr. Frost said, quoting from Allan Nation, the publisher of The Stockman Grass Farmer, considered the grazier’s bible. Change comes slowly closer to the 100th meridian, the line of longitude bisecting East from West, where the average annual rainfall drops to less than 20 inches, acreage is measured in the thousands and the big city can be a day’s drive away. Where the great cattle herds once roamed, grass finishing — an intricate and lengthy ballet involving the balance of protein and energy derived from the stalk, with the flavor rendered by earth, plants and even stress — is a nearly lost art. Recent tradition dictates that animals be fattened for the slaughterhouse as quickly and as profitably as possible, on average between 14 and 18 months of age with the help of grain. These unconventional ranchers, their cattle idling in pastures for two or more years before reaching maturity, elicit cocked eyebrows. “There’s a cultural kind of fear-mongering that is involved,” said Fred Kirschenmann, a distinguished fellow at the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University and the president of the board of the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture in Pocantico Hills, N.Y. “The attitude out there is that grass-fed is for the crazies.” In late April, Mr. Frost was attending the Slow Money National Gathering in Boulder, Colo., where food producers trawled for investors, when he found himself at lunch with Tom Lasater of the storied Colorado and Texas ranching family. Dining on burgers and kale salad, the men could have been mistaken for oenophiles as they debated the nuances of dry aging and terroir, or how various grasses and soil conditions affect the taste of meat. Image Tom Lasater, who runs his family’s beef-marketing business in Colorado, has discussed a collaboration with Prescott Frost. Credit Matthew Staver for The New York Times “When the wine industry started out in California, nobody had a language for what a bouquet was,” Mr. Frost, 55, said. “Vintners had to come up with a way an audience could have a conversation about hints of raspberries, of camomile. And that’s what we have to do with beef.” The next week, Mr. Lasater, 42, who in 2009 settled in Denver to run his family’s beef-marketing business, paid Mr. Frost a visit to discuss a possible collaboration. “He’s a fellow maverick,” Mr. Lasater said. “Finding someone like Prescott is like finding a needle in a haystack.” The connection was easy to understand. Each had been educated at Eastern boarding schools (Mr. Frost at the Putney School in Vermont; Mr. Lasater at the Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire), had lived abroad (Mr. Frost in Paris and Rome; Mr. Lasater in China and Hong Kong) and had spent time in California (Mr. Frost as a stockbroker and decorative painter in Los Angeles; Mr. Lasater as an Internet entrepreneur in Silicon Valley). And though Mr. Frost took up farming in 2003 after inheriting land in Illinois while Mr. Lasater grew up in the saddle, each was focused on addressing the distribution imbalance between the heartland and the coasts, and on increasing name recognition of their brands. “The intrigue and the interest in eating grass-fed beef is more in the areas of urban concentration, and where you have the cheaper land is more in the rural Midwest areas,” Mr. Kirschenmann said. “In New York, land is so expensive that farmers can’t afford to raise animals from birth to butcher on grass.” After beef samples sent to food writers received enthusiastic reviews, Mr. Frost created a monthly Internet club, at PrescottFrost.com , that offers organic, grass-fed ground beef and hot dogs, with steaks as a bonus for subscribers. All the meat, his own and that of other producers, relies on the genetics masterminded by his partner, Rick Calvo, who fine-tunes their ranch’s two herds: Mr. Frost’s Murray Greys and Mr. Calvo’s Red Angus. “You want a minimum-input type cow, with more depth of body, more thickness, good udder structure and a good disposition,” Mr. Calvo said. “An angry cow is not a very good eating experience.” With Grass-Fed Beef, Midwest Ranchers Take Their Time 9 Photos View Slide Show › Image Matthew Staver for The New York Times In the mid-1990s, Mr. Lasater’s father, Dale Lasater, whose holistic management techniques have been chronicled in National Geographic and the documentary “Food, Inc.,” decided to market the Beefmaster, his family’s breed. “We learned that just because we liked our beef didn’t mean that anyone else in the world did, or even really cared what grass-fed beef was,” Tom Lasater said. “For the first 10 years it was a real uphill battle.” Lasater Grasslands Beef sells about 75 percent of its product through retailers like Whole Foods and Natural Grocers, with the remaining 25 percent online. “Grass-fed beef is getting to a point where it’s almost an interesting business,” Mr. Lasater said the afternoon before heading to California to speak with investors. “It sounds fairly simple, but when you get into the nitty-gritty of raising the beef and trying to supply people on a timely basis — what they want, when they want it and how they want it — it’s actually complicated, because you’re at the mercy of Mother Nature.” A month ago, the Lasater Ranch in Matheson — some 30,000 acres of shortgrass prairie 70 miles southeast of Denver that runs along the cottonwood-lined Big Sandy Creek, now dry — received its first rain in more than a year. “The grass is very green and the ranch looks great, but six weeks ago we were wondering what happens if we have to move cattle off,” Mr. Lasater said. “Whole Foods doesn’t suddenly stop wanting cattle, and all of your other customers don’t suddenly disappear.” Recently, Mr. Frost was recuperating after a harried drive back to Nebraska from New York and Connecticut, where he, too, had tried to drum up investors. “How lucky am I?” he asked as the rush of a flow-well broke the early morning silence. “It’s amazing to be part of something that has the potential to be so huge in terms of the planet and sustainability. I say it’s revolutionary.”

Beef
Nebraska
Prescott Frost
Meat
Cattle
Agriculture
Tom Lasater
Colorado


Sinkhole and Town: Now You See It ...

