App Smart: News360, Edge Extended, Need for Speed and Other Great Android Apps

Tablets are changing computing, there’s no doubt. I realized this when I saw my 2-year-old son pick up an iPad and master its basic controls, including discovering a child’s app, in about half an hour. The iPad led the way into this brave new world more or less alone at first. It has taken until now for the sheer pressure of innovation inside Apple’s rivals to lead to some great Android-based tablets finally making a mark.

The Need for Speed Most Wanted app for Android.

The Autumn Tree Live Wallpaper app lets you select different trees and watch their leaves descend.

A "tiled" news item display on News360.

If you’re a new owner of one of these, you’ll be happy to know that there’s many an app that will simultaneously thrill you, inform you and welcome you into the world of tablet computing.

For a great news experience, the free app News360 has to be one of the better news-aggregating ones I’ve seen on any platform. When you first open the app, you are presented with a long list of topics that it can aggregate for your convenience into different categories, from arts through science to zombies.

The app uses this profile to grab news from the Web and present it to you within its elegant interface. This is dominated by picture-based “tiles” for each news article the app collects. Each tile tells you the appropriate category, where the news item came from and when. Tapping on one of these tiles takes you to a new page that contains a screen grab of the original online source, alongside the text the app has collected from the article.

The pleasure of News360 is that you can either satisfy your curiosity by tapping on a link to read the original article or decide you have learned enough and navigate on. You can also mark the article as interesting, save it for reading offline — perhaps on a commute — or share it on a social network. These controls are also accessible from the initial “tiles” screen, where you flip over an article’s tile to see the controls. The flip is accompanied by a very pleasing animation. It’s just a little graphical touch, but small details like this make an app great fun.

Part of the fun of having a new tablet is showing off its graphical prowess. Games are a great way to do this. I’ve had immense fun with Edge Extended (about $3 on Google Play). In this game, you play a multicolored cube that you roll around a blocky terrain to collect targets. You swipe your finger on the screen to make the cube flop onto its faces to move. There are all the classic elements of collecting points, avoiding pitfalls, activating switches and so on. But despite its graphical simplicity, the app is swift-paced and very satisfying; it even gave me that sensation of falling from a height in some of its trickier parts.

If you really want to impress people with your tablet’s screen, then you’ll probably get a kick out of a game like Need for Speed Most Wanted ($7 on Google play). It’s a racing game that uses motion to control steering and simple tap controls to brake, slide the car in a drift or turn on a nitrous turbo boost. True to the “Most Wanted” title, you race on regular roads, not racetracks, and can get in trouble with the police. This app has all the typical racing fun, along with the ability to earn points that unlock better cars and so on. But the standout feature is the attractiveness of the graphics, and the image rendering even includes reflections of passing buildings in puddles. It’s really eye-popping, and it even works on a diminutive tablet like the Nexus 7.

If racing’s not your thing, you may like SoulCraft THD instead. In this hack-and-slash role-playing game, you control your character from above as it fights its way through a fantasy landscape of dungeons and cities. As on a standard computer action game, you can earn spells and improve your character’s powers.

The game is “freemium” so it’s free to download and play, but you have to make in-game purchases with real money to advance quickly. The graphics are slick, but don’t expect the kind of detailed rendering you would see on a gaming PC.

If you want to make your pals who own iPads jealous, turn on an animated background. This shows off the computing power of your tablet and Android’s skills, too.

Right now my tablet is rocking the seasonal Autumn Tree Live Wallpaper, which is $1. You can control all sorts of aspects of the app, including what type of trees wave their autumnal leaves in the wind, and it’s delightful. It’s also something that a stock iPad absolutely can’t do.

Have fun, but here’s a big reminder for you: Not all Android tablets will play nicely with all tablet apps, and some features depend on installing the latest edition of the operating system.

Quick Calls

Fresh and free on Android and iOS is a highly unusual “experimental” game, Curiosity. It’s a cube with faces made of millions of smaller cubes. Players all around the world hack away at these by tapping on their devices. A single prize is hidden inside an unknown number of layers. It’s weirdly fun to play ... One of the earliest and slickest apps for Windows 8/RT devices is the official Wikipedia app (free), which shows the online encyclopedia in its most elegant, graphical format yet.

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Attacks Resume After Israeli Assault Kills Hamas Leader

KIRYAT MALACHI, Israel — Israel and Hamas widened their increasingly deadly conflict over Gaza on Thursday, as a militant rocket killed three civilians in an apartment block in this small southern town. The deaths were likely to lead Israel to intensify its military offensive on Gaza, now in its second day of airstrikes.

In Gaza, the Palestinian death toll rose to 11 as Israel struck what the military described as medium- and long-range rocket and infrastructure sites and rocket-launching squads. The military said it had dispersed leaflets over Gaza warning residents to stay away from Hamas operatives and facilities, suggesting that more was to come.

The regional perils of the situation sharpened, meanwhile, as President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt warned on Thursday that his country stood by the Palestinians against what he termed Israeli aggression, echoing similar condemnation on Wednesday.

“The Egyptian people, the Egyptian leadership, the Egyptian government, and all of Egypt is standing with all its resources to stop this assault, to prevent the killing and the bloodshed of Palestinians,” Mr. Morsi said in nationally televised remarks before a crisis meeting of senior ministers. He also instructed his prime minister to lead a delegation to Gaza on Friday and said he had contacted President Obama to discuss strategies to “stop these acts and doings and the bloodshed and aggression.”

