Sandy and the Need for More Time, Paperwork for Mortgages

ReutersHomes on the New Jersey coast damaged by Hurricane Sandy.

A colleague whose home is located in an area affected by Hurricane Sandy had applied last week for a refinance of his mortgage and thought he was done signing forms. But today, his lender said that because his home was in a declared disaster area, he'd have to provide additional documents.

That might not be the easiest thing to do, since getting documents may be a challenge for those in areas without power.

A Bank of America spokesman, Kris Yamamoto, said that due to “GSE guidelines and our policy, and depending on the category of the disaster area,” there may be additional requirements to process a loan, like an inspection or certification on the property. (The term GSE refers to government-sponsored enterprises like Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, which are major buyers of home loans.)

He also said that if the processing of a loan is delayed due to a bank site being temporarily closed  and the interest rate lock expires during that time, the customer will continue to qualify for their previous interest rate.

A Chase spokeswoman said she was looking into my inquiry. Meantime, she said, Chase is automatically giving many borrowers affected by the storm an extra seven-day extension on an interest-rate lock, if they were scheduled to close on a mortgage this week. (She said the extension applies to Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia and Washington, D.C.)

Wells Fargo didn't immediately respond to an e-mail request for information about how the storm i s affecting loan applications.

Do you have a home loan or refinance pending? Has the storm affected your application?

Wrestling With Halloween Cost Creep

European Pressphoto AgencyA Halloween display in Decatur, Ga.

Halloween used to be a one-night event. When I was a kid, my mother helped me and my brothers put together costumes - usually, homemade. We carved a pumpkin. Maybe we bobbed for a few apples. We went trick-or-treating in our neighborhood. We tried to con each other into trading candy we liked better. And that was it, until the next year.

Times have changed. Halloween has morphed into days - even weeks - of October parties, festivals and candy giveaways that strain budgets and overload youngsters with more sweets than my Milky Way-addled childhood brain could ever have imagined. There's no need for sibling bargaining, when everyone has an over abundance of treats.

I find this “holiday creep” annoying, not to mention potentially fattening, as well as expensive. The average American will spend nearly $80 on decorations, costumes and candy this year, up from $72 last year, according to the National Retail Federation. Total Halloween spending is expected to be about $8 billion.

It's not that the organizers of all the extra events aren't well intentioned. Last week, my children attended a “fall festival” (it involves costumes and candy, but is apparently named so as not to put off those who object to Halloween). It was a fund-raiser for a very deserving local charity. But bringing two children, plus a friend, totaled $60 for the night. (I realize I have free will, and could simply have chosen not to go. But it gets harder to sit out when excess celebration is becoming the norm, and all of your children's friends are attending, too).

Today, my younger child had a celebration at school. (Call me a party pooper, but I didn't bake cupcakes.) And this afternoon, my offspring will go trick-or-treating at their dad's workplace, where employees elaborately decorate their cubicles for the holiday to entertain the kids. Finally, at dusk, we'll venture out into the neighborhood for the actual door-to-door event.

In addition to being tiring, the cost of all this partying adds up. Unless you're adept at homemade costumes or have time to browse thrift shops, you'll pay about $15 to $20 per child for an out-of-the-bag get-up, and three to four times that if you order from a higher-end catalog. If your child is the messy type, you may need more than one costume for the different events, which adds to the cost. (My youngest was a vampire for the fall festival, but agreed â€" whew! â€" to recycle a Pocahontas costume from a school play for the “official” trick-or-treat outing.) This year we're pet owners, so my kids begged for a pumpkin sweater for the dog. (O.K., I do h ave to admit that she looks really cute).

By the time we're finished, we'll have shopping bags full of candy. This is the situation that leads parents to turn to the “Halloween fairy,” who takes away excess treats in exchange for a toy, which adds to the cost further. But wouldn't it make more sense to scale back the excess in the first place?

How do you keep the lid on Halloween, without appearing to be a killjoy?

Digital Notes: Apple Delays Latest iTunes Upgrade

On Tuesday, a day after a management shake-up and a month after the botched release of its Maps app drew a rare public apology from its chief executive, Apple quietly delayed the release of its latest upgrade to iTunes, saying it needed more time to “get it right.”

The new version of iTunes was announced last month with no more specific timing than “coming in October”; on Tuesday, with two days left on the month, Apple revised that timing with an orange tab on its Web site that now says “coming in November.”

The company issued no formal announcement about the change, but in a comment to the technology news site All Things Digital, a spokesman said: “The new iTunes is taking longer than expected and we wanted to take a little extra time to get it right. We look forward to releasing this new version of iTunes with its dramatically simpler and cleaner interface and seamless integration with iCloud before the end of November.”

The new version is supposed to have a streamlined look and better integration with iCloud, its service for synching music and video collections. It is said to be the most significant upgrade to iTunes in the 11-year life of the program, which has grown from a simple music player to the most powerful retailer in the music business - and a force in the movie, television and e-books businesses - and, on Apple's PCs, the portal to its app store.

Ben Sisario writes about the music industry. Follow @sisario on Twitter.

Gay Couples May Want to File a Protective Tax Refund Claim

The recent decision by a federal appeals court regarding the Defense of Marriage Act suggests gay couples may want to file something known as a protective refund claim with the Internal Revenue Service in the event the Supreme Court overturns the law, according to accounting experts.

The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York struck down the law's definition of marriage as a union between a man and a woman as unconstitutional. The decision was the second by a federal appeals court striking down DOMA, as the law is known. The law's constitutionality is expected eventually to be considered by the United States Supreme Court.

If the high court invalidates DOMA, legally married same-sex couples will be able to file claims for refunds of federal tax overpayments, said Janis Cowhey McDonagh, a partner at Marcum LLP in New York and a specialist in the firm's national LGBT and non-traditional family practice.

Currently, same-sex marriage is recognize d by six states - New York, Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont - and the District of Columbia.

Patricia Cain, a law professor at Santa Clara University and an authority on legal issues faced by same-sex couples, said others might want to consider filing a protective claim, too.

For instance, she noted that an additional nine states, as well as Washington, D.C.,  recognize “marriage equivalent statuses” for same-sex couples, like domestic partnerships or civil unions. While most people presume those relationships aren't marriages, she said in an e-mail, “there's a good argument that absent DOMA such relationships should be treated as marriages for tax purposes.”

In light of such uncertainty, she said, some details may end up being settled by further litigation. “I actually would advise anyone who would benefit from joint filing to file an amended return as a protective claim for refund if they ar e married (no matter where they live) or in a marriage equivalent status.”

Ms. McDonagh said couples should file a protective refund claim now because there is a three-year statute of limitations on tax refund claims. By filing a claim now, couples will have standing for overpayments dating to 2009, while DOMA wends its way through the court system. The claim applies to income taxes, estate taxes as well as gift taxes, she said.

It's possible, Ms. McDonagh said, that if the Supreme Court voids the law, the I.R.S. could waive the three-year statute of limitations. That would seem the fair thing to do, she said, but there isn't any precedent for the agency doing so. So to be safe, filing a protective claim makes sense.

Couples should consult their accountants for advice about filing a protective claim, which essentially involves filing an amended tax return, she said.

The case decided earlier this month was brought on behalf of Edith Windsor of New Yo rk City, who married her longtime partner, Thea Clara Spyer, in 2007 in Canada. When Ms. Spyer died in 2009, Ms. Windsor inherited her property. Because the I.R.S. was not allowed, under the Defense of Marriage Act, to consider her as a surviving spouse, she faced a tax bill of $363,053 that she would not have had to pay if the marriage had been recognized.

Do you intend to file a protective claim?

How Sandy Slapped the Snark Out of Twitter

Brendan Mcdermid/Reuters People congregate on Tuesday in front of a building in Manhattan that still has wireless Internet access.

Twitter is often a caldron of snark, much of it funny, little of it useful. But as a social medium based on short-burst communication, Twitter can morph during large events - users talk about “watching” the spectacle unfold across their screens. It is, after all, a real-time service, which means that you can “see” what is happening as it happens.

As a media reporter, my Twitter feed has a strong Manhattan bias, serving as a sandbox for media and technology types that I follow. Under norma l circumstances, we show up on Twitter to preen, self-promote and crack wise about the latest celebrity meltdown. If that New York cohort has a soul - insert your own joke here - you could see into it on Twitter.

And then along came Hurricane Sandy. For most of Monday, people on Twitter were watching an endless loop of hurricane coverage on television and having some fun with it, which is the same thing that happens when the Grammys or the Super Bowl is on. But as the storm bore down, Twitter got busy and very, very serious.

It is hard to data-mine the torrent â€" some estimates suggested there were three and a half million tweets with the hashtag #Sandy - #8212;but my feed quickly moved from the prankish to the practical in a matter of hours as landfall approached. I asked Simon Dumenco, who writes the Media Guy column for Advertising Age and is well versed in the dark arts of Twitter analytics, about the tonal shift via e-mail.

“I kept a close eye on th e Top 10 Trends chart as Sandy was bearing down on the East Coast, and there was no shortage of gravitas on Twitter,” he wrote. “The last time I checked before losing power in my Manhattan apartment, seven of the 10 trends were Sandy-related - New Jersey, ConEd, Hudson River, Lower Manhattan, FEMA, Queens and #SandyRI. Clicking on each of them yielded plenty of information.”

At my home in suburban New Jersey, a 30-foot limb dropped down at 4 p.m., so the illusion that this was an event happening to someone else quickly dissipated. And at 8 p.m., just when we hunkered down in front of the big screen, the house went dark. This very large event would not be televised. We built a fire and sat around a hand-cranked radio, but I was diverted over and over by the little campfire of Tweets on my smartphone.

