Mark Papermaster, the Apple executive in charge of hardware for the company’s flagship iPhone, has left the company in the wake of widely reported problems with the antenna of the recently introduced iPhone 4. It is not clear if Mr. Papermaster was ousted or left on his own accord. Reached on his cellphone, Mr. Papermaster declined to comment. In a statement, an Apple spokesman, Steve Dowling, confirmed Mr. Papermaster’s departure. Mr. Dowling said Mr. Papermaster “is leaving the company and Bob Mansfield, senior vice president of Macintosh hardware engineering, is assuming his responsibilities.” Mr. Mansfield already oversees several technologies that are part of the iPhone, including the A4 chip, the retina display and touch screens, Mr. Dowling said. Mr. Papermaster arrived at Apple in 2008, setting off a prominent battle with I.B.M., where in a 25-year-career he had risen to the top levels of management. I.B.M. sued Mr. Papermaster in federal court in an attempt to prevent him from joining Apple, saying that he had signed a noncompete agreement. The parties settled the case after Mr. Papermaster testified in court that he had not revealed any trade secrets. When Steven P. Jobs, the chief of Apple, introduced the iPhone 4, he hailed the design ???? of its antenna, which is built into a steel band that encases the phone. But almost immediately after the iPhone 4 went on sale, consumers began to complain that when they touched a spot on the lower left section of the device, reception would decrease sharply, in some cases resulting in dropped calls. The problems, and Apple’s clumsy response, turned into a public relations mess for the company. Apple first recommended that users hold the phone in a way that avoids contact with the lower left section of the device. The company later said it found a software problem with the signal meter that indicates cellphone reception. Embarrassingly, the company said the problem affected not only the iPhone 4, but also earlier models. While Apple fixed the problem, complaints about the antenna continued to mount. After Consumer Reports shone a spotlight on the problems and said it could not recommend the iPhone 4, Apple called a press conference on July 16 where Mr. Jobs mounted an impassioned defense of the device. Mr. Jobs said other smartphones suffered from similar problems when cradled in certain ways, an assertion that was challenged by several of Apple’s competitors. But in an effort to put the problem behind the company, Mr. Jobs offered free bumpers to all iPhone 4 customers. By insulating the antenna from human touch, the bumpers solve the reception problems. Mr. Jobs also said that the iPhone 4 was the most successful new product introduction in Apple’s history. He said complaints among customers were minimal and he accused the media of blowing the problem out of proportion. Some observers were surprised that Mr. Papermaster was not present at the press conference, which in addition to Mr. Jobs included Tim Cook, the chief operating officer, and Mr. Mansfield. Mr. Papermaster, who was listed as an executive on Apple’s Web site earlier Saturday, had vanished from the site later in the day.

The Senate on Thursday approved a long-awaited child nutrition act that intends to feed more hungry kids and make school food more nutritious, and it provides for $4.5 billion over the next decade to make that happen. Called the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, it passed the Senate unanimously and now moves on to the House, where passage is also expected. National child nutrition programs are set to expire on September 30. The legislation will expand the number of low-income children who are eligible for free or reduced-price school meals, largely by streamlining the paperwork required to receive the meals. And it will expand a program to provide after-school meals to at-risk children. Foods sold in schools will be required to meet new nutrition guidelines, whether ???? sold in the school lunch line or in vending machines. Schools may still be allowed to sell pizza and other favorites, though schools may have to substitute healthier ingredients to qualify. School vending machines and ala carte lines, however, may be prohibited from selling candy bars and high-sugar sodas that have long provided revenue for extracurricular programs. To help schools cover the costs of healthier foods, the bill provides for the first non-inflationary increase in the reimbursement rate for federal-sponsored school meals— the amount local districts are repaid by the federal government — since 1973. The increase amounts to an additional six cents for every meal. “The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act will finally put us on a path towards improving the health of the next generation of Americas, providing common-sense solutions to tackling childhood hunger and obesity,” said Blanche Lincoln, Democratic senator from Arkansas and the chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, in prepared remarks. “In this budget environment, with record deficits, we have been able to produce a bill that is fully paid for and will not add a dime to the deficit.” The Senate bill was applauded by nutrition advocates, who have long complained that federally sponsored school lunch programs provided food that didn’t meet the government’s own nutrition guidelines. “The Senate bill changes the school food landscape in ways that are all positive,” said Michael F. Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, in a press release. “Put simply, it will get junk food out of, and put more healthy food into, America’s schools. It preserves the free and reduced-cost meals that many families depend on in an economic downturn.” Michelle Obama, who has pushed for the bill’s passage as part of her “Let’s Move” agenda for children, also applauded the Senate’s action. “While childhood obesity cannot be solved overnight, with everyone working together, there’s no question that it can be solved — and today’s vote moves us one step closer to reaching that goal,” a statement released by the White House said.

In the bazaar that is Capitol Hill, there is nothing surprising about lawmakers’ doing favors for campaign donors or intervening with federal agencies on behalf of constituents or friends. So why are Representatives Charles B. Rangel, a New York Democrat, and Maxine Waters, a California Democrat, facing the rare spectacle of public ethics trials for actions their defenders say are just business as usual in Congress? The charges reflect, in part, a heightened sensitivity in Washington to indiscretions by members of Congress. The House ethics committee, which has brought the charges, has come under fire for failing to hold lawmakers accountable in previous investigations. Both cases also involve personal causes — for Ms. Waters, the financial investments of her husband, and for Mr. Rangel, an education center set up in his name in New York. With their integrity under attack after widespread news reports, Mr. Rangel and Ms. Waters are fighting the charges instead of simply accepting a modest punishment. As a result, Washington has suddenly become fixated on ethics issues, including the continuing investigation of Senator John Ensign, a Republican from Nevada, who has been accused of improperly intervening with federal regulators at the request of a former ???? aide, whose wife had an affair with the senator. “This wave of activity will remind members and staff that this is an era of more vigilance and scrutiny and they need to be much more careful about what they do,” said Abbe D. Lowell, a Washington defense lawyer who has handled a number of ethics inquiries. “The public’s low esteem for Congress and the appearance of inappropriate conduct in general have to be confronted and dealt with.” Ms. Waters on Monday became the second lawmaker in two weeks to face formal ethics charges, as the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct announced it was creating a new panel to hold a trial to determine whether she took improper steps on behalf of a bank in which her husband owns stock. Her case illustrates the conflict between lawmakers and the ethics committee over whether her actions represent a widely accepted norm or an egregious violation of the ethics rules. She is accused of improperly calling Henry M. Paulson Jr., then the Treasury secretary, to set up a meeting in late 2008 on behalf of minority bankers pushing for a federal bailout. That group included executives from the bank her husband invested in. “I simply will not be forced to admit to something I did not do,” Ms. Waters said in a statement on Monday. “The case against me has no merit,” she added. The accusations against all three lawmakers hang in large part on the question of whether the actions they took came in the course of their normal professional duties or constituted personal favors that may have been influenced, or at least appeared to have been influenced, by money or other factors. In their defense, Mr. Rangel, Ms. Waters and Mr. Ensign rely on similar arguments: The people and industries they helped