Abstract: DAISETTA, Tex. — A huge and ravenous sinkhole that threatened to swallow this little East Texas oil town gobbled more crumbling earth Thursday but spared, at least for now, homes, the high school and the main road, Farm to Market 770. “It’s unreal — the earth just wallered up,” said Lynn Wells, the mayor and fire chief, who monitored emergency efforts, speeding back and forth on his red Harley-Davidson. Since the rim of an underground salt dome collapsed and the ground cracked and gave way abruptly Wednesday morning, the hole — already one of the largest on record, geologists here said — has grown to about 600 feet by 525 feet and 150 feet deep, said Cpl. Hugh Bishop of the Liberty County Sheriff’s Office. Tom Branch, coordinator of the Liberty County Office of Emergency Management, has been in the job only two weeks and was expecting something different from oil country. “I’m used to things blowing up, not falling in,” Mr. Branch said. Two trucks have already tumbled into the saltwater muck, along with two grain tanks, utility poles and pine trees. A work shed of the DeLoach Oil and Gas Well Vacuum Service adjacent to the pit hung precariously over the rim, likely to topple in next. “I’ve got some lakefront lots to sell here,” said a neighbor, Harold McCann, 82, as he sat on his property staring out at what had been, barely 24 hours ago, a wooded field. Officials expressed cautious optimism Thursday that the collapse had stabilized. “It appears to be slowing down, the hole does,” Corporal Bishop said. But he said that “there are still chunks falling in” and that the authorities were prepared to evacuate Daisetta’s 1,034 residents if the hole suddenly grew. Carl E. Norman, a consulting geologist and professor emeritus at the University of Houston, did not offer residents much comfort when he said at a news briefing here, “This is not the largest sinkhole in the world.” But Dr. Norman added: “For a salt dome, this is a very large one. This is exceptionally large.” He said, “This may become stable any day, or it could collapse in six months.” And, he warned, “It could double in size.” There were not many options, Dr. Norman said, adding, “Stopping it is a very difficult thing to do.” The entire subterranean salt dome might be as much as six miles in diameter, he said. The collapse might have been entirely natural, he said, or hastened by injections of saltwater wastes by oil companies under disposal permits from the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates oil drilling. According to the United States Geological Survey, sinkholes are common where the underlining rock is limestone, carbonate or salt beds that can be dissolved by circulating water that hollows out caverns. The land above stays intact for a while, and then can suddenly collapse. In 1973, a sinkhole that became known as the December Giant opened up near Montevallo, Ala. At 520 feet by 125 feet and 60 feet deep, it was then called the largest collapse in the country in many years. In the 1980s, smaller sinkholes opened up in and around Daisetta, about 50 miles east-northeast of Houston and named for two early residents, Daisy Barrett and Etta White. But nothing like the current collapse, which residents have begun calling “the Sinkhole de Mayo,” had ever happened here. The first warnings came Wednesday morning when employees of the DeLoach company saw cracks in the earth and the roadway started “warping down,” Corporal Bishop said. Ricky and Dicky Johnson, brothers who live near Mr. McCann close to the pit, said they felt it coming on about 10 a.m. “The ground got to shaking,” said Dicky Johnson, over the din of news helicopters hovering over the site. Quickly, the hole grew to 20 feet across. Then things started falling in.


Meanwhile, the Other No. 2 Keeps On Punching

Abstract: FLAT ROCK, Mich. — As the economy reels, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. — the Other Running Mate — has been absolutely butchering Senator John McCain across the Rust Belt this week. It is not clear who has noticed. “John is so out of touch, he just has no idea,” charged Mr. Biden, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, who called his “old, dear friend” someone who “just doesn’t think,” who is behaving in a repugnant manner and who is peddling “Republican garbage,” and malarkey. The older woman who introduced him at a rally here called Mr. Biden’s Republican counterpart, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, a “bucket of fluff,” and he rewarded the woman as he took the microphone with an “I love you” and a gentle kiss on the head. “If I sound angry, it’s because I am angry,” Mr. Biden told a few hundred people gathered at a high school football field. Yes, he sounds angry, yelling through his stump speeches, flailing his arms and telling a (supportive) member of the audience to “Shush up, will you?” (“I’m kidding,” he added, but did not sound it.) But the reality for Mr. Biden is that while running mates are second-fiddlers by definition, the phenomenon of Ms. Palin has rendered him something of a fourth or fifth fiddle. It is not like last month, when reporters swarmed Mr. Biden’s Delaware home and delegates swooned at the Democratic convention. He is now trailed by just a few national reporters, and struggling to break through in a race marked by historic firsts, political celebrities and charismatic newcomers — none named Joe Biden. The Obama campaign was hoping to reintroduce Mr. Biden this week as running mate attack dog. But his penchant for verbal rambling ensured that much of the attention he drew was unwanted: he said wealthy Americans had a “patriotic” duty to pay more taxes, a remark the McCain campaign mocked relentlessly. Yet Joltin’ Joe has also become a fascinating Off Broadway spectacle in his own right. He is a distinctive blend of pit bull and odd duck whose weak filters make him capable of blurting out pretty much anything — “gaffes,” out-of-nowhere comments (pivoting midspeech to say “Excuse my back!” to people seated behind him), goofy asides (tapping a reporter’s chest and telling him, “You need to work on your pecs.”) Mr. Biden’s role is red-meat serious: to pulverize Mr. McCain, lend foreign policy heft to Senator Barack Obama and be his campaign’s main ambassador to two at-risk constituencies: former supporters of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and blue-collar Democrats. He speaks to working-class voters in the harsh language of their economic trials, and summons easy rage at ear-splitting volumes. “John said that the economy can have a ‘psychological effect,’ ” Mr. Biden said at a twilight rally in Media, Pa., on Tuesday. “Let me tell you about the psychological effect,” he said, describing his family’s economic struggles when he was young. Mr. Biden might seem like an afterthought on the national airwaves, but he can clearly resonate close up. “People got to wake up, because these guys in Washington are raping this country,” said Dave McLimans, a steelworker from Coatesville, Pa., who attended the rally in Media. “Joe Biden talks in a way that can wake people up.” Mr. Biden’s venues are, in many cases, economically challenged areas of swing states. His crowds are up-and-down in number and enthusiasm — some loud and in the thousands, others sleepier and small. But his reviews are generally good from voters, some who came in unconvinced about Mr. Obama. “Biden is a guy who I really believe, who really seems like he is going to help us out,” said Sheryl Kline, a loader for the United Parcel Service who attended a rally in Maumee, Ohio. “He sounds like someone who knows how we’re struggling.” Despite his hard words, there is also a joy to Mr. Biden’s pursuit. On Monday, he walked into a Ford plant in Macomb County, Mich., jumped behind the wheel of a red Mustang convertible and let loose with a few satisfying vroom-vrooms of the engine. “I know I’m not supposed to like muscle cars, but I like muscle cars,” Mr. Biden said as clusters of autoworkers whooped around him. “I tell you man, this is nice,” he said, giving a few extra revs of the engine for good measure, and his Senate cuff links clicked on the side of the car as he jumped out to more applause. In an interview, he rejected any notion that his message was not being heard. “I just don’t get that, I don’t see any evidence of that,” he said in the back office of the Maumee Elks Lodge. He barely mentions the Alaska governor in speeches; in the interview, he described her as “a very attractive political personality” who can “really deliver a political message.” Mr. Biden, 65, has been part of the national political furniture for decades. Like most senators, he thought he could be president, and he made runs for the job twice. Then Mr. Obama picked him for a job he said he never wanted. Mr. Biden retains his regal senatorial bearing even in gritty settings of the campaign trail. On Wednesday, he wore a pressed blue blazer with a hanky folded smartly into the breast pocket. His skin is perma-tanned, and his smile is shiny white. He has his own big entourage now — own bus, own plane. He conveys the giddy sense of a man who has won a political lottery, or been plucked from an elite purgatory. In Mansfield, Ohio, on Thursday, Mr. Biden made an improvisational stop at a diner, shook a bunch of hands and walked out into the sun holding a vanilla ice cream cone. “I’m dripping here, man,” Mr. Biden said to a well-wisher as he headed across the street to a carousel. “Am I too old to get on it?” he asked no one in particular, then headed back to his campaign bus. “Anyone need a ride?” he asked some people standing nearby. “I’ve got a nice bus.” Mr. Biden’s tone turns somber when he discusses Mr. McCain, a colleague of over two decades. The tenor of this campaign has tested a friendship that has been close even by Senate standards, where everyone claims to be “my good friend.” “That guy I used to know, he’s gone,” Mr. Biden said of Mr. McCain at the campaign event in Maumee, shaking his head. “It literally saddens me,” added Mr. Biden, who tends to used the word “literally” about a dozen times per speech (literally). Mr. Biden recalls that after Mr. McCain came under heavy attack from George W. Bush in the 2000 race for the Republican presidential nomination, he called Mr. McCain and offered to “go anywhere in the country and testify to his character.” Now, Mr. Biden asserts, Mr. McCain has embraced the same tactics he once criticized. “I tried to talk to John,” Mr. Biden said in the interview. When both men were at Columbia University last week on the Sept. 11 anniversary, Mr. Biden had a staff member try to arrange a dressing-room visit with Mr. McCain. But Mr. Biden was told not to come, he said. “I walked down anyway,” Mr. Biden said. “And who the hell is going to stop me?” Mr. McCain looked up and was “like, what is this about?” Mr. Biden said. Mr. McCain hugged Mr. Biden’s wife, Jill, and the two senators shared a quick handshake, but there was no time for any discussion. Leaving the Elks Lodge in Maumee this week, Mr. Biden threw his arms around volunteers, posed for photos, and said he was flattered about the attention. “Remember, no one decides who they’re going to vote for based on the vice president,” he said. “I mean that literally.”

