DealBook: McClendon, Under Fire, to Retire at Chesapeake Energy

9:15 p.m. | Updated

HOUSTON — Aubrey K. McClendon, Chesapeake Energy’s daring and innovative co-founder, will step down as chief executive on April 1 after months of scrutiny over how he mixed his personal finances and those of the corporation.

Mr. McClendon’s retirement, announced by the company on Tuesday, comes as the national boom in natural gas drilling, which he helped set in motion, is fading, diminishing Chesapeake’s prospects.

Over the past decade, Mr. McClendon aggressively explored for gas and outbid competitors in one shale field after another. Not only did his small Oklahoma company become the nation’s second biggest gas producer after Exxon Mobil, but Mr. McClendon also assembled a trophy room of assets that included a piece of the Oklahoma Thunder basketball team, a winery and a $12 million collection of antique maps.

In the end, a downturn in natural gas prices, caused in large part by the industry’s exuberant drilling, dealt a huge blow to the company’s balance sheet and to Mr. McClendon’s personal fortune.

Mr. McClendon borrowed heavily — more than $800 million — to finance his participation in an unusual compensation plan that allowed him to invest alongside his company in every well it drilled, sharing both in profits and expenses. Last year, the Securities and Exchange Commission opened an inquiry into Mr. McClendon’s finances, and a shareholder rebellion led to his removal as chairman in June and a reshuffling of the board.

Chesapeake, which borrowed extensively to finance its expansion spree, has been forced to unload $12 billion in valuable oil and gas fields over the last year as it tried to pay off its crushing debts. Last September, the company still had $19 billion in debt, according to Philip Weiss, a senior oil company analyst at Argus.

“He really built this company from nothing and made it into something meaningful,” Mr. Weiss said, “but in the end, I think it’s the right thing for the company and its shareholders” for him to leave. “The company needs a financial guy to bring spending under control.”

Investors appeared to agree, sending Chesapeake’s shares up more than 10 percent in after-hours trading.

The roots of Mr. McClendon’s sudden departure lay partly in a shake-up of Chesapeake’s board last summer, in which the company replaced more than half of its directors. Four of those board members were nominated by two major investors, Southeastern Asset Management and the investor Carl C. Icahn; an independent chairman was also appointed.

In recent weeks, Chesapeake’s board concluded that the company’s stock was suffering from Mr. McClendon’s presence, according to a person briefed on the matter. Shares in the company have fallen 14 percent over the last 12 months.

“Aubrey and the board have agreed that the time has come for the company to select a new leader,” Chesapeake’s chairman, Archie W. Dunham, said in a statement.

The company said the board’s review of Mr. McClendon’s financial dealings “to date has not revealed improper conduct.”

Mr. McClendon, 53, agreed to retire from the company on April 1 and will continue serving as chief executive until a successor is appointed.

“I am extremely proud of what we have built over the last quarter of a century,” he said in a statement. “While I have certain philosophical differences with the new board, I look forward to working collaboratively with the company and the board to provide a smooth transition.”

When gas prices were still high four years ago, Chesapeake’s stock price soared, and Mr. McClendon had a net worth of more than $1 billion. He bought homes in Hawaii, Colorado and Bermuda.

But as the price of gas fell by more than two-thirds over the last few years, Chesapeake lost more than two-thirds of its value as well.

Pressure on Mr. McClendon began last April after news reports revealed that he had obtained personal loans using minority stakes in company-owned wells as collateral. Reuters reported that he had personally borrowed more than $1 billion from EIG Global Energy Partners, a firm that also invested in Chesapeake, raising questions over conflict of interest.

Mr. McClendon was a larger-than-life figure in an industry filled with them. His dealings stretched across the globe as he negotiated partnerships with the Norwegian oil company Statoil, China’s CNOOC and France’s Total, shepherding the foreign oil giants into joint ventures in shale fields around the country.

“It’s an end of an era,” said Fadel Gheit, a senior oil analyst at Oppenheimer. “He was a maverick in the true sense of the word, and he represented both the good and the bad in corporate America. He was the risk-taker, a true visionary, but obviously there were excesses.”

Mr. Icahn, now one of the company’s largest shareholders, was generous in his praise.

“Aubrey has every right to be proud of the company he has built, the world-class team of people at Chesapeake and the collection of assets he has assembled, which in my opinion are the best portfolio of energy assets in the country,” he said.

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Mayoral debate focuses on city's troubled finances

In the highest-profile debate so far in the Los Angeles mayoral race, three longtime city officials defended their records Monday night as two long-shot challengers accused them of putting the city on a path to insolvency.