were constituents they had always helped in the past, regardless of any other political, personal or financial ties. Mr. Ensign contended, for instance, that he had always been a supporter of a Nevada airline, Allegiant Air, and an electric utility, NV Energy. Investigators are examining whether he may have tried to hush up the affair by inappropriately helping his mistress’s husband lobby federal agencies on behalf of those companies. Mr. Rangel’s lawyers said his charitable work raising money with City College of New York to start an educational center named after him there reflected his long commitment to the college, four blocks from where he grew up. Mr. Rangel’s lawyers, in a 32-page rebuttal to the charges, said a number of other prominent lawmakers including Senator Mitch McConnell, and former Senators Trent Lott, Jesse Helms and Robert C. Byrd raised money for their own favorite university causes while they were in office. Mr. McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate minority leader, has helped raise money from corporate donors, including RJR Nabisco, Toyota and military defense contractors, for a center named after him at the University of Louisville, Mr. Rangel’s lawyers point out. “We provide these examples not as part of an “everyone does it” defense, but rather to demonstrate that these activities have never been regarded as creating an improper benefit to a member,” Mr. Rangel’s lawyers wrote. The House ethics panel that investigated his case disagreed. The committee said that not only did he appeal for contributions from companies like Verizon, New York Life Insurance and American International Group, which all had major legislative matters before his committee, but he also made those appeals on official House stationery, with the help of his House aides. And there was an unusually close overlap, the committee contended, between appeals for donations and his intervention on legislative matters, citing in particular a meeting Mr. Rangel held in 2007 at a New York hotel with an executive from an oil drilling company at which he made a bid for a donation and also discussed a tax break the company was seeking. The executive, Eugene Isenberg, and his company ended up making a $1 million contribution to the educational center, and Mr. Rangel helped the company secure a tax break worth an estimated $500 million. “Reasonable persons could construe contributions to the Rangel Center by persons with interest before the Ways and Means Committee as influencing the performance of respondent’s government duties,” said the complaint against Mr. Rangel, who was the committee’s chairman. Mr. Rangel’s lawyers acknowledge that he probably should have checked in advance with the House ethics staff about the City College arrangement, but contended that “the congressman did not abuse his official position or enrich himself financially.” Robert K. Kelner, an ethics lawyer in Washington who is involved in Senator Ensign’s case, called the charges against Mr. Rangel and Ms. Waters perhaps overblown. “This is the committee’s way of showing that it is alive and well, notwithstanding the criticism directed at it,” Mr. Kelner said. “Here’s an opportunity where we can bare our teeth.” Whatever the explanation, lawmakers in Washington are noticing the crackdown, their lawyers said. “There is definitely a heightened concern and sensitivity about political and charitable contributions and the timing in relation to official actions,” said Kenneth A. Gross, an ethics defense lawyer. “It’s a big issue out there right now, and these are very rough waters to navigate.”

Army investigators are broadening their inquiry into the recent disclosure of classified military information to include friends and associates who may have helped the person they suspect was the leaker, Pfc. Bradley Manning, people with knowledge of the investigation said Friday. Two civilians interviewed in recent weeks by the Army’s criminal division said that investigators were focusing in part on a group of Private Manning’s friends and acquaintances in Cambridge, Mass. Investigators, the civilians said, apparently believed that the friends, who include students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Boston University, might have connections to WikiLeaks, which made the documents public. It is unclear whether the investigators have specific evidence or are ???? simply trying to determine whether one person working alone could have downloaded and disseminated tens of thousands of documents. The Army has charged Private Manning with disclosing a classified video of an American helicopter attack to WikiLeaks, as well as more than 150,000 classified diplomatic cables. Military officials said Friday that the private was also the main suspect in the disclosure to WikiLeaks of more than 90,000 classified documents about the Afghan war, some of which were published this week by The New York Times, the German magazine Der Spiegel and the British newspaper The Guardian. A military official acknowledged on Friday that Army investigators were looking into whether Private Manning physically handed compact discs containing classified information to someone in the United States. Private Manning, an intelligence analyst who was deployed over the past year in Iraq with the Second Brigade of the 10th Mountain Division at a remote base east of Baghdad, visited friends in Boston during a home leave in January. Investigators believe that he exploited a loophole in Defense Department security to copy thousands of files onto compact discs over a six-month period. In at least one instance, according to people familiar with the inquiry, Private Manning smuggled highly classified data out of his intelligence unit on a disc made to look like a music CD by Lady Gaga. Adrian Lamo, a computer hacker who this year traded instant messages with Private Manning, said in a telephone interview on Friday that he believed that WikiLeaks was in part directing Private Manning and providing technical assistance to him in downloading classified information from military computers. Military officials would not confirm Mr. Lamo’s claim. Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment. Mr. Lamo, who turned Private Manning in to the authorities, is cooperating with the Army and has a strained relationship with WikiLeaks. Last month, WikiLeaks denounced Mr. Lamo, along with a Wired News reporter, Kevin Poulsen, who broke the story about Private Manning’s arrest, as “notorious felons, informers and manipulators.” As Mr. Lamo characterized it in Friday’s interview, Private Manning “was to a great extent manipulated by WikiLeaks.” Mr. Lamo, who had extensive e-mail exchanges with Private Manning before reaching out to the authorities, said he believed that “there is at least one co-conspirator but probably more.” Mr. Lamo said that he believed that a person with ties to WikiLeaks had helped Private Manning set up encryption software that would have allowed him to e-mail small bits of classified data outside the military computer system without detection. According to Mr. Lamo, the small bits were meant to attract the notice of Mr. Assange. Mr. Lamo acknowledged that he had no direct evidence that Private Manning had help. He said he based his belief on information from people who knew Private Manning, not on his contact with the soldier himself. Asked if Private Manning had ever told him of any WikiLeaks assistance, Mr. Lamo replied, “Not explicitly, no.” In one e-mail that Private Manning sent to Mr. Lamo in May, the private described his role with WikiLeaks as “a source, not quite a volunteer.” One of the civilians interviewed by the Army’s criminal division, who asked for anonymity so that his name would not be associated with the inquiry, said Friday that the investigators’ questions led him to believe that the Army was concerned that there were classified documents in the Boston area. “I was under the impression that they believed that perhaps Bradley had used friends in Cambridge as a mechanism for moving documents,” he said. The civilian also said that the Army had offered him “a considerable amount of money if I were to keep my ear to the ground and be an in with them with WikiLeaks.” He said that he had turned the Army down and that he had no connection to WikiLeaks. The other civilian also said in an interview on Friday that he had no connection to WikiLeaks. The first civilian said it appeared from the questioning that Army investigators “are trying to build a network among Bradley’s friends to infiltrate WikiLeaks.” Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates denounced WikiLeaks on Thursday for endangering lives because it included the names and villages of Afghan informants in the documents released. He has asked the F.B.I. to assist in the Army inquiry. Unlike the military, the F.B.I. can prosecute civilians. The Times, and the two other publications given access to the documents, posted online only selected examples from documents that had been redacted to eliminate names and other information that could be used to identify people at risk.