It was hard to resist. Twitter not only keeps you in the data stream, but because you can contribute and re-Tweet, you feel as if you are adding something even though Mother Nature clearly has the upper hand. The activity of it, the sharing aspect, the feeling that everyone is in the boat and rowing, is far different than consuming mass media.

Because my Internet connection was poor, so much of the rich media - amazing videos and pictures documenting the devastation - was lost to me. In true media throwback fashion, Hurricane Sandy was something I experienced as a text event, but I don't feel as if I missed much. The Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel inundation, the swamping of the Lower East Side, the huge problems at New York hospitals, the stranding of the holdouts in Atlantic City, all became apparent on Twitter in vivid detail.

At the same time, much of the seen-it-all and isn't-it-dumb seemed to leak out of my Twitter stream. (The message that earnestness was nascent and irony was on the run seemed widespread - the servers of Gawker, the hilarious and ill-mannered Manhattan snark machine, were drowned and the site went down. Still is, as a matter of fact.)

Many local television stations did an amazing job and the big cable-news outlets played large, but the template of the rain-and-wind-lashed correspondent shouting to a blow-dried anchor back in the studio has its limits. The local radio stations were nimble and careful, including WCBS, WNYC and WINS, but they were part of the story on occasion, with transformers going down and hurricane-induced glitches along the way.

Manhattan is the epicenter of a number of big blogs, including Gawker, BuzzFeed and Huffington Post, but each had to pivot to Twitter, among other platforms, as their servers succumbed to encroaching waters. (At a conference last year, Andrew Fitzgerald of Twitter wondered about the utility of the platform if the end of the world arrived in the form of an alien attack. The people participating in the discussion pointed out that the lightweight infrastructure of Twitter and its dur ability would probably make it very practical should end times draw nigh.)

In the early days of Twitter, there was a very big debate about whether reporters should break news on Twitter. That debate now seems quaint. Plenty of short-burst nuggets of news went out from reporters on Twitter on Monday night and they were quickly followed by more developed reports on-air or on the Web. There were abundant news Tweets from @antderosa of Reuters, @acarvin of NPR and @brianstelter of The New York Times, among many others, but there were also Tweets from plain old folks retailing very important information about their blocks, their neighborhoods, their boroughs. I knew what was happening to many of my friends as far away as D.C. and as close as the guy up the block. There is no more important news than that.

Jay Rosen, a professor of journalism at New York University, wrote in a note: “To me the most basic act of journalism there can be is: ‘I'm there, you're not, le t me tell you about it.' Or: ‘I heard it, you didn't, let me tell you what Bloomberg said.' And the fact is Twitter is rife with such. That is why it is basic in a sprawling emergency.”

Twitter is a global platform, but it can be relentlessly and remarkably local should the occasion - or crisis - arise, as Choire Sicha, the founder of The Awl, pointed out.

“Twitter was phenomenally useful microscopically - I was literally finding out information about how much flooding the Zone A block next to me was having, hour by hour - and macroscopically, too - I didn't even have to turn on the TV once the whole storm,” he wrote. He pointed out, as have many others, that there was abundant misinformation rendered in 140 characters as well, which reminded @kbalfe of another rapid-fire medium, actually. “Was a lot like cable news: indispensable … yet full of errors.”

In fact, some people used the friction-free, democratic nature of the medium to intentional ly stir panic. On Tuesday, BuzzFeed outed - “doxed” in the nomenclature of the Web - a person they said they said was the guy behind @comfortablysmug, an account that suggested that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo had been trapped by rising waters, that Con Edison was shutting down all of Manhattan and that the floor of the New York Stock Exchange had been flooded.

BuzzFeed identified the person behind those tweets as Shashank Tripathi, a hedge fund analyst and the campaign manager of Christopher R. Wight, this year's Republican candidate to represent New York's 12th Congressional District. (Mr. Tripathi has since apologized and resigned from the campaign.) Because his Twitter feed was followed by a number of New York-based reporters, the misinformation spread quickly, although John Herman, also writing in BuzzFeed, suggested that “Twitter is a Truth Machine,” writing that “during Sandy, the Internet spread - then crushed - rumors at breakneck speed.”

Margaret S ullivan, the public editor of The New York Times, said in a message on Twitter that whatever the quality of the feed at any given moment, it was riveting: “Impossible to tear one's eyes from, with occasional nuggets of helpfulness amid constant stream of flotsam and jetsam.”

The day after the storm, Twitter shook off much of the earnestness and reverted back to its snarky self, although the storm's death toll and the quest for resources made it a more serious village common than usual. In an e-mail, Peter Kafka of AllThings D, considered the value of Twitter in a big news event by running it through the way-back machine.

“Would it have been better during 9/11 if we had Twitter?” he wrote. “Plenty of bad and good info spread that day, by mouth, web and TV. My hunch is Twitter would do the same. The difference? Twitter allows my friends/like-minded people/people I like to feel a bit more connected. And that's a lot better than less connected.”

Cal ling it a “pop-up town square” for the affected area, @editorialiste said in a message on Twitter, it was “a great place to laugh, cry, argue, sympathize together.”

Kurt Andersen, radio host and writer, said that the combination of utility and sociability made Twitter a remarkable informative shelter during the storm.

“I've never liked or used the word ‘community' about people communicating online, but the Sandy conversations seemed worthy of the word, actually communal,” he wrote. “And given the circumstances, it really could've only happened online.”

The Breakfast Meeting: Lucas Hands Off to Disney, and a Storm\'s Online Power

The Walt Disney Company strengthened its position in fantasy entertainment on Tuesday by purchasing Lucasfilm - George Lucas's company, which made the “Star Wars” films - for $4.05 billion in stock and cash, Michael Cieply reports. The move follows a string of similar acquisitions, including the $4 billion deal for Marvel Entertainment in 2009 and the $7.4 billion purchase of Pixar Animation Studios in 2006.

• Disney said it planned to release a seventh “Star Wars” feature film in 2015, with new films coming every two or three years. (Mr. Iger said Disney acquired a detailed treatment for the next three “Star Wars” films as part of the acquisition.) Also, the company said it saw great potential in selling “Star Wars” merchandise worldwide.
• The combination of two pop-cultural institutions (Disney and Star Wars) was easily mocked online, but the hard-core fans on a forum at TheForce.net were often sympathetic to Mr. Lucas and his decision to move on. One wrote: “What if he just wanted it all behind him, where he couldn't have an opinion anymore and could truly, utterly relax?” Another noted that in a New York Times Magazine profile this year, Mr. Lucas spoke of the pressure of tending to the “Star Wars” franchise:

Lucas seized control of his movies from the studios only to discover that the fanboys could still give him script notes. “Why would I make any more,” Lucas says of the “Star Wars” movies, “when everybody yells at you all the time and says what a terrible person you are?”

The punishing winds and flooding from Hurricane Sandy on Monday night knocked out a range of Web sites whose servers sit in Lower Manhattan, including The Huffington Post, part of AOL, Quentin Hardy and Jenna Wortham report. The Huffington Post was back up by Tuesday morning, but others, including Gawker, were still down. The destructive storm nonetheless illustrated the vu lnerability of computer networks, particularly in Manhattan, where aging infrastructure and tight space force “servers and generators to use whatever space is available.”

• NY1, the local cable news channel, made a comforting and informative companion during Hurricane Sandy's arrival on Monday night, Jon Caramanica writes. Other local stations also went into round-the-clock storm coverage, but theirs tended to be more frenetic. NY1 has a 20-year-old style of unflashy, steady news coverage. Mr. Caramanica writes:

The plan seemed to be to find someone - a correspondent, a spokesman, a politician - with something to say, and stick with that person until someone else wanted to speak. One by one, they took their turn, everyone from Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to Joseph J. Lhota, the chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, to representatives of Con Edison and various local elected officials, speaking at length, and often in detail, and often until cut short by a dial tone or a burst of silence when the connection was lost.

Noam Cohen edits and writes for the Media Decoder blog. Follow @noamcohen on Twitter.

Wednesday Reading: Three Travel Trips to Get Around Sandy

A variety of consumer-focused articles appears daily in The New York Times and on our blogs. Each weekday morning, we gather them together here so you can quickly scan the news that could hit you in your wallet.

• Supporters of same-sex marriage see room for victories. (National)
• Oklahoma prepares for law that makes guns more visible. (National)
• For flood victims, an insurance blow is possible. (Business)
• The risk of tapping  your retirement fund for an alternative use. (Dealbook)
• Homemade Halloween candy for adult tastes. (Dining)
• Why Consumer Reports and J.D. Power are so different. (Wheels)
• A wireless charging solution for the Leaf and Volt. (Wheels)
• Google adds new emergency resources due to Sandy. (Bits)
• Insect robots, just in time for Halloween. (Gadgetwise)
• Sticking with Windows 7. (Gadgetwise)
• How to carbo-load for a marathon. (Well)
• Helpâ€"my daughter wants to make movies. (Motherlode)
• Three travel tips to navigate the storm. (In Transit)
• A shortcut for hailing cabs in European cities. (In Transit)
• A four-day, best-Brazil-beach quest. (Frugal Traveler)

Lawsuit Seeking Greater Digital Royalties for Eminem\'s Music Is Settled

Larry Busacca/Getty Images for the Recording Academy Eminem performing at the Grammys in 2011.

A federal lawsuit that has been closely watched in the music industry because of its potential effect on the contentious issue of digital royalties has been settled.

In the case, F.B.T. Productions v. Aftermath Records, a team of Eminem's early producers sued a subsidiary of the Universal Music Group, arguing that they were not getting the royalties they were owed from downloads at iTunes and other digital stores.

