Fractured Recovery a Week After Hurricane Sandy

Kirsten Luce for The New York Times

Residents on Michigan Ave. in Long Beach, N.Y., banded together to keep a lookout for looters.

The patchy recovery from Hurricane Sandy exposed a fractured region on Saturday: The lights flickered on in Manhattan neighborhoods that had been dark for days and the city’s subways rumbled and screeched through East River tunnels again. But in shorefront stretches of Staten Island and Queens that were all but demolished, and in broad sections of New Jersey and Long Island, gasoline was almost impossible to come by, electricity remained absent and worried homeowners wondered when help would finally arrive.

Drivers in New Jersey faced 70s-era gasoline rationing imposed by Gov. Chris Christie, while in New York, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said 8 million gallons had been unloaded from commercial tankers and another 28 million gallons would go into distribution terminals over the weekend. He also said the Defense Department was sending in 12 million gallons of fuel to be pumped from five mobile stations.

“They’ll have a 10-gallon limit,” the governor said. “The good news is, it’s going to be free.”

Only about 5,800 people in Manhattan awoke to find that they still lacked power, and crowds streamed into parks that reopened on a blindingly bright Saturday morning. Horse-drawn carriages were circling the roadways in Central Park again, and the grandstands were still in place for the New York Marathon. The race long been scheduled for Sunday, but on Friday, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg canceled it for the first time in its 42-year history.

On Long Island, there was a profound sense of isolation, with whole towns cut off from basic information, supplies and electricity — and people in washed-out neighborhoods saying the felt increasingly desperate. “I just keep waiting for someone with a megaphone and a car to just tell us what to do,” said Vikki Quinn, standing amid a pile of ruined belongings strewn in front of her flooded house in Long Beach. “I’m lost.”

David O’Connor, 44, has begun to use his living room chairs as firewood. A neighbor, Gina Braddish, a 27-year-old newlywed, was planning to siphon gas from a boat that washed into her front yard. Older people on darkened streets have been shouting for help from second-floor windows that are eye-level with buoys still trapped in trees.

Mr. Cuomo, at a briefing in Lower Manhattan, said that the city was moving forward.

“We are getting through it,” he said. “The worst is behind us.” But he also cautioned, “This entire situation is going to go on for a while.”

Mr. Cuomo said four subway lines that tie Manhattan to Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens — the 4, 5, 6,and 7 lines — had returned to life on Saturday morning, with four others—the D, F, J and M lines — set to begin running by the nightfall. Trains were also expected to begin running again on the commuter rail line on Staten Island.

He said that 60 percent of the power who lost power in the storm had had it restored, but that 900,000 were still in the dark. On Long Island, where 1.2 million people lost power, he said some 550,000 had power by Saturday morning. And in Midtown Manhattan, riggers went to work high above West 57th Street, where the storm broke the boom on a construction and left it dangling 74 stories up. They hand-cranked the boom closer to the partly completed building, a condominium and hotel complex, and the plan was to strap the boom to the structure. Once that process was completed, the surrounding streets, which had been closed since the boom snapped in punishing winds on Monday afternoon, could begin to reopen.

“Where are the police?” asked Anna Beigelman, a realtor in Merrick, who said she was afraid to drive.

The authorities estimated that as many as 100,000 homes and businesses on Long Island had been destroyed or badly damaged in the storm, from bedroom communities in Nassau County to the leafy towns of the South Shoreto Long Island’s notable summer refuges — Fire Island, the Hamptons, Jones Beach —which were decimated by the storm. Sand dunes were flattened and whole rows of beach houses crushed. The storm’s furious flood tide created new inlets that could become permanent parts of the topography.

“Fire Island is changed forever,” Steve Bellone, the Suffolk County executive, said.

As the storm approached, Long Island appeared be far from its path. But its incredibly wide, counterclockwise swirl of damaging winds and rain, combined with an unusually high tide, sent a huge storm surge along its top like a right hook, slamming both the ocean and sound shores of Long Island.

Reporting was contributed by Taylor Adams, Ruth Bashinsky, Matt Flegenheimer, Elizabeth A. Harris, Angela Macropoulos, Liz Robbins, Marc Santora, Nate Schweber, Michael Schwirtz, Stacey Stowe and Bernard Vaughan.

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Google's Android software in 3 out of 4 smartphones

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Songs offer messages of hope at Sandy benefit show

NEW YORK (AP) — From "Livin' on a Prayer" to "The Living Proof," every song Friday at NBC's benefit concert for superstorm Sandy victims became a message song.

New Jersey's Jon Bon Jovi gave extra meaning to "Who Says You Can't Go Home." Billy Joel worked in a reference to Staten Island, the decimated New York City borough. The hourlong event, hosted by Matt Lauer, was heavy on stars and lyrics identified with New Jersey and the New York metropolitan area, which took the brunt of this week's deadly storm. The telethon was a mix of music, storm footage and calls for donations from Jon Stewart, Tina Fey, Whoopi Goldberg and others.

The mood was somber but hopeful, from Christina Aguilera's "Beautiful" to Bon Jovi's "Livin' on a Prayer" and a tearful Mary J. Blige's "The Living Proof," her ballad of resilience with the timely declaration that "the worst is over/I can start living now." Joel rocked out with "Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway)," a song born from crisis, New York City's near bankruptcy in the 1970s, while Jimmy Fallon endured a faulty microphone and gamely led an all-star performance of the Drifters' "Under the Boardwalk" that featured Joel, Bruce Springsteen and Steven Tyler. The Aerosmith frontman then sat behind a piano and gave his all on a strained but deeply emotional "Dream On." Sting was equally passionate during an acoustic, muscular version of The Police hit "Message In a Bottle" and its promise to "send an SOS to the world."

The show ended, as it only could, with Springsteen and the E Street Band, tearing into "Land Of Hope and Dreams."

"God bless New York," Springsteen, New Jersey's ageless native son, said in conclusion. "God bless the Jersey shore."

