News Trickery

Obama and Romney Zero In on Battleground States

Labels: World

Doug Mills/The New York Times

President Obama boarded Air Force One on Saturday to campaign in four states. They included Iowa, where he and Mitt Romney both planned to visit Dubuque.

MILWAUKEE — President Obama and Mitt Romney entered their final weekend of campaigning on Saturday facing a stubborn landscape of competitive states that right to the end are producing equal shares of hope and fear amid conflicting signals about the outcome.

The president, fighting to avoid being turned out of office four years after a rousing and historic victory, sought to shore up his standing in Midwestern states that had backed him enthusiastically last time. He assumed a defensive posture in Iowa and here in Wisconsin, two states where his advisers had openly scoffed at his rival’s chances only a few months ago.

Mr. Romney, in the closing days of his second quest for the White House, worked to harness the enthusiasm running through the Republican Party to overcome the challenges he confronts in building an Electoral College majority. He fought to secure critical states like Florida and Virginia without allowing others to slip away.

But after hundreds of millions of dollars in television commercials, months of campaigning and three widely viewed debates, the race was locked in the same dynamic that has defined it from the start: Mr. Obama, burdened by four years of economic struggle and partisan animosity but still an inspiration to his party, holding the slightest of edges in Ohio and other swing states, and Mr. Romney, bearer of the hopes of conservatives and voters convinced the nation is on the wrong path, fighting to overtake him.

The last defining question was whether Mr. Romney’s support had hit a ceiling — blunted by Mr. Obama’s opportunity to show leadership in the deadly aftermath of Hurricane Sandy — or whether he was on the verge of unseating a president in a dramatic finale.

Supporters, donors and advisers to Mr. Romney, in battleground states and at the campaign headquarters in Boston, said in conversations over the last two days that they had hoped to be closing the campaign in a stronger position, with clear leads in at least some of the battleground states. Now, several of them said, their optimism comes from the uncertainty in the closing hours of a contest, rather than any affirmative command of the race.

Mr. Obama raced through four states on Saturday as he tried to build enthusiasm among Democrats, appearing after a performance here by the singer Katy Perry to urgently tell a crowd of thousands, “We have come too far to turn back now; we have come too far to let our hearts grow weary.” Mr. Romney sought to tap into disappointment and discontent among voters as he rallied supporters, telling a rally in Portsmouth, N.H.: “He’s offering excuses. I’m offering a plan. I can’t wait to get started.”

The outlook expressed by both campaigns belied the tight nature of the contest in at least seven states. In their respective headquarters, advisers made convincing cases for why their candidate had the clearer path to 270 electoral votes, but when pressed they admitted to sleepless nights about a result that was expected to come down to only a sliver of the electorate.

The pursuit of Ohio’s 18 electoral votes drew the most attention, with the candidates scheduling multiple stops there before Tuesday, but the rest of the landscape was also highly volatile. Mr. Obama had the edge in Nevada and Mr. Romney in North Carolina, strategists agreed, while Colorado, Florida, Iowa, New Hampshire, Virginia and Wisconsin were far closer.

Here in Wisconsin, Mr. Romney rallied voters on Friday as his running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan, a native son, fought to rewrite the historical trends of a state that has not voted for a Republican presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan in 1984.

The president, who carried Wisconsin by 14 percentage points in 2008, arrived here in Milwaukee on Saturday afternoon. His campaign advisers thought the contest here was narrow enough to send him back to the state on Monday for a rally with an even bigger music star, Bruce Springsteen.

“It’s always tantalizingly close for Republicans, and I assume that’s where we are at with this one,” said James E. Doyle, a former Democratic governor of Wisconsin, who was among the early supporters of Mr. Obama.

The defeat this year of an attempt to recall Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, left behind a well-trained contingent of voters that Mr. Romney and his team will try to return to the polls. State laws that allow same-day registration in Wisconsin and in Iowa were seen by advisers to the Obama campaign as an advantage in their efforts to turn out younger voters.

Google's Android software in 3 out of 4 smartphones

Labels: Technology

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George Lucas' filmmaking rooted in rebellion

Labels: Lifestyle

LOS ANGELES (AP) — There's no mistaking the similarities. A childhood on a dusty farm, a love of fast vehicles, a rebel who battles an overpowering empire — George Lucas is the hero he created, Luke Skywalker.

His filmmaking outpost, Skywalker Ranch, is so far removed from the Hollywood moviemaking machine he once despised, that it may as well be on the forest moon of Endor.

That's why this week's announcement that Lucas is selling the "Star Wars" franchise and the entire Lucasfilm business to The Walt Disney Co. for more than $4 billion is like a laser blast from outer space.

Lucas built his film operation in Marin County near San Francisco largely to avoid the meddling of Los Angeles-based studios. His aim was to finish the "Star Wars" series— his way.

Today the enterprise has far surpassed the 68-year-old filmmaker's original goals. The ranch covers 6,100 acres and houses one of the industry's most acclaimed visual effects companies, Industrial Light & Magic. Lucasfilm, with its headquarters now in San Francisco proper, has ventured into books, video games, merchandise, special effects and marketing. Just as Anakin Skywalker became the villain Darth Vader, Lucas —once the outsider— had grown to become the leader of an empire.

"What I was trying to do was stay independent so that I could make the movies I wanted to make," Lucas says in the 2004 documentary "Empire of Dreams." ''But now I've found myself being the head of a corporation ... I have become the very thing that I was trying to avoid."

After the blockbuster sale announcement Tuesday, Lucas expressed a desire to give away much of his fortune, donate to educational causes and return to the experimental filmmaking of his youth. Still, the move stunned those who've followed him. He'd contemplated retirement for years and said he'd never make another "Star Wars" film.

Dale Pollock, the author of the 1999 biography "Skywalking," said Lucas disdained the Disney culture in interviews he gave in the 1980s, even though he admired the company's founder. "He felt the corporate 'Disneyization' had destroyed the spirit of Walt," Pollock said.