In language that reflected the upheaval in the political dynamics of the Middle East since the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak last year, Mr. Morsi said: “Israelis must realize that we don’t accept this aggression and it could only lead to instability in the region and has a major negative impact on stability and security in the region.”

The thrust of Mr. Morsi’s words seemed confined to diplomatic maneuvers, including calls to the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, the head of the Arab League and President Obama.

The 120-nation Nonalignmed Movement, the biggest bloc at the United Nations, added its condemnation of the Gaza airstrikes in a statement released by Iran, the group’s rotating president and one of Israel’s most ardent foes. “Israel, the occupying power, is, once more, escalating its military campaign against the Palestinian people, particularly in the Gaza Strip,” the group’s coordinating bureau said in the statement. The group made no mention of the Palestinian rocket fire but condemned what it called “this act of aggression by the Israelis and their resort to force against the defenseless people” and demanded “decisive action by the U.N. Security Council.”

In his conversation with Mr. Obama, Mr. Morsi said, he “clarified Egypt’s role and Egypt’s position; our care for the relations with the United States of America and the world; and at the same time our complete rejection of this assault and our rejection of these actions, of the bloodshed, and of the siege on Palestinians and their suffering.”

Mr. Obama had agreed to speak with Israeli leaders, Mr. Morsi said.

The Thursday’ deaths in Kiryat Malachi were the first casualties on the Israeli side since Israel launched its assault on Gaza, the most ferocious in four years, in response to persistent Palestinian rocket fire.

Southern Israel has been struck by more than 750 rockets fired from Gaza this year that have hit homes and caused injuries. On Thursday, a rocket smashed into the top floor of an apartment building in Kiryat Malachi, about 15 miles north of Gaza. Two men and one woman were killed, according to witnesses at the scene. A baby was among the injured and several Israelis were hospitalized with shrapnel wounds after rockets hit other southern cities and towns, they said.The apartment house was close to a field in a blue-collar neighborhood and the rocket tore open top-floor apartments, leaving twisted metal window frames and bloodstains.

Nava Chayoun, 40, who lives on the second floor, said her husband, Yitzhak, ran up the stairs immediately after the rocket struck and saw the body of a woman on the floor. He rescued two children from the same apartment and afterward, she said, she and her family “read psalms.”

Isabel Kershner reported from Kiryat Malachi, Israel, and Fares Akram from Gaza. Reporting was contributed by Rina Castelnuovo from Kiryat Malachi; Mayy El Sheikh and David D. Kirkpatrick from Cairo; Gabby Sobelman from Jerusalem; Rick Gladstone from New York; and Alan Cowell from Paris.

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Samuel Adams Brewer Counsels Small Businesses

Gretchen Ertl for The New York Times

Jim Koch, who started brewing Samuel Adams Boston Lager at his house in 1984, and Carlene O'Garro, who runs a cake business, participate in a program in which big businesses help small ones.

Carlene O’Garro’s cake business was barely a month old when she arrived at the Samuel Adams brewery in South Boston recently to meet with business counselors, but she brought with her an agenda that hinted at outsize ambitions.

Ms. O’Garro bakes nondairy cheesecakes that she was selling at a handful of grocery stores, including two Whole Foods outlets, in the Boston area. She hoped to learn how to expand the business and distribute the cakes nationally. “I know Jim is all over the place,” she said, “and I want to be like that.”

Jim is Jim Koch, the founder of the Boston Beer Company and one of 36 advisers who spent an evening last August “speed coaching” fledgling food, beverage and hospitality businesses. In 20-minute sessions, some 95 bakers, brewers and restaurant owners peppered the coaches — Boston Beer employees and consultants who included lawyers, accountants and small-business counselors — with questions about both basic day-to-day issues and more strategic concerns.

Speed coaching is one element of “Brewing the American Dream,” a program Boston Beer established with a microlender, Accion, to help small businesses. Mr. Koch, who started brewing Samuel Adams Boston Lager at his house in 1984, remains central to these efforts even as he presides over a company with a market capitalization of $1.4 billion and annual revenue of more than $500 million. He said he had not forgotten his early days, when he struggled to find capital, get his beer into distribution networks and expand.

In six sessions that August evening, Mr. Koch spoke with perhaps a dozen entrepreneurs and then stayed another hour to visit with six or eight more. This year, Boston Beer and Accion are staging 12 speed-coaching events in 11 cities, and Mr. Koch expects to attend about half of them.

Big businesses reaching out to help smaller businesses has come into vogue since the recession. In 2009, Goldman Sachs introduced its 10,000 Small Businesses campaign. Starbucks raises money from customer donations to finance small-business loans. American Express encourages consumers to shop locally on “Small Business Saturday” after Thanksgiving. The New York Stock Exchange links small vendors with large corporations and finances loans through Accion. And several corporations have run contests — Wal-Mart, Chase Bank and Staples have furnished winning small companies with opportunities for retail distribution, capital and office equipment.

It is the latest example of what is known in corporate circles as cause marketing — hitching a brand to a social issue. “How you improve the American economy and create jobs is on everybody’s minds these days,” said David Hessekiel, founder and president of Cause Marketing Forum. “Companies know that it’s on the minds of their consumers, and they want to be seen as part of the solution, not as the enemy.”