The stable of NBC Universal networks, including USA, CNBC, MSNBC, E! Entertainment, The Weather Channel and Bravo, aired the concert live from the NBC studios in Rockefeller Center in midtown Manhattan, several blocks north of where the city went days without power. Millions of people for whom the benefit was organized couldn't watch the event because they had no electricity.

NBC Universal invited other networks to televise the event, but not everyone signed on.

That might have something to do with network rivalries.

In the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the networks organized a benefit together behind the scenes and it was televised on more than 30 networks simultaneously, including all the big broadcasters.

After Hurricane Katrina, NBC televised its own benefit before the other broadcasters, one that became best known for Kanye West's off-script declaration that "George Bush doesn't care about black people." The other broadcasters cooperated on their own telethon a week later, and NBC televised that one, too.

Also this year, NBC organized and scheduled a telethon and gave others the chance to air it.

Others declined to televise Friday's telethon, even though ABC parent Walt Disney Co. said it would donate $2 million to the American Red Cross and various ABC shows will promote a "Day of Giving" on Monday. The CBS Corp., Viacom Inc., parent of "Jersey Shore" network MTV, Fox network owner News Corp. also announced big donations to the Red Cross.

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Second Illness Infects Meningitis Sufferers

Just when they might have thought they were in the clear, people recovering from meningitis in an outbreak caused by a contaminated steroid drug have been struck by a second illness.

The new problem, called an epidural abscess, is an infection near the spine at the site where the drug — contaminated by a fungus — was injected to treat back or neck pain. The abscesses are a localized infection, different from meningitis, which affects the membranes covering the brain and spinal cord. But in some cases, an untreated abscess can cause meningitis. The abscesses have formed even while patients were taking powerful antifungal medicines, putting them back in the hospital for more treatment, often with surgery.

The problem has just begun to emerge, so far mostly in Michigan, which has had more people sickened by the drug — 112 out of 404 nationwide — than any other state.

“We’re hearing about it in Michigan and other locations as well,” said Dr. Tom M. Chiller, the deputy chief of the mycotic diseases branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “We don’t have a good handle on how many people are coming back.”

He added, “We are just learning about this and trying to assess how best to manage these patients. They’re very complicated.”

In the last few days, about a third of the 53 patients treated for meningitis at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital in Ann Arbor, Mich., have returned with abscesses, said Dr. Lakshmi K. Halasyamani, the chief medical officer.

“This is a significant shift in the presentation of this fungal infection, and quite concerning,” she said. “An epidural abscess is very serious. It’s not something we expected.”

She and other experts said they were especially puzzled that the infections could occur even though patients were taking drugs that, at least in tests, appeared to work against the fungus causing the infection, a type of black mold called Exserohilum.

The main symptom is severe pain near the injection site. But the abscesses are internal, with no visible signs on the skin, so it takes an M.R.I. scan to make the diagnosis. Some patients have more than one abscess. In some cases, the infection can be drained or cleaned out by a neurosurgeon.

But sometimes fungal strands and abnormal tissue are wrapped around nerves and cannot be surgically removed, said Dr. Carol A. Kauffman, an expert on fungal diseases at the University of Michigan. In such cases, all doctors can do is give a combination of antifungal drugs and hope for the best. They have very little experience with this type of infection.

Some patients have had epidural abscesses without meningitis; St. Joseph Mercy Hospital has had 34 such cases.

A spokesman for the health department in Tennessee, which has had 78 meningitis cases, said that a few cases of epidural abscess had also occurred there, and that the state was trying to assess the extent of the problem.

Dr. Chiller said doctors were also reporting that some patients exposed to the tainted drug had arachnoiditis, a nerve inflammation near the spine that can cause intense pain, bladder problems and numbness.

“Unfortunately, we know from the rare cases of fungal meningitis that occur, that you can have complicated courses for this disease, and it requires prolonged therapy and can have some devastating consequences,” he said.

The meningitis outbreak, first recognized in late September, is one of the worst public health disasters ever caused by a contaminated drug. So far, 29 people have died, often from strokes caused by the infection. The case count is continuing to rise. The drug was a steroid, methylprednisolone acetate, made by the New England Compounding Center in Framingham, Mass. Three contaminated lots of the drug, more than 17,000 vials, were shipped around the country, and about 14,000 people were injected with the drug, mostly for neck and back pain. But some received injections for arthritic joints and have developed joint infections.

Inspections of the compounding center have revealed extensive contamination. It has been shut down, as has another Massachusetts company, Ameridose, with some of the same owners. Both companies have had their products recalled.

Compounding pharmacies, which mix their own drugs, have had little regulation from either states or the federal government, and several others have been shut down recently after inspections found sanitation problems.

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Live Coverage: Anger Flares as Recovery Inches Ahead

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State-by-State Guide

A look at the devastation caused in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy from North Carolina to New England.

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Microsoft vs Google trial raises concerns over secrecy

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Two weeks before a high-stakes trial pitting Google's Motorola Mobility unit against Microsoft, Google made what has become a common request for a technology company fighting for billions of dollars: A public court proceeding, conducted largely in secret.

Google and Microsoft, like rivals embroiled in smartphone patent wars, are eager to keep sensitive business information under wraps - in this case, the royalty deals they cut with other companies on patented technology. Microsoft asked for similar protections in a court filing late on Thursday.

Such royalty rates, though, are the central issue in this trial, which begins November 13 in Seattle.

U.S. District Judge James Robart has granted requests to block many pre-trial legal briefs from public view. Though he warned he may get tougher on the issue, the nature of the case raises the possibility that even his final decision might include redacted, or blacked-out, sections.

Legal experts are increasingly troubled by the level of secrecy that has become commonplace in intellectual property cases where overburdened judges often pay scant attention to the issue.

Widespread sealing of documents infringes on the basic American legal principle that court should be public, says law professor, Dennis Crouch, and encourages companies to use a costly, tax-payer funded resource to resolve their disputes.

"There are plenty of cases that have settled because one party didn't want their information public," said Crouch, an intellectual property professor at University of Missouri School of Law.

Tech companies counter that they should not be forced to reveal private business information as the price for having their day in court.

The law does permit confidential information to be kept from public view in some circumstances, though companies must show the disclosure would be harmful.