The label calculates the royalties for those downloads as it does for CDs, but F.B.T. contended that the downloads should instead be treated as licensed music, whic h pays substantially higher royalties. (In typical contracts, artists earn a royalty of 10 percent to 20 percent from sales of albums and singles, and 50 percent from licenses for other uses, like a TV commercial.)

The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in California, ruled in F.B.T.'s favor in 2010, overturning a jury verdict by a lower court, and the parties have been involved in a damages trial for more than a year. They announced the settlement in a court filing on Monday, but both sides declined to reveal the terms of their agreement.

The F.B.T. case - Eminem himself was not a party - opened the door for a wave of litigation over the last two years. Artists as varied as Kenny Rogers, James Taylor, the Temptations, Weird Al Yankovic and Rob Zombie have all filed suits arguing that their labels owed them huge amounts of digital royalties. Sony settled a similar class-action suit earlier this year, agreeing to pay artists a total of $8 millio n.

The full effect of the F.B.T. case on the music business is still unclear. Universal declined to comment on Tuesday, but in the past the company has disputed that the case set a legal precedent. David M. Given, a lawyer in San Francisco involved in a number of such cases, including one filed by the estate of the singer Rick James, disagrees with that view.

“The legal precedent the case set has already had a profound impact,” Mr. Given wrote in an e-mail on Tuesday. “If U.M.G. paid the price, which I think it probably did, then that will set the bar (which I expect will be high) for the settlement of other download royalty claims, like the ones in the James class action, for other recording artists.”

Ben Sisario writes about the music industry. Follow @sisario on Twitter.

Disney Buying Lucas Films for $4 Billion

LOS ANGELES - The Walt Disney Company, in a move that gives it a commanding position in the fantasy world of film, said Tuesday it had agreed to acquire Lucasfilm Ltd. from its founder, George Lucas, for $4.05 billion in stock and cash.

The sale provides a corporate home for a private company that grew from Mr. Lucas's hugely successful “Star Wars” series, and became an enduring force in creating effects-driven science fiction entertainment for large and small screens. Mr. Lucas, who is 68 years old, had already announced he would step down from day-to-day operation of the company.

Combined with the purchase of Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion in 2009 and of Pixar Animation Studios for $7.4 billion in 2006, the acquisition also guarantees the legacy of Robert A. Iger, Disney's chief executive, as a builder who aggressively expanded the company since taking charge in 2005.

Mr. Iger is set to step down as chief executive in March of 2015, but will re main with Disney in a lesser role under an employment deal he reached with Disney last year.

Like the Marvel acquisition, the Lucasfilm deal appears to have caught Hollywood and Wall Street by surprise. It was announced on Tuesday afternoon, while the New York Stock Exchange was closed by storm damage, though investors were scheduled for a briefing on the acquisition in a conference call set for late Tuesday afternoon.

Disney Buying Lucas Films for $4 Billion

LOS ANGELES - The Walt Disney Company, in a move that gives it a commanding position in the fantasy world of film, said Tuesday it had agreed to acquire Lucasfilm Ltd. from its founder, George Lucas, for $4.05 billion in stock and cash.

The sale provides a corporate home for a private company that grew from Mr. Lucas's hugely successful “Star Wars” series, and became an enduring force in creating effects-driven science fiction entertainment for large and small screens. Mr. Lucas, who is 68 years old, had already announced he would step down from day-to-day operation of the company.

Combined with the purchase of Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion in 2009 and of Pixar Animation Studios for $7.4 billion in 2006, the acquisition also guarantees the legacy of Robert A. Iger, Disney's chief executive, as a builder who aggressively expanded the company since taking charge in 2005.

Mr. Iger is set to step down as chief executive in March of 2015, but will re main with Disney in a lesser role under an employment deal he reached with Disney last year.

Like the Marvel acquisition, the Lucasfilm deal appears to have caught Hollywood and Wall Street by surprise. It was announced on Tuesday afternoon, while the New York Stock Exchange was closed by storm damage, though investors were scheduled for a briefing on the acquisition in a conference call set for late Tuesday afternoon.

Wealthy Donated Less but Volunteered More in 2011

The “1 percent” have taken some lumps over the last year or so. But despite a dip in overall philanthropic giving, the majority of the wealthy donated a consistent proportion of their income to charity last year, a new study finds.

Ninety-five percent of wealthy households donated to charity last year, according to the 2012 Bank of America Study of High Net Worth Philanthropy. That is down from 98 percent in 2009, in a previous version of the study. (About 65 percent of the general population of United States households donate to charity, the study said.)

But the wealthy still gave roughly 9 percent of their incomes - about the same level as in 2009, the study found. Given the recent recession, that level of giving shows an “extraordinary” commitment to philanthropy, said Claire Costello, philanthropic practice executive for U.S. Trust, Bank of America Private Wealth Management. The average dollar amount given per household fell 7 percent, to $52,770 fr om $56,621, adjusted for inflation.

The study also showed an uptick in volunteering among the wealthy, suggesting that the affluent may have compensated for lower dollar donations by giving more of their time. In 2011, 89 percent of wealthy individuals volunteered with nonprofits, up from 79 percent in 2009.

The study was done in partnership with the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University. The results are based on a nationwide sample of 700 households with net worths of $1 million or more, excluding the value of their homes, or annual household incomes of $200,000 or more.

About a quarter of wealthy households plan to increase their giving over the next three to five years, and about half said they planned to give at the same level, the study found.

How much of your income do you donate to charity?

\'Community\' to Return From the Wilderness in February, NBC Announces

“Community” fans will finally get a chance to see their favorite again - and on a night when better ratings could still save it.

The well-reviewed but lightly rated NBC comedy will return Feb. 7, and remain on Thursdays at 8. (It had originally been scheduled for the lost-items zone of Friday nights.)

NBC will also test the fans of the Broadway drama “Smash” by taking it away from the protection of the network's hit singing competition “The Voice” and moving it to Tuesdays at 10. It resumes with a two-hour episode on March 3 at 9.

Those were among a series of midseason announcements made by NBC on Tuesday.

Of most note was that the network will keep its new hit “Revolution” on Mondays at 10 - still after “The Voice” - when both return from a hiatus on March 25.

“The Biggest Loser” returns on Jan. 6 and “Celebrity Apprentice” on March 3.

“Community,” which will no longer be guided by its mercurial creator, Dan Harmon, will replace the departing “30 Rock” as part of a reconstructed Thursday. NBC is adding a new comedy, “1600 Penn,” at 9:30, starting Jan. 10. And “Parks and Recreation” will move to 8:30.

The scheduling of “The Voice,” “Revolution” and “Smash” means they will extend past the traditional end of the season in May - a move that could signal more interest in extending original programming into the summer.

Bill Carter writes about the television industry. Follow @wjcarter on Twitter.

Digital Gains Help Newspaper Circulation Figures

A steady increase in digital circulation has helped newspapers combat the pressures on their print product, with average daily and Sunday circulation remaining essentially flat for the sixth month period ending Sept. 30.

Digital circulation accounted for 15.3 percent of the total average circulation for newspapers in that period, up from 9.8 percent in the same period a year ago, an increase of more than 50 percent, according to figures released Tuesday by the Audit Bureau of Circulation. Those figures include readers using smartphones, tablets, e-readers or metered Web sites, the bureau said.

Daily circulation decreased an average of 0.2 percent during the six-month period for the 613 newspapers that report comparable figures. Sunday circulation increased by 0.6 percent, the data showed.

Digital gains helped some newspapers make striking gains in overall daily circulation. The New York Times, for instance, had an increase of more than 40 percent in total circulation, from 1,150,589 in 2011 to 1,613,865 in the period ended Sept. 30 this year. Its average digital circulation for Monday-Friday totaled just over 896,000, and increase of 136 percent over a year ago. The Wall Street Journal gained about 200,000 in daily circulation from 2011 and had a digital circulation of 794,594.

The Journal had the highest total daily circulation, the figures showed, followed by USA Today and The New York Times. USA Today had the biggest print circulation. The Times's average daily print circulation was 717,513, a 7 percent decline, and its Sunday average declined by 1.8 percent, to 1,250,077.

A Refresher on Hurricane Deductibles and Flood Coverage

Getty ImagesA man in New York City sweeps water out of his apartment after Hurricane Sandy.

If you were affected by the wrath of Hurricane Irene last year you may already know this, but it bears review in the wake of Hurricane Sandy: Damage caused by surging storm water generally isn't covered by your homeowner's or renter's insurance policy.

Rather, you'll only have coverage if you purchased a separate flood insurance policy, either from the National Flood Insurance Program or a handful of private firms.

The national flood policy covers damage for up to $250,000 to the structure of your home, and $100,000 for personal possessions. Note that the NFIP policy prov ides “replacement” cost coverage for the structure, but only “actual cash value” coverage for your belongings.

Damage from wind, however, is covered by homeowner's insurance policies-but it's likely subject to a special “hurricane deductible,” which is different from the policy's standard deductible. Coastal states from Maine to Texas have special rules for hurricanes, put in place to limit insurance losses after catastrophic storms. Details vary, but in general when a hurricane (or, in some cases, a named storm) is declared by the National Weather Service, special hurricane deductibles apply for resulting damage.

The standard deductible is usually a flat amount-$500 or $1,000, for instance. But hurricane deductibles are generally a percentage of the home's insured value and usually run from 1 to 5 percent. So, for instance, if a home is valued at $300,000, the deductible could be as high as $15,000.

Please let us know what conversations you've had with your insurance companies so far in the wake of Sandy.

 

A Refresher on Hurricane Deductibles and Flood Coverage

Getty ImagesA man in New York City sweeps water out of his apartment after Hurricane Sandy.