The Federal Trade Commission on Thursday announced restrictions on companies that purport to help borrowers get rid of crippling amounts of debt. The effort aims to address complaints about lenders that charge huge fees but fail to reduce the obligations of customers in debt. The rules, which will take effect in the fall, prohibit companies from charging a fee before they settle or reduce a customer’s credit card or unsecured debt. The rules also require that the companies set up dedicated accounts for debt relief payments by consumers and disclose how long the debt-reduction efforts will take, what they will cost and the potentially negative consequences that could occur. “Too many of these companies pick the last dollar out of consumers’ pocket and, far from leaving them better off, push them deeper into debt, even bankruptcy,” Jon Leibowitz, chairman of the F.T.C., said in a statement announcing the regulations. “This rule will stop companies who offer consumers false promises of reducing credit card debts by half or more in exchange for large, upfront fees,” he said. Debt settlement programs boomed after the housing market collapse, the recession and the rise in unemployment. As the industry has grown, so have the charges of unfair practices. Attorneys general in more than 20 states have brought enforcement actions against debt-relief companies since 2004. According to comments filed with the F.T.C., the number of consumer complaints against companies in the industry more than doubled from 2007 to 2009. The leader of a trade group representing the debt-settlement industry said he believed the rules were unfair and would put a lot of companies out of business. “I think this is a victory for the big banks and a loss for consumers,” ???? said David Leuthold, the executive director of the Association of Settlement Companies. Credit card companies often will not settle a debt for less than is owed until a consumer has deposited the entire negotiated repayment in an independent account, Mr. Leuthold said. If the companies are not allowed to collect any fees before settlement, that leaves them providing services for months without compensation. “Most companies will go out of business because of this,” he said. Consumer advocates generally applauded the rules but also said loopholes leave consumers open to abuse. Susan Grant, the director of consumer protection for the Consumer Federation of America, said that because the regulations were amendments to the F.T.C.’s telemarketing sales rule, they applied only to agreements struck as a result of telephone calls by debt-relief companies to consumers or consumers’ calls to a company in response to advertisements. Not covered, Ms. Grant said, are transactions that take place entirely online — where debt-relief companies often advertise — or as a result of a face-to-face meeting between a company representative and a consumer. Joel Winston, the associate director of the division of financial practices at the F.T.C., said that while those exceptions did exist, the commission thought that nearly all of the fraudulent activity in the debt-relief industry involved telephone traffic. Even the commission is uncertain, however, about some situations. If, for example, a debt-laden consumer responds by e-mail to an online ad, then conducts a conversation with a debt-settlement company via Skype, which transmits voice and video over the Internet, it is not certain whether the transaction would be considered telemarketing. “But we certainly will be monitoring the business, and can still bring charges under general F.T.C. regulations,” Mr. Winston said. “I would hope that members of this industry would not try to evade the rules like that.”

A macabre legal wrangle is under way over who should pay the hospital bill for an American art student who lost an eye after being struck by a tear-gas canister fired by an Israeli border police officer at a Palestinian-led protest in the West Bank. The student, Emily Henochowicz, 21, was injured on May 31 after she joined Palestinian and foreign activists protesting that morning’s deadly raid by Israeli naval commandos on a Turkish boat trying to breach the blockade of Gaza. Israeli security forces fired tear gas to disperse the demonstration after a few Palestinian youths threw rocks. Witnesses at the protest, by the Qalandiya checkpoint near Ramallah, said that a border police officer had fired the tear-gas directly at the demonstrators, rather than into the air in line with regulations. The Israeli police have begun a criminal investigation. But the lawyer representing Ms. Henochowicz, Michael Sfard, recently received a letter from the Israeli Ministry of Defense rejecting any demand for compensation or payment of hospital costs. The reason, the ministry stated, was that the protest was violent and that the tear-gas canister was not fired directly but had ricocheted off a concrete barricade. Ms. Henochowicz, who is Jewish and is a student at the Cooper Union in New York, arrived in Israel in February for what was supposed to be a six-month student exchange. Her father was born in Israel to Holocaust survivors whom he described as “ardent Zionists.” Speaking by telephone from her home in Potomac, Md., this week, Ms. Henochowicz said it was “upsetting, when someone gets an injury, not only to have to deal with the physical consequences of something you did not do to yourself, but the economic consequences as well.” Ms. Henochowicz, who was treated at Hadassah University Medical Center in Ein Kerem, had her left eye removed and suffered fractures that required the insertion of titanium plates. She returned to the United States in early June, where she is continuing to visit doctors and specialists. But more than the cost of the treatment in Israel, which amounted to about $10,000, there are clearly legal principles and interests at stake. The student’s father, Dr. Stuart Henochowicz, said by telephone that he had not yet explored the question of whether his daughter’s insurance would cover the bill, because he was under the impression that it would be paid by the Ministry of Defense. On Tuesday, the ministry stated that according to preliminary checks, the border police dealt lawfully with the “violent protest at Qalandiya,” and that the firing of tear gas was justified. While expressing sorrow over Ms. Henochowicz’s injury, ???? the ministry added that it did not cover hospitalization expenses in circumstances such as these. The ministry said it had acted similarly in the case of Tristan Anderson, an American severely wounded by a tear-gas projectile in 2009. The ministry said that Mr. Anderson had filed a suit in the Tel Aviv District Court, where the issue of hospital expenses would be settled. Mr. Sfard, the lawyer, said that from the start he told Dr. Henochowicz, who flew to Israel from the United States to be at his daughter’s bedside, “not to touch his wallet or to sign any check.” In a letter to the ministry, Mr. Sfard wrote, “It is insolent and preposterous to expect someone who was shot by the security forces, whether unintentionally, negligently or with criminal intention, to fund her own medical treatment.” Yuval Weiss, the director of the medical center in Ein Kerem, said the hospital was “not a party to the argument.” “It makes no difference to us who pays, as long as somebody does,” he said. “We cannot work for free.” After her arrival in Israel, Ms. Henochowicz, who came to Jerusalem’s Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, got involved with the pro-Palestinian International Solidarity Movement after meeting activists at a demonstration in Sheikh Jarrah, an East Jerusalem neighborhood where settlers have won court cases and evicted several Palestinian families from their homes. From Sheikh Jarrah, Ms. Henochowicz frequented the regular Palestinian protest spots in the West Bank like Bilin, Nilin and Nabi Saleh. The late May protest was her first at Qalandiya. “I did not know what it would be like,” she said. The demonstration came hours after Israel’s raid on an aid flotilla. Violent clashes broke out on the Turkish boat and nine activists — eight Turks and an American-Turkish youth — were killed. Ms. Henochowicz said she was not standing near the stone throwers. She was holding a Turkish and an Austrian flag when she was struck. Avi Issacharoff, an Israeli journalist from the newspaper Haaretz, was watching the demonstration. “The police fired a tear-gas grenade, and then another and another,” he wrote in June “I remember that what surprised me was the volley of grenade fire directly aimed directly at the demonstrators, not at the sky. After the fourth grenade, if I am not mistaken, a shout was heard about 100 meters away.” Unusual for a foreign activist in a conflict where battle lines are often starkly drawn, Ms. Henochowicz says she feels a certain affinity with both sides. She said she had wanted to help the Palestinians, but because of her background, she said she also felt “very attached” to Israel “in lots of ways.” She added, “If I did not really care about what was happening in the country, I would have hung out on the beach all day.” Dr. Henochowicz said he found the whole episode “hurtful,” and was upset that no Israeli officials made any contact with him or his daughter during the five days they were at the hospital. Israel’s ambassador to Washington, Michael B. Oren, has since visited the family’s home in Maryland, Dr. Henochowicz said. If it was an accident, “Why didn’t they come to the hospital and talk to me?” he asked.