Lucas said through a spokeswoman on Saturday that he never said such a thing. But his anti-corporate streak is renowned. In the Lucasfilm-sanctioned documentary "Empire of Dreams", Lucas says on camera that he is "not happy that corporations have taken over the film industry."

Growing up in the central California town of Modesto, the independent streak was strong in young Lucas. The family lived on a walnut ranch and Lucas' father owned a stationery store. But, like his fictional protege Luke, George had no interest in taking over the family business. Lucas and his father fought when George made it clear that he'd rather go to college to study art than follow in his father's footsteps.

Lucas loved fast cars, and dreamed that racing them would be his ticket out. A near-fatal car crash the day before his high school graduation convinced him otherwise.

"I decided I'd better settle down and go to school," he told sci-fi magazine Starlog in 1981.

As a film student at the University of Southern California, he experimented with "cinema verite," a provocative form of documentary, and "tone poems" that visualized a piece of music or other artistic work.

The style is reflected in some of the short films he made at USC: "1:42:08" focused on the sound of a Lotus race car's engine driving at full speed and "Anyone Who Lived in a Pretty How Town," inspired by an e.e. Cummings poem. In later interviews, Lucas described his early films as "visual exercises."

Lucas' intellectual explorations led to an interest in anthropology, especially the work of American mythologist Joseph Campbell, who studied the common thread linking the myths of disparate cultures. This inspired Lucas to explore archetypal storylines that resonated across the ages and around the world.

Lucas' epic battle with the movie industry began after Warner Bros. forced him to make unwanted changes to an early film, "THX 1138." Later, Universal Pictures insisted on revisions to "American Graffiti" that Lucas felt impinged on his creative freedom. The experience led Lucas to insist on having total control of all his work, just like Charlie Chaplin and Walt Disney in their heyday.

"In order to get my vision out there, I really needed to learn how to manipulate the system because the system is designed to tear you down and destroy everything you are doing," Lucas said in an interview with Charlie Rose.

He shopped his outline for "Star Wars" to several studios before finding a friend in Alan Ladd Jr., an executive at 20th Century Fox. Despite budget and deadline overruns, and pressure from the studio, the movie was a huge success when it was released in 1977. It grossed $798 million in theaters worldwide and caused Fox's stock price at the time to double.

In one of the wisest business moves in Hollywood history, Lucas cut a deal with distributor Fox before the film's release so that he could retain ownership of the sequels and rights for merchandise. He figured in the 1970s that might mean peddling a few T-shirts and posters to fans to help market the movie. Over the decades, merchandising has formed the bedrock of his multi-billion-dollar enterprise, resulting in a bonanza for Lucas from action figures, toys, spinoff books and other products.

Industrial Light & Magic, the unit he started in a makeshift space in the Los Angeles suburb of Van Nuys, moved to the ranch in northern California and lent its prowess to other movies. It broke ground using computers, motion-controlled cameras, models and masks. Its reach is breathtaking, notably among the biggest science fiction movies of the 1980s: "E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial," ''Poltergeist," ''Back to the Future," ''Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark," ''Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" and more.

"Between him and (Steven) Spielberg, they changed how movies got made," said Matt Atchity, editor-in-chief of movie review website Rotten Tomatoes.

These days, the talent at ILM has spread around the globe, and many former employees have become top executives at other special effects companies, said Chris DeFaria, executive vice president of digital production at Warner Bros.

"You meet anybody who's a significant executive or artist at a company, they've spent their time at ILM or got their start there. That's probably one of George's greatest gifts to the business," DeFaria said.

Lucas helped make the tools that were needed for his films. ILM developed the world's first computerized film editing and music mixing technology, revolutionizing what had been a cut-and-splice affair. Pixar, the imaging computer he founded as a division of Lucasfilm, became a world-famous animated movie company. Apple's Steve Jobs bought and later sold it to Disney in 2006.

But the goliath Lucas created began to weigh on him. Fans-turned-critics felt the "Star Wars" prequel trilogy he directed fell short of the first films. Others believed his revisions to the re-released classics undid some of what made the first movies great.

Giving up his role at the head of Lucasfilm may shield him from the fury of rebellious fans and critics. He said in a video released by Disney that the sale would allow him to "do other things, things in philanthropy and doing more experimental kind of films."

"I couldn't really drag my company into that."

Still, Lucas is not planning on going to a galaxy far, far away.

Speaking on Friday night at Ebony magazine's Power 100 event in New York, Lucas said: "It's 40 years of work and it's been my life, but I'm ready to move on to bigger and better things. I have a foundation, an educational foundation. I do a lot of work with education, and I'm very excited about doing that."

This week he assured the incoming president of Lucasfilm, Kathleen Kennedy that he'd be around to advise her on future "Star Wars" movies —just like the apparition of Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi helps Luke through his adventures.

"They're finishing the hologram now," he told Kennedy. "Don't worry."

___

Liedtke reported from San Francisco. Global Entertainment Editor Nekesa Mumbi Moody in New York contributed to this story.

Second Illness Infects Meningitis Sufferers

Labels: Health

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.

In Election-Night Party Planning, Flexibility Is a Must

Labels: Business

Isaac Brekken for The New York Times

Frank Roskowski, director of technical services at the Aria Resort in Las Vegas, says it's difficult to determine the contours of an election-night party.

Isaac Brekken for The New York Times

A sign points to an early-voting site in Las Vegas, a city well suited to election parties because many of its ballrooms can expand or contract to accommodate victory or loss.

WHEN empty, the Bristlecone ballroom at the Aria Resort and Casino here is 57,000 square feet of beige carpeting and fluorescent lights. But two years ago, it was briefly the overstuffed epicenter of American politics.

This is where Senator Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat and majority leader, held his election-night party after prevailing in a race that many had predicted he would lose. To Democrats, this was a site for triumph and relief; for Republicans, it was one for disappointment and loss.

For Frank Roskowski, it was something else entirely. “It was carnage. It was goofy,” he said, grinning as he surveyed the room last week.

