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SAN FRANCISCO — Alex Payne, a 24-year-old Internet engineer here, has devised a way to answer a commonly asked question of the digital age: Is my favorite Web site working today? Alex Payne created a way to tell if Web sites are working. In March, Mr. Payne created downforeveryoneorjustme.com, as in, “Down for everyone, or just me?” It lets visitors type in a Web address and see whether a site is generally inaccessible or whether the problem is with their own connection. “I had seen that question posed so often,” said Mr. Payne, who perhaps not coincidentally works at Twitter, a Web messaging and social networking site that is itself known for frequent downtime. “Technology companies have branded the Internet as a place that is always on and where information is always available. People are disappointed and looking for answers when it turns out not to be true.” There is plenty of disappointment to go around these days. Such technology stalwarts as Yahoo, Amazon.com and Research in Motion, the company behind the BlackBerry, have all suffered embarrassing technical problems in the last few months. About a month ago, a sudden surge of visitors to Mr. Payne’s site began asking about the normally impervious Amazon. That site was ultimately down for several hours over two business days, and Amazon, by some estimates, lost more than a million dollars an hour in sales. The Web, like any technology or medium, has always been susceptible to unforeseen hiccups. Particularly in the early days of the Web, sites like eBay and Schwab.com regularly went dark. But since fewer people used the Internet back then, the stakes were much lower. Now the Web is an irreplaceable part of daily life, and Internet companies have plans to make us even more dependent on it. Companies like Google want us to store not just e-mail online but also spreadsheets, photo albums, sales data and nearly every other piece of personal and professional information. That data is supposed to be more accessible than information tucked away in the office computer or filing cabinet. The problem is that this ideal requires Web services to be available around the clock — and even the Internet’s biggest companies sometimes have trouble making that happen. The causes of these problems range widely: it might be system upgrades with unintended consequences, human error (oops, wrong button) or even just old-fashioned electrical failures. Last month, an electrical explosion in a Houston data center of the Planet, a Web hosting company, knocked thousands of Web businesses off the Internet for up to five days. Web addicts who find themselves shut out of their favorite Web sites tend to fill blogs and online bulletin boards with angry invective about broken promises and interrupted routines. The volatile emotions around Web downtime are perhaps most prevalent in the discussion around Twitter, on which users post updates on who they are with, where they are, and what they are doing. According to Pingdom, a Web monitoring firm, Twitter was down for 37 hours this year through April — by far more than any other major social networking Web site. Instead of simply dumping the service and moving on with their lives, Twitter users have responded with an endless stream of rancor, creating “Is Twitter Down?” T-shirts, blog rants and YouTube parodies, and posting copies of Twitter’s various artfully designed error messages. Twitter has said its downtime is the result of rapidly growing demand and fundamental mistakes in its original architecture. Jesse Robbins, a former Amazon executive who was responsible for keeping Amazon online from 2004 to 2006, says the outcries over failures are understandable. “When these sites go away, it’s a sudden loss. It’s like you are standing in the middle of Macy’s and the power goes out,” he said. “When the thing you depend on to live your daily life suddenly goes away, it’s trauma.” He says Web services should be held to the same standard of reliability as the older services they aim to replace. “These companies have a responsibility to people who rely and depend on them, just as people going over a public bridge expect that the bridge won’t suddenly collapse.”

In honor of Independence Day, show us something patriotic.