A woman planning a Florida vacation in Key West called the health department there last week to ask if it were true that the city was being evacuated because of an epidemic of dengue fever. “No!” Chris Tittel, a spokesman for the Monroe County Health Department, says he told her. “No, no, no, no, no.” Dengue (pronounced DENG-gay) is a viral illness, spread by mosquitoes, that can cause fever, headaches, body aches and a rash. Symptoms range from mild to severe, although some people have no symptoms. Without a doubt, there is dengue in Key West, though at 27 known cases last year and 18 so far this year, it is hardly what most people would call an epidemic. But those cases are the first outbreak in Florida since 1934, and some medical experts fear that the disease, once rampant on the Eastern Seaboard, could take hold again. Parts of the Caribbean and Central America are having epidemics now, but none of those infected in Key West had traveled outside the country. That means they caught the virus locally. News of the disease has apparently unsettled a few potential visitors. But tourism officials and business owners in Key West are even more unsettled, by the way the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has publicized the cases. On July 13, the centers issued a press release stating that an estimated 5 percent of Key West’s population showed evidence of recent exposure to the dengue virus. The estimate was based on tests of 240 residents, of whom 13 were positive. The 5 percent figure was reported by many newspapers, including The New York Times. That news was the last thing the city needed, with the economy already making the usual summer slump in tourism even worse. The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has also scared some visitors away, even though the oil has been nowhere near Key West. “I don’t know if the C.D.C. understands what it potentially has done here,” said Andy Newman, the director of media relations for the Florida Keys and the Key West tourism council. He said he knew of a “smattering” of canceled trips, but suspected more. Robert Eadie, administrator of the health department, called the disease centers’ report “very alarmist.” Local officials were irked that the centers had used just 240 people to ???? estimate an exposure rate for the whole city, which has a population of about 25,000. But scientists involved in the research are sticking to their story. Dr. Harold Margolis, chief of the disease centers’ dengue branch in Puerto Rico, said it was statistically valid to extrapolate from the 240 people tested. “Somehow the virus is getting there,” Dr. Margolis said. An infected visitor may have passed the virus to local mosquitoes, or a mosquito carrying dengue may have arrived on an airplane or cruise ship. Key West has plenty of Aedes aegypti, a type of mosquito that can carry dengue. People are worried about being stigmatized, especially those with businesses. A restaurant owner who was infected a year ago agreed to be interviewed only if his name was not published, because he thought fear of the disease might keep customers away, even though the virus is not spread by food or personal contact. He said he had had a mild flulike illness for about five days. He had no idea it was dengue until health workers asked him to be tested. Then they urged him to avoid being exposed again, because there are four different strains, and people who have had one strain and later contract another can develop a dangerous form of the disease that can cause hemorrhaging and even death. Dr. Peter J. Hotez, a tropical medicine expert at George Washington University, said he thought the potential was “pretty high” for dengue to spread up the Gulf Coast, where another species of Aedes mosquito that can carry the virus is common. If the disease does get there, it will strike poor people hardest, he predicted, because many of them lack screens and air-conditioning. There is no vaccine. “I believe the threat is very real,” he said. “And we understand that the C.D.C. is about to close its dengue branch. Can you imagine anything so stupid? This is the worst time possible.” The disease centers confirmed that the 2011 budget does eliminate financing for the “vector-borne” disease branch, which tracks dengue, West Nile virus, plague, encephalitis and other illnesses carried by insects. Dr. Ali S. Khan, deputy director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, said that the disease centers had to make budget cuts, and that the vector-borne disease branch was one. But he said other money could be used to pay for some of the work it used to do. More than a dozen medical organizations have signed a letter to Congress, asking that the money be reinstated. Meanwhile, as they are trying to ease public fears, officials in Key West are scrambling to stop the outbreak. The best way to fight the disease is to fight the mosquitoes, by wearing bug repellent, spraying pesticides and dumping anything that holds water. The amount it takes to fill a bottle cap is enough for Aedes aegypti to breed. Mosquito control inspectors have been dispatched to neighborhoods with suspected cases. Sometimes they have to deal with vacant houses because Key West, like many cities, is dotted with foreclosures. The inspectors have also told landscapers to stock ponds with minnows, which feed on mosquito larvae. The city even launched Mosquito TV, a weekly show, to mobilize residents against the pest. At the Key West Cemetery, where the gravestone of B. P. Roberts (who died in 1979) reads, “I told you I was sick,” dozens of “ovitraps” — black plastic cups laced with poison to kill female mosquitoes and their eggs — mingled among concrete urns and vases of water rife with squiggling larvae. Plans for next year include providing sterile male mosquitoes to prevent their mates from reproducing. Key West residents have been taking it all in stride. At a parade last October, a group calling itself Dengue Night Fever included a John Travolta look-alike and followers sporting giant mosquito wings. Tourists interviewed this week at the nightly sunset celebration on Mallory Square seemed oblivious. Linwood Dean, 31, and his family had been visiting from Pennsylvania for three days. Mr. Linwood had a fresh mosquito bite on his forearm. “We haven’t heard anything about it,” he said. “We are having a wonderful time.”

The iPhone 4 antenna may be causing static for some Apple investors, but the company is showing no signs of slowing down. Apple said on Tuesday that its net income rose 78 percent last quarter, driven by strong sales of the iPhone, the iPad and the Macintosh line of computers. The results show that Apple is continuing to outpace its competitors in its three major lines of business: computers, phones and tablets. And Apple would be selling even more iPhones and iPads if it could keep up with demand. “More and more, people’s lives are dependent on desktop and mobile computing,” said Gene Munster, an analyst with Piper Jaffray. “People realize that and are willing to pay up for it, and Apple is capitalizing on that.” Apple executives said they were pleased with the results, which topped Wall Street’s forecasts. “IPad is off to a terrific start, more people are buying Macs than ever before, and we have amazing new products still to come this year,” Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, said in a news release. Apple sold nearly 3.3 million iPads in the quarter. Consumers gravitated to higher-priced models of the tablet, helping to create a new segment of Apple’s business that generated revenue of $2.1 billion. With 8.4 million units sold, the iPhone remains Apple’s biggest and most profitable business, generating $5.3 billion in revenue in the quarter. Most of the sales were of the iPhone 3G and 3GS, since the iPhone 4 went on sale June 24, just three days ???? before the quarter’s end. And Apple sold 3.47 million Macintosh computers, the most ever in a quarter, dispelling fears that the iPad would hurt those sales. “Apple was scared that the iPad would cannibalize sales of Macintosh computers,” Mr. Munster said. “That’s not happening.” Apple said its net income rose to $3.25 billion, or $3.51 a share, a 78 percent jump from a year earlier. Revenue rose 61 percent, to $15.7 billion. On average, Wall Street analysts had expected Apple to report net income of $3.12 a share on revenue of $14.75 billion. Investors were watching for the effect of the iPad on Apple’s profit margins; the company had warned earlier that the iPad’s margins would be lower than those of products like the iPhone. But in a conference call with investors, Apple executives said that the drop was less than expected, in part because of brisk sales of highly profitable iPhones. Over all, Apple’s gross margin was 39.1 in the most recent quarter, down from 40.9 percent in the period a year earlier. The company also gave a bullish forecast for the current quarter. “Apple is now a multifaceted company, and it continues to defy the economy,” said Shaw Wu, an analyst with Kaufman Brothers. Shares of Apple had fallen nearly 9 percent since the introduction of the iPhone 4, but they rebounded 2.57 percent on Tuesday to close at $251.89. Apple released its financial results after the close of regular trading, and its shares rose an additional 3.1 percent in after-hours trading. Problems surrounding the iPhone 4’s antenna reception made headlines in recent weeks. Shortly after the release of the device, users began to complain of weak reception and dropped calls when they touched the lower left portion of the antenna, which is built into a steel band that encases the phone. On Friday, Apple gave its most detailed and forceful defense of the iPhone 4’s ability to receive and hold calls. In a news conference at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., Mr. Jobs said the reception problems were common ones that affected most smartphones, an assertion that several competitors rejected. Mr. Jobs also said the iPhone’s antenna problems had been blown out of proportion by the media. But to end the controversy, he said, Apple would give customers free bumper cases that insulate the antenna from human touch. Apple executives dismissed concerns that worries about the antenna were affecting sales. “We are selling every unit we can make currently,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s chief operating officer, during the conference call. Mr. Cook also said Apple was working hard to increase the supply of iPhones and iPads to catch up with consumer demand. Apple did not give precise numbers for the cost of the free bumpers, but some analysts said they expected it to be about $178 million.