The city's chronic budget shortfalls dominated the event at UCLA's Royce Hall, televised live on KNBC-TV Channel 4. Entertainment lawyer Kevin James and technology executive Emanuel Pleitez sought to maximize the free media exposure, portraying themselves as fresh alternatives to business as usual at City Hall.

James, a former radio talk-show host, described himself as an independent and accused rivals Wendy Greuel, Eric Garcetti and Jan Perry — all veteran elected officials — of being cozy with unions representing the city workforce.

"Bankruptcy doesn't happen overnight," said James, the only Republican in the race. "This happened over a period of time and it happened because of a series of bad decisions."

Pleitez struck a similar note.

"Our politicians in the last decade made decisions on numbers they didn't understand," he said.

"I'm the only one that has worked in the private sector and on fiscal and economic policies at the highest levels," Pleitez said, citing his experience as a special assistant to economist Paul Volcker on President Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board.

Greuel, Garcetti and Perry, in turn, pledged to show fiscal restraint as the city grapples with projected budget shortfalls totaling more than $1 billion over the next four years.

City Controller Greuel cited the "waste, fraud and abuse" her office's audits have identified at City Hall, saying they demonstrate her independence.

"As mayor of Los Angeles, I get not only being the fiscal watchdog, and showing where we can find this money, and knowing where the bodies are buried," said Greuel, who served on the City Council for seven years. "I've learned as city controller, you don't always make friends when you highlight what can be done better."

Garcetti, a councilman for more than a decade, said he had a record of "not just talking about pension reform, but delivering on it." When tax collections dried up in the recession, he said, the council and mayor eliminated 5,000 jobs and negotiated a deal with unions requiring some city workers to contribute to their health and pension benefits.

"Those are the things that kept us away from our own fiscal cliff," he said.

Perry also stressed her support for increasing worker contributions to health and retirement benefits.

"This is about long-term survival," she said.

By the normal standards of election campaigns, it was a remarkably genteel debate, at least among the three city officials.

Only Perry attacked her rivals, and even then, not by name.

Recalling her work with Garcetti and Greuel in talks with city unions, she faulted them for engaging in "side meetings and side negotiations," saying she was more transparent.

"As mayor, I will make sure that practice stops, that everything is done on the record — that all employees are treated fairly and all employees are given the same information," Perry said.

Neither Greuel nor Garcetti answered the attack.

As in previous forums, the most obvious contrasts among the candidates Monday night were in biography and style — rather than policy positions.

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You'll Never Guess Who: Strange Recordings From the Library of Animal Sounds

The murmurs, whispers, shrieks and growls of 9,000 species are now digitized in a huge library of animal sounds, including some songs that will never be sung again.

Housed at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the Macaulay Library’s audio archive contains roughly 150,000 high-resolution recordings, all available online. It’s the largest collection of wildlife sounds in the world, and routinely called upon by students, scholars, scientists, and filmmakers.

“Sound has a remarkable ability to transport someone,” said audio curator Greg Budney. “You play a sound, and it’s as though the person or the animal is alive, right there in the room with you.”

Digitizing the collection took 12 years. Now, the 10 terabytes of tracks have a total playback time of more than 7,500 hours. Supplementing that auditory cacophony are thousands of video clips, and a photo archive is on the way.

The collection’s inaugural recordings date back to 1929, when a song sparrow, rose-breasted grosbeak, and house wren were recorded singing near the shores of Cayuga Lake. The youngest bird in the collection is an ostrich – recorded while still in its egg.

Who makes this sound?

(answer below)

Whales, cicadas, hippos, and even the environmental soundscape of an Indian temple await listeners.

Also tucked into the collection are recordings of the now-extinct Kauai Oo and the (most-likely) extinct ivory-billed woodpecker. Preserving these natural sounds for future generations is certainly one of the collection’s functions, but Budney points to others.

“If you want people to have an appreciation for places they might never go, or animals they’ve never seen, sound really makes it alive for them,” he said. “But then, also in the collection, are fantastic discoveries waiting to be made.”

Already, the collection has revealed geographic differences in the tunes some birds sing, and helped scientists identify new bird species; biologists are using the recordings to better understand animal behavior; and the decades of data can tell scientists how vocalizations have changed over the years.

But it’s not just for experts: Anyone can contribute to the collection, and anyone can listen to it.