Vice Presidents and Vice Presidency (US)


Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Brings Together Art and Science, Virtual and Real, Under One Big Roof

Abstract: TROY, N.Y. — On a hillside overlooking this college town on the banks of the Hudson, the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has erected a technological pleasure dome for the mind and senses. Eight years and $200 million in the making, the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, or Empac , resembles an enormous 1950s-era television set. But inside are not old-fashioned vacuum tubes but the stuff of 21st-century high-tech dreams dedicated to the marriage of art and science as it has never been done before, its creators say — 220,000 square feet of theaters, studios and work spaces hooked to supercomputers. Within its walls, the designers say, scientists can immerse themselves in data and fly through a breaking wave or inspect the kinks in a DNA molecule, artists can participate in virtual concerts with colleagues in different parts of the world or send spectators on trips through imaginary landscapes, and architects can ponder their creations from the inside before a single brick or two-by-four has been put in place. It opens for business on Oct. 3 with a three-week gala of performances including classical music, virtual reality rides, symposiums and celebrations. Some scientists dream of eventually using the new center to create a version of the “Star Trek” holodeck where humans can interact with life-size “synthetic creatures” who live only in a computer. Others plan to teach surgery by doing virtual procedures or taking doctors on tours through models of actual hearts and circulatory systems. “What you do is a function of what you want to do,” said Shirley Ann Jackson, a physicist and president of Rensselaer since 1999. In terms of scale and the combination of performance and research at a university, “Nothing can be compared to this,” she said. “To our knowledge, there is nothing else like it.” Jaron Lanier, a computer scientist, composer and visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, who coined the term “virtual reality,” noted that the notion of a “virtual reality theater” was not new. In the 1990s, for example, Silicon Valley denizens attended shows at the George Coates Performance Works, an abandoned neo-Gothic cathedral in San Francisco where human actors, music and digital effects were combined. But Empac, Mr. Lanier said, represents “a major leap in commitment and ambition.” Dr. Jackson said Rensselaer, which prides itself on interdisciplinary research and hands-on engineering learning, had a tradition of electronic arts, including a major in games and simulations. A performance center had been part of a long-range plan she and the trustees approved in 2000. The concept of Empac was born, she said, when she and her advisers decided to combine art with the problem of making sense of data, a problem that she said lay at the nexus of art, science, technology, cognitive perception and learning. In 2001, an anonymous donor gave the university $360 million, one of the largest private grants ever made to an American university, enabling Dr. Jackson to jump-start not just Empac but other elements of her plan as well. That gift was later augmented by $40 million from Curtis R. Priem, one of the founders of Nvidia, a maker of graphics processors, and for whom the center will be officially named. A London firm, Nicolas Grimshaw & Partners, was selected to design the building. To run the project, Dr. Jackson recruited Johannes Goebel, a composer, curator, computer music producer and founding director of the Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany. As he led a reporter on a hard-hatted tour of the nascent center late this summer, dodging piles of construction materials and workers, Dr. Goebel described his mission. “Art integrates the senses,” he said. “Science takes the senses apart and analyzes. The idea of Empac is to bridge the gap between the digital world of data and the physical world of our senses, which is where we make sense of things and decide what things mean.” “It’s always us as human beings who have the final word on what something means,” he said. The centerpiece of the building is a 1,200-seat concert hall, encased in curved wood like a ship within a ship, accessible by gangways from the lobby. A second, smaller theater seats 400, with movable stages and seats. Dr. Goebbel marched into the first of two studios that have been designed as so-called immersive environments, the future holodecks, where you will see and hear only what a producer or scientist wants you to. About the size of a basketball court, but square, with a 40-foot ceiling, the room was lined with odd-shaped acoustical panels that were sort of like giant speakers in reverse. Each panel is designed to absorb a different frequency of sound, so all the stray noise and energy are sucked out. “You need dead space to create immersion,” he said. There was rigging, he added, “so you can fly through it.” Linked to Empac and supplying it with all that data to fly through will be Rensselaer’s Computational Center for Nanotechnology Innovations , which has at its heart an I.B.M. Blue Gene supercomputer consisting of 32,768 parallel processors. The results of those computations could be anything: a chain of DNA, a semiconductor circuit, a map of the sky, the blood flow through a particular human body. “There is a lot of science nowadays where we generate tremendous amounts of data,” said John Kolb, vice president for information technology at Rensselaer. “Sometimes we know what to do with it. Sometimes we have to wonder where the gems are.” Scientists are used to viewing data on a small computer screen that measures maybe 1,000 pixels by 1,000 pixels, he said. Now imagine, he said, data projected on all four walls measuring 4,000 pixels by 4,000 pixels, with sound or touch as an extra dimension to tell you when some data points exceed some limit, for example. “Walk into this environment and the data is all around you,” Dr. Kolb said. “Education is the killer app,” he said. “You could have a kindergarten class that walks through a human being.” What will this actually be like? Last summer, with the new building still a construction site, a reporter seeking a taste of virtual reality art was taken to the temporary lair in downtown Troy of a group of video artists known as Workspace Unlimited , who have been commissioned to produce a piece for Empac’s opening. I was cautioned not to eat lunch first. I found myself inside a darkened room surrounded by a circular screen. At first the image projected on the screen simply reproduced the building we were in. But soon we had stepped off like astronauts into a dizzying light show, an abstract landscape of waving numbers not unlike the light show at the end of “2001: A Space Odyssey,” as one of the Workspace artists sitting at a computer maneuvered an avatar, or stylized representation of himself, around the screen. More than one avatar can roam this space at a time, but each has a unique experience. “It’s like sitting on the couch and watching a movie with someone, but you don’t experience or see quite the same thing,” said Thomas Soetens, of Workspace. At one haunting point we could see avatars controlled by Mr. Soetens and his colleague Kora Van den Bulcke staring at us from opposite directions like lonely moonwalkers, each stuck in their own landscape. But they couldn’t get together. Will the lonely avatars ever meet someday? Just as such tools of science make possible new kinds of art, Dr. Jackson said, she hoped this new center of art would lead to new science. “It’s exciting,” Dr. Jackson said. “The real message is we don’t know all that’s going to come out of this, but we know it’s going to be important.”