That has been a particular concern for chains like Wal-Mart and Starbucks, given their longstanding reputations for forcing local competitors to close. Helping small businesses, Mr. Hessekiel said, “helps them deal with an old issue.”

The Boston Beer program actually predates the recent economic crisis. The seeds of the idea, Mr. Koch said, came to him in 2007 as he walked to his car after he and his employees had volunteered to paint a nearby community center. “I should have felt really good, and I didn’t — I felt a little depressed,” he said. “What I realized is, I’d just taken about $10,000 worth of management time and talent, and turned it into about $1,000 worth of painting. And it was pretty bad painting, too.”

Mr. Koch retooled his company’s philanthropy to take advantage of its resources, particularly its employees’ expertise. The company has committed $1.4 million to finance loans, which are handled by Accion. The loans are small, typically $5,000 to $7,000, with terms of 18 months to two years and interest rates that vary regionally. (In New England, the rate is around 13 percent, typical for microloans.) Perhaps as important as the money is the tutoring by Mr. Koch and his employees. Most microloan programs provide borrowers with rudimentary counseling, but Boston Beer is unusually “high touch,” said Shaolee Sen, vice president for strategy and development at the Accion U.S. Network.

Ms. O’Garro was one of the program’s original clients — she has had two loans, totaling $4,000 — and though she’s repaid that debt and though the muffin business it helped finance has been dormant since 2010, she continues to derive benefits from the program with her cheesecake business, Delectable Desires. She learned how to price her cakes from an employee in Boston Beer’s finance department, Mike Cramer, who went to Whole Foods and scoped out the competition. “He actually made a spreadsheet for me of how much the high-end and low-end desserts cost,” she said.

Another borrower, Sandy Russo of Lulu’s Sweet Shoppe in Boston, said that when she had questions, she sometimes called Mr. Koch’s executive assistant. Last summer, when Lulu’s opened a second location, Boston Beer’s lawyers reviewed the lease and its public relations staff wrote the news release.

Of course, it’s one thing to provide that kind of support to a handful of companies. The question facing Accion and Boston Beer is whether the program can remain as intensive as it expands nationally. “We’re really struggling with that right now,” Ms. Sen said. “The portfolio has been so small up until this point that they really are passionate about their clients.”

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Kidney Donors Given Mandatory Safeguards

ST. LOUIS — Addressing long-held concerns about whether organ donors have adequate protections, the country’s transplant regulators acted late Monday to require that hospitals thoroughly inform living kidney donors of the risks they face, fully evaluate their medical and psychological suitability, and then track their health for two years after donation.

Enactment of the policies by the United Network for Organ Sharing, which manages the transplant system under a federal contract, followed six years of halting development and debate.

Meeting at a St. Louis hotel, the group’s board voted to establish uniform minimum standards for a field long regarded as a medical and ethical Wild West. The organ network, whose initial purpose was to oversee donation from people who had just died, has struggled at times to keep pace with rapid developments in donations from the living.

“There is no question that this is a major development in living donor protection,” said Dr. Christie P. Thomas, a nephrologist at the University of Iowa and the chairman of the network’s living donor committee.

Yet some donor advocates complained that the measures did not go far enough, and argued that the organ network, in its mission to encourage transplants, has a conflict of interest when it comes to safeguarding donors.

Three years ago, the network issued some of the same policies as voluntary guidelines, only to have the Department of Health and Human Services insist they be made mandatory.

Although long-term data on the subject is scarce, few living kidney donors are thought to suffer lasting physical or psychological effects. Kidney donations, known as nephrectomies, are typically done laparoscopically these days through a series of small incisions. The typical patient may spend only a few nights in a hospital and feel largely recovered after several months.

Kidneys are by far the most transplanted organs, and there have been nearly as many living donors as deceased ones over the last decade. What data is available suggests that those with one kidney typically live as long as those with two, and that the risk of a donor dying during the procedure is roughly 3 in 10,000.

But kidney transplants, like all surgery, can sometimes end in catastrophe.

In May at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, a 41-year-old mother of three died when her aorta was accidentally cut during surgery to donate a kidney to her brother. In other recent isolated cases, patients have received donor kidneys infected with undetected H.I.V. or hepatitis C.

Less clear are any longer-term effects on donors. Research conducted by the United Network for Organ Sharing shows that of roughly 70,000 people who donated kidneys between late 1999 and early 2011, 27 died within two years of medical causes that may — or may not — have been related to donation. For a small number of donors, their remaining kidney failed, and they required dialysis or a transplant.

The number of living donors — 5,770 in 2011 — has dropped 10 percent over the last two years, possibly because the struggling economy has made it difficult for prospective donors to take time off from work to recuperate. With the national kidney waiting list now stretching past 94,000 people, and thousands on the list dying each year, transplant officials have said they must improve confidence in the system so more people will donate.

The average age of donors has been rising, posing additional medical risks. And new ethical questions have been raised by the emergence of paired kidney exchanges and transplant chains started by good Samaritans who give an organ to a stranger.

Brad Kornfeld, who donated a kidney to his father in 2004, told the board that it had been impossible to find good information about what to expect, leaving him to search for answers on unreliable Internet chat rooms. He said he had almost backed out.