Two of Budney’s favorite sounds include the substrate-based vibrations of treehoppers – tiny, crazy-looking insects that send signals zinging through the stems and branches on which they perch – and the wing-beats of the ruffed grouse, which can be heard up to a quarter-mile away. “It sounds like someone starting up an old VW bus,” he said.

A bell-like walrus, otherworldly bird song, the hidden realm of insects, “There are sounds like this going on all around the world,” Budney said. “And we’re just beginning to learn about them, just beginning to tap into them.”

Now, archivists are working on adding more than 50,000 raw recordings to the already-expansive repository, a favored resource of filmmakers. Ken Burns consulted the Macaulay Library holdings while creating his National Parks series. Harry Potter’s audio team needed help finding something that sounded like a hippogriff. And Skywalker Sound sought some audio help while working on The Incredibles.

Hidden in the collection are all kinds of gems. Here, we’ve compiled a few of our favorites in audio quiz format -- all are in the grid above. Have a listen, then scroll down in each slide to reveal which animal made which sound (the "view all" option is not recommended for this gallery).

Is that an interstellar spaceship? Are those haunting howls coming from a mammal? A bird? What on Earth sounds like…that?

For those wading into the archive on their own, Budney has a few tips: Search by animal, or by geographic area. The first search results returned for a species are the best recordings. Learn songs or sounds a few at a time. And enjoy!

“One of the potent aspects of this archive that moves it out of the realm of just being a menagerie of wildlife sounds and into a real conservation and research resource is that technology is advancing our understanding of how animals use sounds,” Budney said.

(Answer: Chimpanzee)

Photo: Thomas Lersch/Wikimedia

All audio courtesy of Macaulay Library.

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Animal shelters are real winners of ‘Puppy Bowl’

LOS ANGELES (AP) — There will be a winner and a loser every Super Bowl Sunday. But at the “Puppy Bowl,” it’s always a win for animal shelters.

The show provides national exposure to the shelters across the country that provide the puppy athletes and the kittens that star in the halftime show, and introduces viewers to the different breeds and animals that need homes, animal workers say. Many shelters see bumps in visits from viewers who are inspired to adopt a pet.

“It raises awareness for our shelter and others that take part,” said Madeline Bernstein, president and CEO of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Los Angeles. “It shows dogs in a happy, playful, fun way, which makes people think, ‘Gee, I could play with a dog too.’ You hope it will also stimulate adoptions, and if not, at least a positive attitude toward dogs, rather than they are just hairy and smelly.”

The “Puppy Bowl,” an annual two-hour TV special that mimics a football game with canine players, made its debut eight years ago on The Animal Planet. Dogs score touchdowns on a 10-by-19-foot gridiron carpet when they cross the goal line with a toy. There is a Most Valuable Pup award, a water bowl cam, a new lipstick cam (it’s in the lips of the toys), slow-motion cameras, hedgehog referees, a puppy hot tub and a blimp with a crew of hamsters. Bios on each puppy player flash across the screen during close-ups of the action, letting viewers know how to find each animal for adoption.

Most of the puppies, however, are usually adopted by airtime since the show is filmed months ahead, said executive producer Melinda Toporoff, who is working on her fifth “Puppy Bowl.” But Bernstein said the point is to show that animals just like the ones on the show can be found at any shelter at any time.

“A lot of people have come in during the last year and said, ‘I want a dog just like Fumble,’” she said, referring to spcaLA’s player entry in “Puppy Bowl VIII” who earned the game’s Most Valuable Pup crown.

About 300 puppies and kittens have been featured on “Puppy Bowl” over the last decade, according to Petfinder.com, the country’s largest online pet adoption database that helps cast the show’s animal stars.

“Shelters and rescues are at capacity, and pet adoption is the responsible way to add to your family,” said Sara Kent, who oversees outreach to the 14,000 shelters and rescues that Petfinder works with.

The inaugural “Puppy Bowl,” which was promoted as an alternative to the Super Bowl, had 22 puppies and was watched by nearly 6 million viewers. Nearly 9 million tuned in last year and another 1.4 million watched via video streams, Toporoff said. “Puppy Bowl IX” will feature 84 animals, including 21 kittens from a New York shelter for the halftime show, and 63 puppies from 23 shelters.

Only four of the puppies have yet to find new homes, Toporoff said. They include Tyson, Daphne and Sacha — three pit bull mixes from the Pitter Patter Animal Rescue in Silver Lake, Wis., — and Jenny, a terrier mix from the Pitty Love Rescue in Rochester, N.Y.