Mr. Roskowski, whom everyone calls Mustache Frank, is Aria’s director of technical services, and he is reminiscing about the chaos and bustle of Nov. 2, 2010. Democrats lost a bunch of races across the country, not to mention control of the House of Representatives, and in the days before the votes were tallied it looked possible that Mr. Reid would be a casualty. Twenty-two television crews were jockeying for position in the Bristlecone, starting at 4 a.m.

“The TV trucks all were fighting because the thing is, they have to run cable to a connection point,” Mr. Roskowski recalls. “So the guy in the truck, if he gets here early, he only has to run 100 feet. If he’s late, he’s got to run 500. At 3 in the morning, they’re out there, I’m out there, my guys are out there and these TV guys are like: ‘Hey, you want doughnuts? You want beer? 50 bucks?’ I’m like: ‘Whoa. Here’s what was sent to me. You’re here, you’re here, you’re here.”

As a feat of event planning, there is nothing quite like an election-night party. At most festivities that call for banquet halls and cocktails, there is little doubt about the basic contours of the main event. If it’s a wedding, two people are married and the union is celebrated. Organize a conference, and a crowd will mingle and drink. But an election-night party could be an evening of triumph or fiasco, a celebration or a wake. It’s like a trip to the hospital that might culminate with a fatal diagnosis or a healthy baby.

Both tragedy and triumph must be accommodated. It’s fine for politicians to say, “When I’m elected” or “When I’m re-elected,” but the election-night party planner toils in the realm of the possible, not the fondly wished for. If you anticipate an enormous, victory-hailing crowd and you lose, you are looking at not just a defeated candidate but also a tableau that accentuates all the empty space where supporters were supposed to revel. So, what to do? Order a few thousand balloons but don’t fill them until the polls close? Hide the confetti until the victory is certified?

What is far more essential, it turns out, is a room that can be shrunk or enlarged, quickly. Which is why Las Vegas is arguably the greatest election-night city in the country. Expandable banquet rooms are a specialty here, and turning a space that fits 100 into a space that fits 2,000 — and vice versa — is a feat that can be pulled off in places like the Bristlecone ballroom in a matter of minutes. The trick is air walls, huge movable slabs that slide back and forth like pocket doors.

Ultimately, on election night in 2010 here, the space in front of all the television cameras fit a mere 150 people. That was a tiny fraction of the entire room, and it left a tundra of emptiness out of view of all those cameras. But priority No. 1 was making the room look packed.

“When you tuned in at home,” Mr. Roskowski says, “it looked body-to-body tight.”

THE worlds of electioneering and catering will again intersect on Tuesday, as candidates await the public’s verdicts in settings of their choosing. For catering, it is often an evening of modest profit — a typical event with a couple of hundred people will cost $50,000, depending on the quality and quantity of food and drink. For the campaigns, devising these get-togethers can seem both fraught and irrelevant at the same time. Yes, all the stagecraft and planning matter. But what is the point of worrying about the finish line when the race is in the last sprint? Many campaigns contacted for this article would not discuss their plans, or they kept the discussion to a bare minimum.

New York City Marathon Will Not Be Held Sunday

Labels: World

After days of intensifying pressure from runners, politicians and the general public to call off the New York City Marathon in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, city officials and the event’s organizers decided Friday afternoon to cancel the race.

The move was historic — the marathon has taken place every year since 1970, including the race in 2001 held two months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks — but seemed inevitable as opposition to the marathon swelled. Critics said that it would be in poor taste to hold a foot race through the five boroughs while so many people in the area were still suffering from the storm’s damage, and that city services should focus on storm relief, not the marathon. Proponents of the race — notably Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Mary Wittenberg, director of the marathon — said the event would provide a needed morale boost, as well as an economic one.

“It’s clear that the best thing for New York and the best thing for the marathon and the future is, unfortunately, to move on,” said Ms. Wittenberg, the chief executive of New York Road Runners, the organization that operates the marathon. “This isn’t the year or the time to run it. It’s crushing and really difficult. One of the toughest decisions we ever made.”

George Hirsch, chairman of the board of Road Runners, said officials huddled all day Friday, hoping to devise an alternate race. They considered replacing the marathon with a race that would comprise the final 10 miles of marathon, starting at the base of the Queensboro 59th Street Bridge on the Manhattan side. But that was not deemed plausible, Mr. Hirsch said.

“We still want to do something, and we’re going to do something,” he said, referring to a replacement event for the marathon. “But it won’t require generators or water.”

Among the many details that remained unclear was how the field of nearly 50,000 runners who were expected to compete in Sunday’s marathon, thousands of whom traveled to New York from other countries, might be compensated. Runners who were registered for Sunday’s race are guaranteed entry into next year’s race.

“We have a lot to work through,” Ms. Wittenberg said when asked if elite runners would still receive their appearance fees. “We appreciate the investment athletes have put into training for New York. As always we’ll be sure to be fair. I think everyone knows and will expect that of us.”

Nearly 40,000 of the 47,500 registered runners had already arrived in the city, Mr. Hirsch said.

Mr. Bloomberg and Ms. Wittenberg had repeatedly stood behind the plan, insisting it was best for the city. But many runners joined a chorus of politicians and area residents this week in speaking out against the plan to stage the marathon despite the widespread damage wrought by the storm Monday night.

For days, online forums sparked with outrage against politicians and race organizers, a tone that turned to vitriol against runners, even from some other runners who accused them of being selfish.

The city was divided so bitterly that it became clear to marathon organizers that to hold the race would defeat the very purpose of it.

“The marathon is about uniting the city,” Mr. Hirsch said. “But all it was doing was dividing it. Is that what the New York City Marathon is all about? No, not at all.”

But as the criticism of the decision to hold the race escalated on Friday, Road Runners continued with its plans. Runners arrived to pick up their bibs at the Jacob K. Javits Center, elite runners spoke to reporters at the marathon’s media center in Central Park and preparations for the course were made. After lunch, board members were sent an update with little hint of what was to follow.