Battered by volatile markets and a sharp reduction in trading gains, earnings at Goldman Sachs dropped 83 percent in the second quarter to 78 cents a share, making it the worst quarter for the giant investment bank since the depths of the financial crisis in late 2008. Revenue fell 36 percent to $8.84 billion from $13.76 billion in the quarter a year ago. Net income was $613 million, down from $3.43 billion or $4.93 a share, in the quarter a year ago. Still, the investment bank’s profit was more than the amount it agreed to pay last week to settle a fraud suit brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission in April. The suit accused Goldman of misleading institutional investors who ???? bought financial products linked to subprime mortgages which ultimately defaulted. Goldman did not admit wrongdoing but agreed last week to provide better disclosure to investors in mortgage securities as part of the $550 million settlement, one of the largest ever for a Wall Street firm. The earnings include $1.15 billion in special charges — $550 million for the S.E.C. settlement and $600 million for a British bank payroll tax. Excluding these charges, earnings were $2.75 a share. Analysts had already factored in the charge for the British bonus tax, but nevertheless the results were weaker than Wall Street expected. While earnings forecasts had been declining in recent weeks, “they missed the consensus” said Guy Moszkowski, an analyst with Bank of America Merrill Lynch. “It’s rare for them to miss, but it does happen.” “It was a very, very bad operating environment,” he said. “The trading results were much weaker but still respectable” The lawsuit overshadowed Goldman’s outsize profits in the first quarter, when buoyant results in trading lifted earnings to $3.46 billion. Now, as markets weaken, the focus is squarely back on the bottom line and Goldman shares are down more than 20 percent from where they were before the S.E.C’s suit was filed in April. Analysts had been expecting net income of $1.23 billion, or $2.03 a share, on revenues of $8.98 billion, according to Thomson Reuters. “The market environment became more difficult during the second quarter ???? and, as a result, client activity across our businesses declined,” the chief executive, Lloyd C. Blankfein, said. “Looking ahead, we remain focused on helping our clients to raise capital, manage risk and invest for the future, which are all important to economic growth.” Other financial giants, like JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup, also reported disappointing results from their trading operations when they announced second-quarter results last week. Tuesday’s results represent a rare miss for Goldman’s vaunted traders, who have helped make the firm Wall Street’s most powerful — and profitable — investment bank. But few traders were prepared for the sharp swings of the market in the spring, when exchanges around the world were roiled by fears about European government borrowing and the specter of a default by Greece. Closer to home, the “flash crash” in May, when the Dow dropped nearly 1,000 points in less than 30 minutes, also unnerved investors. In addition, Goldman said it had set aside 43 percent of revenue in the first half of 2010 for employee salaries and bonuses, down from 49 percent for the same period a year ago.

Some final U.S. Open observations while tripping over fallen golfers on our way out of Del Monte Forest: -- Tiger Woods remains the game's most riveting show, even in defeat. No player routinely seizes the moment the way he did again Saturday, when he finished with three consecutive birdies - punctuated by his breathtaking 3-wood shot around one tree, along the coastline and swiss shoes onto the 18th green (the shot of the tournament). Woods when he opens his mouth: Not so riveting. Not so appealing, either. First he called Pebble Beach's greens "awful" after his opening-round 74 - even if other players agreed, it came off as shameless excuse-making. Then, after his final-round 75, he dropped hints of discontent with caddie Steve Williams and whiffed on an obvious chance to commend winner Graeme McDowell. Woods suggested he had the wrong club on the No. 6 tee (3-wood instead of 2-iron or 3-iron) and explained his bogey on No. 10 by saying he shouldn't have fired his approach shot at the flagstick, but "Steve said take dead aim right at it, and in my heart I said no. There was no chance." At least he acknowledged he took an "awful swing." But by bringing Williams into the conversation, Woods made it sound as if he were shifting blame, an enduring habit. One last point: When Woods was asked if he was surprised a MBT Sapatu Shoes more marquee player didn't win the Open, the gracious move would have included congratulating McDowell. Phil Mickelson fielded virtually the same question by saying McDowell is a solid player and his peers weren't surprised he won. Woods pointed to the USGA's Mike Davis as giving "more guys the chance to win. It's more open now, with the graduated rough and being firm and fast like this." He's right, but would it have been so hard to mention McDowell? -- No offense to the new champion - who handled his crowning moment with grace and good humor - but can you even imagine the buzz-less atmosphere and empty grandstands if McDowell and Gregory Havret had an 18-hole playoff Monday? NBC might have set a new low in television ratings. And the argument for abandoning the USGA playoff format - in favor of sudden death or a same-day, three-hole playoff - would have gained fresh momentum. -- Speaking of TV ratings, Sunday's numbers were 35 percent higher than last year's Sunday telecast from Bethpage (where rain pushed the ending to Monday). This year's final round stretched deeper into prime time in the East, and it obviously helped to have Woods, Mickelson and Ernie Els all in the hunt on the back nine. -- The outbreak of triple bogeys on No. 14, after a MBT Mens Sapatu Shoes rash of quadruple bogeys at the AT&T in February, makes it clear: Pebble Beach officials need to blow up that green and start over. -- If Dustin Johnson never wins a major - hard to picture, given his length off the tee - he will forever regret his final-round meltdown at Pebble. He would have won by shooting 76 and forced a playoff by shooting 77. Instead, he shot 82 and didn't even have a chance coming down the stretch. Yikes. -- Three players posted rounds of 66 - and the winning score still landed at even par. And McDowell didn't even shoot any of those 66s. -- Four of the past five major champions were first-timers, from Lucas Glover (2009 U.S. Open) and Stewart Cink ('09 British Open) to Y.E. Yang ('09 PGA) and McDowell. This shows golf's ever-expanding depth - there are a lot of good players out there - and offers another obstacle to Woods as he tries to surpass Jack Nicklaus' record of 18 major titles. -- On that subject, Sir Eldrick now has gone two years MBT Womens Sapatu Shoes without a major. If he fails to win next month's British Open at St. Andrews, it will be natural to wonder if Nicklaus' record is safe.