If you were affected by the wrath of Hurricane Irene last year you may already know this, but it bears review in the wake of Hurricane Sandy: Damage caused by surging storm water generally isn't covered by your homeowner's or renter's insurance policy.

Rather, you'll only have coverage if you purchased a separate flood insurance policy, either from the National Flood Insurance Program or a handful of private firms.

The national flood policy covers damage for up to $250,000 to the structure of your home, and $100,000 for personal possessions. Note that the NFIP policy prov ides “replacement” cost coverage for the structure, but only “actual cash value” coverage for your belongings.

Damage from wind, however, is covered by homeowner's insurance policies-but it's likely subject to a special “hurricane deductible,” which is different from the policy's standard deductible. Coastal states from Maine to Texas have special rules for hurricanes, put in place to limit insurance losses after catastrophic storms. Details vary, but in general when a hurricane (or, in some cases, a named storm) is declared by the National Weather Service, special hurricane deductibles apply for resulting damage.

The standard deductible is usually a flat amount-$500 or $1,000, for instance. But hurricane deductibles are generally a percentage of the home's insured value and usually run from 1 to 5 percent. So, for instance, if a home is valued at $300,000, the deductible could be as high as $15,000.

Please let us know what conversations you've had with your insurance companies so far in the wake of Sandy.

 

The Breakfast Meeting: Publishing Consolidates, and Creeping \'Christmas Creep\'

Despite the storm, David Letterman broadcast from Midtown Manhattan on Monday night, without a studio audience. Above, Denzel Washington braved the elements to appear on the show, entering in a yellow slicker while the band played Bob Dylan's song “Hurricane,” which did double duty for Mr. Washington, who portrayed the boxer Rubin Carter in the film “The Hurricane.”

The planned merger of Random House and Penguin, announced on Monday, could be the start of even more consolidation in publishing, Eric Pfanner and Amy Chozick report. As e-books become more central to commercial publishing, the thinking goes, the competition is not only from rival publishers but from online giants like Amazon, Google and Apple.

• The decision by the publishers' parent companies, Bertelsmann and Pearson, to create a combined company with about 25 percent of the A merican market will need regulatory approval, but there could be a benefit from being the first of the Big Six publishers to combine. As one analyst explained: “It's easier to argue that the industry going from six to five publishing houses won't change the market, than arguing that going from five to four players won't impact competition.”
• Interest in Penguin by News Corporation, which owns the publisher HarperCollins, may have sped up the merger. Rupert Murdoch, who runs News Corporation, took to Twitter to mock the merger: “Bertelsmann-Penguin faux merger disaster. Two publishers trying to contract while saying opposite. Let's hear from authors and agents!”

The Supreme Court on Monday heard a copyright case over the sale of imported textbooks on eBay, Adam Liptak reports. At issue is whether the so-called first-sale doctrine - which says that owners of particular copies of products made in the United States can later lend them or sell them - al so applies to copies made abroad. In the case of textbooks, prices can be lower overseas, and one enterprising student from Thailand helped pay for his education by selling copies that his family shipped to him. The publisher John Wiley & Sons sued him.

“Christmas creep” is in full effect this year, Stuart Elliott writes, with many retailers planning to start their holiday campaigns this week. Some, like Target and Toys “R” Us, are already on the air with ads. This development can still seem a shock to those used to Thanksgiving as the start of the Christmas shopping season, but it appears to work for the stores and the shoppers. In an uncertain economy, retailers want to get customers as soon as possible, and consumers have welcomed a longer shopping season to seek out better deals.

Noam Cohen edits and writes for the Media Decoder blog. Follow @noamcohen on Twitter.

Tuesday Reading: Scientists Have Long-Lasting Flu Vaccine in Sight

A variety of consumer-focused articles appears daily in The New York Times and on our blogs. Each weekday morning, we gather them together here so you can quickly scan the news that could hit you in your wallet.

• Hurricane Sandy leaves path of destruction in Northeast. (National)
• Corn mazes help farmers make ends meet. (National)
• In Seattle, virtual campus will have physical one, too. (National)
• Home retailers prepare for after the deluge. (Business)
• Business travelers stay with friends instead of hotels. (Business).
• Lean airlines in poor shape to clear passenger backlog. (Business)
• Moving closer to a long-lasting flu vaccine. (Science Times)
• Smoke-free workplace leads to fewer heart attacks. (Well)
• Ford continues slide in reliability survey. (Wheels)
• Hybrids and E.V.s do well in reliability survey. (Wheels)
• Running for the music. (Booming)

A New Bank Lets You Choose Charity for Rewards

A new online bank is hoping that better-than-average savings rates, and the lure of charitable giving, will attract new deposits.

The bank, ableBanking, is offering those who open a new account a donation of $25 to the charity of the customer's choice - any 501c(3) organization will do. Then, each year on the anniversary of the account's opening, the bank will donate the equivalent of 0.25 percent annual percentage yield (25 basis points) of the account's average balance to that charity.

The bank's money market savings account, for instance, is currently paying a 0.96 percent annual percentage yield. So if an account has an average balance of $10,000, at the end of the first year the customer will have earned $96 in interest, and the bank will donate another $25 to the charity, for a total of $50 donated. (A minimum deposit of $1,000 is necessary to open an eligible account).

So why not just find an account paying an extra 25 basis points over ableBanking's offerings, and then make a charitable donation yourself?

AbleBanking's founders say that is not easy to do, because its savings rates are competitive with those offered by other, similar banks, based on rates listed at Bankrate.com. And the idea here is to encourage group efforts to maximize the amount of money donated to a cause. For instance, supporters of a specific charity - say, a local food bank, or even a Little League baseball team - could all agree to open accounts and direct the donations to that recipient. If 10 people opened accounts and selected the food bank, that would be at least $250 going to the charity.

“The attractiveness is the power of collective giving,” said Richard Wayne, the bank's co-founder and chief executive.

The bank's interest rates ar e not “teaser” rates (although they are subject to change, as are any bank's rates), nor is the charitable donation a temporary offer, he said. “The very heart of the product is the charitable component,” he said.

The money for donation to charity comes in lieu of expensive marketing, the founders said. AbleBanking is focusing its efforts mostly online, forgoing expensive options like billboards and television ads.

When customers create accounts, they can select their charities in several ways. They can choose one of ableBanking's partner charities, listed on the Web site; these are based in Boston, since the site began as a pilot program there. They can also search for charities in their communities by ZIP code or search a list of national charities.

AbleBanking is a division of Northeast Bank, a community bank based in Lewiston, Me., with 10 branches. The bank's parent, Northeast Bancorp, is publicly traded (Nasdaq: NBN). While ableBanking has no brick-and-mortar branches, it does have customer service available seven days a week through Northeast Bank's call center in Maine.

The bank isn't aiming to replace your traditional checking account; it's meant just for savings, says Heather Campion, the bank's chief administrative officer. But as with other direct banks, regular deposits can be set up from a checking account into ableBanking.

What do you think of ableBanking's concept? Would you open an account there to help a charity?

Google Signs Deal With Warner Music Group

Google got one of the key pieces of its digital music puzzle in place over the weekend when it finally signed a deal to bring the catalog of the Warner Music Group - with Green Day, Madonna, Neil Young, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and hundreds of other acts - to its Play store.

The news of the deal was tucked in a Google company blog post on Monday that was mostly about new models of its Nexus phones and tablets. But for Google's music service, which has struggled to gain traction against iTunes, Amazon and the myriad of other digital services, it is an important step. It means that Google's millions of Android users - whose devices do not have iTunes - will finally have an essentially complete catalog of MP3s to buy.

“We're now working with all of the major record labels globally, and all the major U.S. magazine publishers, as well as many independent labels, artists and publishers,” wrote Andy Rubin, the company's senior vice president of mobile and digital content.

Google also announced in its blog post that its music store will open in Western Europe on Nov. 13.

In Europe, it will also introduce “scan and match,” a key feature for cloud music which matches songs on a customer's computer to a master database on Google's servers, allowing users to skip the laborious task of uploading every single song. (The feature will not be ready in the United States until “soon after” its introduction in Europe on Nov. 13, Mr. Rubin wrote.

Warner controls about 15 percent of the world's recorded music market, according to the trade publication Music & Copyright. But it was absent when Google announced its MP3 store last November; Warner was also the last of the big record labels to sign a deal with Spotify.

In March, Google consolidated its MP3 store, along with the Android app marketplace and stores for movies, television and magazines, under the umbrella of Play. Its bra nding efforts included a truck that gave out free ice cream at the Celebrate Brooklyn concerts in New York this summer.

As Sandy Takes Its Time, TV News Is an Endless Loop of Anticipation

Stan Honda/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images A TV reporter walks the beaches of Atlantic City, N.J., on Monday morning.

One of the blessings of Hurricane Sandy, if there are any, is its status as a very slow moving weather event.

The lead time has given people in the affected area - a broad swath of the Northeast and the Mid-Atlantic - days to make way for what is set to be a very destructive visitor. But people who turned on their televisions in search of up-to-date information could not be blamed for thinking that they had tuned into a storm-themed sequel to “Groundhog Day,” the film where a television weatherman, played by Bill Murray, wakes up to find the same day, running in replay, over and over.

Since Friday, and even before that, all-news channels and local TV stations in the areas in the hurricane's path have had to find a different way to say the same thing over and over.