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- George Carlin, the influential comedian whose routines used profanity, scatology and absurdity to point out the silliness and hypocrisy of human life, has died. He was 71. Carlin, who had a history of heart trouble, died of heart failure died Sunday at at 5:55 p.m. PT. Carlin was "a hugely influential force in stand-up comedy. He had an amazing mind, and his humor was brave, and always challenging us to look at ourselves and question our belief systems, while being incredibly entertaining. He was one of the greats," actor and comedian Ben Stiller said in a statement. Carlin was often quoted, his best lines traded like baseball cards. "Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?" began one famous routine. Another pointed out the differences between the pastoral game of baseball and the militaristic game of football: "Baseball is played on a diamond, in a park. The baseball park! Football is played on a gridiron, in a stadium, sometimes called Soldier Field or War Memorial Stadium." Then there were the non sequiturs: "The bigger they are, the worse they smell," he observed. He filled three best-selling books, more than 20 record albums and countless television appearances with his material. He appreciated the impact his words made on fans. "These are nice additional merit badges that you earn if you've left a mark on a person or on some people," he told CNN.com in 2004. "I'd say it's flattering, but flattery implies insincerity, so I call it a compliment." Carlin was probably best known for a routine that began, "I was thinking about the curse words and the swear words, the cuss words and the words that you can't say." It was a monologue, known as "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television," that got Carlin arrested and eventually led to the U.S. Supreme Court. The "Seven Dirty Words" bit prompted a landmark indecency case after New York's WBAI-FM radio aired it in 1973. The case was appealed to the Supreme Court, which ruled 5-4 that the sketch was "indecent but not obscene," giving the Federal Communications Commission broad leeway to determine what constituted indecency on the airwaves. "So my name is a footnote in American legal history, which I'm perversely kind of proud of," Carlin said. "In the context of that era, it was daring. "It just sounds like a very self-serving kind of word. I don't want to go around describing myself as a 'groundbreaker' or a 'difference-maker' because I'm not and I wasn't," he said. "But I contributed to people who were saying things that weren't supposed to be said." Carlin was born on May 12, 1937, in New York. He dropped out of high school in the ninth grade and joined the Air Force, where his misfit ways continued -- he received three courts-martial and several punishments. After leaving the military, he spent a few years in radio, where he met Burns. In 1960, the pair left to pursue a comedy career in Los Angeles. Burns told the AP that the Carlin of those years was "fairly conservative," but things changed when the two saw Lenny Bruce in the early '60s. "It was an epiphany for George," Burns told the AP. "The comedy we were doing at the time wasn't exactly groundbreaking, and George knew then that he wanted to go in a different direction." Carlin remembered a similar feeling, he told CNN.com. "[His career] represented a lot of such honesty on the stage, the willingness to confront a lot of sacred cows and expose them," he said of Bruce. "He did it with a great deal of irreverence and with a lot of brilliance." Carlin went solo in 1962. For most of the decade, he was a conservative-looking presence: clean-shaven, attired in jacket and tie, making his amused observations to audiences on "The Tonight Show" and "The Ed Sullivan Show." But as the times changed, so did Carlin. He let his hair down, grew a beard and dressed in jeans and tie-dyed T-shirts. It was this Carlin who became a hit with college audiences in the early '70s and made such albums as "FM & AM" and "Occupation: Foole." Carlin hosted the first broadcast of "Saturday Night Live" in October 1975. He also appeared in movies, including "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" (1989), Kevin Smith's "Dogma" (1999) and "Cars" (2006). For the latter, he was the voice of Fillmore, the Volkswagen bus. He starred as a cabdriver in his own sitcom, "The George Carlin Show," which ran from 1993 to 1995. He also played the character of Mr. Conductor on the PBS series "Shining Time Station" and lent his voice to two episodes of "The Simpsons." Carlin was blunt about his own struggles. He suffered several heart attacks, one at Dodger Stadium during a baseball game. He also underwent treatment for drug and alcohol abuse. He was relentlessly amused by humanity -- in one of his most famous lines, he pointed out that "if you're born in this world you're given a ticket to the freak show. If you're born in America, you're given a front-row seat" -- but refused to consider himself a cynic. He preferred "disappointed idealist." Remembering Carlin Join Larry King in remembering the late George Carlin, along with a panel of those who knew him best. Tonight, 9 p.m. ET

Want to know what Barack Obama thinks about net neutrality? John McCain's views on white space spectrum? Good luck learning about that during any of this fall's official debates. But we're reasonably sure these and other issues will come up via a semi-formal debate the two campaigns are starting up today -- via Twitter....organized by Andrew Rasiej's Personal Democracy Forum: Sometime today, moderator Ana Marie Cox will start lobbing questions to two officially sanctioned stand-ins for the rival campaigns -- Mike Nelson, who's advising the Obama campaign on tech issues, and Liz Mair, online communcations director for the Republican National Committee. The debate is supposed to focus exclusively on tech...Ana Marie is best known as the original Wonkette...