Google argues that revelations about licensing negotiations would give competitors "additional leverage and bargaining power and would lead to an unfair advantage."

Robart has not yet ruled on Google and Microsoft's requests, which, in the case of Google includes not only keeping documents under seal, but also clearing the courtroom during crucial testimony.

It is also unclear whether Robart will redact any discussion of royalty rates in his final opinion. The judge, who will decide this part of the case without a jury, did not respond to requests for comment.

NOT PAYING ATTENTION

Apple Inc and Microsoft Corp have been litigating in courts around the world against Google Inc and partners like Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, which use the Android operating system on their mobile devices.

Apple contends that Android is basically a copy of its iOS smartphone software, and Microsoft holds patents that it contends cover a number of Android features.

Google bought Motorola for $12.5 billion, partly to use its large portfolio of communications patents as a bargaining chip against its competitors.

Robart will decide how big a royalty Motorola deserves from Microsoft for a license on some Motorola wireless and video patents.

Apple, for its part, is set to square off against Motorola on Monday in Madison, Wisconsin, in a case that involves many of the same issues.

In Wisconsin, Apple and Motorola have filed most court documents entirely under seal. U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb did not require them to seek advance permission to file them secretly, nor did she mandate that the companies make redacted copies available for the public.

Judges have broad discretion in granting requests to seal documents. The legal standard for such requests can be high, but in cases where both sides want the proceedings to be secret, judges have little incentive to thoroughly review secrecy requests.

In Apple's Northern California litigation against Samsung, both parties also sought to keep many documents under seal. After Reuters challenged those secrecy requests, on grounds it wanted to report financial details, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh ordered both companies to disclose a range of information they considered secret - including profit margins on individual products - but not licensing deals. Apple and Samsung are appealing the disclosure order.

In response to questions from Reuters last week, Judge Crabb in Wisconsin, who will also decide the case without a jury, acknowledged she had not been paying attention to how many documents were being filed under seal. Federal judges in Madison will now require that parties file redacted briefs, she said, though as of Wednesday, Apple and Motorola were still filing key briefs entirely under seal.

"Just because there is a seed or kernel of confidential information doesn't mean an entire 25-page brief should be sealed," said Bernard Chao, an intellectual property professor at University of Denver Sturm College of Law.

Crabb promised that the upcoming trial would be open.

"Whatever opinion I make is not going to be redacted," she told Reuters in an interview.

CHECKING THE COMPS

Microsoft sued Motorola two years ago, saying Motorola had promised to license its so-called "standards essential" patents at a fair rate, in exchange for the technology being adopted as a norm industrywide. But by demanding roughly $4 billion a year in revenue, Microsoft says Motorola broke its promise.

Robart will sort out what a reasonable royalty for those standards patents should be, partly by reviewing deals Motorola struck with other companies such as IBM and Research in Motion - much like an appraiser checking comparable properties to figure out whether a home is priced right.

In this case, though, the public may not be able to understand exactly what figures Robart is comparing. Representatives for Microsoft and Google declined to comment.

In its brief, Microsoft said licensing terms could be sealed without the need to clear the courtroom.

"Permitting redaction of this information will minimize the harm to Microsoft and third parties while also giving due consideration to the public policies favoring disclosure," the company argued.

IBM and RIM have also asked Robart to keep licensing information secret.

Chao doesn't think Robart will ultimately redact his own ruling, even though it may include discussion of the specific royalty rates. "I can't imagine that," he said.

Most judges cite lack of resources and overflowing dockets as the reason why they don't scrutinize secrecy requests more closely, especially when both parties support them.

In Wisconsin, Crabb said that even though she will now require litigants to ask permission to file secret documents, it is highly unlikely that she will actually read those arguments - unless someone else flags a problem.

"We're paddling madly to stay afloat," Crabb said.

The Wisconsin case in U.S. District Court, Western District of Wisconsin is Apple Inc. vs. Motorola Mobility Inc., 11-cv-178. The Seattle case in U.S. District Court, Western District of Washington is Microsoft Corp. vs. Motorola Inc., 10-cv-1823.

(Reporting by Dan Levine in San Francisco; Additional reporting by Bill Rigby in Seattle.; Editing by Jonathan Weber, Andrew Hay and Bernadette Baum)

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Blake Shelton pulls off surprise win at CMAs

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Winning the Country Music Association Awards' entertainer of the year is a top honor and always counted as a career high point. But for Blake Shelton it wasn't even the most memorable moment of an amazing Thursday night.

"The Voice" star took home three trophies, including his third straight male vocalist victory, but nothing compared to sharing song of the year with wife Miranda Lambert. The pair wrote "Over You," about the death of Shelton's brother Richie in a car wreck 15 years ago. He said that trophy will always have a special place in their Oklahoma home.

"For me as a songwriter that is as personal as I can get," Shelton said. "So that songwriter award, song of the year award, it will have its own shelf. It will have spotlights on it and an alarm and everything. Trip wires and there will be a land mine if you walk towards it. It is a real big deal to Miranda and I."

Shelton's entertainer win was the biggest surprise of a night full of them. Even he couldn't believe he'd won the award in a field that included Taylor Swift, Jason Aldean, Kenny Chesney and Brad Paisley.

"I didn't think about that tonight. I was thinking there's Taylor Swift right there," he said of the two-time entertainer of the year. "Really, this is pretty dumb that there's anyone else even nominated."

The reality, though, is Shelton capped one of the most impressive career reboots in country music history with the win. About three years ago, he was searching for a hit or a gimmick that might return him to the top of the charts, without much luck. He scored a novelty hit with Trace Adkins called "Hillbilly Bone," began a run of hits and then joined "The Voice" in a move that made him an instant celebrity outside the country world.

He hasn't sold as many records as Swift, whose "Red" just moved 1.2 million copies in its first week, or as many concert tickets as Chesney or Aldean. But his leading-man looks, wicked sense of humor, Twitter presence and mellow baritone have made him one of country's top stars.

While Shelton didn't give himself much of a shot, Lambert — who also won her third straight female vocalist of the year award — thought he fit the definition of entertainer of the year after doing a little research.