“I don’t know if there’s any bigger forum for getting something out on adoption. We make sure the message gets out there. We make clear that these dogs need homes and that all animals have come to us during the adoption process,” Toporoff said.

Fumble, last year’s MVP winner, was adopted before the show aired. Michael Wright, of New York, said he found out about Fumble’s participation toward the end of the adoption process. He planned to watch this year’s show to catch any flashbacks of last year’s MVP playing his heart out.

“I’m not really a fan of football,” he said, adding that he has renamed Fumble to Toby. “He fits the name Toby. He is so cute. I like the name Fumble, but I pictured someone dropping the ball. He wasn’t a Fumble,” Wright said.

Each year, recruiting for the show is a logistical challenge for Kent and her crew of 80-plus. This year’s show was particularly worrisome because taping was scheduled for October 2012 — just after Superstorm Sandy hit the East Coast.

“We worried about the puppies, kittens and hedgehogs that may have been directly impacted or unable to travel due to Sandy,” Kent said.

The New York studio where the game was supposed to be taped lost power, but the taping couldn’t be postponed for too long given how quickly puppies grow. Another studio further uptown that had both power and space was found, and “amazingly, the crew was able to reschedule the shoot for only a week later and all the animals were still able to attend,” Kent said.

Bernstein said they try to find rambunctious, energetic puppies to enter in the bowl though even if a dog falls asleep on its way to the end zone, it can be funny. Puppies chosen for the show have to be between 10 and 15 weeks old, healthy and sturdy enough to be on the field with playmates. All breeds are considered because “we try to reflect what’s out there in the adoption world. A lot of those breeds are mixed,” Toporoff said.

Producers also were trying to find ways to incorporate older animals into the show, since shelters have more trouble finding homes for them than they do puppies and kittens, Toporoff said.

As with all reality TV shows, the behind-the-scenes casting can lead to problems. Viewers often come in seeking a dog just like one on the show, and “then the lawyer brain kicks in, and you have to make sure you let everybody know not every dog plays football,” said Bernstein, who is also an attorney. “People will adopt the kind of dog they see in the movie and they’ll expect their Dalmatian to know how to use a word processor and not understand that was a cartoon.”

“Some dogs like to play more than others. But don’t come in thinking every Chihuahua can play football,” she said.

The “Puppy Bowl” airs on Feb. 3 from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. in all time zones and will keep repeating until 3 a.m. The Super Bowl starts at 6:30 p.m. ET and 3:30 p.m. PT.

___

Online:

http://animal.discovery.com/tv-shows/puppy-bowl

http://www.spcaLA.com

http://www.petfinder.com/petdetail/24414038 (Tyson)

http://www.petfinder.com/petdetail/24413997 (Daphne)

http://www.petfinder.com/petdetail/24413979 (Sacha)

http://www.petfinder.com/petdetail/24393351 (Jenny)

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Rescuer Appears for New York Downtown Hospital

Manhattan’s only remaining hospital south of 14th Street, New York Downtown, has found a white knight willing to take over its debt and return it to good health, hospital officials said Monday.

NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, one of New York City’s largest academic medical centers, has proposed to take over New York Downtown in a “certificate of need” filed with the State Health Department. The three-page proposal argues that though New York Downtown is projected to have a significant operating loss in 2013, it is vital to Lower Manhattan, including Wall Street, Chinatown and the Lower East Side, especially since the closing of St. Vincent’s Hospital after it declared bankruptcy in 2010.

The rescue proposal, which would need the Health Department’s approval, comes at a precarious time for hospitals in the city. Long Island College Hospital, just across the river in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, has been threatened with closing after a failed merger with SUNY Downstate Medical Center, and several other Brooklyn hospitals are considering mergers to stem losses.

New York Downtown has been affiliated with the NewYork-Presbyterian health care system while maintaining separate operations.

“We are looking forward to having them become a sixth campus so the people in that community can continue to have a community hospital that continues to serve them,” Myrna Manners, a spokeswoman for NewYork-Presbyterian, said.

Fred Winters, a spokesman for New York Downtown, declined to comment.

Presbyterian’s proposal emphasized that it would acquire New York Downtown’s debt at no cost to the state, a critical point at a time when the state has shown little interest in bailing out failing hospitals.

The proposal said that if New York Downtown were to close, it would leave more than 300,000 residents of Lower Manhattan, including the financial district, Greenwich Village, SoHo, the Lower East Side and Chinatown, without a community hospital. In addition, it said, 750,000 people work and visit in the area every day, a number that is expected to grow with the construction of 1 World Trade Center and related buildings.