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Museums
Science and Technology
Computers and the Internet
Virtual Reality (Computers)


A Heart Device Is Found Vulnerable to Hacker Attacks

Abstract: To the long list of objects vulnerable to attack by computer hackers, add the human heart. The threat seems largely theoretical. But a team of computer security researchers plans to report Wednesday that it had been able to gain wireless access to a combination heart defibrillator and pacemaker. They were able to reprogram it to shut down and to deliver jolts of electricity that would potentially be fatal — if the device had been in a person. In this case, the researcher were hacking into a device in a laboratory. The researchers said they had also been able to glean personal patient data by eavesdropping on signals from the tiny wireless radio that Medtronic , the device’s maker, had embedded in the implant as a way to let doctors monitor and adjust it without surgery. The report, to published at www.secure-medicine.org , makes clear that the hundreds of thousands of people in this country with implanted defibrillators or pacemakers to regulate their damaged hearts — they include Vice President Dick Cheney — have no need yet to fear hackers. The experiment required more than $30,000 worth of lab equipment and a sustained effort by a team of specialists from the University of Washington and the University of Massachusetts to interpret the data gathered from the implant’s signals. And the device the researchers tested, a combination defibrillator and pacemaker called the Maximo, was placed within two inches of the test gear. Defibrillators shock hearts that are beating chaotically and dangerously back into normal rhythms. Pacemakers use gentle stimulation to slow or speed up the heart. Federal regulators said no security breaches of such medical implants had ever been reported to them. The researchers said they chose Medtronic’s Maximo because they considered the device typical of many implants with wireless communications features. Radios have been used in implants for decades to enable doctors to test them during office visits. But device makers have begun designing them to connect to the Internet, which allows doctors to monitor patients from remote locations. The researchers said the test results suggested that too little attention was being paid to security in the growing number of medical implants being equipped with communications capabilities. “The risks to patients now are very low, but I worry that they could increase in the future,” said Tadayoshi Kohno, a lead researcher on the project at the University of Washington, who has studied vulnerability to hacking of networked computers and voting machines. The paper summarizing the research is called “Pacemakers and Implantable Cardiac Defibrillators: Software Radio Attacks and Zero-Power Defenses.” The last part refers to defensive possibilities the researchers outlined that they say would enhance security without draining an implant’s battery. They include methods for warning a patient of tampering or requiring that an incoming signal be authenticated, using energy harvested from the incoming signals. But Mr. Kohno and Kevin Fu, who led the University of Massachusetts arm of the project, said they had not tried to test the defenses in an actual implant or to learn if anyone trying to use them might run afoul of existing patent claims. Another participant in the project, Dr. William H. Maisel, a cardiologist who is director of the Medical Device Safety Institute at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, said that the results had been shared last month with the F.D.A., but not with Medtronic. “We feel this is an industry-wide issue best handled by the F.D.A.,” Dr. Maisel said. The F.D.A. had already begun stepping up scrutiny of radio devices in implants. But the agency’s focus has been primarily on whether unintentional interference from other equipment might compromise the safety or reliability of the radio-equipped medical implants. In a document published in January, the agency included security in a list of concerns about wireless technology that device makers needed to address. Medtronic, the industry leader in cardiac regulating implants, said Tuesday that it welcomed the chance to look at security issues with doctors, regulators and researchers, adding that it had never encountered illegal or unauthorized hacking of its devices that have telemetry, or wireless control, capabilities. “To our knowledge there has not been a single reported incident of such an event in more than 30 years of device telemetry use, which includes millions of implants worldwide,” a Medtronic spokesman, Robert Clark, said. Mr. Clark added that newer implants with longer transmission ranges than Maximo also had enhanced security. Boston Scientific, whose Guidant division ranks second behind Medtronic, said its implants “incorporate encryption and security technologies designed to mitigate these risks.” St. Jude Medical, the third major defibrillator company, said it used “proprietary techniques” to protect the security of its implants and had not heard of any unauthorized or illegal manipulation of them. Dr. Maisel urged that patients not be alarmed by the discussion of security flaws. “Patients who have the devices are far better off having these devices than not having them,” he said. “If I needed a defibrillator, I’d ask for one with wireless technology.”

