Sport 
Basketball 
Francis, Still Hobbled, Will Give It Another Try  
4/24/2007 
GREENBURGH, N.Y., March 1 — Steve Francis said Monday that he was uncertain whether he would play again this season because of a right knee injury. But he practiced Thursday and said he expected to play against the Golden State Warriors on Friday. Skip to next paragraph Justin Lane/European Pressphoto Agency Knicks guard Steve Francis, driving against Keyon Dooling of the Magic late last month, missed 30 games with tendinitis in his right knee. N.B.A. Live Scoreboard Results and Schedule Teams | Statistics Discuss the N.B.A. Knicks Schedule/Results Roster | Statistics Discuss the Knicks Nets Schedule/Results Roster | Statistics Discuss the Nets W.N.B.A. Schedule/Results Statistics | Teams Standings Francis was not the recipient of a miracle cure. He merely felt he had no choice. Asked what accounted for the sudden turnaround, Francis said: “The obvious — Jamal got hurt. You know what I’m saying? Nate’s been sick, and he’s been sick for a while. And I’m there, and I’m looking forward to putting forth a good effort to help the team.” Francis was referring to Jamal Crawford, who is scheduled to have surgery on a stress fracture in his right ankle on Friday, and Nate Robinson, who did not travel to Boston for Wednesday’s game, a 102-94 loss, because of a stomach virus. The Knicks have also been without David Lee, who has missed the last three games with a sprained right ankle. Lee did not practice Thursday, and what initially seemed to be a day-to-day injury is lingering. Coach Isiah Thomas said Lee was “highly doubtful” for Friday’s game, but Lee, Robinson, who also did not practice, and Francis are listed as questionable. The Knicks (26-33) had only three guards against the Celtics, including Stephon Marbury, who has also been playing through a knee injury. They fell behind by 23 points in the first half before taking a short-lived lead in the fourth quarter, underscoring the need for reinforcements in the backcourt. Francis approached the team sometime after Crawford’s injury was announced on Tuesday and said that he was ready to return, if needed. Asked to evaluate his health after Thursday’s practice, Francis said he would have to wait and see. But he added that he would most likely play Friday. “The team needs me, you know what I’m saying?” Francis said. “I think I’m obligated, definitely, to give what I can. It might not be or it might be 100 percent. But whatever I can do to help the team. And I think the guys are really supportive of it. They know the things that I’ve been going through over the last couple months.” A magnetic resonance imaging exam on Wednesday confirmed the initial diagnosis of tendinitis in the right knee, a condition that has forced Francis to miss 30 games this season. “Hey, we’ll take anything we can get,” said Thomas, who added that he was not surprised by Francis’s reversal. “We know he’s not 100 percent healthy, but whatever he can give us, we’ll definitely take because we’re in need of bodies.” The Knicks traded for Francis in February 2006 to please the former coach Larry Brown. But neither Francis, who has never fit in well, nor the team has been pleased with the results. Unless the Knicks can trade Francis, which is unlikely because of his high salary, it seems inevitable that they will buy out his contract. “There’s a possibility for anybody to get traded,” Francis said. “Like I said, the best players to ever play this game have been traded. So I’m no exception to it. It’s the nature of the business of the N.B.A. That week has passed. And we’re here now to play Golden State.” The Knicks on Friday will search for ways to mask the absence of Crawford, who averaged 17.9 points a game, second highest on the team. In the Knicks’ first game without Crawford, Eddy Curry was hampered by Celtics double teams, and the Knicks lacked a scoring threat at the end. “We’re never going to really pick up the slack for Jamal because there’s no one on our team who’s capable of doing the things that he or David provides,” Thomas said. “But if everyone stays in their role and do the things that they’re capable of doing, we’ll be O.K.” Francis is aiming to play the role of a savvy veteran who can shrug off an injury to prove his worth. “I’m not a bum,” he said. “Don’t forget that. I can still play.”  

Technology 
IT 
A Laptop With Vista That Seems Just Like a Fully Upgraded PC  
4/24/2007 
Acer’s TravelMate 2480-2779 laptop costs about $550 and runs Vista without complaint. 

Technology 
IT 
Google Courts Small YouTube Deals, and Very Soon, a Larger One 
4/24/2007 

SAN FRANCISCO, March 1 — Google has been frustrated in its efforts to reach comprehensive deals with major studios and networks to put their video on YouTube. But in the meantime, it is forming partnerships with hundreds of smaller media companies that see value — or at least a valuable experiment — in contributing to the site.

Some of the partnerships have been announced publicly. On Monday, for instance, YouTube, which was purchased by Google in October, said it had teamed up with the National Basketball Association to create a channel where the league would show authorized clips and where fans could upload short videos showcasing their best moves.

A day later, YouTube said it had reached a deal with an independent label, Wind-up Records, to stream music videos and allow YouTube users to incorporate music tracks into their own videos.