The proposal argues that New York Downtown is essential partly because of its long history of responding to disasters in the city. One of its predecessors was founded as a direct result of the 1920 terrorist bombing outside the J. P. Morgan Building, and the hospital has responded to the 1975 bombing of Fraunces Tavern, the 1993 and 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, and, this month, the crash of a commuter ferry from New Jersey.

Like other fragile hospitals in the city, New York Downtown has shrunk, going to 180 beds, down from the 254 beds it was certified for in 2006, partly because the more affluent residents of Lower Manhattan often go to bigger hospitals for elective care.

The proposal says that half of the emergency department patients at New York Downtown either are on Medicaid, the program for the poor, or are uninsured.

NewYork-Presbyterian would absorb the cost of the hospital’s maternity and neonatal intensive care units, which have been expanding because of demand, but have been operating at a deficit of more than $1 million a year, the proposal said.

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DealBook: Former Jefferies Trader Is Charged With Fraud

Federal prosecutors charged a former senior trader at the Jefferies Group on Monday with defrauding his clients — and the government — while selling them mortgage-backed securities after the financial crisis.

Jesse C. Litvak, the former Jefferies trader, is accused of generating more than $2 million in revenue for Jefferies by overcharging his customers through deceitful conduct. Those who are said to have been his victims include some of the world’s largest investment firms, including Soros Fund Management, Magnetar Capital, BlackRock and Wellington Management.

The government was also a victim in this case, prosecutors said, because Mr. Litvak’s clients were managing money that was part of the Treasury Asset Relief Program, or TARP, the $700 billion bailout fund. As part of a public-private investment program, the Treasury picked nine private firms to invest in toxic mortgage-backed securities and help remove them from the clogged balance sheets of the large banks.

While the alleged violations — cheating brokerage clients by misrepresenting the prices of securities — might typically prompt the loss of a job or civil lawsuits, such conduct rarely, if ever, rises to the level of a federal criminal prosecution.

The case demonstrates the aggressive prosecutorial stance of the special inspector general for TARP, or Sigtarp, which led the investigation. The office, now led by Christy Romero, has been responsible for criminal cases filed against 121 individuals.

“Illegally profiting from a federal program designed to assist our nation in recovering from one of our worst economic crises is reprehensible,” said David B. Fein, the United States attorney in Connecticut, whose office brought the charges. The Securities and Exchange Commission filed a parallel civil action in the case.

Federal agents arrested Mr. Litvak, 38, early Monday morning at his apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. He made an appearance in Federal District Court in Bridgeport, Conn., and was released on $1 million bail. Mr. Litvak, who worked at RBS Greenwich Capital earlier in his career, joined Jefferies in 2008 and was fired in December 2011.

“Jesse Litvak did not cheat anyone out of a dime,” said Patrick J. Smith, Mr. Litvak’s lawyer at DLA Piper, in a statement. “In fact, most of these trades turned out to be hugely profitable. Jesse looks forward to the trial in this case so that his name can be cleared and he can get on with his career.”

While the market for mortgage-backed securities is complex and opaque, the charges against Mr. Litvak are rather simple. Prosecutors said that he deceived his customers about the prices of the securities that he sold to them. The indictment said that Mr. Litvak deployed the scheme in part to increase the size of his year-end bonus.

In some cases, they said, Mr. Litvak would lie about the price at which his firm had bought a security so he could resell it to another customer at a higher price and earn more money for the firm. In other instances, the government said, he created a fake seller to give the impression that he was arranging a trade between two customers, when in fact he was selling the security out of his firm’s inventory at a high price.

“The kind of false claims made by Litvak were unfit for a used-car lot, let alone a marketplace for mortgage-backed securities,” said George S. Canellos, the S.E.C.’s deputy director of enforcement.

Mr. Smith, the lawyer for Mr. Litvak, said that the trades were transactions between sophisticated market participants and that the profits that Jefferies earned on each trade were well within industry norms for the mortgage-backed securities market.

Mr. Litvak wants Jefferies to pay his legal fees related to the government’s investigation, and he has filed papers in the Delaware Court of Chancery demanding compensation from the bank. Jefferies has refused to reimburse him, arguing that it fired Mr. Litvak for cause. Richard Khaleel, a spokesman for Jefferies, declined to comment.