Defibrillators
Implants
Medtronic Inc
Security and Warning Systems
Computers and the Internet


Iran Vendors Protest Move to Collect a Sales Tax

Abstract: TEHRAN — Merchants in traditional bazaars in several large cities closed their shops this week to protest a decision by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to enforce the nation’s first ever sales tax. The protests, the largest since Mr. Ahmadinejad was elected in 2005, began Saturday in the central city of Isfahan when jewelers closed their shops, newspapers reported Wednesday. The strike spread, and by Tuesday bazaars in the cities of Shiraz, Tabriz, Qazvin and Mashhad had followed suit. The police clashed Wednesday with a group of shopkeepers who gathered outside the bazaar in Isfahan, the daily newspaper Sarmayeh reported. In Tehran, only the gold merchants joined the strike. Bazaars are the backbone of the country’s traditional economy. Before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, merchants allied with the clergy, and their strikes helped overthrow the government. They still wield significant power, and this is the first time since the revolution that they have protested on such a large scale. The news media refrained from reporting the protests until Wednesday because of the delicacy of the issue. Although the strike appeared to be a reaction to the sudden enforcement of the tax law, analysts said the driving issue was really the worsening of the economy. “These protests are not the result of the tax law,” said Saeed Leylaz, a political analyst and an economist in Tehran. He added, “These shopkeepers are the middle class who are fed up with the pressures and are now showing their frustration in a civil protest.” Last year, Parliament approved Iran ’s first value-added tax, a 3 percent levy on all products except basic commodities like dairy products and bread. But enforcement of the law began only on Sept. 21. The speaker of Parliament, Ali Larijani, said the law finally had to be put in place since it had been passed by Parliament, the ISCA news agency reported. Merchants, however, said the sales tax could lead to a further surge in prices and a drop in their sales. Mohammad Abbassi, a carpet salesman in Tehran’s bazaar, said business was bad even before the law was adopted. “Every day I opened and closed the shop without anyone coming to say hi or ask a price, for God’s sake,” he said. “What will happen if we increase the prices by another 3 percent?” Merchants demanded that the law be dropped or postponed. The newspaper Sarmayeh reported Thursday that the authorities had agreed to delay the law for three months, but only on gold products, in an effort to persuade merchants in Tehran to open their shops. The head of the Association of Guilds, Mohammad Azad, told the newspaper that the three-month delay would give enough time to resolve some issues under contention, but that the law would eventually be put in place. “We’ve had no agreements, but all our efforts are aimed at convincing the merchants to open their shops,” he said. The decision to enforce the law is seen as an effort by Mr. Ahmadinejad to increase the government’s revenue. Economists predict that within months he could face a budget deficit of nearly $50 billion. Iran’s economy is heavily dependent on oil, the prices of which have declined since this summer. Economists blame Mr. Ahmadinejad’s economic policies for the inflation. The Central Bank said Wednesday that Iran’s annual inflation rate had risen to 29.4 percent in September. Sarmayeh reported Thursday that the price of red meat in October was 23 percent higher than this time last year. In a televised address on Tuesday, Mr. Ahmadinejad dismissed the statistics, asserting that inflation had started to fall in the past six months. He referred to the decline in the value of real estate as an example. He also vowed to cut government subsidies on energy and basic commodities and to redistribute the money as payouts directly to citizens, a measure that some members of Parliament called “an empty promise.”

Iran
Sales Tax
Demonstrations and Riots
Economic Conditions and Trends
Taxation
Ahmadinejad Mahmoud
Politics and Government


Health’s Gain May Be Army’s Loss

Abstract: Call it the law of unintended consequences. When you fix one thing, it messes up other things. If the Democrats win the election this year, and are able to enact a health care plan that extends adequate coverage to all Americans, the loser could be the Army. Getting enough people to enlist could become a major problem for the next president. Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican candidate, has already pointed out that Senator Barack Obama, the likely Democratic candidate, never served in the military. It remains to be seen how potent that will be as an issue, given the fact that the last four presidential elections have been won by the candidate with the less impressive military resume. But there is something else that distinguishes Mr. Obama from all recent candidates for the presidency. He would be the first presidential nominee to come of age after the draft was abolished in the administration of Richard M. Nixon. He never had to decide how to deal with the draft, and legally was under no more pressure to enlist than he was to go to medical school or become a bus driver. Joining the military was a career option like any other. And that has made it harder to put the Army together. Government polls show that the proportion of young people who think they might enlist is roughly half what it was in the late 1980s. The military has responded with more recruiters and higher cash enlistment bonuses, and has met its goals. A significant factor for many recruits, it turns out, is the military’s generous health benefits for dependants. Michael Massing, writing in the April 3 issue of The New York Review of Books, tells the story of one part-time college student from Brooklyn, who was holding down two jobs but still going into debt. “Meanwhile, he got married, his wife got pregnant, and he had no health care. From a brother in the military, he had learned of the Army’s many benefits, and, visiting a recruiter, he heard about Tricare, the military’s generous health plan.” He enlisted. It seems a bit perverse that the incentives for a young person with children to join are greater than the incentives for his childless friend. But that is the way it is. All that could change if the push for some kind of national health insurance program were to be successful. It is true, of course, that Democrats have been talking about such things for generations. The failure of health care legislation during Bill Clinton’s first two years in office left some viewing the issue as political dynamite — good for a campaign but fatal to anyone who tries to pass a specific program. It is quite unclear how the government would pay for a comprehensive program, and no candidates seem eager to discuss ways to hold down health care spending. But if such a program were adopted, it seems likely that the military, and particularly the Army, would feel the immediate effect. To expand the Army, as all the candidates say they want to do, would require some other incentive for enlistment, particularly when the economy recovers. In the near term, it is possible that a recession will improve the military’s recruiting success. The official unemployment rate is still low, but the proportion of Americans who expect the job picture to improve is at its lowest level in a quarter century, according to the Conference Board’s consumer confidence survey. That survey shows that younger people are still more confident than older ones, but the confidence of both groups has fallen sharply this year. One partial solution to the negative effect on enlistment of a health care plan for all could be a new G.I. education benefit. Both the House and Senate have approved such a plan, but as part of the Iraq funding bill on which there are major differences. President Bush is opposed to the legislation, which its sponsors say would cost $50 billion over 10 years, and it is far from clear it will be enacted. The bill approved by the Congress would give enhanced education benefits to all veterans who spent three years in the military after Sept. 11, 2001. They would be eligible for full tuition at a public university, and about $1,000 a month for living expenses and more for books. Senator Jim Webb, a freshman Democrat and Vietnam veteran, is the principal Senate sponsor of the legislation. He argued — with something less than precise data — that passage of the bill would increase enlistment by 16 percent, and bring in more high-quality recruits who valued the education benefit. Both Senator Obama and his Democratic rival, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, support that bill. Senator McCain has proposed a less costly alternative that would provide better benefits to those who stay in the military longer. He may have a point. Last year about three-quarters of Army volunteers who completed their first term of enlistment, and nearly as many marines, chose not to re-enlist. Offering better education benefits after three years could encourage enlistment and discourage re-enlistment. If we get a real health care plan for all Americans, it might require something like the Webb bill — or a very unpopular revival of the draft — just to keep fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. The backers of health care legislation do not want to hurt the Army, but that is what could happen.