“If information is power,” said Mr. Kornfeld, a Coloradan who serves on the living donor committee, “the lack of information is crippling.”

Under the policies approved this week, the organ network will require hospitals to collect medical data, including laboratory test results, on most living donors to study lasting effects. Results must be reported at six months, one year and two years.

Similar regulations have been in place since 2000, but they did not require blood and urine testing, and hospitals were allowed to report donors who could not be found as simply lost.

That happened often. In recent years, hospitals have submitted basic clinical information — like whether donors were alive or dead — for only 65 percent of donors and lab data for fewer than 40 percent, according to the organ network. Although the network holds the authority, no hospital has ever been seriously sanctioned for noncompliance.

“It’s time we put some teeth into our policy,” said Jill McMaster, a board member from Tennessee.

By 2015, transplant programs will have to report thorough clinical information on at least 80 percent of donors and lab results on at least 70 percent. The requirements phase in at lower levels for the next two years.

Dr. Stuart M. Flechner of the Cleveland Clinic, the chairman of a coalition of medical societies that made recommendations to the organ network, said 9 of 10 hospitals would currently not meet the new requirement.

Donna Luebke, a kidney donor from Ohio who once served on the organ network’s board, said the new standards would matter only if enforcement were more rigorous. She noted that the organization was dominated by transplant doctors: “UNOS is nothing but the foxes watching the henhouse,” she said.

Another of the new regulations prescribes in detail the medical and psychological screenings that hospitals must conduct for potential donors. It requires automatic exclusion if the potential donor has diabetes, uncontrolled hypertension or H.I.V., among other conditions.

The new policies also require that hospitals appoint an independent advocate to counsel and represent donors, and that donors receive detailed information in advance about medical, psychological and financial risks.

Read More..

Kidney Donors Given Mandatory Safeguards

ST. LOUIS — Addressing long-held concerns about whether organ donors have adequate protections, the country’s transplant regulators acted late Monday to require that hospitals thoroughly inform living kidney donors of the risks they face, fully evaluate their medical and psychological suitability, and then track their health for two years after donation.

Enactment of the policies by the United Network for Organ Sharing, which manages the transplant system under a federal contract, followed six years of halting development and debate.

Meeting at a St. Louis hotel, the group’s board voted to establish uniform minimum standards for a field long regarded as a medical and ethical Wild West. The organ network, whose initial purpose was to oversee donation from people who had just died, has struggled at times to keep pace with rapid developments in donations from the living.

“There is no question that this is a major development in living donor protection,” said Dr. Christie P. Thomas, a nephrologist at the University of Iowa and the chairman of the network’s living donor committee.

Yet some donor advocates complained that the measures did not go far enough, and argued that the organ network, in its mission to encourage transplants, has a conflict of interest when it comes to safeguarding donors.

Three years ago, the network issued some of the same policies as voluntary guidelines, only to have the Department of Health and Human Services insist they be made mandatory.

Although long-term data on the subject is scarce, few living kidney donors are thought to suffer lasting physical or psychological effects. Kidney donations, known as nephrectomies, are typically done laparoscopically these days through a series of small incisions. The typical patient may spend only a few nights in a hospital and feel largely recovered after several months.

Kidneys are by far the most transplanted organs, and there have been nearly as many living donors as deceased ones over the last decade. What data is available suggests that those with one kidney typically live as long as those with two, and that the risk of a donor dying during the procedure is roughly 3 in 10,000.

But kidney transplants, like all surgery, can sometimes end in catastrophe.

In May at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, a 41-year-old mother of three died when her aorta was accidentally cut during surgery to donate a kidney to her brother. In other recent isolated cases, patients have received donor kidneys infected with undetected H.I.V. or hepatitis C.

Less clear are any longer-term effects on donors. Research conducted by the United Network for Organ Sharing shows that of roughly 70,000 people who donated kidneys between late 1999 and early 2011, 27 died within two years of medical causes that may — or may not — have been related to donation. For a small number of donors, their remaining kidney failed, and they required dialysis or a transplant.

The number of living donors — 5,770 in 2011 — has dropped 10 percent over the last two years, possibly because the struggling economy has made it difficult for prospective donors to take time off from work to recuperate. With the national kidney waiting list now stretching past 94,000 people, and thousands on the list dying each year, transplant officials have said they must improve confidence in the system so more people will donate.

The average age of donors has been rising, posing additional medical risks. And new ethical questions have been raised by the emergence of paired kidney exchanges and transplant chains started by good Samaritans who give an organ to a stranger.

Brad Kornfeld, who donated a kidney to his father in 2004, told the board that it had been impossible to find good information about what to expect, leaving him to search for answers on unreliable Internet chat rooms. He said he had almost backed out.

“If information is power,” said Mr. Kornfeld, a Coloradan who serves on the living donor committee, “the lack of information is crippling.”

Under the policies approved this week, the organ network will require hospitals to collect medical data, including laboratory test results, on most living donors to study lasting effects. Results must be reported at six months, one year and two years.

Similar regulations have been in place since 2000, but they did not require blood and urine testing, and hospitals were allowed to report donors who could not be found as simply lost.