"I realized that it just meant not only touring numbers, not only ticket sales or how much production you have, but the way that you represent country music within a year," Lambert said. "The media that you do and the work that you do and the TV shows that you are on and how you represent yourself and how you speak out about country music. When you think about it that way, Blake Shelton deserved to win that trophy tonight."

Shelton's victory was just one of many surprises during the awards. Quartet Little Big Town joined Lambert with two wins apiece, taking home vocal group and single of the year for "Pontoon." And Thompson Square's Shawna and Keifer Thompson won vocal duo of the year, ending Sugarland's five-year run in that category.

"Y'all, this has been a 13-year journey," Karen Fairchild said as members of the group fist-pumped, jumped up and down and shouted on stage. "We're living proof that if you work really hard and chase your dream, all the good stuff happens and it follows you. Nashville, you made us your band. Thank you for letting us do this."

Like fellow outsiders LBT, Eric Church felt the love from the CMA's voters for the first time. He won the prestigious album of the year for his breakthrough record "Chief," signaling the North Carolina native's complete acceptance by the country music community.

"I spent a lot of my career wondering where I fit in — too country, too rock," Church told the crowd. "I want to thank you guys for giving me somewhere to hang my hat tonight."

The awards went off-script early, and not just for Little Big Town. Thompson Square won in a category that's been locked up by either Sugarland or Brooks & Dunn 19 of the last 20 years.

"Ever since I was 5 years old, I used to practice in the kitchen with one of my Meemaw's Mason jars for this moment here," Shawna Thompson said.

Hunter Hayes won new artist of the year, while Chesney and Tim McGraw won musical event of the year for "Party Like a Rock Star" and Toby Keith won video of the year for "Red Solo Cup."

Church helped kick off the show by combining forces with Aldean and Luke Bryan. Playing with a large American flag behind them, the trio of performers teamed up on Aldean's new single "The Only Way I Know" from his new album "Night Train" and earned a standing ovation. Each returned later to play singles, showing how large a market share they now own in country music.

Most of country's top stars were on hand at Nashville's Bridgestone Arena for the celebration, with many slated to perform. Swift performed her somber new single "Begin Again" on a set with a picture of the Eiffel Tower and falling leaves in the background. She received an ovation of her own.

Shelton, McGraw and wife Faith Hill, Lady Antebellum and Keith Urban joined together to salute lifetime achievement winner Willie Nelson, ending with a group sing-along of his iconic "On the Road Again."

Little Big Town performed their winner "Pontoon," a song that was something of a departure for Fairchild, Kimberly Schlapman, Jimi Westbrook and Phillip Sweet. Produced by Jay Joyce, the song has a sharper groove than LBT's previous efforts.

In a coincidence, Joyce also produced Church's "Chief." The hard edge he brought to both paid off all around.

Church said album of the year, arguably the CMA's second most prestigious award, was a win that fit right in with his and Joyce's philosophy.

"I still think in this day and time the only way to really get a fan base is you've got to give them more than one chapter of a book," Church said. "They've got to read the whole book."

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AP writer Kristin M. Hall in Nashville contributed to this report.

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Online:

http://cmaworld.com

http://abc.go.com/shows/cma-awards

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For the latest country music news from the Associated Press: http://twitter.com. Follow AP Music Writer Chris Talbott: http://twitter.com/Chris_Talbott.

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Arthur R. Jensen, Who Set Off Debate on I.Q., Dies

Arthur R. Jensen, an educational psychologist who ignited an international firestorm with a 1969 article suggesting that the gap in intelligence-test scores between black and white students might be rooted in genetic differences between the races, died on Oct. 22 at his home in Kelseyville, Calif. He was 89.

His death was confirmed by the University of California, Berkeley, where he was an emeritus professor in the Graduate School of Education.

Professor Jensen was deeply interested in differential psychology, a field whose central question — What makes people behave and think differently from one another? — strikes at the heart of the age-old nature-nurture debate.

Because of his empirical work in the field on the quantification of general intelligence (a subject that had long invited a more diffuse, impressionistic approach), he was regarded by many colleagues as one of the most important psychologists of his day.

But a wider public remembered him almost exclusively for his 1969 article “How Much Can We Boost I.Q. and Achievement?” Published in The Harvard Educational Review, a scholarly journal, the article quickly became — and remains even now — one of the most controversial in psychology.

In the article, Professor Jensen posited two types of learning ability. Level I, associative ability, entailed the rote retention of facts. Level II, conceptual ability, involved abstract thinking and problem-solving. This type, he argued, was roughly equivalent to general intelligence, denoted in psychology by the letter “g.”

In administering I.Q. tests to diverse groups of students, Professor Jensen found Level I ability to be fairly consistent across races. When he examined Level II ability, by contrast, he found it more prevalent among whites than blacks, and still more prevalent among Asians than whites.

Drawing on these findings, Professor Jensen argued that general intelligence is largely genetically determined, with cultural forces shaping it only to a small extent. For this reason, he wrote in 1969, compensatory education programs like Head Start are doomed to fail.

While some observers praised Professor Jensen as a scientist unafraid to go where the data led him, others called him a racist. He continued to be heckled at speaking engagements throughout his career. He was burned in effigy on some college campuses and received death threats; for a time, he was accompanied by bodyguards.

The idea that intelligence cleaved along racial lines quickly became known as Jensenism, and its merits were the subject of heated public discussion for years afterward. The evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould, for instance, devoted much of his 1981 book, “The Mismeasure of Man,” to criticizing Professor Jensen’s claims.

More recently, Professor Jensen’s ideas about race and the heritability of intelligence were cited approvingly in “The Bell Curve,” the 1994 book by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray that engendered renewed debate on the subject.

Today, some psychologists say that Professor Jensen’s work has been misunderstood. In a telephone interview on Wednesday, Douglas Detterman, a psychologist at Case Western Reserve University who edits the journal Intelligence, said: “If you look at the Harvard Educational Review paper, he discusses race very little in that paper, but he did say that it’s a possibility that there are genetic differences among racial groups. And that was not a very popular idea when that paper came out.”