A fight has broken out between the nation’s biggest drugstore chains, Walgreen and CVS Caremark, potentially affecting where millions of consumers can fill their prescriptions. On Monday, Walgreen, which operates about 7,500 drugstores across the country, announced it would not participate as a prescription drug provider for customers in new drug benefit plans administered by CVS Caremark. CVS Caremark, besides operating more than 7,000 of its own drugstores, is also a leading provider walking shoes** of prescription drug benefit plans that many employers offer workers and their dependents. On Wednesday, CVS Caremark countered the Walgreen move. The company said that anyone now enrolled in its drug benefit plans would have to stop filling their prescriptions at Walgreen within a month. “It’s a real big game of chicken, and I don’t know who’s going to win this one,” said Edward A. Kaplan, a benefits expert at the Segal Company, a consultant to big employers. Mr. Kaplan said he was working with employers to determine how many of their workers might be affected if they were forced to stop using Walgreen under their plans. Smaller drugstore operators had already raised antitrust concerns against CVS Caremark, citing potential conflicts caused by its dual role as a pharmacy chain and a drug plan administrator. The National Community Pharmacists Association, which represents independent drugstores, said the Federal Trade Commission was investigating its accusations of anti-competitive practices by CVS Caremark. The commission confirmed the investigation but declined to comment on the nature of the inquiry. Attorneys general in 24 states are conducting a similar investigation, according to CVS Caremark. In a statement, CVS Caremark said Wednesday it remained “confident that our business practices and service offerings are being conducted in compliance with antitrust laws.” While CVS Caremark said that the vast majority of customers could easily find a nearby pharmacy other than Walgreen, Mr. Kaplan and other benefits consultants said the standoff could be disruptive. In certain companies, they say, as many as 2o to 30 percent of employees enrolled in plans mbt** administered by CVS Caremark are filling their prescriptions at Walgreen. For those corporations, “it is significant,” said David Dross, an executive for the consultant Mercer who advises companies on pharmacy benefits. This dispute, of course, could be brinksmanship of the sort that frequently occurs between health insurance plans and hospitals, in which consumers are threatened with the possibility of their hospital’s being dropped from an insurer’s network until the two parties finally reach an agreement on how much the hospital should be paid. In deciding to drop Walgreen before Walgreen could drop it, CVS Caremark said it was simply reacting to its rival’s attempt to extract higher payments for the drugs that CVS Caremark enrollees buy at its stores. “Walgreen’s announcement was nothing more than a transparent attempt to try to raise the pharmacy reimbursement rates it receives from CVS Caremark,” the company said in a statement on Wednesday. Besides battling over drugstore customers, Walgreen and CVS Caremark compete to a lesser extent in providing employee drug benefit plans, although CVS Caremark is a much bigger player in that field. The two companies “are effectively choosing to be direct competitors in administering plan benefits as well as prescription drugs,” said George Hill, an analyst with Leerink Swann. Because employers may resist limiting the choice of pharmacies for their workers, the dispute could benefit some competing drug plan managers like Express Scripts and Medco Health Solutions, analysts said. In announcing Monday that it would no longer participate in CVS Caremark drug plans, mbt m.walk shoes** Walgreen said that its rival was essentially using its prescription coverage business to steer patients to its own CVS drugstores, discriminating against competitors. Over time, “we went from being a valued provider within CVS Caremark’s network to, we believe, being more of a competitor to CVS drugstores within their network,” Gregory D. Wasson, the chief executive of Walgreen, said in a phone interview on Wednesday. Certain CVS Caremark drug benefit plans have diverted long-standing customers away from Walgreen and the pharmacists with whom those customers have trusted relationships, Walgreen said. In particular, Walgreen cited Maintenance Choice, a CVS Caremark drug plan that requires people taking long-term medications to refill their prescriptions at a CVS pharmacy or through the company’s mail service — or to pay more, potentially full price, at a competing pharmacy. CVS Caremark said on Wednesday that those plans were meant to provide more choice for workers whose employers would otherwise restrict them to mail-order services for long-term prescriptions. The Walgreen complaints echo some of the concerns that smaller drugstores have raised about CVS Caremark, said B. Kemp Dolliver, a research analyst who follows the industry for Avondale Partners. Mr. Dolliver personally owns stock in two drug benefit competitors to CVS Caremark. The Federal Trade Commission is currently looking into some of the issues raised by the smaller pharmacies, he said, and the Walgreen dispute could draw even more attention to these potential concerns. Independent pharmacists argue CVS Caremark has limited consumers’ choices of where to refill their prescriptions. “When a patient does not have the right to choose the health care provider, in this case the pharmacy that they choose and trust, that’s not good,” said Joseph H. Harmison, the president of the National Community Pharmacists Association, a group representing nearly 23,000 independent ????** community pharmacies and pharmacy chains. Some people who feel intimidated by physicians turn to their local pharmacists for medical advice about their prescriptions, he said. “The pharmacist is often the person a patient will wait to ask the questions to,” he said. Last May, his association filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission alleging that CVS Caremark had used its dominant position in the pharmaceutical service industry to eliminate consumer choice and drive consumers away from competing pharmacies. The F.T.C. confirmed Wednesday that it was investigating CVS Caremark, but Richard A. Feinstein, the director of the agency’s bureau of competition said the commission would not comment on the subject of the probe. Consultants and analysts say it is unclear whether the pharmacy benefit business will move toward a business model in which patients will no longer be able to fill their prescriptions at every drugstore but be forced to go to a select group of retailers.

Christine A. Moore, a hat designer on 34th Street in Midtown Manhattan, is one of the unlucky 100. Like other businesses and landlords in the area, she has been warned that a giant tunnel-boring machine is coming to her neighborhood and that she will have to move as her building is marked for demolition. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey this week began to send letters to more than 3,000 occupants of a wide swath of the West Side that surrounds the path of one of the biggest public-works projects in the nation: an $8.7 billion commuter train tunnel under the Hudson River. The letters lay mbt** out the plan and schedule for construction of the tunnel — twin tunnels, actually — which will end at a new terminal deep under 34th Street at the foot of the Macy’s flagship store. The Port Authority, which is a partner with New Jersey Transit in the project, is telling most of the recipients of the letters that they do not stand in the way of the project and, so, will not be directly affected by the construction. But Ms. Moore, her landlord and more than 90 other businesses or building owners are receiving a different message: The Port Authority wants all or part of your building and may invoke eminent domain law to acquire it. That notice upset Ms. Moore, who has run her hat-making business out of a 900-square-foot space at 110 West 34th Street for 12 years. She said that she had been promised help in finding another location for her showroom but that she first had to adjust to the idea of being uprooted. “The reality is, it’s going to happen,” Ms. Moore said. “But you need some time to adjust.” Ms. Moore described the building, which is 12 stories, as a remnant of another era. The building is about 80 years old and has been managed for the last quarter-century by the Jemal family, which has owned and developed commercial buildings across the city. Its ground floor houses a Payless Shoe Source, and the upstairs tenants include clothing companies, travel agencies and doctors’ offices. Most striking was Ms. Moore’s positive sentiment toward her landlords. “They’ve been very gracious landlords to small start-ups,” said Ms. Moore, who, even more surprisingly, characterized her rent as “very low.” She said she doubted that O. R. Colan Associates, a company based in North Carolina that the cheap mbt shoes** Port Authority has hired to help with relocations, would be able to find her a similar space nearby. “Where would you put me? Because I can’t go to Coney Island,” said Ms. Moore, whose hats are popular among women who attend horse races like the Belmont Stakes. “I can’t operate a fashion business from Coney Island.” Originally, the plan for the tunnel project — known as Access to the Region’s Core — called for taking part of 110 West 34th for an entrance to the long escalators that would carry commuters down to the new terminal, 150 feet below street level. But after more study, engineers decided that the building could not remain standing, said Paul Wyckoff, a spokesman for the project. Mr. Wyckoff and Stephen Sigmund, a spokesman for the Port Authority, declined to characterize negotiations with the Jemals. Through another spokesman, the Jemals also declined to comment. It will be a while before the Port Authority can take any of the property. First, it must hold a public hearing to explain the eminent domain process and give people a chance to comment about the project. The date for that hearing has not been set. Along the way, officials of the authority have been negotiating with owners of seven properties that they want to acquire and seven others that they want to buy a portion of. If they strike deals, they could avoid potentially costly litigation. “We’re going to make every effort to reach negotiated agreements with these property mbt sport** owners,” Mr. Sigmund said. Ground was broken last summer at the west end of the tunnel in North Bergen, N.J. New Jersey Transit, whose commuter trains will run through the tunnels, has chosen a consortium to dig the Manhattan side of the tunnels, but work in the city is not expected to begin for several months. The Manhattan end of the project will begin with the construction of a shaft near the west end of 28th Street. About a year later, according to one of the letters the Port Authority is sending out, “a tunnel boring machine begins steadily digging the tunnel and advancing to the north and east.”

