HealthBridge Managemant Ordered to Reinstate Striking Workers

A federal judge in Hartford has ordered a Connecticut nursing home chain to reinstate nearly 600 workers who have been on strike since July 3, and to rescind the pension and health care cuts it had imposed.

Judge Robert N. Chatigny of the United States District Court in Connecticut ruled on Tuesday night that the nursing homes’ owner, HealthBridge Management, had broken the law by refusing to bargain in good faith and by imposing the cuts before a true negotiating impasse had been reached.

Judge Chatigny issued an injunction that ordered HealthBridge to reinstate the workers by next Monday, even if it means ousting hundreds of the replacement workers hired to run the nursing homes after the strike began.

“Everybody is quite happy about the decision,” said Vern Scatliffe, a nurse’s aide, as he picketed outside Danbury Health Care Center, one of the five nursing homes — the others are in Milford, Newington, Stamford and Westport — where the workers walked out to protest the cuts HealthBridge had imposed. “The judge’s order is a big relief to me. I can now go back to work and earn my living again.”

Saying the company was disappointed by the judge’s decision, Lisa Crutchfield, a HealthBridge spokeswoman, said it had filed an appeal with the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, asking it to overturn the injunction.

“We are acting in the best interests of our residents — their well-being is paramount to us,” she said. Ms. Crutchfield said the order to reinstate the strikers would “expose residents to the very people who sought to do them harm” during the walkout. HealthBridge has accused the strikers of several acts of sabotage, including changing the names on several patients’ doors and wheelchairs and switching the names of some residents in Alzheimer’s units.

Deborah Chernoff, a spokeswoman for the strikers’ union, the New England Health Care Employees Union, said it had opposed any sabotage. She suggested that the allegations themselves were suspicious, noting that they were first made two weeks after the strike began.

The strike began after HealthBridge declared the negotiations deadlocked and then imposed changes that included freezing the workers’ pensions, requiring many to pay at least $6,000 more a year for family health coverage and eliminating six paid sick days and a week’s vacation for many workers.

Two weeks after the strike began, the striking employees, who belong to a branch of the Service Employees International Union, offered to return to work, but the company refused to take them back. Judge Chatigny said it was “just and proper” to reinstate them “because there is a pressing need to restore the status quo” from before the company made the changes, which he found to be illegal.

The judge acted only after the National Labor Relations Board’s office in Hartford sought an injunction.

David Pickus, president of the strikers’ union, said, “This ruling is a decisive victory for workers and a sign that HealthBridge cannot get away with its unfair and illegal treatment of its employees.”

Read More..

HealthBridge Managemant Ordered to Reinstate Striking Workers

A federal judge in Hartford has ordered a Connecticut nursing home chain to reinstate nearly 600 workers who have been on strike since July 3, and to rescind the pension and health care cuts it had imposed.

Judge Robert N. Chatigny of the United States District Court in Connecticut ruled on Tuesday night that the nursing homes’ owner, HealthBridge Management, had broken the law by refusing to bargain in good faith and by imposing the cuts before a true negotiating impasse had been reached.

Judge Chatigny issued an injunction that ordered HealthBridge to reinstate the workers by next Monday, even if it means ousting hundreds of the replacement workers hired to run the nursing homes after the strike began.

“Everybody is quite happy about the decision,” said Vern Scatliffe, a nurse’s aide, as he picketed outside Danbury Health Care Center, one of the five nursing homes — the others are in Milford, Newington, Stamford and Westport — where the workers walked out to protest the cuts HealthBridge had imposed. “The judge’s order is a big relief to me. I can now go back to work and earn my living again.”

Saying the company was disappointed by the judge’s decision, Lisa Crutchfield, a HealthBridge spokeswoman, said it had filed an appeal with the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, asking it to overturn the injunction.

“We are acting in the best interests of our residents — their well-being is paramount to us,” she said. Ms. Crutchfield said the order to reinstate the strikers would “expose residents to the very people who sought to do them harm” during the walkout. HealthBridge has accused the strikers of several acts of sabotage, including changing the names on several patients’ doors and wheelchairs and switching the names of some residents in Alzheimer’s units.

Deborah Chernoff, a spokeswoman for the strikers’ union, the New England Health Care Employees Union, said it had opposed any sabotage. She suggested that the allegations themselves were suspicious, noting that they were first made two weeks after the strike began.