Professor Detterman, who in 1998 devoted a special issue of Intelligence to Professor Jensen’s work, added: “When he wrote that paper, probably a large portion of psychologists wouldn’t have believed that there was a hereditary basis for intellectual ability. Now, there’s very little argument about that in the field. Whether there are differences between races is another thing altogether.”

Arthur Robert Jensen was born in San Diego on Aug. 24, 1923. An accomplished clarinetist, he considered pursuing a career as an orchestra conductor before taking a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Berkeley, followed by a master’s in the field from San Diego State College and a Ph.D. from Columbia. He joined the Berkeley faculty in 1958.

Professor Jensen’s wife, Barbara, died before him. Survivors include a daughter, Bobbi Morey.

Among his books are “Genetics and Education” (1972), “Educability and Group Differences” (1973), “The g Factor: The Science of Mental Ability” (1998) and “Clocking the Mind: Mental Chronometry and Individual Differences” (2006).

Even psychologists who disagree with Professor Jensen’s conclusions defend him against charges of racism.

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Modest Jobs Growth in Final Report Before Election

The economy may have some more underlying strength than earlier believed, according to the final job market report released before Tuesday’s presidential election.

The nation’s employers added 171,000 positions in October, the Labor Department reported on Friday, and more jobs than initially estimated in both August and September. Hiring was broad-based, with just about every industry except state government adding at least a handful of jobs. The unemployment rate ticked up slightly to 7.9 percent in October, from 7.8 percent in September, but for a good reason: more workers joined the labor force and so officially counted as unemployed.

None of this makes for a game-changer in the presidential race, analysts said. But it appeared to provide some relief for President Obama, whose campaign could have been sideswiped by bad news from the volatile monthly jobs report.

With the latest numbers, the economy finally shows a net gain of jobs under his presidency; his record had previously been weighed down by huge layoffs in his first year in office.

The report also allayed widespread suspicion that September’s plunge in the unemployment rate — to below 8 percent for the first time since the month he took office — might have been a one-month statistical fluke.

“Generally, the report shows that things are better than we’d expected and certainly better than we’d thought a few months ago,” said Paul Dales, senior United States economist for Capital Economics. “But we’re still not making enough progress to bring that unemployment rate down significantly and rapidly.”

Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential nominee, said in a statement that the jobs report was evidence of the need to change the nation’s economic policies.

“Today’s increase in the unemployment rate is a sad reminder that the economy is at a virtual standstill,” he said. He also noted that October’s unemployment rate of 7.9 percent was higher than the 7.8 percent when Mr. Obama took office in January 2009.

Economists were hopeful that once the election was over and Congress addressed the major fiscal tightening scheduled for the end of this year, job growth could speed up further.

“If we can do this kind of job growth with all the uncertainty out there, imagine if we were to clear up those tax issues and hold back the majority of tax increases that are pending at the end of the year,” said John Ryding, chief economist at RDQ Economics. “We could do much better in 2013, maybe as well as we appeared to be doing earlier this year.”

In October, the biggest job gains were in professional and business services, health care and retail trade, the Labor Department said. Government payrolls dipped slightly. State and local governments have been shedding jobs most months over the last three years.

One of the lowlights of the report was in hourly wages, which remained flat in October after showing barely any growth in the previous several months.

“Perhaps the decline in real wages is a factor here in being able to employ more people,” Mr. Ryding said. “It’s something to keep in mind when we think about creating jobs and whether we’re maybe creating the wrong sort of jobs.”

A report from the National Employment Law Project, a liberal research and advocacy organization that focuses on labor issues, found that while the majority of jobs lost in the downturn were middle-income jobs, the majority of the jobs created since then have been lower-wage ones.

There have now been 25 consecutive months of jobs gains in the United States, but the increases have been barely large enough to absorb the increase in the population. A queue of about 12 million unemployed people remain waiting for work, about two out of five of whom have been out of a job for more than six months.

That is in addition to more than eight million people who are working part time but really want full-time jobs.

“I’m not just competing against all the other people who are out of work,” said Griff Coxey, 57, of Cascade, Wis., who was laid off in May from his controller job at a small business. “I’m also competing against all those people who are actually working but are underemployed.”

Like two million other idle workers, Mr. Coxey is scheduled to lose his unemployment benefits the last week of the year, when the federal extensions abruptly expire. He said he still had some savings to fall back on, but many workers do not.

Labor advocates and many economists have been urging Congress to renew the benefits as part of their discussions of the “fiscal cliff” during their postelection session. So far, though, the issue has received little attention, and analysts worry that ending extended benefits could disrupt what modest forward momentum the economy currently has.

“Federal unemployment benefits are one of the most effective stimuli we have,” said Christine L. Owens, the executive director of the National Employment Law Project.

“The recovery is still fragile,” she said, “and to pull that amount of income and expenditure out of the economy — particularly at a time when people thinking about the holiday season — will have a significant impact on not just those individuals and their families but the economy as a whole.”

Friday’s jobs report was unlikely to affect policy from the Federal Reserve, which has pledged open-ended stimulus until the job market improves “substantially.”

“The Fed desires both a substantial and sustainable improvement in labor market conditions and is likely to read recent payroll growth as a positive step in the right direction, but just one step in a longer journey,” said Michael Gapen, director of United States research and global asset allocation at Barclays Capital.

The jobs snapshot for October was based on surveys conducted too early in the month to capture work disruptions across the East Coast caused by Hurricane Sandy. Economists expect that businesses and employment will resume their normal activity by the next jobs survey, in mid-November, and that some industries are likely to show an increase in hiring because of the storm.

“We had a lot of lost hours worked and production stuff still delayed, but much of that will be offsets by hiring of emergency workers, government workers and construction, to do all that emergency fixing,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at Mesirow Financial.

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Live Coverage: More Dead Found in Storm’s Wreckage

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State-by-State Guide

A look at the devastation caused in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy from North Carolina to New England.

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NBC to hold a benefit concert for Sandy victims

NEW YORK (AP) — NBC will hold a benefit concert Friday for victims of Hurricane Sandy featuring some artists native to the areas hardest hit.

Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi of New Jersey and Billy Joel of Long Island are scheduled to appear at the concert, hosted by "Today" show co-host Matt Lauer.

Other performers include Christina Aguilera, Sting and Jimmy Fallon.

The telecast will benefit the American Red Cross and will be shown on NBC and its cable stations including Bravo, CNBC, USA, MSNBC and E! Other networks are invited to join in.

"Hurricane Sandy: Coming Together" will air at 8 p.m. EDT and will be taped-delayed in the West.

The telethon will be broadcast from NBC facilities in Rockefeller Center in New York City.

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NBC is controlled by Comcast Corp.

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Routines Restart, if With Less Power and Public Transit

Still hobbled by power failures and waterlogged transit, the New York region started to restore some transportation services on Wednesday as it struggled to return to daily life during a daunting period of recovery.

The extent of the challenge was apparent during the morning commute, which quickly froze to gridlock. People who normally took the subway or regional rail lines were forced into taxis or their own cars, clogging the streets. Drivers reported delays of hours, with vehicles lined up at the major crossings and at parking garages.

But the transportation situation could soon improve. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced on Wednesday afternoon that limited service would be restored to two commuter rail lines for the city’s suburbs — the Metro-North Railroad and the Long Island Rail Road — starting at 2 p.m. He also said limited subway service would resume starting on Thursday, with a bus bridge from Brooklyn to Manhattan, but no service below 34th Street.

Mr. Cuomo said a major problem continued to be water in the subway tunnels, as well as in the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, which connects Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn. Getting water out of the tunnels, he said, was “one of the main orders of business.”

More than 4,000 cabs, which for the moment could be shared among harried commuters, offered another partial lifeline to those cut off by the continued suspension of subway service. Some ferries were expected to be crossing between New Jersey and Manhattan.

In a briefing, Mr. Cuomo said that the Queens-Midtown Tunnel was still closed, contributing to the high volume of traffic, and that traffic signals were still out. Power restoration was being worked on. The greatest challenge was on Long Island, and utility workers were being brought in from upstate to help.

“These are significant challenges,” he said.

But in other ways the city slowly went back to business. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg rang the bell to open the New York Stock Exchange after a two-day closing, the first for weather-related reasons since 1888, as Wall Street and other businesses began to shake off the storm and return to work.

Newark Liberty International Airport opened at 7 a.m., and Kennedy International Airport also resumed operations, but many airlines were still working on a limited basis. La Guardia Airport, which sustained damage, remained closed.

State courtrooms in the city were also reopening. Connecticut, New Jersey and New York began reopening many closed roads and bridges on Tuesday.

Yet schools, parks and East River tunnels remained closed in the city, and many residents up and down the mid-Atlantic still stumbled through their morning routines with candles, flashlights or in darkness.

Amtrak said it would provide modified Northeast Regional service from Newark to points south.

President Obama approved disaster declarations for New York and New Jersey, making them eligible for federal assistance for rebuilding.

On Wednesday, the president started a tour of storm-hit areas with Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey.

The two shook hands at the bottom of the stairs at Mr. Obama’s plane, and the president patted the governor on the back several times. Craig Fugate, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, also shook hands with Mr. Christie.

Mr. Christie and Mr. Obama talked to each other as they walked to Marine One, the president’s helicopter, for the brief ride to the storm-damaged area. Mr. Obama gestured to Mr. Christie to board the helicopter first.

“All of us have been shocked by the force of mother nature,” the president said in remarks before the trip. He promised “all available resources” for recovery efforts.

In Hoboken, N.J., a city of 50,000 people across the Hudson River from Manhattan, local officials issued dire warnings about thousands of people stranded by flooding, and the National Guard began moving in on Wednesday morning to try to rescue them.

“Keep an eye out, go down to the lowest possible floor, but do not go outside,” the city said on its Facebook page. “Signal to get their attention.”

The toll — in lives disrupted or lost and communities washed out — was staggering. A rampaging fire reduced more than 100 houses to ash in Breezy Point, Queens. Explosions and downed power lines left the lower part of Manhattan and 90 percent of Long Island in the dark.

Reporting on the storm was contributed by Peter Applebome, Charles V. Bagli, Nina Bernstein, Joseph Berger, Russ Buettner, John H. Cushman Jr., David W. Dunlap, Theo Emory, Ann Farmer, Sheri Fink, Emma Fitzsimmons, Lisa W. Foderaro, Joseph Goldstein, J. David Goodman, Michael M. Grynbaum, Danny Hakim, David M. Halbfinger, Christine Hauser, Anemona Hartocollis, Winnie Hu, Jon Hurdle, Kristin Hussey, Thomas Kaplan, Mark Landler, John Leland, Eric Lipton, Elizabeth Maker, Andrew Martin, Cynthia McCloud, Patrick McGeehan, Colin Moynihan, Sarah Maslin Nir, Sharon Otterman, Amisha Padnani, Michael Powell, Julia Preston, William K. Rashbaum, Ray Rivera, Liz Robbins, Sam Roberts, Wendy Ruderman, Marc Santora, Michael S. Schmidt, John Schwartz, Nate Schweber, Mosi Secret, Katharine Q. Seelye, Kirk Semple, Kim Severson, Michael D. Shear, Brian Stelter, Kate Taylor, Joyce Wadler, Timothy Williams, Michael Wilson and Steven Yaccino.

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In hurricane, Twitter proves a lifeline despite pranksters

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - As Hurricane Sandy pounded the U.S. Atlantic coast on Monday night, knocking out electricity and Internet connections, millions of residents turned to Twitter as a part-newswire, part-911 hotline that hummed through the night even as some websites failed and swathes of Manhattan fell dark.

But the social network also became a fertile ground for pranksters who seized the moment to disseminate rumors and Photoshopped images, including a false tweet Monday night that the trading floor at the New York Stock Exchange was submerged under several feet of water.

The exchange issued a denial, but not before the tweet was circulated by countless users and reported on-air by CNN, illustrating how Twitter had become the essential - but deeply fallible - spine of information coursing through real-time, major media events.