Health Insurance and Managed Care
Draft and Recruitment (Military)


Raw Statistics Belie a Crackdown on Gangs

Abstract: On West Street in North Oakland, a short residential block within the borders of Oakland’s gang injunction zone, a bloodstain marks a spot on the sidewalk where a woman was killed last month in a drive-by shooting. While City Attorney John Russo has moved forward with plans for a second injunction zone, some residents on West Street, who have seen little change, seem resigned to the violence. “It’s either here or around the corner or up the street somewhere,” said Keyondra Dollar, 27, who can see from her living room window the site of the recent shooting. The gang injunction, Oakland’s first, functions like a restraining order against 17 individuals whom the police have identified as members of the North Side Oakland gang. The court-ordered measure imposes a 10 p.m. curfew and bars activities like interacting in public with others on the list, carrying a gun or recruiting members. Named members who violate the injunction face steep fines or jail time. In his campaign for the injunction, Mr. Russo argued that the measure would help improve public safety. But studies show that proving the effects of injunctions is no easy task. So far, Mr. Russo has followed San Francisco’s lead by gathering statistics not on violence, but on the number of times the named individuals have been arrested (at last count, once). Unlike San Francisco, Oakland has not seen a temporary drop in shootings. In the six months since the injunction was put in place, shootings and killings within the 100-block “safety zone” have doubled over the corresponding period a year ago. Between June and October 2009, the safety zone was the site of one killing and 11 shootings. This year, the area has had two killings and 22 shootings. While the police point to an overall drop in violent crime citywide, shootings this year increased about 13 percent. Criminologists say while those numbers are shocking, more data is needed to determine a real trend. On West Street, 29-year-old Carolyn Howard was one of those numbers. A handful of homes line this short street off busy Martin Luther King Jr. Way, bordered by public housing complexes and a church, and a dingy tract of concrete benches. Children’s Hospital is less than a block away. Just before midnight on Oct. 15, a car pulled alongside another and someone inside fired about 20 shots, residents say. The car sped off, leaving three men seriously wounded and Ms. Howard, who had been a bystander, bleeding to death on the ground. The case remains unsolved. Last week, the police began serving 42 reputed members of the Norteño gang in Fruitvale, the focus of Oakland’s second gang injunction. With fewer officers on the streets, the police say the injunctions scare gang members by increasing scrutiny and penalties and taking away the anonymity that allows crime and anti-snitching sentiment to thrive. On West Street, that change has yet to take hold. When asked what he knew about the shooting, one resident who stood next to the bloodstain on the sidewalk shook his head and quoted a street expression about minding your own business. “That’s how you get shot,” he said.


Wesley McDonald, Who Planned for Grenada, Dies at 84

Abstract: Adm. Wesley L. McDonald, who as commander of American forces in the Atlantic in 1983 organized the invasion of the Caribbean island nation of Grenada , which the Reagan administration contended was about to be taken over by Cuba, died on Feb. 8 at his home in Arlington, Va. He was 84. He died of natural causes, his wife, Helen, said. Admiral McDonald, who as a naval aviator in 1964 had led the first air strike against North Vietnam after the Gulf of Tonkin incident, was supreme Atlantic commander for NATO and commander of American forces in the Atlantic when, in October 1983, he was placed in charge of the invasion of Grenada, which was called Operation Urgent Fury. Under his command, about 6,000 American soldiers and Marines went onto the island, starting on Oct. 25, 1983. Within four days, they had overwhelmed a military force of approximately 1,200 Grenadians and 780 Cubans. The intervention was prompted by an internal coup that led to the execution of Prime Minister Maurice Bishop by another leftist faction of his government. Mr. Bishop, who had himself seized power in 1979, had already aligned with communist governments, including Cuba’s. Declaring that a major Cuban military buildup on Grenada after the coup would further Soviet influence in the region, President Reagan ordered the invasion. Its immediate mission was to evacuate several hundred American students attending a medical school on the island. Although the intervention received significant public support in the United States, the United Nations called it “a flagrant violation of international law.” News reports said the president, and to some degree Admiral McDonald, had disseminated information that inflated the number of Cuban military personnel on the island. Supporting Reagan’s contention that Cuba was planning to take over Grenada, the admiral had said that there were at least 1,100 Cuban soldiers on the island and that “341 more officers and 4,000 more reservists” were on their way. Wesley Lee McDonald was born in Arlington on July 26, 1924, one of two sons of Wesley and Selma Dulin McDonald. After graduating from the Naval Academy (officially he was a member of the class of 1947, but under a special program he completed his studies a year earlier), Ensign McDonald joined Adm. Richard E. Byrd on one of his expeditions to the South Pole. In 1950, he completed flight training and began rising through the ranks while serving aboard several aircraft carriers. He became a rear admiral in 1969 and by 1982 was a four-star admiral. Among Admiral McDonald’s decorations were three Navy Distinguished Service Medals, two Legion of Merits, two Distinguished Flying Crosses and five Air Medals. In 1947, he married Norma Joy; she died in 1989. Besides his second wife, the former Helen Billingsly, Admiral McDonald is survived by four children from his first marriage: a son, Lt. Col. Thomas McDonald, a retired Marine; and three daughters, Kathryn Overman; Joy McDonald and Toni McDonald; his brother, Malcolm; eight grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren. As a flight leader aboard the carrier Ticonderoga on Aug. 5, 1964, he was assigned to lead the first retaliatory air strike against North Vietnam after the Gulf of Tonkin incident, in which two American destroyers reported that they had engaged with North Vietnamese torpedo boats. The incident led, on Aug. 7, to Congress’s passing the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which granted President Lyndon B. Johnson the power to conduct military operations in Southeast Asia without a declaration of war.