That happened often. In recent years, hospitals have submitted basic clinical information — like whether donors were alive or dead — for only 65 percent of donors and lab data for fewer than 40 percent, according to the organ network. Although the network holds the authority, no hospital has ever been seriously sanctioned for noncompliance.

“It’s time we put some teeth into our policy,” said Jill McMaster, a board member from Tennessee.

By 2015, transplant programs will have to report thorough clinical information on at least 80 percent of donors and lab results on at least 70 percent. The requirements phase in at lower levels for the next two years.

Dr. Stuart M. Flechner of the Cleveland Clinic, the chairman of a coalition of medical societies that made recommendations to the organ network, said 9 of 10 hospitals would currently not meet the new requirement.

Donna Luebke, a kidney donor from Ohio who once served on the organ network’s board, said the new standards would matter only if enforcement were more rigorous. She noted that the organization was dominated by transplant doctors: “UNOS is nothing but the foxes watching the henhouse,” she said.

Another of the new regulations prescribes in detail the medical and psychological screenings that hospitals must conduct for potential donors. It requires automatic exclusion if the potential donor has diabetes, uncontrolled hypertension or H.I.V., among other conditions.

The new policies also require that hospitals appoint an independent advocate to counsel and represent donors, and that donors receive detailed information in advance about medical, psychological and financial risks.

Read More..

Israelis Launch Major Assault on Gaza, Killing Hamas Commander

Reuters

Palestinians extinguished a fire after an Israeli airstrike on a car carrying Ahmed al-Jabari, who ran Hamas's military wing, on Wednesday in Gaza City.

GAZA — Israel on Wednesday launched one of the most ferocious assaults on Gaza since its invasion four years ago, hitting at least 20 targets in aerial attacks that killed the top military commander of Hamas, drew strong condemnation from Egypt and escalated the risks of a new war in the Middle East.

The Israelis coupled the intensity of the airstrikes with warnings to all Hamas leaders in Gaza to stay out of sight or risk the same fate as the Hamas military commander, Ahmed al-Jabari, who was killed in a pinpoint airstrike as he was traveling by car down a Gaza street. “We recommend that no Hamas operatives, whether low level or senior leaders, show their faces above ground in the days ahead,” the Israel Defense Forces said in a Twitter message.

The ferocity of the airstrikes, in response to what Israel called repeated rocket attacks by Gaza-based Palestinian militants, provoked rage in Gaza, where Hamas said the airstrikes amounted to war and promised a harsh response. Civil-defense authorities in Israel raised alert levels and told residents to take precautions for rocket retaliation from Gaza.

The abrupt escalation in hostilities between Israel and Hamas, the militant organization regarded by Israel as a terrorist group sworn to Israel’s destruction, came amid rising tensions between Israel and all of its Arab neighbors. Israel has faced growing lawlessness on its border with the Sinai, including cross-border terror attacks. It recently fired twice into Syria, which is caught in a civil war, after munitions fell in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, and it has absorbed rocket fire from Gaza, which has damaged homes and frightened the population.

Israeli officials had promised a robust response to the rocket fire, but for the moment, at least, opted against a ground invasion and instead chose airstrikes and targeted killings.

The Israeli attacks especially threatened to further complicate Israel’s fragile relations with Egypt, where the Islamist-led government of President Mohamed Morsi, reversing a policy of ousted predecessor Hosni Mubarak, had established closer ties with Hamas and had been acting as a mediator to restore calm between Israel and Gaza-based militant groups.

In a sign of rising anti-Israel hostility in Egypt, Mr. Morsi’s Freedom and Justice Party, which was founded by the Muslim Brotherhood, issued a statement saying: “The wanton aggression against Gaza proves that Israel has yet to realize that Egypt has changed and that the Egyptian people who revolted against oppression/ injustice will not accept assaulting Gaza.”

A spokesman for Hamas, Fawzi Barhoum, said the Israelis had “committed a dangerous crime and broke all redlines,” and that “the Israeli occupation will regret and pay a high price.”

Military officials in Israel, which announced responsibility for the death of Mr. Jabari, later said in a statement that their forces had carried out additional airstrikes in Gaza targeting what they described as “a significant number of long-range rocket sites” owned by Hamas that had stored rockets capable of reaching 25 miles into Israel. The statement said the airstrikes had dealt a “significant blow to the terror organization’s underground rocket-launching capabilities.”

Yisrael Katz, a minister from Israel’s governing Likud Party, issued a statement saying that the operation had sent a message to the Hamas political leaders in Gaza “that the head of the snake must be smashed. Israel will continue to kill and target anyone who is involved in the rocket attacks.”Hamas and medical officials in Gaza said both Mr. Jabari and a companion were killed by the airstrike on his car in Gaza City. Israeli news media said the companion was Mr. Jabari’s son, but there was no immediate confirmation.

The Israel Defense Forces said in a statement that Mr. Jabari had been targeted because he “served in the upper echelon of the Hamas command and was directly responsible for executing terror attacks against the state of Israel in the past number of years.”

The statement said the purpose of the attack was to “severely impair the command and control chain of the Hamas leadership as well as its terrorist infrastructure.”

The statement did not specify how the Israelis knew Mr. Jabari was in the car but said the operation had been “implemented on the basis of concrete intelligence and using advanced capabilities.”