The people in the studio do the toss to the reporters in the wind/rain/surf who say the storm is bad and getting worse, and then it is back to the studio, where the anchors repeat the following information: Sandy is dangerous; if you have been told to evacuate you should (this from media outlets whose reporters are standing in or near menacing waves); and once the storm arrives, it will wreak significant havoc. (Poynter, the media news site, had seen enough clichés crashing onto the shore to make GIFs of the more ubiquitous ones - people stocking up on groceries, the God's-eye satellite map of the storm itself and, of course, the reporter standing in the elements.)

It can be a silly spectacle, while important at the same ti me, which makes it hard to look away, especially when you are finished with whatever preparations you can do for a storm and are locked down inside the house. Once that's done, you can read the parade of both earnest updates and storm snark on Twitter, play board games, or turn on your television. And the storm will find you on almost every click of the dial.

Part of what is taking place is that Sandy is making landfall - very slowly - not just in one of the most populated places in the United States, but in one of the most thickly mediated places on the planet. The region is rife with national and local news outlets, all competing to be the go-to source for a captive audience.

The endless coverage takes on an air of sameness, even though the implications are dire. A word cloud of Monday morning's coverage would include the word “again” in three-foot-high letters. “Again, we have to remind again that this may be, again, one of the worst storms in the history, again, of this region.” Again, we got that.

“Worse than Irene” was trending on-air Monday, as was, “Get out now!” “Monster storm” is becoming a trademark of Sandy coverage, in part because it makes a natural event sound like a movie and partly owing to its size, duration and area of impact. Makes you wonder what will be left in the bank of hyperbole for tonight when Sandy actually makes landfall.

One of the major building blocks of the storm coverage has come from the news conferences, daily and sometimes more frequently, from local politicians, who find both opportunity and responsibility in the task of leading the public through a crisis.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has been a steady and steadying presence at the mic, speaking both English and Spanish. And there is something vaguely hypnotic about the sign-language interpreter who is always at his side. Her ability to convey “over-topping,” “storm surge ” and “tunnel closure” in vivid, nonverbal terms is remarkable to behold.

Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey is a natural - folksy and forthright - when it comes to telling people what to do. “If it looks stupid, it is stupid,” he said at a news conference on Sunday afternoon, speaking of people's efforts at jury-rigged power sources.

Speaking of people acting stupid, if news outlets want great video, they only have to head nearer to the ocean. And for the sake of the viewing audience, reporters need people who don't have the common sense of a bag of hammers.

Just after noon on Monday, CNN's Suzanne Malveaux found the money shot in Lindenhurst, on Long Island, in a live shot with reporter Jason Carroll. He was standing knee-deep in water, natch, but he was far from alone.

There was the family in a boat with a dog, finally persuaded to leave by the fact that, um, their house was flooding. While Mr. Carroll was talking to them, a guy tried to ride his bike through thigh-high water. Another guy chose a kayak, a wiser move, and great video to boot, given that they were filming on what had been a residential street.

But next to him? A guy lying down in full scuba gear. Tanks, goggles, breathing apparatus, the whole nine. Mr. Carroll stepped up to the guy, whom we will call Aqualung.

“What might convince you it was time to leave?” Mr. Carol asked.

“I dunno, maybe if they declared martial law?” Mr. Aqualung said.

Back to you, Suzanne.

Barnes & Noble Continues Push in Britain

Barnes & Noble said on Monday it would begin its first advertising campaign in Britain, focusing on its Nook reader with built-in light as a way to grab customers before Christmas time.

The ads, which begin Monday part of an aggressive recent push by the book store chain to gain e-reader market share in Britain. The company, which already has agreements to sell their eReaders through supermarket chains like Sainsbury, Dixons, and Waitrose, also announced a new partnership with Asda, another supermarket chain. The e-readers will be available in 300 of Asda¹s stores as well as on its Web site.

Currently the company says it has it products in 1600 retail outfits in Britain and will expand to over 2,500 in the coming months.

Barnes & Noble is struggling to position its Nook against competitors like Amazon¹s Kindle and Apple¹s iPad. In Britain it is promoting its e-ink devices like the Nook Simple Touch and the Nook Simple Touch GlowLight, which has a buil t-in reading light.

The campaign in Britain, which includes print and online ads as well as a 30-second television spots, focuses on couples where one partner is trying to sleep and the other is disturbing them by keeping a light on for reading. Barnes & Noble says its research shows that this is a common source of bedtime arguments.

“This is a common clash between couples at bedtime,” said Patrick Rouvillois, international managing director for Nook Media, LLC., in a written statement. “Our new campaign sheds light on this age-old issue and celebrates its resolution with Nook Simple Touch GlowLight.”

In August, the company announced that in the quarter ending July 28, Nook sales were flat over the previous year, at $192 million.

Shows Go On for Letterman and Fallon, but Kimmel\'s Brooklyn Broadcast Won\'t

The arrival of Hurricane Sandy changed plans Monday for several television shows that tape in New York.

ABC's Jimmy Kimmel, who had planned a week of shows from Brooklyn, will not go forward with Monday night's show, he announced about noon. The show hopes to return Tuesday, depending on the conditions.

Both Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert canceled Monday's shows on Comedy Central, and the network said that a decision on Tuesday's shows was yet to be made.

As of midday Monday, producers of David Letterman's late-night show on CBS and Jimmy Fallon's on NBC said they planned to go ahead with the shows. Mr. Letterman's executive producer, Rob Burnett, said that the show would move up the taping time to 3:30 p.m.

But the producers on both shows said they were concerned about whether they would be able to find live audiences, with the New York subways closed.

Mr. Burnett said, “We don't know if we'll have an audience at all, but we will do a show anyway.”

Bill Carter writes about the television industry. Follow @wjcarter on Twitter.

Anderson Cooper Talk Show Won\'t Return for a Third Season

Ali Goldstein/Warner Brothers Anderson Cooper during a taping of his show “Anderson.”

The syndication arm of the Warner Brothers studio, Telepictures, has decided that there will not be a third season of “Anderson,” the daily talk show hosted by Anderson Cooper.

Citing disappointing ratings, a studio executive, who insisted on not being identified because the studio planned no official release on the decision, said on Monday that the entire talk television market has been struggling to build audiences. Mr. Cooper's show will end after the summer.

The executive spoke because some of the stations that have been carrying Mr. Cooper's show have begun making feelers about replacement shows, and the news was certain to leak out through one of them, the executive said.

Telepictures issued statement on Monday:

“We are extremely proud of Anderson and the show that he and the entire production team have produced. While we made significant changes to the format, set and produced it live in its second season, the series will not be coming back for a third season in a marketplace that has become increasingly difficult to break through. We will continue to deliver top-quality shows throughout next summer.”

Mr. Cooper released his own statement:

“I am very proud of the work that our terrific staff has put into launching and sustaining our show for two seasons, I am grateful to Telepictures for giving me the opportunity, and I am indebted to the audience, who have responded so positively. I look forward to doing more great shows this season, and I'm sorry we won't be continuing, but I have truly enjoyed it.”

The decision was not a reflection of any lack of faith in Mr. Cooper, the executive said, but an acknowledgement of the business realities in daytime talk television.

The studio “could have renewed the show but could not create a viable economic business model to move forward,” the executive said.

Even the much anticipated new Katie Couric talk show has not yet emerged as a bona fide hit, the executive said. And new shows with other hosts, including Jeff Probst and Ricki Lake, have fared poorly.

But Mr. Cooper, who is also a mainstay in prime time on CNN, had been expected to be a star in daytime talk when his show started up last fall. After one year with sub-par ratings, the studio and Mr. Cooper instituted a series of changes including stressing same-day tapings as often as possible to deal with breaking subjects and a new location for the studio.

Mr Cooper was on assignment for CNN in New Jersey Monday, co vering the storm story.

Bill Carter writes about the television industry. Follow @wjcarter on Twitter.

Clear Channel Goes Classical (Sort Of)

Clear Channel Communications has made groundbreaking royalty deals lately with the record labels Big Machine (home to Taylor Swift) and Glassnote (Mumford & Sons). In a radio first, those labels will get a percentage of Clear Channel's revenue when their songs are played over the air and online. (In the United States, terrestrial radio stations pay royalties online to music publishers, not record labels.)

On Monday, Clear Channel announced another deal, this one with Naxos Records, one of the biggest independent classical labels. Naxos, known for an enormous catalog of budget albums, will program “Classica,” a new classical station on iHeartRadio, Clear Channel's app collecting hundreds of radio streams.

“Mozart, Brahms, Beethoven, Bach, Chopin, Haydn - these composers wrote the original power chords, and their work is as vital today as when it was first written,” Robert W. Pittman, Clear Channel's chief executive, said in a statement. “Our agreement with Naxos further demonstrates that the market-based business model we unveiled this past summer makes sense for labels, artists, broadcasters, and fans.”

There is one major difference between this deal and the ones with Big Machine and Glassnote, however. The Naxos deal is only for digital play, with no corresponding royalty agreement for terrestrial radio play, a Clear Channel spokeswoman said. The company has 850 stations - but none of them are classical.

Sony Executive to Amazon: Michael Paull, a top digital executive at Sony Music, has joined Amazon, a move that could help Amazon smooth over its occasionally bumpy dealings with the big labels.

Mr. Paull, who was one of Sony's primary licensing negotiators, is now Amazon's vice president of content acquisition and business development, Amazon said, and will be based in New York.

Amazon is an important sales outlet for the labels, but last year the relationship was strained when Amazon introduced an unlicensed storage and streaming service, Cloud Player; the service was perfectly legal, but top executives at Sony made rare public complaints that the move was done without their cooperation.

In July, Amazon updated the service with a licensed version to compete with Apple's iTunes Match.