The case first showed up on the government’s radar after one of Mr. Litvak’s customers, AllianceBernstein, complained to Jefferies that the bank had overcharged it for mortgage-backed securities, according to people briefed on the case. According to records from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, or Finra, Jefferies settled the case with AllianceBernstein for $2.2 million.

Court papers depict Mr. Litvak as an exuberant salesman, frequently communicating with instant messages and peppering his communications with slang. When Mr. Litvak reported to a client, Wellington Management, about a sham purchase, he wrote “winner winner chicken dinner.” Another time, the complaint said, Mr. Litvak gave a customer a false report on the price of a security that he sold to a hedge fund, York Capital Management. “We are doneski gorgeous!” he wrote.

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Hillary Clinton's legacy at State: Splendid but not spectacular

WASHINGTON — Hillary Rodham Clinton leaves her post as secretary of State next month with a split judgment on her diplomatic career: She's won rave reviews from the American public and the president, but maybe not a prominent place in the diplomatic history books.

Job approval ratings for the former senator and first lady are at stratospheric levels, suggesting that her four years as chief U.S. diplomat could be an important asset if she runs for president in 2016.

But scholars and diplomatic insiders say she has never dominated issues of war and peace in the manner of predecessors Dean Acheson or Henry Kissinger, or laid down an enduring diplomatic doctrine.

President Obama has tightly controlled foreign policy in the last four years — more so even than his recent predecessors. Clinton has had a seat at the table on every key issue, officials say, but she did not "own" any of them.

She devoted long hours to signatures issues, including empowerment of women and girls, gay rights, Third World development, health and Internet freedoms. Clinton lent her support to a wide range of new projects and organizations, and she appointed new officials in the State Department to shepherd them. Some of these may eventually have huge effects, but many are at an early stage.

At the same time, the most important and toughest foreign policy issues of the day — Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan-Pakistan, the Arab-Israeli standoff — weren't resolved during the four years. Some grew more intractable. Though none of that may be Clinton's fault, the lack of diplomatic breakthroughs on her watch limits her legacy.

"She's coming away with a stellar reputation that seems to have put her almost above criticism," said Aaron David Miller, a longtime U.S. peace negotiator who is a vice president at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. "But you can't say that she's really led on any of the big issues for this administration or made a major mark on high strategy."

Expectations ran high that Clinton would be a heavyweight — maybe even a "co-president" on foreign policy — from the time Obama picked his bitter rival in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary campaign to take the Cabinet's senior spot. She had star power from 20 years in national life that dazzled foreign audiences and guaranteed worldwide attention to whatever issue she focused on.

"She's the first secretary who's also been a global rock star," said a senior State Department official who was not authorized to be quoted by name. "It's allowed her to raise issues on the global agenda in a way that no one before her has been able to do."

Obama praised her performance Sunday in a joint interview with Clinton that he proposed to CBS' "60 Minutes." Obama described her as "one of our finest" secretaries of State and one of his most important advisors on a range of issues, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Al Qaeda.

In the interview, Clinton brushed aside questions about her future in politics and pronounced her health as good — although she said she had some "lingering effects" from a concussion she suffered in December when she fainted and hit her head after suffering from a virus that left her dehydrated. The concussion led to a blood clot behind her right ear, for which she was hospitalized.

"The doctors tell me that will all recede," she said, referring to the continued symptoms. "And so, thankfully, I'm looking forward to being at full speed."

As secretary of State, Clinton has shared Obama's democratic take on the proper role of American diplomats, believing that the world is no longer a place where a handful of powers can dictate the terms of the world order. Rather, the job of U.S. diplomats is collaborating with dozens of other countries in the "constant gardening and tending" of institutions and projects that advance common goals, the senior State Department official said.

Foreign audiences warmed to this attitude, which they found appealing after eight years of a George W. Bush administration many associated with a go-it-alone approach. As they did, the American image abroad improved.

At the same time, Clinton quickly removed a potential internal stumbling block, insisting on no infighting between her loyalists at the State Department and Obama's team. Former President Bill Clinton's kibitzing on foreign policy never became the problem some had predicted.

A hard worker and team player, Clinton won praise from many in Obama's circle who had initially doubted her.

But as time passed, it became clear that she wouldn't have the lead role on key issues of war and peace.

Clinton's original plan was to have three powerful "special envoys" in charge of key security issues and reporting to her — a flow chart that would have enabled her to tightly control the biggest security issues.

But Richard C. Holbrooke, in charge of the Afghanistan-Pakistan militant threat, was marginalized after clashing with White House officials. Former Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell resigned in May 2011 after the painful collapse of the administration's opening Middle East peace initiative; and diplomat Dennis Ross, the envoy for Iran, moved to the White House in June 2009 to better help manage the range of Mideast problems that were bubbling over.