Grenada
Military Personnel
United States Armament and Defense
Armament Defense and Military Forces
Deaths (Obituaries)


Intel Leaves Group Backing Education PCs

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO — Intel said Thursday that it had chosen to withdraw from the One Laptop Per Child educational computer organization, which it joined in July after years of public squabbling between Intel’s chairman, Craig R. Barrett , and the group’s founder, Nicholas P. Negroponte. The low-cost laptop, originally priced at $100, has captured the public imagination but also created intense controversy because it was viewed as a potential competitor for both Intel and Microsoft in the developing world. The machine, which is based on the freely available Linux operating system and comes with educational software, is now built with a microprocessor made by Intel’s archrival, Advanced Micro Devices. The PC, called the XO, is being sold for about $200 apiece to governments and institutions. On Thursday an Intel spokesman said the company shared with O.L.P.C. the vision of putting computers into the hands of children, but the two were not able to work out what he described as “philosophical” differences. Intel did not attend a recent board meeting of the group in Florida, according to a person familiar with the events, who asked not to be named because he had not been given authority to describe the events. That set off a bitter private dispute, which led to the Thursday announcement. “We’ve reached a philosophical impasse,” said Chuck Mulloy, the Intel spokesman. “Negroponte had asked us to exclusively support O.L.P.C.-based platforms.” For emerging markets, Intel has been backing its own, more expensive Classmate PC, which sells for about $300. Mr. Mulloy said Intel was unwilling to walk away from support agreements that the company had made for that machine and other systems. Intel also said it was able to develop a prototype of an XO computer with an Intel chip. An O.L.P.C. executive, Walter Bender, accused Intel of failing to deliver on its promises of cooperation with the group and said that Intel had continued to try to undermine the group’s initiatives. “I think that as an organization, Intel is about competition; they are not about learning,” said Mr. Bender, the group’s president for software and content. There were reports in recent months that though an Intel executive joined the group’s board and the company contributed an undisclosed amount to the organization, Intel has continued to compete actively with O.L.P.C. in trying to make educational computing sales to governments. In November, after the promised high-volume sales to governments failed to materialize, the organization began a $399 “Give 1, Get 1” promotion, in which people could buy XO machines and subsidize gifts to educational programs. O.L.P.C. said it distributed about 50,000 computers in the United States during the promotion.

One Laptop Per Child
Intel Corp
Barrett Craig R
Negroponte Nicholas P


Death Toll From C. Difficile Is Raised

Abstract: The deadly bacterial infection Clostridium difficile is estimated to have afflicted almost half a million Americans and caused 29,000 deaths in 2011, according to a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine. The estimate is drawn from laboratory testing and reporting in 10 states and is larger than previous figures based on narrower data sources. C. difficile causes severe diarrhea and colon damage and is linked to overuse of antibiotics. The study estimated that 24 percent of cases occurred in hospitals and 40 percent began in nursing homes or community health care settings.

Infection
Clostridium difficile
The New England Journal of Medicine
Fatalities,casualties
CDC
Antibacterial
Bacteria


Existing-Home Sales Climb

Abstract: WASHINGTON (AP) — Sales of existing homes rose solidly in October, helped by improvement in the job market and record low mortgage rates. The increase, along with a surge in home builder confidence this month, suggests that the housing market is continuing to show signs of recovery. The National Association of Realtors said on Monday that existing-home sales rose 2.1 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.79 million. That is up from 4.69 million in September, which was revised lower. The sales pace is roughly 11 percent higher than a year earlier. But it remains below the more than 5.5 million home sales that economists consider indicative of a healthy market. As the economy slowly recovers, more people have started looking to buy homes or rent apartments. Prices are climbing, while mortgage rates have been low all year. Rents also are rising, making the purchase of a single-family home or condominium more attractive. “Altogether, the report is encouraging,” said Michael Gapen, an economist at Barclays Capital. “Housing is in a recovery phase,” he added, though it will be restrained by limited credit and modest job gains. A separate report on Monday showed that confidence among home builders rose this month to its highest level in six and a half years. The increase was driven by strong demand for new homes and growing optimism about conditions next year. The National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo builder sentiment index increased to 46 in November from 41 in October. Readings below 50 suggest pessimism about the housing market. The index last reached that level in April 2006. Still, the index has been rising since October 2011, when it stood at 17. The median price for previously occupied homes increased 11.1 percent from a year ago to $178,600, the Realtors said.