Layoffs at Universal: Following its acquisition of EMI Music last month, the Universal Music Group has laid off about 45 employees across the country in its distribution service and at its labels in Nashville, from the ranks of both Universal and EMI. Earlier this month, Universal hired Steve Barnett, a key executive at Sony's Columbia label, to run its EMI divisions in the United States.

“Our goal is to maximize the resources available for reinvestment in our labels so they can do what they do best: develop and promote artists, increase the output of new music and expand opportunities for digital innovation,” a Universal spoke sman said. “Change is never easy, but we are excited about the future.”

Six Tips For Setting Your Financial Goals

Carl Richards

Carl Richards is a certified financial planner in Park City, Utah, and is the director of investor education at BAM Advisor Services. His book, “The Behavior Gap,” was published this year. His sketches are archived on the Bucks blog.

If you managed to get unstuck and created your personal balance sheet recently, then you should have a really clear idea of where you are today. The next questions you need to be address are these: Where do you want to go? What are your financial goals?

This can be a frustrating process, since it involves making some really important decisions under extreme uncertainty. None of us know what next week will look like, let alone where we will be in 30 years. On top of that issue, making financial goals involves a whole bunch of assumptions, guesses really.

We have to guess what our 60 or 80-year-old self will want to do. We have to guess what the markets will do, where interest rates will be and how much we can save. Those reasons and many more often lead us to forget that this is a process. We get stuck, unsure what to do next.

Well, despite all the uncertainty and assumptions, we need to have goals. It reminds me of the conversation between Alice and the Cheshire Cat:

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”

“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.

“I don't much care where,” said Alice.

“Then it doesn't matter which way you go,” said the Cat.

“â€"so long as I get somewhere,” Alice added as an explanation.

“Oh, you're sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”

But the problem is that we do care where we end up, and part of deciding where to go depends on setting goals.

So there are a few really important things to keep in mind  here. Before you get too excited or frustrated, here are a few things to consider.

1) These are guesses. 

While it's important to admit these are guesses, you should still make them the best guesses you can. Get specific. Just saying, “I want to save for college for my kids,” isn't enough. How about, “I'll find $100 to add to a specific 529 account on the 15th of each month?”

Even though you need to be specific, give yourself permission to be flexible. An attitude of flexibility goes a long way towards dealing with uncertainty. There is something very powerful about having specific goals but not obsessing about them.

2) These goals will change.

It's an ongoing process, and it will change because life changes. But don't let this knowledge stop you from doing it. You need to start somewhere.

3) Think of these goals as the destination on a trip.

You would never spend a bunch of time and energy worrying about whether you should take a car, train or plane without first deciding where you're going. Yet we spend countless hours researching the merits of one investment over another before we even decide on our goals. Why are you stressing about what stocks to pick if you don't have goals in mind?

4) Prioritize these goals.

Once you have them all written down, rank each goal in terms of importance and urgency. Sometimes you'll have to deal with something that is urgent, like paying off a credit card bill, so you can move on to something really important, like saving for retirement.

5) This is a process.

If you set goals and then forget about them forever, that is a worthless event. This is a process. Since we've given ourselves permission to change our assumptions about the future as more in formation becomes available, we need to do it. Part of the process of planning involves revisiting your goals periodically to see how you're doing and making course corrections when needed.

6) Let go!

As important as it is to regularly review your progress, it's also super-important to let go of the need to obsess over your goals. Define where you want to go, review your goals at set times, and in between, let go of them! Goals for the future are important, but so is living today. Find that balance.

This list may not seem like a big deal, but you'd be surprised at the number of people who can't tell you their goals, let alone break them down into categories or rank their priority. Once you have your goals, you'll be able to move on to the next step: making a plan.

 

The Breakfast Meeting: Random House-Penguin Merger, and Romney\'s Straight Face

The publishers Random House and Penguin plan to merge, their respective owners, Bertelsmann and Pearson, confirmed on Monday, Eric Pfanner reported. Under the merger the parent companies would share executive control, with Markus Dohle of Random House serving as chief executive and John Makinson of Penguin becoming the chairman. Still, Bertelsmann would control 53 percent of the merged publishers, in an attempt to avoid the complications of an even split. The combined company would have around 25 percent of the consumer publishing business in markets like the United States; as a result lawyers for both companies are already strategizing how to navigate regulatory approval.

• The move came after it was reported that News Corporation was considering making a bid for Penguin.

The pop star Paul Gadd - better known as Garry Glitter - was arrested over the weekend as part of the expanding investigation into sexual-abuse scandal surrounding the late BBC TV ho st Jimmy Savile, Nicholas Kulish reported. As many as 300 people have come forward to describe sexual abuse at the hands of Mr. Savile; they also have described a depraved environment in Mr. Savile's dressing room at the BBC studios where teenage girls were molested by Mr. Savile and others, including Mr. Gadd, a convicted pedophile.

• The BBC on Monday said it had begun an inquiry into the “culture and practices” at the corporation behind the sexual abuse scandal that will be led by a former senior court judge.

As the presidential election winds down, both candidates are shaking the trees for votes, but there is one clear strategic difference: President Obama is agreeing to sit on the couch with late-night hosts, and Mitt Romney is not. Lately, Mr. Obama has been on “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart, the “Tonight” show with Jay Leno, as well as MTV and NBC News, which was given two days of access to the president during his campaign tour las t week, Bill Carter writes. Mr. Romney's campaign didn't explain its reasoning, but producers of shows like David Letterman's or Jon Stewart's said Mr. Romney has a standing invitation to appear. And Lorne Michaels of “Saturday Night Live” says he holds out hope that in a close election, Mr. Romney will make a cameo appearance.

• For all the money raised by “super PACs” supporting Mr. Romney, President Obama has managed to maintain an edge in the number of political ads airing, Jeremy W. Peters, Nicholas Confessore and Sarah Cohen reported. The explanations can be technical, related to how different kinds of donations can be spent, but the lack of a Romney advantage in political advertising is still surprising, they write, “because Mr. Romney and conservatives have been spending more money.” (Total Republican ad spending for the presidential campaign is about $500 million, versus $400 million for the Democrats.)

The Spanish-language Univision is beginning its first digital network, UVideos, Tanzina Vega reports, offering 1,500 hours of long-form programming and about 200 short clips a day free to users. Notably, Univision is going to make the content and the user interface for its digital network available in English, with subtitles on many of its shows.

Lance Armstrong's long-time-in-coming fall from grace - from cancer-surviving cycling legend to disgraced former champion accused of doping his way to victory - is an example of how hard it can be to dislodge a compelling narrative, David Carr writes. Even cynical-by-nature journalists get swept up in the tale, he writes, and it was a few journalists who promoted a counter-narrative, aided by a fringe of doubters who used blogs and social media to keep raising questions about Mr. Amstrong. One important blog was NYVelocity, he writes, which acted a clearinghouse for information implicating Mr. Armstrong.

Hollywood's recent concerns may have their roo ts in practical commercial questions (why did box office returns shrink last year to their lowest level since 1995?) but they also have an existential dimension, Michael Cieply writes. In a video-clip, small-screen age, do movies still matter? And if they matter less to the younger public, what can be done about it? Several industry groups, including Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which awards the Oscars, and the nonprofit American Film Institute, which supports cinema, are brainstorming about starting public campaigns to promote the idea of movies, he writes.

Noam Cohen edits and writes for the Media Decoder blog. Follow @noamcohen on Twitter.

Kia Becomes a Time Machine in New Ads With Blake Griffin

A child actor appears as the basketball star Blake Griffin circa 1995 in a commercial for Kia in a campaign that features Mr. Griffin and debuts as the N.B.A. 2012-13 season begins.

In basketball, traveling violates the rules. But in advertising, sending a basketball star on a time-traveling odyssey, inside the sponsor's product, makes for clever commercials.

In a humorous campaign, Kia Motors America and its agency, David & Goliath, are reteaming with Blake Griffin of the Los Angeles Clippers for a series of commercials in which the basketbal l star drives a Kia Optima sedan as if it were a time machine.

The campaign is to begin on Tuesday, to coincide with the start of the 2012-13 National Basketball Association season. The 2013 Kia Optima is the “official vehicle of the N.B.A.”

The commercials feature Mr. Griffin using the Uvo voice-activated entertainment and information system inside his Kia Optima to send him back to different years from 1995 to the early 2000s.

The years, it turns out, are his “Wonder Years,” to borrow the title of the TV series, in that in each commercial Mr. Griffin meets a young actor playing a younger version of himself.

Blake Griffin in the Kia advertisement.

For instance, in the first spot Mr. Griffin asks to go back to 1995 and Uvo summons up the song “This Is How We Do It” from that year. He meets up with a version of himself who, based on his birth date in 1989, is about 6 years old.

“Who are you?” the child asks Mr. Griffin, who replies, “You, from the future.” The child wonders if Mr. Griffin's Optima is his spaceship, to which the grown-up replies, “No, it's way better.”

Then, in a dig at Mr. Griffin's reputation for having problems with free throws, he advises the youngster to “practice your free throws.” On parting, Mr. Griffin takes a shot - and misses.

The Kia association with Mr. Griffin began when he dunked over a Kia Optima at the 2011 N.B.A. All-Star Game.

Sports and music are two of the four pillars of the Kia brand's outreach to its target audience, along with popular culture and what the company calls the “connected life” - that is, te chnology like Uvo.

“The immediate impact” that Mr. Griffin had “on our brand was incredible,” said Michael Sprague, executive vice president for marketing and communications at Kia Motors America in Irvine, Calif., and “proved to be very successful with the N.B.A. fan.”

“We felt we needed to do it again,” he added.

Mr. Griffin's family provided images of him as a child to make it easier to cast the children in the commercials, Mr. Sprague said, and “within hours” of the casting calls getting under way in Los Angeles and New York, “we had some great people to represent him.”