And on Friday, YouTube is to announce a partnership with a larger company, the BBC, according to people with knowledge of the negotiations. Under the multiyear deal, the BBC will create two entertainment channels and one news channel on YouTube. Two of the channels will include ads placed by Google’s advertising system, known as AdSense.

But most of YouTube’s licensing deals have been done quietly. It says it has firmed up more than 1,000 partnerships with content owners ranging from the Sundance Channel to small independent video producers.

Without specifying how many of those deals have been signed since their site was acquired by Google last fall, YouTube officials say they are adding more than 200 media partners a quarter.

“We are creating channels on YouTube for each of these content owners,” said Jordan Hoffner, the head of premium and information content partnerships. “Those who do deals with us will have an opportunity for monetization.”

The executives say the deals are a sign that a growing number of companies are becoming comfortable with displaying their content on the site.

Those with channels on it now include Hollywood Records, Hilary Duff’s label; the YES Network, a New York-based sports television network; AskTheBuilder.com, a home-improvement site; and the Ford Motor Company.

Mr. Hoffner said a small team at YouTube had been busy courting partners. He would not describe the specific financial terms of the deals — nor would the partners — other than to say they typically involved splitting advertising revenue between the content owner and YouTube. For now, that sort of revenue is small.

In an e-mail response to questions, Chad Hurley, YouTube’s co-founder and chief executive, said its success with smaller media companies “validates the business model that we offer them and all partners,” which he said included “a platform for distribution, promotion and monetization of their content, and an opportunity to reach a whole new audience.”

Industry analysts say it is far easier for YouTube to persuade small media companies to license their content than it is to get NBC or Viacom, two of Google’s vocal critics, to give up control of their most-prized content and the advertising revenue associated with it.

“Smaller guys want mass distribution and are willing to face the risk of copyright infringement for access to this huge audience,” said Allen Weiner, an analyst at Gartner. “It is a relatively low-risk deal for them.”

Still, there are signs that courting small media players may be paying off for YouTube. In the two weeks after YouTube acceded to Viacom’s demand that it take down more than 100,000 clips from Viacom properties like MTV and Comedy Central, traffic on the site nonetheless increased by 14 percent, according to Hitwise, an Internet research firm.

Bill Tancer, general manager for global research at Hitwise, said an analysis of the search terms generating visits to YouTube indicated that clips created by users were the main drivers of growth. But he said premium content from professional producers could be a factor, too.

“To the extent that it is short and has high entertainment value, it can only help YouTube grow,” he said.

And as the audience grows, YouTube becomes an increasingly attractive outlet for media companies craving distribution.

“You fish where the fish are,” said John Caplan, president of the Ford Models agency, one of YouTube’s content partners. “YouTube has an outstanding reach. It is one of many great places for us to be.”

Ford Models is not a media company in the traditional sense. But as Internet video has become increasingly popular, it has begun to produce a growing amount of programming. Its channel on YouTube includes clips of models sharing “beauty secrets” or tips on fitness, video blogs created by models taking part in a beauty contest and a feature called “changing-room confessions,” where models go into dressing rooms and make videos of themselves trying on clothes.

YouTube’s deal with the BBC is to include specially created clips, blogs from celebrities, behind-the-scenes video, and popular shows like “Fawlty Towers,” “Doctor Who” and “Life on Earth” by David Attenborough.

Still, many of the agreements that YouTube highlighted suggest that the relationships are tentative and that media owners are treating online video as an experiment.

YouTube’s agreement with the N.B.A., for instance, does not include the league’s most-prized content, the recaps of the games, which will continue to be shown on NBA.com. And the agreement lasts only through the end of the current season.

“We want to see how this works out, and we will adjust and see whether it makes sense for us both,” said Steve Grimes, vice president for interactive efforts at the N.B.A.

Similarly, YouTube’s partnership with the Sundance Channel lasts through this year. “The digital media landscape is constantly evolving, so we want to make sure we have the ability to re-evaluate,” said Christopher Barry, vice president for digital media and business strategy at Sundance.

What’s more, most of YouTube’s deals are not exclusive. Ford Models, for instance, is making its content available on YouTube competitors like Revver and Veoh, and some of the Sundance Channel content is also on Yahoo Video.

And YouTube’s success in courting smaller media companies may not be unique. Jeremy Allaire, chief executive of Brightcove, a YouTube competitor that licenses and distributes content on behalf of media companies, said his company had signed up about 3,000 commercial video publishers. “We are having success with small, medium and large companies,” Mr. Allaire said.

Still, some of those who have become partners with YouTube say they are pleased with early results.

Mr. Barry of the Sundance Channel said there had been more than two million views of its content on YouTube in a little more than a month. “We have had significant growth on our Web site as well, and some portion of that growth we attribute to our YouTube partnership,” he said.