Raise your hand if you can explain why anyone still believes in credit ratings. One of the enduring questions of the financial crisis is how the credit ratings establishment got so much so wrong for so very long. How could century-old institutions like the Moody’s Investors Service give their triple-A blessings to subprime junk? It is time — in fact, past time — for Washington to get some answers. Because despite talk of a mbt sale** shake-up, the companies that dominate the ratings business hope to avoid the radical overhaul their critics are calling for. On Wednesday, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, the federal panel that is trying get to the bottom of the financial crisis, will examine the ratings industry and its many failures at a hearing. There is no shortage of hard questions to ask, including the big one: How can we prevent these institutions and their sometimes cockamamie judgments from endangering our financial system again? Like so much of Wall Street, the ratings industry today looks much like it did before the crisis: powerful, profitable, protected. A few new players are trying to break into the business, but the old guard — Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch — still lords it over the industry. The mortgage collapse exposed the conflicts at the heart of this old-line ratings oligopoly. Restaurant reviews might seem suspect if they were paid for by the restaurants being reviewed. But that is essentially how things work in the credit ratings business. Even now, after all we have learned, Moody’s, S.& P. and Fitch are still paid by the banks and companies whose securities they evaluate. Wall Street may have a bit of hearing fatigue these days, but the one scheduled for Wednesday in New York is bound to draw some scrutiny in banking circles. Joining Raymond W. McDaniel Jr., chairman and chief executive of Moody’s Corporation, will be none other than Warren E. Buffett, who happens to be Moody’s biggest shareholder. Mr. Buffett has been selling some of his Moody’s stock of late, but given his long and lucrative association with the company, the panel might want to know what he thinks about the ratings business, past, present and future. This hearing could be one of the last opportunities to educate the public and Congress masai** about how we might overhaul a system that failed the nation before the current financial regulatory reform bill is signed into law. To that end, here are a few questions the panel might ask: Mr. McDaniel, given the obvious failures of Moody’s and its peers, why should the major ratings companies retain the competitive advantages bestowed upon them by the Securities and Exchange Commission? Moody’s and other major agencies are designated as nationally recognized statistical ratings organizations. What advantages does this designation convey? How would your business and profits be affected if this designation were revoked? What specific changes have you made in your policies, procedures and personnel as a result of the financial crisis and your role in it? How should the government regularly test rating agencies to see if they should maintain their special status? Defend your so-called issuer-pay model — the notion that issuers, rather investors, pay you for ratings. Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, once characterized it as “like having one of the parties in court paying the judge’s salary.” Is Senator Levin wrong? Why is an issuer-pay model better than an investor-pay model, aside from profitability for Moody’s? Given that investors rarely are willing to pay for research, what would happen to your business and the bond industry if the issuer-pay model was outlawed? The Federal Bureau of Investigation issued a warning in 2004 of “an epidemic of mortgage fraud coursing across this country.” Were you aware of that warning? If so, what steps did Moody’s take to ensure that the mortgage investments it was rating were not tainted by fraud? How does Moody’s mbt sport 1** detect possible fraud? Andrew M. Cuomo, the New York State attorney general and candidate for governor, is investigating whether Wall Street banks hoodwinked the ratings agencies. Were you duped? Did anyone at Moody’s worry that banks might be playing fast and loose? If so, did Moody’s stop doing business with those banks, or warn regulators? If you didn’t, why not? William A. Ackman, a prominent hedge fund manager, recently suggested that the ratings industry adopt a “wait to rate” policy. He wants ratings agencies to wait 60 days before rating a new security, thus compelling early buyers to do their own homework. He also suggests the agencies adopt a pay-for-performance model that would reward accurate ratings. What is so bad about that? Senator Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota, has included a provision in the latest regulatory reform bill that would establish a government unit that would act as an intermediary between Wall Street banks and ratings agencies. The unit would assign agencies to rate new issues. Senator Franken hopes that creating a go-between would root out conflicts of interest and prevent rating agencies from competing for clients by offering higher ratings than the securities deserve. What do you make of the provision? Last month, Moody’s disclosed that it received a “Wells notice” from the Securities and Exchange Commission in March, indicating that the commission might file a civil suit against the company, claiming Moody’s had filed misleading descriptions about how it assigned ratings. Why did you wait almost two months before disclosing the Wells notice? On the day Moody’s received the Wells notice, you sold $4.3 million of Moody’s ????** shares through a previously scheduled plan. Did you consider, in light of the notice, not selling your shares? And did you alert Mr. Buffett, your largest shareholder, of the notice? His firm, Berkshire Hathaway, sold $30 million of shares in the next week.