Christine Quinn, the speaker of the City Council and an ally of the mayor’s, came out against the race, saying it was not something she would have chosen to do.

Ms. Wittenberg had said several times this week that the decision to hold the race was ultimately Mr. Bloomberg’s. But she had been working around the clock to turn the event into a platform to help the city heal, both psychologically and financially.

“People are running as an example, they have children, raised money to come here, and they see this as a good, healthy thing,” said Norbert Sander, who won the 1974 marathon and now runs the Armory, an indoor track in Upper Manhattan. “People came from around the world. I think they caved to the worst elements.”

Deborah Rose, a City Council member whose district is in Staten Island, said she fully supported the decision to cancel the race, adding that she and her colleagues were imploring the mayor to change his mind about the event.

“I thought it was a gross misplacement of priorities on the mayor’s part to even consider having the marathon when there are people in Staten Island facing life-and-death situations,” she said. “I’m glad to see that the mayor had an epiphany and be sensitive to those communities that have been so impacted by the hurricane.”

She called on all the marathoners to go to Staten Island to help with the cleanup effort and to bring the clothes they would have shed at the start to shelters or other places where displaced people were in need.

“This is always a race that unites the entire city,” said Howard Wolfson, the deputy mayor. “It’s something that 100 percent of the people who live here can agree on every year. When you have a significant number of people voicing real pain and unhappiness over its running, you have to hear that and take that into consideration. Something that is a celebration of the best of New York can’t become divisive.”

Google's Android software in 3 out of 4 smartphones

Labels: Technology

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APNewsBreak: Cusack developing Rush Limbaugh film

Labels: Lifestyle

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Actor and outspoken liberal John Cusack is developing a movie about conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh, Cusack's production company said Friday.

The working title is "Rush," Cusack's New Crime Productions confirmed, offering no other details.

Hollywood director Betty Thomas, who's set to work on the film, said the production company is putting finishing touches on a script that will star the actor. Production is set for next year, Thomas said.

Limbaugh is in the front ranks of colorful and provocative media figures. Earlier this year, Limbaugh called a Georgetown law student a "slut" and a "prostitute" on air for arguing to Democrats in Congress that health plans should pay for contraception.

This week, the host mocked Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for his "bromance" with Obama after Christie praised the president's response to the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.

Cusack as Limbaugh isn't typecasting, politics aside. Cusack is a slender, dark-haired 46-year-old, while Limbaugh is 61, balding and portly. But Hollywood's makeup experts have probably had greater challenges.

A publicist for Limbaugh said Friday he would check with the host for comment. The agency representing Cusack, Creative Artists Agency, declined comment on the project.

Cusack's credits range from the teen flick "Sixteen Candles" to offbeat films like "Being John Malkovich." He attended President Barack Obama's 2008 inauguration but has criticized Obama over his military and civil liberties policies.

Thomas is a former actress ("Hill Street Blues") and an Emmy-award winning director ("Dream On") whose big-screen films include Howard Stern's "Private Parts" and "The Brady Bunch Movie."

Thomas' latest project is an online series, "Audrey," that is showing on the YouTube channel WIGS.

Urban Athlete: Discover Outdoors Offers Mountain Fitness Class

Labels: Health

Willie Davis for The New York Times

Rey Soriano, foreground, holding himself on suspension trainers in a workout run by Discover Outdoors.

I HAVE spent a small fortune over the years on gym memberships. But all you really need to get in shape, I now know, are a few granite paving stones, some sandbags and a backpack full of water jugs.

Willie Davis for The New York Times

David Tacheny, center, leading an exercise known as “pack mule,” as Courtney McBride pulls May Yu Whu.

Willie Davis for The New York Times

Mr. Tacheny explaining how to use paving stones as weights.

Willie Davis for The New York Times

Wendy Tsang, left, lifting a Bulgarian sandbag.

Early one Sunday morning I arrived at the entrance to Riverside Park for an exercise class called Mountain Fitness. A Manhattan adventure outfitter, Discover Outdoors, describes the class as a way to “train like a guide,” and uses rocks, logs, sandbags and water jugs in a quest to improve “functional fitness.” The company started offering the class a year ago after customers asked how they should train for the more challenging hiking and trekking adventures it offers.

Our instructor, David Tacheny, a guide and personal trainer, told us that a typical gym workout doesn’t engage all the muscles you’ll use on, say, a rock-climbing excursion. A leg press machine, for instance, works the pushing muscles of the legs. Squatting while raising a heavy rock above your head, on the other hand, also uses the back, abdominal muscles and shoulders, and it better approximates what it’s like to lift an overstuffed backpack.

“This is how guides train,” he said. “We don’t go run miles on flat terrain. We don’t just pump iron.”

All the exercises can be adapted to different levels of fitness. Our group of eight (including one man) looked plenty fit and included several people who belonged to social sports clubs in the city and competed in triathlons. Melanie Pessin, a triathlon competitor, did an eight-mile run before showing up for class. “I’m training for a half-marathon,” she said.

After a 10-minute warm-up, Mr. Tacheny took us to a pile of rectangular paving stones, each weighing 25 to 40 pounds. Standing with legs apart, we swung our stones out from between our legs into the air, using our hips instead of our arms for power.

The “halo” routine entailed holding the stone at chin level and circling it in a tight arc around the head. Next were squat presses, with the stones raised over our heads. At this point my back muscles went on strike, forcing me to switch to an imaginary stone.

Why just lift stones, though, when you can run with them — or throw them? Mr. Tacheny had us hold our stones at chest level, heave them as far as we could toward a tree in the distance, then run to pick them up; we were to repeat the move until we reached the tree.

Next, he divided us into two groups for a rousing game of what I came to call ducking stones. Each team started with an equal number of stones at the base of a tree. We were supposed to fetch a stone and run with it, depositing it at the base of the opposing team’s tree. After two minutes, whichever team had the fewest stones remaining would win. Mayhem ensued, with stones flying everywhere, to the point where I would yell out, “Don’t hit me!” whenever I stooped to pick one up.