The Humane Society of the United States are proud supporters of Take Your Dog To Work Day. The organization's President and CEO Wayne Pacelle is an active blogger who says that having their dogs around at the office "reminds us of who we're working for".  Established in 1954 and blogging since 2007, the Humane Society advocates sensible ways to help animals all across the country, from shelters to Congress, and makes the world a more humane place for all of us.  Over on the Humane Society's TypePad blog they're even holding a caption contest for the hard-at-work Piper (an adorable chihuahua mix).

Cyd Charisse, a former co-star of Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, has died in Los Angeles aged 86, her publicist says. The long-legged star appeared in a number of films, but her fame came from the musicals of the 1940s and 1950s. She sang and danced with legends Gene Kelly in Singin' in the Rain, and Fred Astaire in Silk Stockings. At the height of her fame the film company said her long legs were insured for a million dollars. But a BBC correspondent says she did not need such publicity stunts - her talent was enough to make her an essential part of the golden age of Technicolor musicals. 'Beautiful dynamite' Born Tula Ellice Finklea in 1921, Charisse began her career dancing with the Ballet Russe as a teenager. During a European tour she met Nico Charisse, a young French dancer with whom she had trained in Los Angeles. They married in Paris in 1939.

By LAWRENCE DOWNES I went to the Newseum, a shiny new building in Washington that news companies and foundations have erected as a shrine to their industry. Since it’s my industry, too, I thought a museum, where sacred relics and texts have been placed safely in the equivalent of a big glass jar, might make me hopeful about the future. “Where’s the section on copy editing?” I asked the guy at the entrance. He wasn’t sure. “Try Internet, TV and Radio, on the third floor.” “For copy editing? Newspaper copy editing?” He checked with a colleague. “News History, on five,” she said. Ouch. Copy editors are my favorite people in the news business, and many I know are still alive and doing what they do. As it happened, I couldn’t find anything about them on the fifth or any other floor. A call later confirmed that the museum has essentially nothing about how newspapers are made today, and thus nothing about the lowly yet exalted copy editor. I was one for a long time, and I know that obscurity and unpopularity are part of the job. Copy editors work late hours and can get testy. They never sign their work. As for what they do, here’s the short version: After news happens in the chaos and clutter of the real world, it travels through a reporter’s mind, a photographer’s eye, a notebook and camera lens, into computer files, then through multiple layers of editing. Copy editors handle the final transition to an ink-on-paper object. On the news-factory floor, they do the refining and packaging. They trim words, fix grammar, punctuation and style, write headlines and captions. But they also do a lot more. Copy editors are the last set of eyes before yours. They are more powerful than proofreaders. They untangle twisted prose. They are surgeons, removing growths of error and irrelevance; they are minimalist chefs, straining fat. Their goal is to make sure that the day’s work of a newspaper staff becomes an object of lasting beauty and excellence once it hits the presses. Yeah. Presses. It has probably already struck you how irrelevant many of these skills may seem in the endlessly shifting, eternal glow of the Web. The copy editor’s job, to the extent possible under deadline, is to slow down, think things through, do the math and ask the irritating question. His or her main creative outlet, writing clever headlines, is problematic online, because allusive wordplay doesn’t necessarily generate Google hits. And Google makes everyone an expert, so the aging copy editor’s trivia-packed brain and synonym collection seem not to count for as much anymore. The job hasn’t disappeared yet, but it is swiftly evolving, away from an emphasis on style and consistency, from making a physical object perfect the first time. The path to excellence is now through speed, agility and creativity in using multiple expressive outlets for information in all its shapes and sounds. As newspapers lose money and readers, they have been shedding great swaths of expensive expertise. They have been forced to shrink or eliminate the multiply redundant levels of editing that distinguish their kind of journalism from what you find on TV, radio and much of the Web. Copy editors are being bought out or forced out; they are dying and not being replaced. Webby doesn’t necessarily mean sloppy, of course, and online news operations will shine with all the brilliance that the journalists who create them can bring. But in that world of the perpetual present tense — post it now, fix it later, update constantly — old-time, persnickety editing may be a luxury in which only a few large news operations will indulge. It will be an artisanal product, like monastery honey and wooden yachts. It would be nice, at least, to thank the copy editors on the way out. But after visiting the Newseum, I know what I have suspected for a few years: if newspaper copy editors vanish from the earth, no one is going to notice.