The strike began after HealthBridge declared the negotiations deadlocked and then imposed changes that included freezing the workers’ pensions, requiring many to pay at least $6,000 more a year for family health coverage and eliminating six paid sick days and a week’s vacation for many workers.

Two weeks after the strike began, the striking employees, who belong to a branch of the Service Employees International Union, offered to return to work, but the company refused to take them back. Judge Chatigny said it was “just and proper” to reinstate them “because there is a pressing need to restore the status quo” from before the company made the changes, which he found to be illegal.

The judge acted only after the National Labor Relations Board’s office in Hartford sought an injunction.

David Pickus, president of the strikers’ union, said, “This ruling is a decisive victory for workers and a sign that HealthBridge cannot get away with its unfair and illegal treatment of its employees.”

Read More..

DealBook: Yahoo Shakes Up Its Board

Yahoo announced a number of changes to its board on Thursday, including the addition of Max Levchin, a co-founder of PayPal.

The company also said two directors were stepping down: Brad Smith, the chief executive of Intuit, and David W. Kenny, chief executive of the Weather Channel.

Yahoo’s latest board changes signal its continued push to become a top technology company once more, a strategy it began in July, when it hired Marissa Mayer away from Google to become its new chief executive.

Since taking over, Ms. Mayer has emphasized ways to modernize Yahoo staples like its e-mail and the Flickr photo service, to help the company square off against ever-newer competitors.

Bringing in Mr. Levchin is intended to help with that push and show a commitment to developing enticing new offerings. He served as PayPal’s chief technology officer before forming Slide, a company that eventually helped produce Web applications for Facebook. Google bought Slide for about $180 million two years ago, and Mr. Levchin left the Internet giant when it closed Slide last year.

“Max is someone I’ve admired throughout my career for his phenomenal sense for great products and keen focus on user experiences,” Ms. Mayer said in a statement. “I’m confident that his strong product and technology expertise will be a tremendous asset to Yahoo as we work to transform the world’s daily habits.”

He will serve as the fourth director nominated by Daniel S. Loeb, the activist hedge fund manager who joined Yahoo’s board in May after mounting a prominent challenge to the company’s directors. Mr. Loeb’s other directors, besides himself, are Michael J. Wolf, a media consultant, and Harry J. Wilson, a turnaround expert who served on the Obama administration’s automotive task force.

Since joining Yahoo’s board, Mr. Loeb has helped orchestrate a number of changes, including hiring Ms. Mayer.

Mr. Loeb was introduced to Mr. Levchin by Mr. Wolf, who had served on Slide’s board of advisers. They met in Silicon Valley ahead of the proxy fight, when Mr. Loeb was recruiting candidates for Yahoo board seats.

One of the departing directors, Mr. Smith, was a main supervisor of Yahoo’s turnaround efforts, including its talks with private equity firms about a capital infusion into the Web company and its eventual deal to sell some of its stake in Alibaba back to its Chinese Internet partner.

The other, Mr. Kenny, became the Weather Channel’s chief executive in January and was formerly the president of Akamai Technologies. Mr. Kenny had briefly considered campaigning for Yahoo’s top spot last year.

Both men were stepping down to focus on their respective companies, according to Yahoo.

“Both David and Brad played critical roles in bringing me to Yahoo, so I’m especially grateful for the opportunity and trust they’ve placed in me,” Ms. Mayer said. “We will miss their leadership and partnership, and I know I speak for everyone at Yahoo in wishing them the best.”

A version of this article appeared in print on 12/14/2012, on page B6 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Yahoo Shakes Up Its Board And Adds PayPal Co-Founder.

Read More..

Panetta Orders Deployment of U.S. Anti-Missile Units in Turkey

Bernd Wustneck/DPA, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

German soldiers with a Patriot missile battery earlier this month in Bad Suelze, Germany.

INCIRLIK AIR BASE, Turkey — Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta signed an official deployment order on Friday to send 400 American military personnel and two Patriot air defense batteries to Turkey as cross-border tensions with Syria intensify.

The American batteries will be part of a broader push to beef up Turkey’s defenses that will also include the deployment of four other Patriot batteries — two from Germany and two from the Netherlands.

All six units will be under NATO’s command and are scheduled to be operational by the end of January, according to officials in Washington.

George Little, the Pentagon spokesman, said Mr. Panetta signed the order as he flew from Afghanistan to this air base in southern Turkey, close to the border with Syria.