Whether that kind of success persuades large media companies to collaborate more broadly with YouTube remains to be seen. In November, a month after starting a limited trial of its own channel on YouTube, CBS hailed the effort, saying that its more than 300 clips were among the most viewed on YouTube. Yet a broader deal between the companies has proved elusive.

 

World news 
International news 
Opportunists in Somalia 
4/25/2007 

GALKAYO, Somalia — Beyond clan rivalry and Islamic fervor, an entirely different motive is helping fuel the chaos in Somalia: profit.

The New York Times

Profiteers in cities like Galkayo see the government as a threat.

A whole class of opportunists — from squatter landlords to teenage gunmen for hire to vendors of out-of-date baby formula — have been feeding off the anarchy in Somalia for so long that they refuse to let go.

They do not pay taxes, their businesses are totally unregulated, and they have skills that are not necessarily geared toward a peaceful society.

In the past few weeks, some Western security officials say, these profiteers have been teaming up with clan fighters and radical Islamists to bring down Somalia's transitional government, which is the country's 14th attempt at organizing a central authority and ending the free-for-all of the past 16 years.

 

World news 
International news 
Pressed by U.S., Pakistan Seizes a Taliban Chief 
4/24/2007 
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, March 1 ? The former Taliban defense minister was arrested in Pakistan on Monday, the day of Vice President Dick Cheney?s visit, two government officials said Thursday. He is the most important Taliban member to be captured since the American-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Skip to next paragraph The New York Times Quetta is said to be a base for Taliban and fighters for Al Qaeda. The Reach of War Go to Complete Coverage ? The man, Mullah Obaidullah, was a senior leader of the Afghan insurgency, which has battled American and NATO forces with increasing intensity over the last year. He is one of the inner core around Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban leader. The leadership is believed to operate from the relative safety of Quetta, Pakistan, where Mullah Obaidullah was arrested. It was not clear whether he was picked up before, during or after Mr. Cheney?s visit. But the timing may be significant because Mr. Cheney?s mission was intended to press Pakistan to do more to crack down on members of the Taliban and Al Qaeda who use Pakistan as a sanctuary.  

World news 
International news 
Libya Gingerly Begins Seeking Economic but Not Political Reform  
4/24/2007 
TRIPOLI, Libya, March 1 ? For more than three decades, Libya has been an experiment in one man?s ideology. The result is a country with few functioning institutions, an unreliable legal system, inadequate schools and hospitals, and a population isolated and unprepared for modernity. Skip to next paragraph Enlarge This Image Photographs by Shawn Baldwin for The New York Times A butcher dragged a sheep on Saturday in front of his shop in Tripoli. A small group of Libyan reformers is pushing for economic change. That is the assessment of some of the government?s own consultants. Yet the leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, will be holding a huge celebration on Friday to observe the 30th anniversary of the system that has led Libya to its current crisis. So as efforts to change get under way, pushed by a small group of reformers, talk is restricted to economic change. The question on many people?s minds is how that can be carried out without political change as well. ?Do you think we can create social and economic prosperity without political reform?? Ahmed Shebani, a local businessman, asked at an economic conference last week. The Libyan political system is centralized and decentralized. Colonel Qaddafi, called Brother Leader, says that representative democracy is a fraud and that each citizen must participate in the state. So there are 3,000 committees that meet twice a year. There is a 3,000-member council made up of the heads of those committees that assigns priorities and budgets. There are committees on health and finance, as well as local committees that coordinate the national committees. Even though Libya is the wealthiest country in North Africa, roads often do not get paved, housing built or hospitals stocked. In fact, it is far behind its neighbors in almost everything related to human development, especially education, the government consultants say. The government hired the Monitor Group, a consulting business based in Cambridge, Mass., to assess the economy and chart a path forward. Challenges were found in every sector. The consultants are here as guests of the nascent reform movement, and they appeared at a conference last week organized by Colonel Qaddafi?s son Seif el-Islam el-Qaddafi, the main force behind the drive to retool the economy. All stepped quietly around the question of true political reform. ?Look, we have all reached the conclusion that political change is impossible,? said a former political prisoner who like other dissidents here was afraid to be identified for fear of punishment. ?It is impossible to change the system. So the only thing we can do is support the initiatives taken by someone like Seif and hope that it leads eventually to where we want things to go.? It is hard to see how change can come quickly in such an undeveloped economy and in a system whose leaders have been resistant to change. Officials here announced recently that they would eliminate 120,000 government jobs as part of a far-reaching effort to restructure the ailing economy. Then they announced that they were not immediately ending the jobs but would give people three years? salary while they looked for work in a private sector that barely exists. Officials pay homage to Colonel Qaddafi?s philosophy, which is embodied in his Green Book, a m?lange of pop psychology, socialism, populism and Islam. ?Most people don?t understand the system,? said Ahmed Ali Kojman, a director of Watassimo, Libya?s main charity group, run by Colonel Qaddafi?s daughter Aisha. ?Those that do, understand it should be the democracy used all over the world.? Since criticizing the system is a red line, even the outside consultants avoided doing so. ?We have to create a process of improving everything,? Prof. Michael Porter of Harvard, an expert on competitiveness who has helped plan economic reform efforts here, said carefully at the conference. ?It won?t happen overnight. It will take years.? Professor Porter added that the principles behind the Qaddafi philosophy were compatible with a competitive economy. Libya was once widely regarded as a rogue state, led by a man President Reagan described as a ?mad dog.? It was accused of financing groups the United States deemed terrorists, and it was isolated from the world after its agents were accused of the bombing of a Pan Am jetliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. But Colonel Qaddafi has resolved his major differences with the West, given up the agents convicted in the bombing and given up his unconventional weapons programs.  