"She was a fully functioning member of the team," said a former administration official, who asked to remain anonymous speaking about a former colleague. "But not a first among equals."

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The Power of Paying: What Consumer Hotshots Can Learn From Corporate Drudges

Sometimes these days interoperability seems like a lost cause in the technology world. Twitter has been making life hard for startups that make Twitter clients; Facebook has been making life equally hard for Twitter; and Google is preventing anyone else from adding content to its own social network, Google+.

But even as the aforementioned advertising-driven companies have made life hard for developers, enterprise companies have proven that software interfaces for web interoperability can be reliable and robust – powerful enough, even, to build a company on.

Leading the charge has been Amazon, whose web services and software interfaces, or APIs, have emerged as key startup building blocks. Amazon’s S3 storage service and EC2 virtual server service have been like the polar opposite of the Twitter API: Steady where Twitter has been unpredictable, scalable where Twitter has imposed tight limits, and open ended where Twitter has been closed.

But the biggest and most obvious difference between the constrictive Twitter API and the empowering Amazon API is this: The former is free, while the latter costs money. In other words, paying Amazon up front can actually reduce costs long term compared to a free API like Twitter’s, since there’s less volatility and risk in the API itself. (A fair number of startups who bet big on the Twitter API are now cursing the decision, as Wired has documented previously.)

Amazon is hardly the only example of how it pays to bet on software interfaces with a solid revenue stream behind them. Salesforce.com, for example does brisk business with its paid platform cloud Heroku and with its App Exchange, which sells software that runs on its paid core customer relationship management offering. Even Apple’s iOS app store, while essentially free for developers, illustrates how much money can be made writing for a platform that serves paying customers.

“In the consumer world, API’s are usually driven by companies who also have their own direct-to-consumer offering, and thus there is inherent potential conflict in them leveraging their data and user base versus enabling others,” says Matt Murphy, a general partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers who has overseen the venture capital firm’s mobile-focused iFund.

Outside of the consumer world, the case for providing a robust API is more clear-cut. Murphy cited as on example of this Twilio, which offers a paid API to connect applications to phone services like text messages, recorded information lines, and conference calls.

Companies like Twilio that make lots of revenue offering software interfaces have an incentive to maintain and improve those interfaces and to keep those interfaces open and running smoothly. That means building on such interfaces is safer, as a rule.

“You need to be mindful of the competitive dynamics,” says Paul Buchheit, a former Google engineer whose startup FriendFeed built on APIs from Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and others. “The simplest question to ask is if the platform is the product, or if it exists mainly to support another product. The Amazon Web Services platform is the product, and so it’s unlikely that Amazon would do anything to harm the platform. However, in the case of Twitter, the platform is just a feature, and so they will do whatever they believe is best for the core Twitter product, even if that means killing the platform.”

“iOS is kind of in the in-between space of platform as product and platform as feature, and the obviously exercise much more control than Amazon does. I’d be very wary of building an iOS app that somehow competes with Apple, for example.”

Of course, paying customers don’t guarantee a software interface is reliable, just nor does a lack thereof mean a software interface is flaky. Google’s App Engine, for example, offers a paid API that has been criticized as unreliable and constrictive.

GitHub, meanwhile, has built an innovative business around the native API of the free, open-source software revision tracker git.

As a general guideline, however, you can safely assume that if you’re not paying money for an API now, there’s a good chance you’ll be paying, somehow, for your usage later.

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Chris Brown investigated for possible assault

WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. (AP) — Grammy-winning singer Chris Brown is under investigation for an alleged assault in a West Hollywood parking lot, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said early Monday.

Deputies responding to a report of six men fighting Sunday night found the scene clear, but were told by witnesses that there had been a brief fight over a parking space.

“The altercation allegedly led to Chris Brown punching the victim,” the department said in a statement released early Monday morning.

The “victim” wasn’t identified but the celebrity website TMZ — which first reported the fight outside the Westlake Recording Studio — said it also involved Frank Ocean, one of the top nominees at Grammy Awards next month.

In a Twitter posting later, Ocean said he “got jumped by (Brown) and a couple guys” and suffered a finger cut.

It wasn’t Brown’s first problem in the run-up to the Grammys. His attack on singer Rihanna on the eve of the 2009 awards event overshadowed the show.

Last June, he was injured in a brawl with members of hip-hop star Drake’s entourage at a New York nightclub.