Next, Mr. Tacheny introduced the “pack mule” exercise. Each team of two received a harness made of straps. One person held the straps and pulled while the teammate, attached to the harness at the other end, resisted. To inspire us, he recounted the story of two guides who pulled 100-pound sleds up a glacier while carrying 85-pound backpacks.

Freed from their harnesses, the class members followed Mr. Tacheny on a five-minute jog to a remote section of the park. There, he had stored a jump rope, a backpack full of water jugs, two crescent-shaped Bulgarian sandbags and some straps that he tied around tree branches. Instant exercise stations: pull-ups and push-ups using the straps; squats and leg lifts with the backpack or with a sandbag draped over the shoulders; a cardio workout using the jump rope.

After completing our circuits, we gathered in a circle and applauded ourselves for our hard work. “You got a sense of how to vary your workouts a little,” Mr. Tacheny told us, adding that gym routines didn’t appeal to him anymore, and that riding his bike 60 to 70 miles a day had gotten old. “But this stuff,” he said as we all dragged ourselves out of the park, “you won’t get bored with it.”

Discover Outdoors holds 90-minute Mountain Fitness classes for $20 at Riverside Park in Manhattan; (212) 579-4568, discoveroutdoors.com.

A Promising Drug With a Fatal Flaw

Labels: Business

Dr. Bryan A. Cotton, a trauma surgeon in Houston, had not heard much about the new anticlotting drug Pradaxa other than the commercials he had seen during Sunday football games.

Then people using Pradaxa started showing up in his emergency room. One man in his 70s fell at home and arrived at the hospital alert and talking. But he rapidly declined. “We pretty much threw the whole kitchen sink at him,” recalled Dr. Cotton, who works at Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center. “But he still bled to death on the table.”

Unlike warfarin, an older drug, there is no antidote to reverse the blood-thinning effects of Pradaxa.

“You feel helpless,” Dr. Cotton said. The drug has contributed to the bleeding deaths of at least eight patients at the hospital. “And that’s a very bad feeling for us.”

Pradaxa has become a blockbuster drug in its two years on the market, bringing in more than $1 billion in sales for its maker, the privately held German drug maker Boehringer Ingelheim.

But Pradaxa has been linked to more than 500 deaths in the United States, and a chorus of complaints has risen from doctors, victims’ families and others in the medical community, who worry that the approval process was not sufficiently rigorous because it allowed a potentially dangerous drug to be sold without an option for reversing its effects.

Pradaxa is an example, some critics say, of what can happen when a drug that performs well in tightly controlled trials is released into the messy world of real-life medicine. Boehringer Ingelheim said it was working on developing an antidote but that even without one, patients in a large clinical trial died at roughly the same rate as those who were taking warfarin.

The Food and Drug Administration released a report on Friday that found that the drug did not show a higher risk of bleeding than for patients taking warfarin. The report did not address the lack of an antidote for Pradaxa.

“The evolving spontaneous reporting patterns do not indicate a change in the favorable benefit-risk profile of Pradaxa, when used correctly according to the approved label,” Boehringer Ingelheim said in a statement. In other words, the drug is still safe. But some reports have indicated that doctors are not sufficiently cautious when prescribing Pradaxa, giving the drug to older people or those with kidney problems even though there is evidence that the bleeding risks are higher in those groups. The company recommends testing patients’ kidney function before prescribing Pradaxa and notes that the risk of bleeding increases with age.

“The problem is that the people that prescribe this, as a general rule, are cardiologists and family practitioners,” said Dr. Mark L. Mosley, director of the emergency room at Wesley Medical Center in Wichita, Kan. “The people that see the harm are your E.R. docs and your trauma docs.”

Critics say that at least until an antidote is found, better disclosure or more limited use of Pradaxa may be preferable. Patients’ lawyers have begun turning their attention to the drug. More than 100 lawsuits have been filed in federal courts and lawyers say thousands more are expected.

When the F.D.A. approved Pradaxa in October 2010, the drug was hailed as the first in a new category of replacements for warfarin, the nearly 60-year-old drug used to prevent strokes in people with a heart-rhythm disorder known as atrial fibrillation.

Warfarin requires careful monitoring of a patient’s diet and drug regimen, and frequent blood tests to ensure that it is working. Pradaxa required no such monitoring and, compared with warfarin, appeared to be better at preventing strokes.

Sales of the drug took off. By the end of 2011, after just over a year on the market, 17 percent of patients with atrial fibrillation were being prescribed Pradaxa, compared with 44 percent for warfarin, according to a study released in September. About 725,000 patients in the United States have used the drug, according to the F.D.A.

But almost as soon as doctors started prescribing Pradaxa, concerns surfaced about its safety. Pradaxa was identified as the primary suspect in 542 patient deaths reported to the F.D.A. in 2011, and was linked to more reports of injury or death than any of the more than 800 drugs regularly monitored by the Institute for Safe Medication Practices, a nonprofit based in Pennsylvania that monitors medicine safety.

Dr. Mosley said he found it “shocking, just shocking” that the F.D.A. approved Pradaxa, which is also called dabigatran, even though no antidote was available.

In a statement, the F.D.A. said, “the lack of an antidote notwithstanding, dabigatran was superior to warfarin in preventing strokes in a large clinical trial. The rates of bleeding were similar.” In the study it released on Friday, the F.D.A. examined health insurance claims and hospital data and reached a similar conclusion.

Warfarin, which is also known by the brand name Coumadin, can often be reversed by giving a patient vitamin K or other substances. Warfarin, too, can be deadly but, doctors said, they at least have options.

“The practical experience is that once hemorrhagic complications occur in this drug, it is much more likely to be a catastrophe than with Coumadin,” said Dr. Richard H. Schmidt, an associate professor of neurosurgery at the University of Utah, who treated an 83-year-old man who died from bleeding and was using Pradaxa.

Boehringer Ingelheim recommends treating bleeding patients with dialysis to help flush the drug from the body, although it notes that “the amount of data supporting this approach is limited.”