World news 
US news 
Most Support U.S. Guarantee of Health Care 
4/24/2007 
A majority of Americans say the federal government should guarantee health insurance to every American, especially children, and are willing to pay higher taxes to do it, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. Skip to next paragraph Complete Poll Results (pdf) Readers' Opinions Share Your Thoughts What tradeoffs would you be willing to make for a better health care system? Post a CommentRead CommentsMultimedia Video Majority Back Health Care for All Graphic Americans on Health Care Related How the Poll Was Conducted (March 2, 2007) While the war in Iraq remains the overarching issue in the early stages of the 2008 campaign, access to affordable health care is at the top of the public’s domestic agenda, ranked far more important than immigration, cutting taxes or promoting traditional values. Only 24 percent said they were satisfied with President Bush’s handling of the health insurance issue, despite his recent initiatives, and 62 percent said the Democrats were more likely to improve the health care system. Americans showed a striking willingness in the poll to make tradeoffs to guarantee health insurance for all, including paying as much as $500 more in taxes a year and forgoing future tax cuts. But the same divisions that doomed the last effort at creating universal health insurance, under the Clinton administration, are still apparent. Americans remain divided, largely along party lines, over whether the government should require everyone to participate in a national health care plan, and over whether the government would do a better job than the private insurance industry in providing coverage. Looking ahead to the presidential campaign, 36 percent of Americans polled said they had confidence in the ability of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, to “make the right decisions on health care,” while 49 percent said they were uneasy about her. But Mrs. Clinton retained the confidence of nearly 6 in 10 Democrats on the issue, despite the politically devastating collapse 13 years ago of the national health initiative she helped develop early in her husband’s presidency. The poll helps explain why health care already looms large in the presidential campaign, and in statehouses from California — where Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, has proposed a sweeping coverage plan — to Massachusetts, now instituting a program passed under Mitt Romney, the former governor and current Republican presidential candidate. John Edwards, the Democratic presidential candidate and former senator from North Carolina, recently unveiled his own attempt at a consensus plan, one that would require everyone to have insurance and require employers to provide it or pay into a fund that would do so. Nearly 4 in 10 said that was a good idea; nearly half said they were unsure. VideoMore Video » While Democrats are traditionally strong supporters of expanding health coverage, this survey found many Republicans and independents in agreement. “I think everybody should have some kind of health care available to them,” said Diane Manning, 66, of Vancouver, Wash., who described herself as an independent. “I don’t necessarily think that socialized medicine is the answer, but I think everyone should have that right,” said Mrs. Manning, who participated in the poll and agreed to a follow-up interview. “And there are so many people that don’t.” Nearly 47 million people in the United States, or more than 15 percent of the population, now go without health insurance, up 6.8 million since 2000. The poll also found overwhelming support behind the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which covers many low- and moderate-income children and is up for renewal in Congress this year. Eighty-four percent of those polled said they supported expanding the current program to cover all uninsured children, now estimated at more than eight million. A similar majority said they thought the lack of health insurance for many children was a “very serious” problem for the country. The nationwide telephone poll of 1,281 adults was conducted Feb. 23- 27, and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points. The poll found Americans across party lines willing to make some sacrifice to ensure that every American has access to health insurance. Sixty percent, including 62 percent of independents and 46 percent of Republicans, said they would be willing to pay more in taxes. Half said they would be willing to pay as much as $500 a year more. Nearly 8 in 10 said they thought it was more important to provide universal access to health insurance than to extend the tax cuts of recent years; 18 percent said the tax cuts were more important. “I wouldn’t want to pay a lot of taxes, but if it was spread out and everyone paid their fair share, it would be fine,” said Don Galvan, 50, a computer programmer from Ringwood, N.J., who considers himself an independent. “Everybody should have some kind of medical coverage, in case they or their children get sick. Especially children.”