But a year after Twitter gained attention for its role in the rescue efforts in tsunami-stricken Japan, the network seemed to solidify its mainstream foothold as government agencies, news outlets and residents in need turned to it at the most critical hour.

Beginning late Sunday, government agencies and officials, from New York Governor Andrew Cuomo(@NYGovCuomo) to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (@FEMA) to @NotifyNYC, an account handled by New York City's emergency management officials, issued evacuation orders and updates.

As the storm battered New York Monday night, residents encountering clogged 9-1-1 dispatch lines flooded the Fire Department's @fdny Twitter account with appeals for information and help for trapped relatives and friends.

One elderly resident needed rescue in a building in Manhattan Beach. Another user sent @fdny an Instagram photo of four insulin shots that she needed refrigerated immediately. Yet another sought a portable generator for a friend on a ventilator living downtown.

Emily Rahimi, who manages the @fdny account by herself, according to a department spokesman, coolly fielded dozens of requests, while answering questions about whether to call 311, New York's non-emergency help line, or Consolidated Edison.

At the Red Cross of America's Washington D.C. headquarters, in a small room called the Digital Operations Center, six wall-mounted monitors display a stream of updates from Twitter and Facebook and a visual "heat map" of where posts seeking help are coming from.

The heat map informed how the Red Cross's aid workers deployed their resources, said Wendy Harman, the Red Cross director of social strategy.

The Red Cross was also using Radian6, a social media monitoring tool sold by Salesforce.com, to spot people seeking help and answer their questions.

"We found out we can carry out the mission of the Red Cross from the social Web," said Harman, who hosted a brief visit from President Barack Obama on Tuesday.

SPREADING INFORMATION

Twitter, which in the past year has heavily ramped up its advertising offerings and features to suit large brand marketers like Pepsico Inc and Procter & Gamble, suddenly found itself offering its tools to new kind of client on Monday: public agencies that wanted help spreading information.

For the first time, the company created a "#Sandy" event page - a format once reserved for large ad-friendly media events like the Olympics or Nascar races - that served as a hub where visitors could see aggregated information. The page displayed manually- and algorithmically-selected tweets plucked from official accounts like those of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey, who was particularly active on the network.

Agencies like the Maryland Emergency Management Agency and the New York Mayor's Office also used Twitter's promoted tweets - an ad product used by advertisers to reach a broader consumer base - to get out the word.

The company said offering such services for free to government agencies was one of several initiatives, including a service that broadcasts location-specific alerts and public announcements based on a Twitter user's postal code.

"We learned from the storm and tsunami in Japan that Twitter can often be a lifeline," said Rachael Horwitz, a Twitter spokeswoman.

Jeannette Sutton, a sociologist at the University of Colorado who has received funding from the National Science Foundation and the Department of Homeland Security to study social media uses in disaster management, said government agencies have been skeptical until recently about using social media during natural disasters.

"There's a big problem with whether it's valid, accurate information out there," Sutton said. "But if you're not part of the conversation, you're going to be missing out."

As the hurricane hit one of the most wired regions in the country, news outlets also took advantage of the smartphone users who chronicled rising tides on every flooded block. On Instagram, the photo-sharing website, witnesses shared color-filtered snapshots of floating cars, submerged gas stations and a building shorn of its facade at a rate of more than 10 pictures per second, Instagram founder Kevin Systrom told Poynter.org on Tuesday.

Many of the images were republished in the live coverage by news websites and aired on television broadcasts.

LIES SLAPPED DOWN

But by late Monday, fake images began to circulate widely, including a picture of a storm cloud gathering dramatically over the Statue of Liberty and a photoshopped job of a shark lurking in a submerged residential neighborhood. The latter image even surfaced on social networks in China.

Then there was the slew of fabricated message from @comfortablysmug, the Twitter account that claimed the NYSE was underwater. The account is owned by Shashank Tripathi, the hedge fund investor and campaign manager for Christopher Wight, the Republican candidate to represent New York's 12th District in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Tripathi, who did not return emails by Reuters seeking comment, apologized Tuesday night for making a "series of irresponsible and inaccurate tweets" and resigned from Wight's campaign.

His identity was first reported by Jack Stuef of BuzzFeed.

Around 3:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Tripathi began deleting many of his Hurricane Sandy tweets. Tripathi's friend, @theAshok, defended Tripathi, telling Reuters on Twitter: "People shouldn't be taking "news" from an anonymous twitter account seriously."

Tripathi's @comfortablysmug's Twitter stream, which is followed by business journalists, bloggers and various New York personalities, had been a well-known voice in digital circles, but mostly for his 140-character-or-less criticisms of the Obama administration, often accompanied by the hashtag, #ObamaIsn'tWorking.

On Tuesday, New York City Councilman Peter F. Vallone Jr. appeared to threaten Tripathi with prosecution when he tweeted that he hoped Tripathi was "less smug and comfortable cuz I'm talking to Cy," presumably referring to Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.

For its part, Twitter said that it would not have considered suspending the account unless it received a request from a law enforcement agency.

"We don't moderate content, and we certainly don't want to be in a position of deciding what speech is OK and what speech is not," said Horwitz, Twitter's spokeswoman.

But Ben Smith, the editor at Buzzfeed, which outed Tripathi, said Twitter's credibility would not be affected by rumormongers because netizens often self-correct and identify falsehoods.

"They used to say a lie will travel halfway around the world before the truth puts its shoes on, but in the Twitter world, that's not true anymore," Smith said. "The lies get slapped down really fast."

For Smith, the ability to disseminate information via Twitter and Facebook on Monday night became perhaps even more important than his Web publication, which enjoyed one of its better nights in readership but went dark when the blackout crippled the site's servers in downtown Manhattan.

Buzzfeed's staff quickly began publishing on Tumblr instead, and Smith personally took over Buzzfeed's Twitter account to stay in the thick of the conversation.

"Our view of the world is that social distribution is the key thing," Smith said. "We're in the business of creating content that people want to share, more than the business of maintaining a website."