A video released by the Israeli Defense Forces and posted on YouTube showed an aerial view of the attack on what it identified as Mr. Jabari’s car on a Gaza street as it was targeted and instantly blown up in a pinpoint bombing. News photographs of the aftermath showed the car’s blackened hulk surrounded by a large crowd.

Fares Akram reported from Gaza, and Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem. Rick Gladstone contributed reporting from New York, and Mayy El Sheikh from Cairo.

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I.H.T. Special Report | Oil & Money: After Years of Waiting, Virginia Wants to Make Its Name in Oil

Jason Hirschfeld/Associated Press

Hurricane Sandy pounding the coastline last month in Virginia Beach, Va. The state is the new epicenter of efforts by energy companies to get a toehold in the potentially vast resources hidden beneath the Atlantic.

WASHINGTON — When Doug Domenech looks out at the Atlantic Ocean, he sees oil and natural gas and jobs and revenue. Standing between him and those prizes are President Barack Obama, the U.S. Navy and the whales.

Mr. Domenech, Virginia’s secretary of natural resources, is undeterred. He and the state’s Republican governor, Bob McDonnell, have teamed up with Virginia’s two Democratic senators to try to do a run around the president and put Virginia’s coast on the energy map through an act of Congress.

The state is making efforts to restore a lease sale for energy exploration that was canceled in 2010 after the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico followed an explosion on a drilling rig that was connected to a well owned by BP. The efforts have made Virginia the new epicenter of efforts by energy companies to get a toehold in the potentially vast resources hidden beneath the Atlantic.

“The administration not only took away our sale, but they didn’t reinstate it into the next five-year plan. They booted us off to 2017,” Mr. Domenech said. “That’s what made us start pursuing other avenues in Congress.”

Oil companies and government officials believe there is oil and natural gas off the East Coast of the United States. Exploration, however, has been blocked for more than 30 years after a devastating spill off the coast of California turned public opinion against offshore drilling.

That political environment changed in the past decade as oil prices soared and the American public and politicians weighed their fears of offshore drilling against the geopolitical threat of being dependent on oil from hostile nations or unstable regions.

Now seven companies, including Houston-based Global Geo Services and Western Geco, a subsidiary of Schlumberger, have applied for permission to conduct seismic studies along the East Coast from New Jersey all the way to Florida. Efforts are focusing on Virginia because the public, politicians in both parties and energy companies all favor opening the waters to drilling.

To proceed, the would-be explorers will need to bypass the vocal opposition of advocates who say that even the preliminary survey work would harm endangered whales and the U.S. Navy, which uses the waters off Virginia as training grounds for its Norfolk base.

“It’s an important frontier, and it’s right next to a large market,” said Joe Gagliardi, vice president of marine programs at Ion Geophysical Corp., a Houston-based company that has applied to spend six months conducting two-dimensional seismic surveys from New Jersey to Florida. “The Eastern seaboard market is huge.”

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management estimates that there are 3.3 billion barrels of recoverable oil on the Atlantic’s outer continental shelf and another 31.3 trillion cubic feet, or 886.3 million cubic meters, of natural gas. The estimates are based on two-dimensional seismic surveys that were done in the early 1980s.

While they are careful to say that they have no idea what energy resources might be hidden beneath the Atlantic, energy industry executives believe that the B.O.E.M.’s estimates are low, noting the industry's history in the Gulf of Mexico..

“Initial estimates in the Gulf were five billion barrels of oil,” said Andy Radford, senior policy adviser at the American Petroleum Institute. “We’ve already produced over 20 billion, and current estimates are that there are 48 billion more.”

There are other indicators that drilling there could lead to big discoveries.

“We know there are oil seeps all along the East Coast of the U.S.,” Mr. Gagliardi said. “Naturally the earth is leaking oil on a daily basis. There’s a natural petroleum system out there.”

The Eastern Seaboard of the United States was once connected to the coast of West Africa before the continent split in two and the pieces drifted apart, creating the Atlantic Ocean. Nigeria alone has more than 37 billion barrels of proven reserves, much of it off the coast in deep water.

Tullow Oil, a company working on the same theory, struck oil last year off the coast of French Guiana. The company, which is London-based, said it had begun exploring in the area because it believed the geology mirrored its earlier successful discoveries across the ocean off the coast of West Africa.

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The Neediest Cases: Single Mother Battling Breast Cancer Takes Strength From Her Children

She had not expected her fingernails to feel as if they had been hollowed out.

Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times

Josmery Batista, 34, with her children: Analisse, 4, left; Erika, 10; and Jeremy, 1. Ms. Batista is receiving chemotherapy treatment.

For the past 100 years, The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund has provided direct assistance to children, families and the elderly in New York. To celebrate the 101st campaign, an article will appear daily through Jan. 25. Each profile will illustrate the difference that even a modest amount of money can make in easing the struggles of the poor.

Last year donors contributed $7,003,854, which was distributed to those in need through seven New York charities.

Josmery Batista, 34, had braced herself for many of the side effects that would result from her palliative chemotherapy treatment. She knew about the dizzy spells, the head pain and the body aches, just as she knew about the fatigue, which weakens her so much at times that she is unable to bathe her infant son or even to hold him.

But when her nails became so brittle that she could not properly wash dishes, a development as alarming as it was discouraging, she sought comfort and reassurance from one of her new friends walking the same path.