A different child portrays Mr. Griffin in the second commercial, which is set in 1997 and uses the song “How Bizarre.” In that spot, Mr. Griffin encounters the younger version of himself playing football with friends.

“Wrong sport,” he tells the child, kicking the football far away. He also offers the junior Blake some fashion advice: “Stop w earing jean shorts. Just trust me.”

There will be three additional spots, Mr. Sprague said, to be released periodically as the N.B.A. season progresses. The five spots will run on networks like ABC, ESPN and TNT as well as on the Kia channel on YouTube.

Although football may be the wrong sport in the commercial set in 1997, it is the right genre for Kia advertising, at least when it comes to the Super Bowl. Kia has announced it would return as a Super Bowl sponsor, buying time during Super Bowl XLVII on Feb. 3, 2013.

Although Mr. Sprague declined to talk about what the Super Bowl spot will be about, he did rule out a couple of possibilities. It will not be a commercial featuring Mr. Griffin, he said, nor, as of now, will it be a spot with the popular hip-hop hamster characters for the Kia Soul.

Stuart Elliott has been the advertising columnist at The New York Times since 1991. Follow @stuartenyt on Twitter and sign up for In Ad vertising, his weekly e-mail newsletter.

Monday Reading: Traveling with Children with Special Needs

A variety of consumer-focused articles appears daily in The New York Times and on our blogs. Each weekday morning, we gather them together here so you can quickly scan the news that could hit you in your wallet.

• A part-time life, as hours shrink and shift. (Business)
• U.S. to sponsor health insurance plans. (National)
• Texas cities disagree on texting and driving bans. (National)
• The 80-year-old marathon man. (N.Y./Region)
• Using the power of the crowd for customer service. (Sunday Business)
• Testing autism and air travel.  (Travel)
• Who really benefits from interest deductions. (Real Estate)
• Yes, driverless cars know the way to San Jose. (Automobiles)
• F.D.A. details contamination at compounding pharmacy. (National)
• Reports on energy drinks show gaps in safety policy. (Business)
• Readers tell of traveling with children with special needs. (In Transit)
• A marriage built on an absence of fuss. (Booming)
• How to shoot a photo to remember. (The New Old Age)
• Halloween forecast: Cloudy with chance of diabetes. (Motherlode)
• Pancakes for dinner, syrup optional. (Well)
• Exercise may protect against brain shrinkage. (Well)
• Troubleshooting video problems in Facebook. (Gadgetwise)
• Google is testing same-day delivery service. (Bits)
• Painting a bolder face on mass transit. (Wheels)
• Massachusetts shuts down another compounding pharmacy. (National)
• Bracing for storm, U.S. stock markets to close. (Business)
• Turning off Mac screen notifications. (Gadgetwise)
• There's homework to do on school lunches. (Well)
• Answers to questions about early admissions, part one. (The Choice)

Times Reaches Tentative Deal With Newspaper Guild

The New York Times said Sunday night that it had reached a tentative agreement with the Newspaper Guild, setting the stage for a new labor contract after more than 18 months of negotiations.

In a message to the staff, the executive editor, Jill Abramson, said the paper and the union had agreed “in concept” on a new five-year contract. She said that at the request of the mediator, Martin Scheinman, no further details would be forthcoming because the agreement still needs to be put in writing.

Mr. Scheinman was appointed as mediator on Oct. 10 after negotiators remained at odds over issues like pensions, wages and health care benefits. In recent weeks, members of the newsroom have staged several labor-related actions, including a gathering in the lobby of the Times headquarters where employees held signs with messages for the incoming chief executive, Mark Thompson.

The Billionaires Club

The cover of the December issue of Bloomberg Markets.

As the rich grow richer, so does the coverage of their fortunes.

Later this week, Bloomberg Markets, the 375,000-circulation magazine distributed mainly to Bloomberg terminal subscribers, is publishing a “World's Richest People” December issue. The issue features 200 billionaires, including a few previously undiscovered billionaires and China's richest man, Zong Qinghou.

The latest issue is part of Bloomberg's broader plan to capture a reporting thread that Forbes has dominated for decades. Last year, Matthew G. Miller, former global wealth editor at Forbes Media, said that at Forbes he had been stru ggling to cover the wealthy with a rapidly diminishing pool of reporters. When he moved to Bloomberg last year, he suddenly had its 1,600 journalists spread across 72 countries to help him cover the world's billionaires.

In March, Bloomberg started publishing on its terminal a ranking of the world's billionaires that it updates daily based on how their fortunes are doing. Mr. Miller said that since he came on board last year, Bloomberg reporters have discovered more than 40 hidden billionaires. These billionaires include several women that the Forbes list had not uncovered like Elaine Marshall, a major shareholder of Koch Industries, and Dirce Camargo, Brazil's richest woman, who is worth $13.4 billion.

“Our reporters are essentially billionaire-hunters,” said Mr. Miller. “Our reporters are constantly calling these billionaires. Some of them are on speed-dial.”

Bloomberg executives stressed how important this coverage i s since these billionaires control so much of the world's wealth. Ronald Henkoff, Bloomberg Markets' editor, said the 200 billionaires on the Bloomberg list have a net worth of $2.7 trillion, which is about the gross domestic product of France. Matt Winkler, the editor in chief of Bloomberg News, said he planned to build on this coverage.

“Like everything that we've started at Bloomberg, once we're committed to it, we see it as ever expanding,” Mr. Winkler said. “That certainly applies to this subject.”

OpenX Acquires JumpTime

Publishers, in print and online, have long sold space to advertisers based on the perceived value of the publisher's audience. The quality of that audience, in turn, was based on its location, income, education level and propensity to buy the product the advertiser sold.

Digital advertising has grown in sophistication, allowing advertisers to tailor messages for specific audiences and to buy those audiences. Still, technologies that inform publishers of the value of editorial content have not been widely available.

On Monday, OpenX Technologies, a provider of digital advertising technologies, will announce that it has acquired JumpTime, a company that helps publishers determine what each piece of their digital content is worth.

Tim Cadogan, the chief executive of OpenX, said the merger would provide technology that makes it easier for publishers to “connect the left brain and the right brain of the publishing organization.â €

“You have to produce content that is exciting,” Mr. Cadogan said. “The way you make money is advertising. Those two worlds need to be connected.” Instead of focusing on pages that generate high C.P.M. rates, or cost per thousand views, publishers should focus on content that encourages users to go deeper into a site and spend more time there, he said. “If the publishers are able to create more engagement on good content, then those are great places to advertise,” he said. “That's where you want to be.”

Using JumpTime technology, publishers have access to a dashboard that shows, in real time, the value of each photo, article and other content on a Web page.

The economics are simple, said Michele DiLorenzo, the senior vice president of OpenX and former chief executive of JumpTime. A publisher can focus on attracting users to a piece of content that generates $18 for every thousand views, or they can focus on drawing users to many pieces of content that have lower individual C.P.M.'s - say five pieces valued at $5 each - but can end up generating a higher total revenue.

“If you only think about the immediate value, you don't know what value is. You're going to consistently make mistakes,” Ms. DiLorenzo said.

News Corporation Is Said to Bid for Penguin

Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation has entered what could become a bidding war for Pearson PLC's Penguin book publishing division, according to a person briefed on the talks who could not discuss private negotiations publicly.

News Corporation's interest comes just days after Pearson confirmed that German media giant Bertelsmann, the parent company of Random House, had approached the British company about acquiring its Penguin division.

News Corporation owns HarperCollins, one of the units of the media conglomerate that will soon be spun off into a separate publicly traded company consisting of other print assets like The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post.

Penguin, which publishes authors like Juno Diaz and crime novelist Patricia Cornwell, would give HarperCollins greater scale as the book industry grapples with how to take on technology companies like Amazon, Google and Apple, whose cheap e-books have transformed the publishing landscape.

P earson recently said its longtime chief executive Marjorie Scardino would step down at the end of the year, prompting speculation that it may sell its print assets, Penguin and The Financial Times, to focus on the faster-growing education business.

A spokeswoman for News Corporation declined to comment.

Analysts have said consolidation of the “big six” publishing houses is inevitable, given the headwinds the industry faces as consumers turn to e-books and brick-and-mortar stores go out of business. They likened it to what the music industry dealt with when it faced iTunes and online downloads of songs.

Mr. Murdoch's interest in Penguin, first reported in The Sunday Times, which is also owned by News Corporation, could stir the pot and prompt a competitive bidding war for the book publisher.

According to the Times report, News Corporation made a cash offer of $1.6 billion. That could blunt a potential merger with Random House. If completed, a Rando m House-Penguin merger would create a publishing behemoth that would control roughly 25 percent of all books published in the United States and present major competition for HarperCollins.

Current TV Considers Putting Itself Up for Sale

Current TV, a low-rated cable channel that recently reinvented itself with a lineup of political talk shows, is considering selling itself, the channel's chief executive, Joel Hyatt, said on Friday.

A sale could be an out for Mr. Hyatt and Al Gore, who bought the small cable news channel Newsworld International in 2004 and turned it into Current TV a year later. They could opt instead for a strategic partnership with a major media company or for a new round of venture capital financing. Mr. Hyatt declined an interview request on Friday.

What may entice buyers isn't Current's built-in audience, but the real estate: it is one of the few channels with a big footprint (it's available in about 60 million homes in the United States) but without a big media owner. The channel's stakeholders, along with Mr. Hyatt and Mr. Gore, include Comcast, Direct TV and several venture capital firms.