“The United States has been supporting Turkey in its efforts to defend itself,” Mr. Little said.

The order “will deploy some 400 U.S. personnel to Turkey to support two Patriot missile batteries,” Mr. Little added, and the personnel and Patriot batteries will arrive in Turkey “in coming weeks.” He did not disclose where the Patriots would be located.

After landing at Incirlik Friday, Mr. Panetta told a gathering of American Air Force personnel of his decision to deploy the Patriots.

He said the United States was working with Turkey, Jordan and Israel to monitor Syria’s stockpiles of chemical weapons, and warned of “serious consequences” if Syria used them, but he did not offer any specifics.

“We have drawn up plans for presenting to the president,” Mr. Panetta said. “We have to be ready.”

Turkey, which has been supporting the Syrian opposition to President Bashar al-Assad, has been worried it is vulnerable to Syrian missiles, including Scuds that might be tipped with chemical weapons. Those concerns were heightened by reports of increased activity at some of Syria’s chemical sites, though Mr. Panetta said this week that intelligence about chemical weapons activity in Syria had “leveled off.”

The recent Scud missile attacks mounted by forces loyal to Mr. Assad against rebels in northern Syria have only added to Turkey’s concerns. The Scud missiles fired at the rebels were armed with conventional warheads, but the attacks showed that the Assad government is prepared to use missiles as it struggles to slow rebel gains.

Syria denied Thursday that it had fired Scud missiles this week. But NATO’s secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said that the intelligence gathered by the alliance indicated that they were Scud-type missiles. “In general, I think the regime in Damascus is approaching collapse,” he said. “I think now it’s only a question of time.”

NATO foreign ministers last week endorsed the decision to send Patriot batteries to Turkey. The details of how many each nation would send were not worked out until this week, officials said.

In preparation for the deployment, allied officials had conducted surveys of 10 potential sites, mostly in southeastern Turkey, that could be defended by one or more Patriot batteries.

But NATO nations do not have enough batteries to cover all of the sites. With tensions building with Iran and North Korea defying the United States and its Asian allies by launching a long-range rocket, American officials did not want to send more than a few Patriot batteries to Turkey, especially since it is not clear how long they will be needed.

But NATO diplomats said that the goal was to show enough of a commitment to Turkey’s defense to deter a Syrian attack.

It will take three weeks to ship and deploy the two American Patriot batteries, a Defense Department official said.

One allied official said it might be possible to speed up the deployment of the German and Dutch batteries if necessary. Each of those nations will also send up to 400 troops.

The United States, Germany and the Netherlands are the only NATO members that have the advanced PAC-3 Patriot system.

The Patriot batteries in Turkey will be linked to NATO’s air-defense system. The response by the missile batteries would be nearly automatic, firing interceptor missiles to destroy the target by ramming into it, a tactic the military calls “hit to kill.”

Thom Shanker reported from Incirlik Air Base, Turkey, and Eric Schmitt and Michael R. Gordon from Washington.

Read More..

Stocks in Wait-and-See Mode

Stocks on Wall Street opened little changed on Thursday after data showed first time claims for jobless benefits fell sharply last week, but investors were cautious about making aggressive bets in the midst of ongoing “fiscal cliff” negotiations.

The three main stock indexes — the Standard & Poor’s 500, the Dow Jones industrial average and the Nasdaq composite index — were all flat in morning trading.

European shares were slightly lower by afternoon. Finance ministers in the European Union reached a deal to make the European Central Bank the bloc’s top banking supervisor. The move could boost confidence in leaders’ ability to tackle the region’s sovereign debt crisis.

Still, global equities gains were likely to be constrained as the set of tax increases and spending cuts that are set to come into effect in the United States in the new year remained at the forefront of investors’ minds. Negotiators on Wednesday warned the showdown over reaching a deal on the so-called fiscal cliff could drag on past Christmas.

The Federal Reserve on Wednesday announced a fresh bout of stimulus for the American economy, but markets focused on comments from Ben S. Bernanke, the Fed chairman, who reiterated that monetary policy would not be enough to offset going over the fiscal cliff.

Investors were worried that doing so could send the economy back into recession, though most expect a deal will be struck eventually.