Over the years, South Korean officials and analysts have grown accustomed to the North Koreans’ habit of stirring up trouble, whether through missile launchings or nuclear tests. And when faced with international censure, the North lashes out with threats of retaliation and even war. Typically, it is an attention-getting tactic, the South Koreans say, used to win diplomatic and economic concessions. But this time the motivation may be different. Experts on North Korea say that its latest act of belligerence — the sinking of a swiss shoes** South Korean ship in March, one of the worst military provocations since the end of the Korean War in 1953 — reflects a new force at play: the efforts of the North’s leader, Kim Jong-il, to establish his 27-year-old son as a legitimate heir to carry on the family dynasty. “His succession to power is the factor that links all other factors when we try to explain why the North is doing what it does these days,” said Choi Jin-wook, a senior analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification, the Seoul government’s top research organization on North Korea. “Without it, no explanation is complete or convincing.” On the surface, the North’s ever-intensifying policy of confrontation can appear self-defeating. But, officials and analysts here say, it is all part of Mr. Kim’s effort to groom Kim Jong-un, the youngest of his three known sons, as his successor. According to this line of thinking, the sinking of the South Korean ship was intended to create an atmosphere of crisis that would serve Mr. Kim’s purposes, both by rallying public support and winning the crucial backing of the military. “Kim Jong-il needs to create a warlike atmosphere at home to push through with the succession of power to his son,” said Cheon Seong-whun, another senior analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification. “To do that, he needs tensions and an external enemy.” Mr. Kim himself was carefully groomed for years to succeed his father, Kim Il-sung, who died in 1994. In the years he was consolidating his power base, Kim Jong-il was credited with masterminding a 1968 commando attack on the South Korean presidential palace in Seoul and the 1976 ax killings of two American military officers at the border, said Baek Seung-joo, a North Korea specialist at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses. Also in 1968, North Korea captured an American naval intelligence ship, the Pueblo, holding 82 hostages for nearly a year, while its commandos attacked remote South Korean villages and clashed with the South Korean military for two months. But this latest succession has been thrust upon the Kims prematurely, after Kim barefoot shoes** Jong-il’s reported stroke in 2008 and subsequent health problems, which have been said to include kidney disease. Although Mr. Kim, 68, was healthy enough to visit China this month, questions persist over how long he can remain in power. The next step for Kim Jong-un is to make his official public debut, but that has been complicated by his lack of major achievements, analysts said. “Planning and ordering a successful naval attack in a disputed sea border with the South boosts Kim Jong-un’s credentials as a ruthless leader who can command the military,” Mr. Baek said. “Pulling off a daring provocation to win military charisma was the rite of passage Kim Jong-il himself went through as he was consolidating power as his father’s heir.” Of course, the succession issue is not the only problem facing Kim Jong-il. His trademark policy of building a “strong and prosperous nation” was called into question when his navy lost a humiliating skirmish against the South last November. His government’s recent attempt to arrest inflation and eliminate black markets through a drastic revaluation of the North Korean currency set off more inflation and a wave of popular discontent that extended beyond the capital, Pyongyang. Meanwhile, South Korea refused to offer economic incentives until the North gave up its nuclear weapons program. With the succession issue and the rising internal and external pressures, it is not surprising that Mr. Kim would ratchet up confrontation with the South and its allies, said Mr. Cheon, the analyst. North Korea’s propaganda machine uses international condemnation to strengthen internal solidarity, whip up a war fever and justify Mr. Kim’s near-absolute grip on power, he said. North Korea is now telling its people that the United States and South Korea fabricated the sinking of the South’s ship as a version of the “Gulf of Tonkin incident,” a battle that Washington vastly overstated to justify expanding the Vietnam War. Huge outdoor rallies are being mobilized in the ????** North, according to North Korea Intellectuals Solidarity, a Web site run by defectors from the North, which cited sources inside North Korea. Last week, using a radio network that reaches every North Korean home, Gen. O Kuk-ryol, a top officer, delivered Mr. Kim’s order to the military and reserve forces to be ready for combat, said the defectors’ Web site. But Mr. Kim’s most concerted efforts seem to be directed at the military, the critical power base for his son. Despite United Nations sanctions that ban exports of luxury goods to the North, Mr. Kim is believed to have smuggled in fancy foreign cars for loyal generals, and in April 100 senior officers received promotions. The government has also elevated to hero status six crewmen of the minisubmarine that sank the South Korean ship, said Ha Tae-keung, who runs Open Radio for North Korea, a Web site based in Seoul that collects news from informants inside the North. Mr. Ha said that Mr. Kim’s tactics seemed to be succeeding. “I think the son is firmly in place,” he said. “He was in charge in Pyongyang when his father and his top aides were all in China.”

Reneging on a prominent campaign promise, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama told outraged residents of Okinawa on Sunday that an American air base would be moved only to the north side of the island rather than off the island. The announcement, a victory for the Obama administration and a humiliating setback for Mr. Hatoyama, confirmed what Japanese media had been reporting for weeks: that he would accept Washington’s demands to honor a 2006 agreement to move the United States Marine Air Station masai shoes** Futenma to the island’s less populated north. Irate crowds greeted his arrival on Okinawa on Sunday with bright yellow signs that said “Anger,” and showered him with jeering cries of “Go home!” And in Tokyo, opposition leaders and even members of his own governing coalition assailed him for having turned the relocation into a huge political issue, only to go back to the original agreement. While defending his decision on strategic grounds, Mr. Hatoyama conceded that it was “heartbreaking,” and offered the islanders his “heartfelt apology for causing much confusion.” Mr. Hatoyama’s historic election victory last August, ending a half-century of nearly unbroken Liberal Democratic Party leadership, had raised concerns in Washington that Japan would withdraw support for American priorities like the war in Afghanistan. He had opposed the war in Iraq, spoken out against American-led globalization and, after decades of reflexive Japanese support for American policies, promised to redefine Tokyo’s relationship with Washington as an “equal partnership.” The concrete symbol of that new relationship was his vow to move the Marine airfield off Okinawa, home to nearly half of the 50,000 United States military personnel in Japan, or even out of the country. While the promise was popular in some quarters, especially on Okinawa, where relations with the Marines have been tense since three American servicemen raped a 12-year-old girl there in 1995, keeping it was another matter. Once in power, facing a nuclear-armed North Korea and an increasingly assertive China, Mr. Hatoyama gave greater weight to the risk of damaging Japan’s critical security alliance with the United States. But his efforts to seek some kind of accommodation proved politically damaging, fueling a perception of indecisiveness that could still bring down his government. Ultimately, Washington’s insistence that Tokyo honor the 2006 agreement to move Futenma and its noisy helicopters to a new base in Camp Schwab, near the northern Okinawan fishing village of Henoko, won out. Visiting Okinawa for the second time this month, Mr. Hatoyama said that since taking posture shoes** office, he had learned to appreciate the role that the Marines play as a deterrent in the region, and that Okinawa was the most strategic location for them. As if to underscore that point, he made the announcement on a day the region was grappling with a response to the sinking of a South Korean warship. “We came to the conclusion that we have to ask local residents to accept the base in an area near Henoko,” he said during a meeting with Okinawa’s governor. He also said he had opted for the original plan of moving the base to Camp Schwab in order to hasten its move from the middle of the city of Ginowan, where residents have long complained. After the meeting, Gov. Hirokazu Nakaima said only, “It is regrettable that he built up our expectations over the past half year.” But other local leaders vowed to fight the decision, raising the specter of protests that could further delay construction of the new base and cause more political embarrassment to Mr. Hatoyama and his party. While the Obama administration appeared to prevail over Mr. Hatoyama, analysts have warned that the victory could prove a hollow one, especially if Washington’s insistence on the original agreement is seen here as an effort to lord it over a weaker ally. However, for now, opinion polls suggest most Japanese back their nation’s security alliance with the United States. Since taking office last September, Mr. Hatoyama has failed to take a clear stand on the issue, at times saying he wanted the base off Okinawa, but at other times saying he wanted to heed Washington’s concerns. This apparent flip-flopping fed criticism of Mr. Hatoyama as indecisive and aloof. There is growing speculation among political observers that he may be forced to step down if his Democrats fare poorly in Upper House elections scheduled for July 11. Washington and Tokyo first agreed to relocate the base in 1996, after the schoolgirl ????** was raped, but the move was delayed as Japan struggled to find another community to accept it. Helped by offers from Tokyo of generous public works projects, the city of Nago, where Camp Schwab is located, finally agreed to host the replacement base. In January, however, the city’s pro-base mayor was defeated by an opponent who was against the base and who rode a wave of voter expectations that it would be moved off Okinawa. In a meeting on Sunday, Nago’s new mayor, Susumu Inamine, told a grim-faced Mr. Hatoyama that he was not welcome. After the meeting, the mayor denounced Mr. Hatoyama as “betraying” his city and Okinawa. He warned that local opposition meant that “there is zero chance” of the base being built. “I cannot hide my rage,” Mr. Inamine said. “Nago needs no new base.”