NEWHALL, Iowa — Here, in some of the best soil in the world, the stunted stalks of Dave Timmerman’s newly planted corn are wilting in what sometimes look more like rice paddies than the plains, the sunshine glinting off of pools of collected water. Although time is running out, he has yet to plant all of his soybean crop because the waterlogged soil cannot support his footsteps, much less heavy machinery.

The FCX Clarity emits none of the gases responsible for global warmingThe Japanese car manufacturer Honda has begun the first ever commercial production of a hydrogen fuel-cell powered vehicle.The medium-sized four-seater, called the FCX Clarity, runs on hydrogen and electricity, emitting only water vapour. Honda claims the vehicle offers three times better fuel efficiency than a traditional, gasoline-powered car. It plans to produce 200 of the cars over the next three years. One of the biggest obstacles standing in the way of wider adoption of fuel cell vehicles is the lack of hydrogen fuelling stations. The car will initially be available for lease starting July to a limited number of customers in southern California and then in Japan later this year. Honda says it expects to lease a few dozen units in the U.S. and Japan within a year, and about 200 units within three years. It said the cost of the car, on a three-year lease, would be $600 (£300) a month. E-mail this to a friend Printable version Bookmark with:DeliciousDiggredditFacebookStumbleUponWhat are these?

RALEIGH, N.C. - Democrat Barack Obama on Monday seized on heightened concerns about the economy, tying John McCain to the Bush administration's recent record of soaring gasoline prices and slumping employment.

Hillary Clinton will withdraw from the race to become the Democratic candidate for the US presidency, and back her rival Barack Obama, her campaign says. On Tuesday, Mr Obama gained enough delegates to win the nomination, after the final votes of the primary season. Mrs Clinton has still not admitted in public that she lost the contest, but on Saturday she will do so "and express her support for Senator Obama". Mr Obama has already announced a team to help select his running mate. Reports that Mrs Clinton was ready to concede came after she made a conference call to senior Democrats in Congress. At a Democratic Party event in Washington, Mrs Clinton will also "express her support... for party unity", her communications director Howard Wolfson said. Earlier, it had been announced that the event would be held on Friday, but Mr Wolfson said it had been delayed a day "to accommodate more of Senator Clinton's supporters who want to attend". The BBC's Jane O'Brien in Washington says that as Mr Obama was claiming victory, Hillary Clinton stunned even her own supporters with a speech that offered no indication that she was giving up. There is speculation that the delay in conceding was an attempt to position herself as a possible vice-president, our correspondent adds. Clinton 'open' DELEGATE COUNT Winner: Needs 2,118 delegates Super-delegates: Obama, 389; Clinton, 282 Total delegates: Obama, 2,154; Clinton, 1,919 South Dakota and Montana: Obama, 25; Clinton, 13 Source: AP at 0230 GMT on 5 June Mr Obama's three-member panel to look for a presidential running mate comprises Caroline Kennedy, daughter of President John Kennedy, former deputy Attorney General Eric Holder and Jim Johnson. Mr Johnson performed the same selection task for John Kerry in 2004. "Senator Obama is pleased to have three talented and dedicated individuals managing this rigorous process," said Bill Burton, a spokesman for the Illinois senator.

Actress Gina Gershon is demanding a retraction from Vanity Fair after the magazine reported "high-end Hollywood dinner-party gossip" that former President Bill Clinton "has been seen visiting" her in California. Gina Gershon accuses Vanity Fair reporter of "irresponsible journalism," lying. Vanity Fair Magazine stands by article and refuses to run a correction. Former President Bill Clinton "has been seen visiting" her in California. Former president Bill called the VF reporter--the husband of his former press secretary Dee Dee Myers, "a scumbag" but later apologized.