Mr. Hyatt said in a statement, “Current has been approached many times by media companies interested in acquiring our company. This year alone, we have had three inquiries. As a consequence, we thought it might be useful to engage expertise to help us evaluate our strategic options.”

Mr. Hyatt's comments were first reported by The New York Post. Later, Reuters reported that JP Morgan Chase and the Raine Group had been hired to assess the channel's options. In 2008, Current filed for a $100 million initial public stock offering but scrapped the plan a year later.

Originally programmed with short-form videos submitted by viewers, the channel changed direction in 2011 by hiring the MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann and by adding a number of like-minded liberal news shows. The ratings have ticked up a bit since then, but not in a way that makes Current a rival of MSNBC or CNN.

This year Current fired Mr. Olbermann, and he sued the company, accusing it of breach of contract; the lawsuit is pending. The channel replaced him with Eliot Spi tzer. The other nightly hosts are Joy Behar, Cenk Uygur and Jennifer Granholm. Mr. Gore has hosted special election coverage this year, most recently during the presidential debates.

Navigating the Medicare Claims Process

In this weekend's Your Money column, I write about the settlement of a class-action lawsuit over the question of whether and when Medicare should cover treatments for people with chronic or degenerative conditions for which there are no cure.

If you or a relative has multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease or if you're paralyzed or recovering from a stroke, among other things, you too may have been unable to get Medicare to cover physical therapy or certain skilled nursing treatment because your health wasn't improving or you weren't likely to improve any more. The settlement clarifies what was supposed to be the law of the land, which is that Medicare ought to cover any reasonable treatment prescribed by a doctor even if it only aims to slow a person's deterioration or maintain the current level of health.

Have you run into a situation where Medicare turned you, a relative or a patient down for treatment because there was no likelihood of improv ement? If so, did you appeal the decision?

Home Entertainment Spending Rises, Buoyed by Streaming Subscriptions

LOS ANGELES - Consumer spending on movies and television in-home entertainment formats nudged up a quarter of a percent to about $3.94 billion in the third quarter, from about $3.93 billion in the period a year earlier, according to the Digital Entertainment Group. For the year to date, spending was $12.34 billion, up about 1 percent from $12.22 billion for the same period in 2011.

The slight increase came as revenue from the subscription streaming of programming rose sharply, to about $579 million in the third quarter, up from about $255 million in the quarter a year ago, and revenue from both video-on-demand and the electronic sale of digital programming rose.

Those increases offset continuing declines in the sale of DVDs and the rental of programming in disc format in stores and by subscription.

Revenue from the rental of discs at kiosks rose about 10 percent in the third quarter, to $455 million from $414 million in the period a year earlier.

Michael Cieply covers the film industry from the Los Angeles bureau.

Claims on a Fortune

Paul Sullivan's Wealth Matters column this week looks at the issue of whether Lance Armstrong should be concerned about keeping his wealth in the wake of the report from the United States Anti-Doping Agency detailing his use of performance-enhancing drugs to win cycling races. And the independent advisers and lawyers Paul spoke to answered that Mr. Armstrong will probably remain a rich man. Yes, he'll probably have to forfeit his Tour de France prize money and his sponsors have dropped him, but much of his wealth is probably protected, these experts said.

Mr. Armstrong is not the first high-profile athlete to fall from grace. But while he may be legally able to protect the millions he earned from his sponsorships, is that the right outcome? Perhaps it's too late to affect Mr. Armstrong's case, but should the rules be changed so that when questions come up in the future about the on-field accomplishments of other athletes, they would not be allowed to hold onto their fortunes?

What do you think is the right thing to do?

Olympics and Asset Sales Help Lift Comcast Profits

Aided by the sale of assets and a lift from the Summer Olympics, Comcast reported strong third-quarter growth on Friday, surpassing expectations on several crucial measures.

The nation's largest cable company said its net income rose to $2.11 billion, or 78 cents a share, compared with $908 million, or 33 cents a share, in the same quarter last year. Most of the increase was attributed to the sale of wireless spectrum to Verizon and the sale of its 15.8 percent stake in A&E Television Networks. Excluding the sales, net income was $1.25 billion, or 46 cents a share, in line with analysts' estimates.

The company's overall revenues rose to $16.5 billion, beating estimates. Its core cable business lost 117,000 of 22 million video subscribers, a bit fewer than the loss forecast by analysts - and more importantly, 29 percent fewer than were lost during the same quarter last year. Meanwhile, its broadband business gained 287,000 subscribers, topping 19 million for the first time, a bit more than forecast.

Most importantly for Comcast, its average video subscriber paid more than ever for its services, topping $150 a month for the first time - more than offsetting the slight decline in total subscribers. Total revenues for video, broadband, business services and the rest of the Cable Communications business totaled at $9.97 billion, up from $9.33 billion in the same quarter last year.

Comcast's other business, NBCUniversal, which it took over last year, also posted gains in the third quarter, thanks in part to the broadcast of the Summer Olympics in July and August. So much for a projected $200 million loss on the Olylmpics; in the third quarter the company reported $120 million in profits from the Games, due in part to higher-than-expected television ratings. Overall, when other revenues and expenses are added up, NBC will break even on its coverage, Comcast's chief financial officer, Michael Ange lakis, said Friday.

The Olympics lifted NBCUniversal's broadcast television segment to a $88 million profit of the quarter; without the Games, broadcast would have reported a $32 million loss, somewhat worse than the $7 million loss in the same quarter last year. Comcast's earnings release cited two reasons for that: “higher programming costs” because NBC started some of its fall shows earlier than usual, and expenses tied to news coverage of the presidential election.

Brian Roberts, Comcast's chief executive, told investors on a conference call Friday morning that NBC was “off to a very strong start in this prime time season.” The network has been winning in the advertiser-friendly demographic of adults 18 to 49 for seven weeks.

“It's certainly early, but I believe and hope we are seeing the beginning of a turnaround at NBC,” Mr. Roberts added.

Including $1.2 billion in Olympics revenue, NBCUniversal as a whole posted $6.8 billion in reve nue, up from $5.2 billion in the same quarter last year. The cable networks segment, an umbrella for channels like Bravo and E!, showed no advertising revenue growth in the quarter, but showed slight growth overall thanks to higher per-channel subscriber fees. The film segment showed a 24 percent revenue gain, to $1.4 billion, thanks to successful theatrical releases like “Ted” and “The Bourne Legacy.”

The Breakfast Meeting: China Blocks Times\'s Sites, and Faulkner v. Allen

The Chinese government blocked access on Friday to both the Chinese-language and English-language Web sites of The New York Times after the newspaper published an account of the fortune accumulated by the family of the prime minister, Wen Jiabao, Keith Bradsher reported. In addition, the popular mini-blogging service in China, Sina Weibo, was blocking attempts to mention The Times or Mr. Wen. The article, which traced the large investment stakes of Mr. Wen's family members, including Mr. Wen's 90-year-old mother, runs counter to his public image as a humble leader from a poor family.

• Since Bloomberg published an article this summer about the wealth accumulated by Mr. Wen's expected successor as China's top leader, Vice President Xi Jinping, the news service has encountered a series of problems in mainland China, including the blocking of its Web site, which is in English, Mr. Bradsher wrote.
• The BBC quoted a spokesman for China's Foreign Ministry as desc ribing The Times article as a smear of China written with “ulterior motives.” The BBC article noted how some users of the Twitter-like Sina Weibo have tried to circumvent the censors by using homonyms and coded language:

“The Twist Your Waist Times says the best actor has $2.7bn of assets. I just wonder how will he spend it?” asked a Tencent Weibo user registered in the British West Indies territory of the Turks and Caicos Islands.
“Twist your waist” in Chinese characters sounds like New York when spoken, while “best actor” refers to Mr Wen, who critics say only pretends to be a people-first leader.

The presidential election is on track to be a $2 billion campaign, based on the latest financial disclosures from the Obama and Romney teams, Nicholas Confessore and Jo Craven McGinty report.

• The Hollywood Reporter writes that including what was collected Thursday night from a fund-raiser featuring Michel le Obama at the home of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith, Hollywood has raised $13 million for President Obama in October alone.
• The casino mogul Sheldon Adelson and his wife donated $10 million this month to a “super PAC” supporting Mitt Romney, Nicholas Confessore reports.

Apple released its latest quarterly results - for the period ending Sept. 29 - and they largely met analysts' expectations, Nick Wingfield reported. The results showed how Apple's business has been shaped by mobile products; revenue from the iPhone rose 56 percent to $17.13 billion, representing nearly half of the company's total revenue. It sold 26.9 million iPhones, 58 percent more than a year earlier. The totals for the quarter were impressive - in line with a company with a market value of $570 billion: net income was $8.22 billion, up 24 percent; revenue was $35.97 billion. Revenue for the full fiscal year was $156.5 billion, Mr. Wingfield writes, exceeding that of Microsoft , Google and Facebook combined.

• The shadow cast by Apple is perhaps nowhere more clear than in the case of the streaming-music service Pandora, Ben Sisario writes. When Apple's product announcements on Tuesday did not include any mention of an Internet radio service, which would compete with Pandora, Pandora's stock rose more than 8 percent. On Thursday, however, Pandora's stock fell as much as 20 percent on a Bloomberg News report that Apple would be introducing such a service in 2013. (The stock rose to close the day down 11.7 percent for the day, gaining more in after-hours trading.)

“The past is not dead; it's not even past.” Just ask the estate of a famous writer. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the owners of the rights to the literary works of the late William Faulkner are suing over the use of that quote in Woody Allen's movie “Midnight in Paris” - spoken by Owen Wilson - as copyright infringement.

Noam C ohen edits and writes for the Media Decoder blog. Follow @noamcohen on Twitter.