(Reporting By Gerry Shih in San Francisco and Jennifer Ablan and Felix Salmon in New York; Editing by Robert Birsel)

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Broadway lights go up in post-Sandy NYC

NEW YORK (AP) — The lights were to go up again on Broadway Wednesday for the first time since Hurricane Sandy hit New York, as entertainers strove to head back to work in a city still wracked by power-outages and a suspended subway system.

Though some Broadway shows, including "Mary Poppins" and "The Lion King" were remaining dark Wednesday, the curtain was to rise for many of the other 38 shows, including "Cyrano De Bergerac." Patrick Page, who plays the villain Comte de Guiche in the production, was heading back to the theater for a matinee performance, even if he was unsure if there would be anyone in the seats.

"Broadway is as important an icon of New York City as the subways, so to get back to work is a sign that we can bounce back," he said. "This has been such a tough time for so many and it's vital that we show the lights are on and there's great work being done onstage."

Page said he spent a restless time off in his Upper West Side neighborhood, worried about his in-laws along the New Jersey shore — he is married to actress and TV personality Paige Davis. He said he checked Facebook to find out how friends were fairing, obsessively watched the news and went out to check that neighbors had ridden out the storm.

"We're New Yorkers," he said. "We'll get through this."

That was also the spirit of New York's late-night TV hosts, all of whom were to be back in production Wednesday. The remaining holdouts — Jon Stewart with "The Daily Show" and Stephen Colbert with "The Colbert Report" — were to join David Letterman ("The Late Show"), Jimmy Fallon ("Late Night") and Jimmy Kimmel ("Jimmy Kimmel Live"), who is doing a week of shows in Brooklyn, on the airwaves.

Out of safety and caution, Letterman taped Monday and Tuesday's episodes in front of an empty Ed Sullivan Theater. Fallon did the same at Rockefeller Center on Monday.

___

AP Theater Writer Mark Kennedy contributed to this report.

___

Follow Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jake_coyle

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Q & A: Why Does Some Hair Frizz When It’s Humid?

Q. Why does some hair frizz when it’s humid?

A. Counterintuitively, your hair may be too dry when it meets humid air, suggested Dr. Andrew Avarbock, a dermatologist at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center.

“Hair is composed primarily of lipids, water and a protein called keratin, important for hair strength and structure,” Dr. Avarbock said. “Alterations in these components affect the quality of hair. People with dry hair are the ones who mainly experience the frizz in humid weather. When it’s humid outside, dry or porous hair soaks up the excess water in the air, which alters interactions between keratin proteins.”

The outcome is swelling of the hair and breaks in its outer layer, called the cuticle, he said, resulting in the appearance of frizz.

“If hair is well moisturized, then environmental changes, such as in humidity, will have less impact on it,” Dr. Avarbock said.

Some kinds of hair are more prone to becoming frizzy, he said, including hair damaged by overheating, chemicals for coloring and permanent waves or vigorous brushing. Overuse of shampoos and alcohol-based gels and sprays also promotes drying.

Hair products that moisturize the hair, like conditioners, can help prevent frizz, as can more gentle treatment over all. Both hair and skin “need moisturizer to maintain water content for an optimal appearance,” Dr. Avarbock said. C. CLAIBORNE RAY

Readers may submit questions by mail to Question, Science Times, The New York Times, 620 Eighth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10018, or by e-mail to question@nytimes.com.

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DealBook: Stocks Little Changed as Market Reopens

The major stock indexes were little changed in light trading on Wednesday morning as the market reopened after a two-day shutdown caused by Hurricane Sandy.

A bevy of TV news crews and camera-toting tourists thronged the New York Stock Exchange for the opening, but the trading floor betrayed little that was unusual.

A small crowd enveloped Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York City as he briefly stepped onto the floor to greet exchange workers. He later took to the balcony overlooking the pits to ring the opening bell, flanked by Duncan L. Niederauer, the chief executive of NYSE Euronext, and Robert Steel, a deputy mayor.

As the familiar clang rang through the hall for the first time this week, a small cheer erupted from the floor.

The dozen staffers at “the ramp,” an important N.Y.S.E. nerve center on the floor, scanned a wall of monitors to check on market activity.

Hurricane Sandy Multimedia

Milling about the floor was Lawrence E. Leibowitz, NYSE Euronext’s chief operating officer, checking on the state of operations. It was his second straight day at the exchange, having slept there overnight after wading from his home to Wall Street.

“There have been very few, very isolated problems,” Mr. Leibowitz said. He pointed to blank monitors that were shut off because the data provider was delivering incorrect market data.

“If that’s the worst of our problems,’ he added, “we’re in good shape.”

Mr. Niederauer seemed pleased as well. Wednesday was his first day back at the exchange since last week, having worked remotely because he could not come into the city.

“We’re pleased to see the turnout of staff,” he said, with many market makers being nearly fully represented.

He said many technical issues had been resolved, though technicians from Verizon were on hand to patch spotty communications and network connections. Many trading firms resorted to sharing working Internet and phone lines, while specialists ducked outside to get cellphone service unavailable on the floor.

At midday, the Dow Jones industrial average was down 0.11 percent, while the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index was 0.16 percent lower and the Nasdaq composite index was off 0.55 percent.

Several specialists said that in some ways, the morning had been easier than expected. Commuting was smoother, they said, with little traffic on the roads. And the exchange provided special dispensation to park on nearby streets.

Jonathan D. Corpina, a senior managing partner at Meridian Equity Partners, came armed with a flashlight to navigate the darkened streets of Lower Manhattan. But he found it easy to find the exchange, which was illuminated thanks to backup generators, and dive into work.

“We’re here filling orders, and it’s business as usual,” he said.

Another trader, Peter Costa, said he had noticed little that was out of the ordinary, except perhaps slightly lower volume.

“To me, this feels like a Monday,” he said, “but on a Wednesday.”

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Live Updates

Published: October 28, 2012

• Full Coverage


• Comments


• Photos


• Game Updates


• Ask The Times

State-by-State Guide

A look at the devastation caused in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy from North Carolina to New England.

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Nokia says shipping new Lumia smartphones this week

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