Strikes and blockades staged over the past three weeks by French fishermen spread this week to Spanish ports; Italy, Portugal, and Greece expect more of the same on Friday as mariners seek to force national governments to offset marine diesel prices, which have shot up by 40% since January. Single boat owners and entire trawler fleets face a real threat of bankruptcy. Matters are no better on land. On Tuesday, hundreds of British truck drivers in London and Cardiff brought traffic to a crawl in a campaign to get their government to lower taxes on diesel fuel, which now costs over $11 per U.S. gallon (3.8 liters). Other businesses owners who rely heavily on gas use — including farmers, ambulance and taxi drivers, and private bus companies — have joined the protest movement or are preparing to do so.

Op-Ed Contributors Kennedy Talked, Khrushchev Triumphed E-Mail By NATHAN THRALL and JESSE JAMES WILKINS May 22, 2008 IN his inaugural address, President John F. Kennedy expressed in two eloquent sentences, often invoked by Barack Obama, a policy that turned out to be one of his presidency’s — indeed one of the cold war’s — most consequential: “Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.” Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Kennedy’s special assistant, called those sentences “the distinctive note” of the inaugural. They have also been a distinctive note in Senator Obama’s campaign, and were made even more prominent last week when President Bush, in a speech to Israel’s Parliament, disparaged a willingness to negotiate with America’s adversaries as appeasement. Senator Obama defended his position by again enlisting Kennedy’s legacy: “If George Bush and John McCain have a problem with direct diplomacy led by the president of the United States, then they can explain why they have a problem with John F. Kennedy, because that’s what he did with Khrushchev.” But Kennedy’s one presidential meeting with Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet premier, suggests that there are legitimate reasons to fear negotiating with one’s adversaries. Although Kennedy was keenly aware of some of the risks of such meetings — his Harvard thesis was titled “Appeasement at Munich” — he embarked on a summit meeting with Khrushchev in Vienna in June 1961, a move that would be recorded as one of the more self-destructive American actions of the cold war, and one that contributed to the most dangerous crisis of the nuclear age. Senior American statesmen like George Kennan advised Kennedy not to rush into a high-level meeting, arguing that Khrushchev had engaged in anti-American propaganda and that the issues at hand could as well be addressed by lower-level diplomats. Kennedy’s own secretary of state, Dean Rusk, had argued much the same in a Foreign Affairs article the previous year: “Is it wise to gamble so heavily? Are not these two men who should be kept apart until others have found a sure meeting ground of accommodation between them?” But Kennedy went ahead, and for two days he was pummeled by the Soviet leader. Despite his eloquence, Kennedy was no match as a sparring partner, and offered only token resistance as Khrushchev lectured him on the hypocrisy of American foreign policy, cautioned America against supporting “old, moribund, reactionary regimes” and asserted that the United States, which had valiantly risen against the British, now stood “against other peoples following its suit.” Khrushchev used the opportunity of a face-to-face meeting to warn Kennedy that his country could not be intimidated and that it was “very unwise” for the United States to surround the Soviet Union with military bases. Kennedy’s aides convinced the press at the time that behind closed doors the president was performing well, but American diplomats in attendance, including the ambassador to the Soviet Union, later said they were shocked that Kennedy had taken so much abuse. Paul Nitze, the assistant secretary of defense, said the meeting was “just a disaster.” Khrushchev’s aide, after the first day, said the American president seemed “very inexperienced, even immature.” Khrushchev agreed, noting that the youthful Kennedy was “too intelligent and too weak.” The Soviet leader left Vienna elated — and with a very low opinion of the leader of the free world. Kennedy’s assessment of his own performance was no less severe. Only a few minutes after parting with Khrushchev, Kennedy, a World War II veteran, told James Reston of The New York Times that the summit meeting had been the “roughest thing in my life.” Kennedy went on: “He just beat the hell out of me. I’ve got a terrible problem if he thinks I’m inexperienced and have no guts. Until we remove those ideas we won’t get anywhere with him.” A little more than two months later, Khrushchev gave the go-ahead to begin erecting what would become the Berlin Wall. Kennedy had resigned himself to it, telling his aides in private that “a wall is a hell of a lot better than a war.” The following spring, Khrushchev made plans to “throw a hedgehog at Uncle Sam’s pants”: nuclear missiles in Cuba. And while there were many factors that led to the missile crisis, it is no exaggeration to say that the impression Khrushchev formed at Vienna — of Kennedy as ineffective — was among them.