Ms. Batista, a single mother of three, knows that she is blessed to have found a support group of others, like her, who are undergoing cancer treatment, and she gains additional courage from the memory of friends who did not survive. She also knows how blessed she is to have sisters to lean on for help.

But friends and siblings alone are not what fortify her will to survive.

“My children give me the strength to fight this illness, this disease,” Ms. Batista said. “My support system has been a great help. But what keeps me going is my kids.”

Five months into her pregnancy with her son, Jeremy Tavarez, now 1, Ms. Batista began to experience excruciating pain from her neck to her midsection. She had no idea what was wrong. When she sought help, examinations ruled out ailments like arthritis or liver problems. Tests for cancer would have involved radiation and, thus, potential harm to the baby, so Ms. Batista waited until after the birth to be tested further. Last November, one month after her son’s birth, Ms. Batista was told she had Stage 4 breast cancer. The disease has since spread to her liver and her bones.

She receives chemotherapy treatment every 21 days at Elmhurst Hospital Center, near her home in Flushing, Queens, and is then required to take pills for the next 14 days. The side effects of that medication are the cause of much of her discomfort.

Petite yet resilient, Ms. Batista is driven to take Tylenol instead of a nap. She will weather the lethargy and endure the pain to ensure that her son and her other two children, Erika, 10, and Analisse Tavarez, 4, can have as normal a life as possible. Whenever she is able to, she plays with her children, accompanies them to school or helps them with homework.

“Even though she’s battling every day, going to the hospital and stuff like that, she doesn’t let her kids fully know, and they’re happy,” said Ms. Batista’s sister Dalisa Batista, who assists with child care.

Josmery Batista, who came to the United States from the Dominican Republic in 1998, had been employed for 13 years as a jewelry sample maker in Manhattan. She has been unable to work since her treatment began and is living month to month as a result.

She receives $450 a month in food stamps and collects $868 monthly in workers’ compensation, a payment that is set to expire in January. Ms. Batista says her children’s father also provides $400 a month in child support. Her rent is $1,100 a month.

With her finances tight, Catholic Charities Brooklyn and Queens, one of the agencies supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund, granted Ms. Batista $500 from the fund in September to cover five weeks of child care when she is at treatment and her relatives are unavailable. The agency also supplies the family with food from the Queens North Community Center pantry, which is affiliated with Catholic Charities.

“She stays very strong,” said Dalisa, who describes her sister as an inspiration. “I never really see her crying at home. She doesn’t cry in front of the kids.” Dalisa added that her niece Erika, who is still too young to fully grasp the severity of her mother’s situation, boosted morale with a child’s innocent honesty.

“Her daughter always gives her strength because she always tells her, ‘You’re beautiful with no hair,’ ” Dalisa said. “She tells her stuff like ‘I don’t want you to wear wigs. You’re beautiful to me.’ ”

The future holds many questions, but estimates are that Josmery Batista will be receiving treatments for at least the next six months. She says she will continue to do what she has been doing all along, basking in the love of those around her.

“I live my life as normal as possible, and I push myself to do the things I need to do,” Ms. Batista said. “I’m not going to allow the illness to dictate how I’m going to carry my life and what I need to do as a mother.”

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The Neediest Cases: Single Mother Battling Breast Cancer Takes Strength From Her Children

She had not expected her fingernails to feel as if they had been hollowed out.

Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times

Josmery Batista, 34, with her children: Analisse, 4, left; Erika, 10; and Jeremy, 1. Ms. Batista is receiving chemotherapy treatment.

For the past 100 years, The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund has provided direct assistance to children, families and the elderly in New York. To celebrate the 101st campaign, an article will appear daily through Jan. 25. Each profile will illustrate the difference that even a modest amount of money can make in easing the struggles of the poor.

Last year donors contributed $7,003,854, which was distributed to those in need through seven New York charities.

Josmery Batista, 34, had braced herself for many of the side effects that would result from her palliative chemotherapy treatment. She knew about the dizzy spells, the head pain and the body aches, just as she knew about the fatigue, which weakens her so much at times that she is unable to bathe her infant son or even to hold him.

But when her nails became so brittle that she could not properly wash dishes, a development as alarming as it was discouraging, she sought comfort and reassurance from one of her new friends walking the same path.

Ms. Batista, a single mother of three, knows that she is blessed to have found a support group of others, like her, who are undergoing cancer treatment, and she gains additional courage from the memory of friends who did not survive. She also knows how blessed she is to have sisters to lean on for help.

But friends and siblings alone are not what fortify her will to survive.

“My children give me the strength to fight this illness, this disease,” Ms. Batista said. “My support system has been a great help. But what keeps me going is my kids.”

Five months into her pregnancy with her son, Jeremy Tavarez, now 1, Ms. Batista began to experience excruciating pain from her neck to her midsection. She had no idea what was wrong. When she sought help, examinations ruled out ailments like arthritis or liver problems. Tests for cancer would have involved radiation and, thus, potential harm to the baby, so Ms. Batista waited until after the birth to be tested further. Last November, one month after her son’s birth, Ms. Batista was told she had Stage 4 breast cancer. The disease has since spread to her liver and her bones.

She receives chemotherapy treatment every 21 days at Elmhurst Hospital Center, near her home in Flushing, Queens, and is then required to take pills for the next 14 days. The side effects of that medication are the cause of much of her discomfort.