Several doctors said that option was not realistic. “People that are bleeding to death aren’t going to tolerate being put on dialysis,” Dr. Cotton said.

Two other new drugs intended as warfarin replacements also lack antidotes. Doctors said they had not seen as many bleeding deaths associated with Xarelto, which was approved in 2011 and is sold by Bayer and Johnson & Johnson. On Friday, the F.D.A. approved Xarelto to also treat deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism, two kinds of blood clots. Pradaxa is approved in the United States only to prevent stroke in patients with atrial fibrillation. A third drug, Eliquis, by Bristol-Myers Squibb and Pfizer, has not yet been approved by the F.D.A. Representatives for both drugs said trials showed their products were safe, adding that the companies were investigating different antidotes. Boehringer Ingelheim is expected to present several new studies of Pradaxa’s safety and efficacy — including one that examines potential antidotes — at the American Heart Association scientific conference next week in Los Angeles.

Some cardiologists have said that Pradaxa and the other new drugs represent real advances over warfarin. Around 40 percent of people with atrial fibrillation do not take any drugs for it, a recent study showed, putting them at risk for strokes.

“I think the benefit of the drug clearly exceeds the risk because to me, a disabling stroke has a greater weight than a bleeding complication,” said Dr. Sanjay Kaul, a cardiologist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and a member of the F.D.A. committee that voted to approve Pradaxa.

But those calculations make little sense to Walter Daumler, who said he watched his 78-year-old sister, Doris, bleed to death in May. Mr. Daumler, who lives in Wisconsin, has hired a lawyer and is considering suing. He said the doctors told him that because she was on Pradaxa, there was nothing they could do.

“My No. 1 goal is to stop this insidious drug,” Mr. Daumler said. “To get this off the market, so others will not undergo or witness what I saw.”

Bloomberg Endorses Obama, Saying Hurricane Sandy Affected Decision

Labels: World

In a surprise announcement, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said Thursday that Hurricane Sandy had reshaped his thinking about the presidential campaign and that as a result he was endorsing President Obama.

Mr. Bloomberg, a political independent in his third term leading New York City, has been sharply critical of both Mr. Obama, a Democrat, and Mitt Romney, the president’s Republican rival, saying that both men have failed to candidly confront the problems afflicting the nation. But he said he had decided over the past several days that Mr. Obama was the best candidate to tackle the global climate change that the mayor believes contributed to the violent storm, which took the lives of at least 38 New Yorkers and caused billions of dollars in damage.

“The devastation that Hurricane Sandy brought to New York City and much of the Northeast — in lost lives, lost homes and lost business — brought the stakes of next Tuesday’s presidential election into sharp relief,” Mr. Bloomberg wrote in an editorial for Bloomberg View.

“Our climate is changing,” he wrote. “And while the increase in extreme weather we have experienced in New York City and around the world may or may not be the result of it, the risk that it may be — given the devastation it is wreaking — should be enough to compel all elected leaders to take immediate action.”

Mr. Bloomberg’s announcement is another indication that Hurricane Sandy has influenced the presidential campaign. The storm, and the destruction it left in its wake, has dominated news coverage, transfixing the nation and prompting the candidates to halt their campaigning briefly.

More than that, it appears to have given a new level of urgency to a central issue in the presidential campaign: the appropriate size and role of government.

As the Federal Emergency Management Agency began undertaking relief efforts across the Northeast, Mr. Romney found himself in the tough position of having to clarify a statement he made last year in which he appeared to back giving the states a larger share of the federal government’s role in disaster response.

But Mr. Bloomberg’s endorsement was largely unexpected. For months, the Obama and Romney campaigns have sought the mayor’s endorsement, in large part because they believe he could influence independent voters around the country.

Mr. Bloomberg has steadfastly withheld his support, largely because he had grown frustrated with the tone and substance of the presidential campaign – recently deriding as “gibberish” the answers that Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney gave during a debate to a question about an assault weapons ban. He has expressed disappointment with Mr. Obama’s performance over the past few years, and concern about what he has described as Mr. Romney’s shifts in views over time.

In announcing his endorsement, Mr. Bloomberg listed the various steps Mr. Obama had taken over the last four years to confront the issue of climate change, including pushing regulations that seek to curtail emissions from cars and power plants. But the mayor cited other reasons for endorsing Mr. Obama, including the president’s support for abortion rights and for same-sex couples, two high-priority issues for the mayor.

At the same time, Mr. Bloomberg said he might have endorsed Mr. Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, except for the fact that the Republican had abandoned positions he once publicly held.

“In the past he has taken sensible positions on immigration, illegal guns, abortion rights and health care – but he has reversed course on all of them, and is even running against the very health care model he signed into law in Massachusetts,” the mayor said of Mr. Romney.

Mr. Bloomberg did not endorse a presidential candidate in 2008, when Mr. Obama ran against Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona.

Even in his endorsement, the mayor continued to express criticism of the president. He said that Mr. Obama had fallen short of his 2008 campaign promise to be a problem-solver and consensus builder, noting that he “devoted little time” to creating a coalition of centrists in Washington who could find common ground on important issues like illegal guns, immigration, tax reform and deficit reduction.

“Rather than uniting the country around a message of shared sacrifice,” Mr. Bloomberg said of Mr. Obama, “he engaged in partisan attacks and has embraced a divisive populist agenda focused more on redistributing income than creating it.”

In a statement, Mr. Obama said he was “honored to have Mayor Bloomberg’s endorsement.” The president acknowledged Mr. Bloomberg’s chief concern, saying climate change was “a threat to our children’s future, and we owe it to them to do something about it.”

“While we may not agree on every issue,” the president added, “Mayor Bloomberg and I agree on the most important issues of our time.”

And, alluding to the damage from the hurricane, Mr. Obama said: “He has my continued commitment that this country will stand by New York in its time of need. And New Yorkers have my word that we will recover, we will rebuild, and we will come back stronger.”