"In China, we say that we share the same blood, we are basically brothers and sisters. And we want to help each other," Hang Kai, who helped organize the event, told CBC News on Monday. "We know that now, if we can help them a little bit, maybe some lives will be saved, some people will recover, they can come back to a normal, happy life." Some people lined up for $15 haircuts, while others, like resident Hua Zhang, turned down vendors' offers for lower prices on items she bought. "The people selling and stuff, they would say, 'Oh, do you want it? We could give you a lower price' … I don't need a lower price. I just want to buy, even at a higher price," said Zhang, whose husband is in China helping rescue efforts. "This is not because [of] money. We want to help. Even [though] we are in Canada, we want to help." All the money from Monday's yard sale will be donated to China through the Red Cross. Earlier on Monday, millions of people across China stopped for three minutes of silence, as the country began three days of mourning for last week's earthquake victims. The Chinese government's official death toll stands at 34,073 as of Monday, with about 245,000 people injured and more than 29,000 people missing.

By CAROL VOGEL Published: May 15, 2008 A 1976 triptych by Francis Bacon brought $86.3 million on Wednesday night at Sotheby’s, becoming the most expensive work of contemporary art ever sold at auction and a retort to doomsayers who had predicted that the art market would falter seriously this season because of broad economic anxieties. Skip to next paragraph Enlarge This Image Sotheby's/Associated Press This undated photo released by Sotheby's shows the three panels of Francis Bacon's "Triptych, 1976." “Recession? What recession?” Barbara Gladstone, a Chelsea dealer, said jokingly as she was leaving the salesroom. Although the sale had top-quality art and dealers predicted it would be a success, it went well beyond even the auction house’s expectations, bringing in $362 million, above the sale’s high $356 million estimate. Only 10 of the 83 works failed to sell, and 18 artist records were set for names ranging from Yves Klein and Piero Manzoni to Tom Wesselmann and Takashi Murakami. By far the most exciting moment of the evening was when “Triptych,” Mr. Bacon’s comment on his own angst — a vast (each of the three panels measures about 6 ½ feet by 5 feet) and densely painted allegorical painting came up for sale. Three telephone bidders went for the painting, which was being sold by the Moueix family, producers of Château Pétrus wines. Hailing the painting as “a landmark of the 20th-century canon,” Sotheby’s had estimated it would sell for $70 million. (Final prices include the commission paid to Sotheby’s: 25 percent of the first $20,000, 20 percent of the next $20,000 to $500,000 and 12 percent of the rest. Estimates do not reflect commissions.) Two monochrome works by the artist Yves Klein fetched giant prices. Offered from the collection of Walther Lauffs, a German industrialist who died in 1981, and his wife, Helga, “MG9” (1962), a gold leaf on panel, proved wildly popular. It carried an estimate of $6 million to $8 million, but Philippe Ségalot, a Manhattan dealer, bought the painting for $23.5 million. Mr. Ségalot, who spoke French on a cellphone as he bid, also bought “IKB1,” a 1960 deep blue canvas that had been expected to bring $5 million to $7 million but fetched $17.4 million. (As soon as the hammer fell on both paintings, speculation started spreading through the salesroom that Mr. Ségalot was bidding for François Pinault, the luxury goods magnate and owner of Christie’s, but Mr. Ségalot declined to comment on the buyer for whom he was bidding.) Abstract images have been strong sellers in general this week. Gerhard Richter’s “Abstract Picture” from 1990, a dreamy canvas of yellows, violets, blues and orange, went for $15.1 million, far above its $5 million to $7 million estimate. The buyer was yet another mystery telephone bidder. Marianne Boesky, who for years had represented Mr. Murakami before he jumped to the powerhouse Gagosian Gallery two years ago, was selling one of the artist’s outrageous sculptures, “My Lonesome Cowboy,” another cast of which is on view as part of the artist’s retrospective that opened last month at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. The sculpture of the naked cowboy brought another record price, selling to a telephone bidder for $15.1 million, nearly four times its $4 million high estimate. Mr. Murakami, wearing his signature baggy blue jeans and his hair in a ponytail, was standing in the back of the salesroom on Wednesday night. People in the audience believed he spent $1.1 million for a 2001 sculpture by the Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara, “Light My Fire,” a sculpture of a child on a tree stump holding a flame. Three works by the art world titan Robert Rauschenberg were on offer Wednesday night, and his death this week at 82 prompted avid speculation on how they would fare. Historically, auction prices tend to dip immediately after an artist dies in anticipation that long-withheld works will flood the market. But “Overdrive,” a 1963 silkscreen collage incorporating images of a bird, a stop sign, a one-way street sign and other objects, made yet another record price, bringing $14.6 million. Sotheby’s had thought it would make $10 million to $15 million.