Real Estate and Housing (Residential)
United States Economy


St. Louis Lifts Rangers in Overtime

Abstract: Martin St. Louis added another chapter to his remarkable playoff journey with a goal in overtime Sunday to give the Rangers a 3-2 victory over the Montreal Canadiens, and a 3-1 lead in the best-of-seven Eastern Conference finals. Moments after St. Louis’s goal, the Rangers poured over the boards to mob him in a joyous pileup. “I’ve jumped on Marty a few times now in overtime,” said Brad Richards, his longtime friend and teammate with the Rangers and Tampa Bay. “It never gets old.” The Rangers can clinch a berth in the Stanley Cup finals for the first time in 20 years with a victory in Game 5 on Tuesday in Montreal. “All I can say is we’re going back to Montreal, and we have to close it,” St. Louis said moments after he scored the winning goal at 6 minutes 2 seconds of overtime. Carl Hagelin started the decisive play. He disrupted the Canadiens in their zone and took the puck away. He was surprised to see St. Louis standing wide open on the right wing, so he fed him the puck. The Rangers players on the bench stood up as the puck crossed from Hagelin to St. Louis. St. Louis took his time. He picked out a spot at the top corner on the short side, just above the crouch of goalie Dustin Tokarski. He shot it to that spot. “I just got open and tried to trust my instincts,” St. Louis said. “I was fortunate.” St. Louis, 38, was not merely fortunate. Last season with Tampa Bay, he became the oldest scoring champion in N.H.L. history. In this postseason, he has six goals and seven assists, making him the Rangers’ leading scorer. And he has surged in the playoffs while grieving the loss of his mother, France, who died May 8. He returned to play for the Rangers the next night, inspiring them to three straight victories that closed out a seven-game series against Pittsburgh. Now St. Louis is closing in on what he hopes will be the second Stanley Cup of his career, to go along with the one he and Richards won with the Lightning in 2004. But, Richards said, this series was “far from over.” Hagelin started the scoring in the first period with a short-handed goal, the Rangers’ first in 70 playoff games, since Ryan Callahan scored one in 2008. He was set up by a perfect 75-foot pass from Brian Boyle that put him in the clear, and he used his speed to zero in on Tokarski and slide a backhander between his pads. It was Hagelin’s sixth goal of the playoffs, tying him with St. Louis for the team lead. The Rangers clung to the lead Hagelin provided them until 8:08 of the second period, when defenseman Francis Bouillon equalized for the Canadiens with a perfect wrist shot under the crossbar that Henrik Lundqvist could not get to. Bouillon, born in New York but raised in Quebec, was inserted into the lineup for the game, his first of the series. Derick Brassard, back from an upper-body injury that sidelined him since early in Game 1, put the Rangers back on top with 56 seconds to go in the second period. Image The Canadiens' Francis Bouillon scoring in the second period against goalie Henrik Lundqvist and Marc Staal. Lundqvist had 27 saves in the win. Credit Barton Silverman/The New York Times It was another breakaway goal, set up by Dan Girardi’s 100-foot pass. Lundqvist also earned an assist on the play, the first postseason point of his career. But the Canadiens would not back down, tying the score two minutes into the third period with a power-play goal from defenseman P. K. Subban. The Rangers had killed 27 straight penalties to that point, and the Canadiens’ power play had gone 0 for 14 in the series, while also surrendering the short-handed goal to Hagelin. Subban had entered the series as the Canadiens’ leading scorer, but that was his first point of the conference finals. On Sunday he played 33:16 of the 66-minute game, the most of any player on the ice. The Canadiens almost scored a go-ahead goal with 3:15 left in regulation when Alex Galchenyuk hit the crossbar behind Lundqvist. The puck bounced straight down and skittered away. The Rangers also survived a penalty in overtime, to Benoit Pouliot for holding Subban’s stick. Had they surrendered a goal there, it would have been their second straight loss in overtime, after they dropped Game 3 on a goal from Galchenyuk. But St. Louis’s goal gave them the victory, the first of the series for a home team. “I tried to trust what I saw,” St. Louis said of his game-winning goal, which he shot over Tokarski’s glove. Earlier in the game, Tokarski robbed St. Louis with a point-blank glove save. “Obviously, I’ve gone to that side quite a bit the last few games and he’s made some good saves on me,” he said. “Sometimes you just have to keep trusting what you see.” St. Louis arrived at the trade deadline in a deal for Callahan. “He has been great for us ever since he got here,” Hagelin, who was awarded the Broadway Hat, said of St. Louis, “He is very easy to play with, and he’s a great teammate.” The Rangers lost the services of the fourth-line forward J. T. Miller when he was knocked shoulder-first into the goal post by Canadiens defenseman Andrei Markov in the second period. Miller played only 3:09 in the game. He had taken the place of Dan Carcillo, who was serving the first of a 10-game suspension for jostling a linesman. They were already without Derek Stepan, their first-line center. Stepan was recovering from surgery after his jaw was broken in Game 3. The Canadiens’ Brandon Prust was suspended for the late hit that injured Stepan. It was the first time Stepan missed a game since he entered the N.H.L. in October 2010, a stretch of 348 consecutive games. There is a slim chance he will return in this series. The absences of Stepan, Prust and Carcillo touched off a baroque series of charges and countercharges over the previous two and a half days. That may have contributed to the eight power plays the Rangers gave the Canadiens. “It was us,” Rangers Coach Alain Vigneault said. “They were penalties. Can’t do that.” Some of the controversy of the preceding days involved Brassard and a statement from Canadiens Coach Michel Therrien that some interpreted as a veiled threat to target his injury. But there seemed to be no such targeting during the game. Instead, Brassard was happy at the end of the game. “If I’d have to pick someone to score the overtime goal, I think it would be him,” said Brassard, who grew up idolizing St. Louis. “He’s a special player, and special players score big goals in key moments.”

Rangers
Montreal Canadiens
Carl Hagelin
Ice hockey
Martin St Louis


U.S. Supports Patent Ruling in a Setback for Qualcomm

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 6 — In a decision watched closely by the mobile phone industry, the Bush administration on Monday let stand an earlier ruling that requires Qualcomm to pay licensing fees to its competitor Broadcom. Qualcomm, which makes chips used in many mobile phones, has argued that the ruling, made in June by the United States International Trade Commission, could lead to a ban on the importation of millions of new phones that use power management technology covered in a patent controlled by Broadcom. But serious disruption in the phone market is unlikely, said Susan C. Schwab, the United States trade representative, in upholding the ruling. Ms. Schwab noted that since the June ruling, two major mobile phone carriers have reached agreements to pay licensing fees to Broadcom, allowing them to bring the latest phones into the country. Ms. Schwab also noted that Broadcom had agreed to give a royalty-free license to public safety organizations using new phones, a move that she said ameliorated Qualcomm’s claim that Broadcom’s demand for fees could hamper public safety. The decision is a blow to Qualcomm, based in San Diego, which is a dominant maker of chips for phones used on mobile phone networks operated by Verizon Wireless, Sprint and AT&T. Qualcomm has argued that the licensing fees of $6 a phone that Broadcom demanded were prohibitively expensive. Broadcom, a chip maker based in Irvine, Calif., has countered that Qualcomm is using its power- management technology without paying royalties. Broadcom has sued Qualcomm over the issue, but the suit was stayed pending a decision by the trade representative. Lou Lupin, general counsel for Qualcomm, said the company planned to appeal for an emergency stay of the ruling to the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. “We’re obviously disappointed but not terribly surprised,” Mr. Lupin said of the decision. He said Qualcomm’s argument that the June ruling would hamper public safety appeared to have been at least partly undermined by Broadcom’s agreements with the two mobile carriers. Verizon reached a deal with Broadcom last month. The other company has not been publicly identified. David Rosmann, vice president for intellectual property litigation at Broadcom, said the company would seek an immediate enforcement of the ruling that would bar the importing of phones with unlicensed Broadcom technology. Mr. Rosmann said such a ban would probably affect fewer than 10 percent of phones, and only new models that are not yet on the market. Mark McKechnie, a telecommunications equipment industry analyst with American Technology Research, said it was in the interest of consumers for Qualcomm and Broadcom to reach an agreement. “It’s going to slow down the ramp of U.S. technology if it holds,” Mr. McKechnie said.

Wireless Communications
Qualcomm Inc
Cellular Telephones
Computer Chips
San Francisco (Calif)
Bush George W


Suriname: Despite Checkered Past, President Seems Set for New Term

Abstract: President Desi Bouterse , a former military leader convicted in 1999 in the Netherlands of drug trafficking, appeared to be on course for a second term in Suriname after his party won a slim majority in Monday’s parliamentary elections, according to preliminary results Tuesday. Mr. Bouterse’s National Democratic Party won 26 or 27 seats in the 51-member assembly, according to the unofficial tally, and the opposition coalition, on track to take 17 or 18 seats, acknowledged defeat. Mr. Bouterse’s charismatic style and social welfare policies seemed to have won over voters. After his conviction in the Netherlands, he remained free, benefiting from Suriname’s lack of an extradition treaty with its former colonial ruler.

Suriname
Desi Bouterse
Appointments and Executive Changes