The endorsement is the latest effort by Mr. Bloomberg to affect the national political debate as he nears the twilight of his tenure in City Hall.

Last month, the mayor announced that he was creating his own “super PAC” to support candidates from either party, as well as independents, who he believed are devoted to his brand of nonideological problem solving, and who supported same-sex marriage, tougher gun laws or school reform. A billionaire, Mr. Bloomberg said he would spend from $10 million to $15 million of his money in highly competitive state, local and Congressional races.

Microsoft pushes new Windows to developers

Labels: Technology

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Days after launching Windows 8, Microsoft Corp is mounting a strong campaign to win over the software developers it needs to kick-start its new operating system.

A lack of apps is Microsoft's Achilles heel as it attempts to catch Apple Inc and Google Inc in the rush toward mobile computing.

Windows 8, the new Surface tablet and a range of Windows-based phones - all unveiled in the past week - are designed to close that gap, but the world's largest software company still needs to convince developers to recreate the thriving 'ecosystem' that made PCs so successful.

"Please go out and write lots of applications," Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer pleaded with 2,000 developers on Tuesday, kicking off an annual, four-day meeting at its campus near Seattle.

The event, called 'Build,' is the equivalent of Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference and Google's I/O event.

Microsoft gave each paying attendee one of its Surface tablets and 100 gigabytes of free space on its SkyDrive online storage service. On top of that, handset partner Nokia threw in a free Lumia 920 smartphone running Windows Phone 8.

The unprecedentedly generous give-away signals the intent of what Microsoft openly calls "evangelism." Most developers at the meeting, who paid up to $2,000 to attend, are already converted to the Windows religion. But this year there is a feeling that Microsoft can re-establish itself as a relevant platform for developers.

"The sessions are overflowing. Everybody wants to learn," said Greg Lutz, product manager at development tools company ComponentOne, who is attending the conference.

"The Surface is really exciting. It's been interesting to see people that would normally be critics of Microsoft surprised to see how good it is," said Lutz, whose company makes features that developers can use in apps, such as calendars or charts.

Microsoft recognizes it needs apps to flesh out its new online Windows Store and make Windows 8 machines more attractive to users, said Russ Whitman, chief strategy officer at Ratio Interactive, a design agency that helps companies create apps.

"The catalog (of apps) is where they are weak, there's no doubt," he said. "But if Microsoft stays focused on quality not quantity, they can win."

DEVELOPER DOUBTS

When Windows 8 launched on Friday, some major content providers had prominent apps in the Windows store, such as Netflix Inc, the New York Times and Rovio's Angry Birds Space. But big names such as Facebook and Twitter were missing.

Twitter moved to rectify that on Tuesday, announcing that a native Windows app would be rolled out "in the months ahead." Dropbox, a fast-growing cloud storage service, also announced it would soon have a Windows app, as did online payment firm PayPal and sports network ESPN.

But Facebook, which now has more than 1 billion users, has not yet made public any plans for a Windows app, despite the fact Microsoft is a minor shareholder.

And Microsoft still has to overcome indifference from many developers who do not see demand from users or simply do not have the resources to build Windows apps alongside iOS and Android.

"Windows 8 is getting good reviews and the tile user interface is a great fit with our geo-visual content," said Jason Karas, CEO at website Trover, where users can share photos of interesting discoveries. "It's on the roadmap for Trover, but we are still a very lean team, so we're hesitant to support a third platform until we have all the innovations we want to see in iPhone and Android in place."

Microsoft has yet to persuade other influential online services, for example car-rental firm Zipcar or real estate information firm Zillow, to develop for Windows 8.

To get more developers on board, Microsoft is spending this week demonstrating how it is making it easier to develop apps for Windows and get them into the real world.

A key part of that is a new set of tools tying in its Azure cloud service, which allows Windows apps to easily harness data stored in remote servers.

"Some of the new changes are pretty incredible and are going to make developing, especially some of the mobile apps, much easier," said Mike Cousins, a software developer following the conference by webcast from Calgary, Canada.

"It just makes it super-easy to integrate mobile clients into your application," said Cousins, who is developing Shuttr, a site for photographers to display and sell their work. "It's been reduced from probably a week's work to minutes."

400 MILLION NEW MACHINES

Microsoft's best argument to developers is the sheer size of the Windows user base.

Microsoft sold 4 million upgrades to Windows 8 in its first four days, a mere fraction of the 670 million or so machines running Windows 7. Ballmer said there would be 400 million new devices running Windows next year, including PCs, tablets and phones, and the company would be marketing heavily to consumers.

That is an attractive audience for developers, and Whitman at Ratio Interactive said he saw many new faces at Microsoft's event this week who previously were more interested in web-based apps and other platforms.

"There's a new generation of developers that can build on Windows 8 that have been building using JavaScript and HTML," he said. "Seeing some of those developers show up and talk about building apps using other languages is pretty cool. It's a whole different group than Microsoft has traditionally been able to court."

One Wall Street analyst said developers may even be tempted to switch back to Microsoft after working with Apple's iOS platform.

"There does seem to be some excitement about the new operating system and many of the new devices that are coming to market," said Jason Maynard, an analyst at Wells Fargo Securities. "We have heard some developers talk about 're-Microsofting' and moving from their Macs for app development."

Cousins said that once developers see the user base for Windows 8 grow, the momentum will start to have an effect.

"All the new PCs people buy will be Windows 8, and people will start demanding Windows 8 apps from companies, and then they will start making them," he said. "I think we'll see a wave of apps coming out pretty soon."

(Reporting By Bill Rigby; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

Chris Brown to stay on supervised probation

Labels: Lifestyle

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A judge on Thursday ordered Chris Brown to remain on supervised probation and make another court appearance after he completes an overseas tour.

Superior Court Judge Patricia Schnegg did not address questions raised at a previous hearing about whether the R&B singer had completed the terms of his community labor sentence.

A prosecutor said a report filed for Thursday's hearing did not add additional details about Brown's service as previously requested by the court. Brown is scheduled to return to court Jan. 17.