NEW YORK — Jimmy Fallon will officially be given the keys to NBC's "Late Night" franchise following Conan O'Brien's exit. A person close to the negotiations who spoke on condition of anonymity because the announcement hadn't been made confirmed the widely rumored change Sunday and said a news conference was planned for Monday. All that's left is an official date for NBC's transition: O'Brien moving out West to take over for Jay Leno on the "Tonight" show and Fallon following in the next time slot. Fallon was a "Saturday Night Live" cast member before leaving for a movie career in 2004. He has had mixed success, with his most notable role as a childlike Boston Red Sox fan and Drew Barrymore's paramour in "Fever Pitch." He signed a deal with NBC in 2007 that was widely seen as a way to keep him in the fold until the time came for Monday's announcement. It would be hard for him to have a rockier transition than O'Brien had when he took over from David Letterman in the mid-1990s. O'Brien was a writer with a quick sense of humor but a mystery to the television audience, and he was savaged in early reviews. NBC nearly fired him but persevered, and O'Brien grew into the role. It was in large part to keep O'Brien happy that NBC announced four years ago that he would replace Leno next year.

By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ Representative Anthony D. Weiner, Democrat of Brooklyn and Queens, drives a 2008 Chevrolet Impala, leased for $219 a month. Representative Michael R. McNulty, a Democrat from the Albany area, gets around in a 2007 Mercury Mariner hybrid, a sport utility vehicle, for $816 a month. “It gets a little better than 25 miles a gallon,” Mr. McNulty said. Charles B. Rangel, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, is not so caught up in the question of gas mileage. He leases a 2004 Cadillac DeVille for $777.54 a month. The car is 17 feet long with a 300-horsepower engine and seats five comfortably. “It’s one of the bigger Cadillacs,” Mr. Rangel, of Harlem, said cheerfully this week. “I’ve got a desk in it. It’s like an airplane.”

The Bryant Park Project, April 22, 2008 · It took 4 million years of evolution to perfect the foot, and humans have been wrecking that perfection with every step since they first donned shoes, New York magazine's Adam Sternbergh says. "Everyone who wears shoes walks wrong," he says, echoing the headline of his recent article, "You Walk Wrong." Sternbergh calls the ubiquity of footwear a "conspiracy of idiocy." He points out the probability that at no point did any shoemaker say, "Let's design something that works with your foot." In the Middle Ages, for example, people began wearing shoes with higher heels to avoid stepping in other people's excrement. Today, high heels are considered sexy. Whatever their reasons for wearing the shoes they wear, people don't usually consider whether a shoe actually works with their foot, he says.

The rapid rise in food prices could push 100 million people in poor countries deeper into poverty, World Bank head, Robert Zoellick, has said. His warning follows that from the leader of the International Monetary Fund, who said hundreds of thousands of people are at risk of starvation. Mr Zoellick proposed an action plan to boost long-run agricultural production. There have been food riots recently in a number of countries, including Haiti, the Philippines and Egypt. "Based on a rough analysis, we estimate that a doubling of food prices over the last three years could potentially push 100 million people in low-income countries deeper into poverty," Mr Zoellick said. His proposal for a "new deal" to tackle the international food crisis was endorsed by the World Bank's steering committee of finance and development ministers at a meeting in Washington. The World Bank and its sister organisation, the IMF have held a weekend of meetings that addressed rising food and energy prices as well as the credit crisis upsetting global financial markets.