Petite yet resilient, Ms. Batista is driven to take Tylenol instead of a nap. She will weather the lethargy and endure the pain to ensure that her son and her other two children, Erika, 10, and Analisse Tavarez, 4, can have as normal a life as possible. Whenever she is able to, she plays with her children, accompanies them to school or helps them with homework.

“Even though she’s battling every day, going to the hospital and stuff like that, she doesn’t let her kids fully know, and they’re happy,” said Ms. Batista’s sister Dalisa Batista, who assists with child care.

Josmery Batista, who came to the United States from the Dominican Republic in 1998, had been employed for 13 years as a jewelry sample maker in Manhattan. She has been unable to work since her treatment began and is living month to month as a result.

She receives $450 a month in food stamps and collects $868 monthly in workers’ compensation, a payment that is set to expire in January. Ms. Batista says her children’s father also provides $400 a month in child support. Her rent is $1,100 a month.

With her finances tight, Catholic Charities Brooklyn and Queens, one of the agencies supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund, granted Ms. Batista $500 from the fund in September to cover five weeks of child care when she is at treatment and her relatives are unavailable. The agency also supplies the family with food from the Queens North Community Center pantry, which is affiliated with Catholic Charities.

“She stays very strong,” said Dalisa, who describes her sister as an inspiration. “I never really see her crying at home. She doesn’t cry in front of the kids.” Dalisa added that her niece Erika, who is still too young to fully grasp the severity of her mother’s situation, boosted morale with a child’s innocent honesty.

“Her daughter always gives her strength because she always tells her, ‘You’re beautiful with no hair,’ ” Dalisa said. “She tells her stuff like ‘I don’t want you to wear wigs. You’re beautiful to me.’ ”

The future holds many questions, but estimates are that Josmery Batista will be receiving treatments for at least the next six months. She says she will continue to do what she has been doing all along, basking in the love of those around her.

“I live my life as normal as possible, and I push myself to do the things I need to do,” Ms. Batista said. “I’m not going to allow the illness to dictate how I’m going to carry my life and what I need to do as a mother.”

Read More..

Bits Blog: After Overhaul, Windows Chief Leaving Microsoft

SEATTLE — Microsoft has unexpectedly parted ways with Steven Sinofsky, the leader of one of its most lucrative businesses and an executive often mentioned as a possible successor to the current chief executive.

In a surprise announcement late Monday, Microsoft said that Mr. Sinofsky, the president of its Windows division, would leave the company immediately after a 23-year career there. His departure was a mutual decision by Mr. Sinofsky and Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, according to a person briefed on the situation who was not authorized to speak on the matter.

Just weeks earlier, Microsoft released Windows 8, the company’s biggest overhaul to its flagship software product in years. The departure raises questions about how Microsoft, one of the giants in the technology business, will prepare itself for a new generation of leadership.

In an e-mail sent to all employees Monday evening, Mr. Ballmer said that Mr. Sinofsky’s decision to leave Microsoft comes at the start of a “new era” for the company, with the release of a wave of new products like Windows 8.

“I am grateful for the work that Steven has delivered in his time at our company,” Mr. Ballmer said in the e-mail. Frank Shaw, a Microsoft spokesman, said Mr. Sinofsky was not available for an interview.

In a statement announcing his departure, Mr. Sinofsky, 47, said, “I am humbled by the professionalism and generosity of everyone I have had the good fortune to work with at this awesome company.”

Mr. Sinofsky was viewed as one of the most competent managers within Microsoft, and he earned high marks for helping to improve the quality of its software after the company released Windows Vista, a widely criticized version of the operating system. A former technical assistant to Bill Gates, Microsoft’s co-founder, he was known to be a big admirer of Apple’s attention to detail in its products.

His name was often floated by people speculating about a possible successor to Mr. Ballmer, who has not announced any plans to retire from the company.

Mr. Sinofsky, however, was also said to be a polarizing figure who alienated many other members of Microsoft’s senior leadership team. For that reason, he was viewed by many insiders as an unlikely replacement for Mr. Ballmer, one whose elevation to the top job would have created waves of dissent within the company.

By his detractors, Mr. Sinofsky was seen as territorial and often unwilling to cooperate with other divisions.

In an internal review of his job performance last year, Mr. Sinofsky was faulted for failing to make sure that Microsoft lived up to a 2009 agreement with European regulators to offer users an easy way to install competitive Web browsers in Windows, according to a filing with securities regulators.

Mr. Sinofsky was also faulted for a 3 percent decline in the revenue of Microsoft’s Windows business, long one of its most profitable divisions and the foundation for its strength in the personal computing market. As a result, Mr. Sinofsky received 60 percent of the bonus he was eligible to receive last year.

Windows 8, the product Mr. Sinofsky most recently oversaw, has received mixed reviews so far. The new operating system has a drastically different look than previous versions, and Microsoft tailored the new Windows for use with tablets and other devices with touch-sensing screens.

Mr. Sinofsky also oversaw Microsoft’s decision to enter the computer hardware business with Surface, a tablet computer that has also earned mixed reviews.

Julie Larson-Green, another longtime Microsoft employee in its Windows division, will take over the leadership of all engineering responsibilities related to Windows. Tami Reller, the chief financial officer of the Windows division, will run business and marketing for the group.

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