No arrests were made. Brown was gone by the time deputies arrived but the department said the investigation is ongoing and Brown would be contacted later.

Email messages to Ocean’s publicist and Brown’s lawyer were not immediately returned. A man answering the phone at the recording studio declined to comment.

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Well: Keeping Blood Pressure in Check

Since the start of the 21st century, Americans have made great progress in controlling high blood pressure, though it remains a leading cause of heart attacks, strokes, congestive heart failure and kidney disease.

Now 48 percent of the more than 76 million adults with hypertension have it under control, up from 29 percent in 2000.

But that means more than half, including many receiving treatment, have blood pressure that remains too high to be healthy. (A normal blood pressure is lower than 120 over 80.) With a plethora of drugs available to normalize blood pressure, why are so many people still at increased risk of disease, disability and premature death? Hypertension experts offer a few common, and correctable, reasons:

¶ About 20 percent of affected adults don’t know they have high blood pressure, perhaps because they never or rarely see a doctor who checks their pressure.

¶ Of the 80 percent who are aware of their condition, some don’t appreciate how serious it can be and fail to get treated, even when their doctors say they should.

¶ Some who have been treated develop bothersome side effects, causing them to abandon therapy or to use it haphazardly.

¶ Many others do little to change lifestyle factors, like obesity, lack of exercise and a high-salt diet, that can make hypertension harder to control.

Dr. Samuel J. Mann, a hypertension specialist and professor of clinical medicine at Weill-Cornell Medical College, adds another factor that may be the most important. Of the 71 percent of people with hypertension who are currently being treated, too many are taking the wrong drugs or the wrong dosages of the right ones.

Dr. Mann, author of “Hypertension and You: Old Drugs, New Drugs, and the Right Drugs for Your High Blood Pressure,” says that doctors should take into account the underlying causes of each patient’s blood pressure problem and the side effects that may prompt patients to abandon therapy. He has found that when treatment is tailored to the individual, nearly all cases of high blood pressure can be brought and kept under control with available drugs.

Plus, he said in an interview, it can be done with minimal, if any, side effects and at a reasonable cost.

“For most people, no new drugs need to be developed,” Dr. Mann said. “What we need, in terms of medication, is already out there. We just need to use it better.”

But many doctors who are generalists do not understand the “intricacies and nuances” of the dozens of available medications to determine which is appropriate to a certain patient.

“Prescribing the same medication to patient after patient just does not cut it,” Dr. Mann wrote in his book.

The trick to prescribing the best treatment for each patient is to first determine which of three mechanisms, or combination of mechanisms, is responsible for a patient’s hypertension, he said.

¶ Salt-sensitive hypertension, more common in older people and African-Americans, responds well to diuretics and calcium channel blockers.

¶ Hypertension driven by the kidney hormone renin responds best to ACE inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers, as well as direct renin inhibitors and beta-blockers.

¶ Neurogenic hypertension is a product of the sympathetic nervous system and is best treated with beta-blockers, alpha-blockers and drugs like clonidine.

According to Dr. Mann, neurogenic hypertension results from repressed emotions. He has found that many patients with it suffered trauma early in life or abuse. They seem calm and content on the surface but continually suppress their distress, he said.

One of Dr. Mann’s patients had had high blood pressure since her late 20s that remained well-controlled by the three drugs her family doctor prescribed. Then in her 40s, periodic checks showed it was often too high. When taking more of the prescribed medication did not result in lasting control, she sought Dr. Mann’s help.

After a thorough work-up, he said she had a textbook case of neurogenic hypertension, was taking too much medication and needed different drugs. Her condition soon became far better managed, with side effects she could easily tolerate, and she no longer feared she would die young of a heart attack or stroke.

But most patients should not have to consult a specialist. They can be well-treated by an internist or family physician who approaches the condition systematically, Dr. Mann said. Patients should be started on low doses of one or more drugs, including a diuretic; the dosage or number of drugs can be slowly increased as needed to achieve a normal pressure.

Specialists, he said, are most useful for treating the 10 percent to 15 percent of patients with so-called resistant hypertension that remains uncontrolled despite treatment with three drugs, including a diuretic, and for those whose treatment is effective but causing distressing side effects.

Hypertension sometimes fails to respond to routine care, he noted, because it results from an underlying medical problem that needs to be addressed.

“Some patients are on a lot of blood pressure drugs — four or five — who probably don’t need so many, and if they do, the question is why,” Dr. Mann said.

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