Brown remains on supervised probation for felony assault for an attack on Rihanna in 2009.

In September, officials in Brown's home state of Virginia reported that the singer completed six months of community labor, but the judge called those records "somewhat cryptic" at the time.

Brown is scheduled to begin a tour that spans several countries in Europe and South Africa on Nov. 14.

Brown appeared at the hearing along with his mother and attorney Mark Geragos. He did not speak during the proceedings, and when he attempted to at one point during discussions of his schedule, Geragos joked, "I don't dance, you don't talk."

___

Anthony McCartney can be reached at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP

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Changing channels; Sony, Sharp in turnaround battle

Labels: Technology

TOKYO (Reuters) - Sony Corp is likely to say it returned to an operating profit for July-September after it sold a chemicals business, but investors still aren't sure a consumer electronics revamp will deliver the profit growth the group seeks.

Sony shares, valued at less than $12 billion, have dropped 16 percent since end-June and its 5-year credit default swaps - the cost of insuring against debt default - have jumped by almost 60 percent. The benchmark Nikkei average is down by less than 1 percent.

The maker of Bravia TVs, Vaio laptops and PlayStation game consoles, battling weak demand and tough competition, is expected to say it earned operating profit of 33.8 billion yen ($424.7 million) in its second-quarter, after losing 1.6 billion yen a year ago, according to an average estimate from five analysts on Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Sony has sold a chemicals unit to state-backed Development Bank of Japan for 58 billion yen, and other asset sales may further inflate operating profit this business year. The Japanese group, which blazed a trail in the early 1980s with its Walkman portable music players, is closing the Shinagawa Technology Center, a 31-storey Tokyo office built in 1998 and may even sell the 37-storey Sony Tower, the New York headquarters of its U.S. business, according to media reports.

Sony has said it expects to reduce its global workforce by 10,000 people by end-March, around 6 percent of its total, as it seeks to lop 30 billion yen off its costs.

HIGH-RISK

Kazuo Hirai, who took over as CEO in April, has pledged to rebuild Sony around gaming, digital imaging and mobile devices, and nurture new businesses such as medical devices, as the TV business shrinks - Sony has lost close to $9 billion in TVs over the past 8 years. In late-September, Sony agreed to pay 50 billion yen to become the biggest shareholder in Olympus Corp, a world leader in medical endoscopes.

"The areas in which Sony is continuing to focus are of course high-risk, high-return markets," said JP Morgan analyst Yoshiharu Izumi in a recent report. "Although we expect (full-year) margin improvement in the electronics segment, we think it's too early to appraise a sustained recovery."

While battling weak demand for its products, fierce competition from Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics and others, Sony is also up against a strong yen and a depressed global economy.

Panasonic Corp, a rival Japanese TV maker, said on Wednesday it will lose almost $10 billion this business year as it cleans its house of risky assets - writing down billions of dollars of goodwill and assets in its mobile and energy units and preparing for more restructuring that is likely to see it shift away from money-losing TVs and other consumer electronics.

OUTLOOK DIMMER

In August, Sony cut its full-year operating profit forecast by more than a quarter to 130 billion yen, still some way above the average forecast by 19 analysts for 107 billion yen. At a net level, Sony sees annual profit of 20 billion yen, while the market prediction is for around a third of that.

"It's unclear if Sony will cut its full-year operating profit guidance, but we see considerable potential for second-half shortfalls, mainly in smartphones and games," Goldman Sachs analyst Takashi Watanabe said in a client note.

Sales of Sony's handsets, including its Xperia smartphones, are expected to have slid by more than a fifth in July-September, to below 8 million devices, a Reuters poll showed last month. [ID:nL6E8LAL10] For next year, it's forecast to sell 34.4 million mobiles, about the same as Samsung shifts each month.

The South Korean firm and Apple are also encroaching on Sony's gaming business, and Hirai has cut the forecast for annual sales of the hand-held Vita and PSP consoles to 12 million from 16 million.

After four straight years of net losses, Hirai is also hampered by weakened finances. At end-June, Sony's shareholder equity ratio fell to below 15 percent - a rate of 20 percent is generally considered a healthy minimum.

While selling off non-core assets, Sony has also spent to bolster its business portfolio - laying out $1.8 billion in four months on the Olympus stake, a cloud gaming firm and a website for doctors, but this has prompted both Moody's and Standard & Poor's to lower their long-term debt rating on the company to the second-lowest investment grade.

SHARP DOWNTURN

At rival Japanese TV maker Sharp Corp, which also announces quarterly earnings on Thursday, the need to return to profit is more urgent.

The maker of Aquos TVs has secured a $4.6 billion bank bailout, and has pledged to axe 10,000 jobs, sell assets, and return to profit. At end-June, Sharp's shareholder equity ratio was 18.7 percent.

After adding restructuring charges, valuation losses on stocks of LCD display panels and other costs, Sharp is expected to post a 400 billion yen net loss for April-September, almost double the company's estimate, the Nikkei business daily reported last week.

In front-loading those costs, and taking the hit now, Sharp may be better placed to return to profit in the current second half of the year, allowing lenders to justify the bailout.

Sharp is said to be increasing production capacity for its high-definition power-saving IGZO screens, which it hopes to sell to makers of ultrabook computers, including Lenovo Group, Dell Inc and Hewlett-Packard, Japanese media have reported.

For the second quarter, Sharp is expected to have made a 50.4 billion yen operating loss, according to the average of six analysts on Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Both Sharp and Sony may also have felt the impact of a recent dispute with China over ownership of islands in the East China Sea, which triggered sometimes violent protests against Japanese products. Sharp had almost a fifth of its revenues in China, while Sony has around 8 percent of its business there.

Sharp shares have more than halved since end-June, to record lows below 150 yen. Five years ago, the stock traded at above 2,440 yen. Its market value has slumped to below $2.4 billion.

($1 = 79.5800 Japanese yen)

(Additional reporting by Reiji Murai; Editing by Ian Geoghegan)

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