“Obviously, people still have their eyes on the ‘fiscal cliff’ negotiations,” said Peter Jankovskis, co-chief investment officer at OakBrook Investments LLC in Lisle, Ill. “It’s just a wait-and-see mode.”

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 29,000 to a seasonally adjusted 343,000, pointing to healing in the labor market.

Separate reports showed producer prices fell more than expected in November, while retail sales rebounded.

Shares of Best Buy surged more than 15 percent after a report that the company’s founder is expected to make a fully financed offer to buy the consumer electronics retailer by the end of the week.

Sprint Nextel offered $2.1 billion to buy the rest of Clearwire Corp to get full ownership of its wireless spectrum. Shares of Clearwire jumped 11.6 percent, while Sprint slipped 0.7 percent.

CVS Caremark gained 4.9 percent after it said it expects higher earnings next year.

Read More..

Another Look at a Drink Ingredient, Brominated Vegetable Oil

James Edward Bates for The New York Times

Sarah Kavanagh, 15, of Hattiesburg, Miss., started an online petition asking PepsiCo to change Gatorade’s formula.

Sarah Kavanagh and her little brother were looking forward to the bottles of Gatorade they had put in the refrigerator after playing outdoors one hot, humid afternoon last month in Hattiesburg, Miss.

But before she took a sip, Sarah, a dedicated vegetarian, did what she often does and checked the label to make sure no animal products were in the drink. One ingredient, brominated vegetable oil, caught her eye.

“I knew it probably wasn’t from an animal because it had vegetable in the name, but I still wanted to know what it was, so I Googled it,” Ms. Kavanagh said. “A page popped up with a long list of possible side effects, including neurological disorders and altered thyroid hormones. I didn’t expect that.”

She threw the product away and started a petition on Change.org, a nonprofit Web site, that has almost 200,000 signatures. Ms. Kavanagh, 15, hopes her campaign will persuade PepsiCo, Gatorade’s maker, to consider changing the drink’s formulation.

Jeff Dahncke, a spokesman for PepsiCo, noted that brominated vegetable oil had been deemed safe for consumption by federal regulators. “As standard practice, we constantly evaluate our formulas and ingredients to ensure they comply with federal regulations and meet the high quality standards our consumers and athletes expect — from functionality to great taste,” he said in an e-mail.

In fact, about 10 percent of drinks sold in the United States contain brominated vegetable oil, including Mountain Dew, also made by PepsiCo; Powerade, Fanta Orange and Fresca from Coca-Cola; and Squirt and Sunkist Peach Soda, made by the Dr Pepper Snapple Group.

The ingredient is added often to citrus drinks to help keep the fruit flavoring evenly distributed; without it, the flavoring would separate.

Use of the substance in the United States has been debated for more than three decades, so Ms. Kavanagh’s campaign most likely is quixotic. But the European Union has long banned the substance from foods, requiring use of other ingredients. Japan recently moved to do the same.

“B.V.O. is banned other places in the world, so these companies already have a replacement for it,” Ms. Kavanagh said. “I don’t see why they don’t just make the switch.” To that, companies say the switch would be too costly.

The renewed debate, which has brought attention to the arcane world of additive regulation, comes as consumers show increasing interest in food ingredients and have new tools to learn about them. Walmart’s app, for instance, allows access to lists of ingredients in foods in its stores.

Brominated vegetable oil contains bromine, the element found in brominated flame retardants, used in things like upholstered furniture and children’s products. Research has found brominate flame retardants building up in the body and breast milk, and animal and some human studies have linked them to neurological impairment, reduced fertility, changes in thyroid hormones and puberty at an earlier age.

Limited studies of the effects of brominated vegetable oil in animals and in humans found buildups of bromine in fatty tissues. Rats that ingested large quantities of the substance in their diets developed heart lesions.

Its use in foods dates to the 1930s, well before Congress amended the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act to add regulation of new food additives to the responsibilities of the Food and Drug Administration. But Congress exempted two groups of additives, those already sanctioned by the F.D.A. or the Department of Agriculture, or those experts deemed “generally recognized as safe.”

The second exemption created what Tom Neltner, director of the Pew Charitable Trusts’ food additives project, a three-year investigation into how food additives are regulated, calls “the loophole that swallowed the law.” A company can create a new additive, publish safety data about it on its Web site and pay a law firm or consulting firm to vet it to establish it as “generally recognized as safe” — without ever notifying the F.D.A., Mr. Neltner said.

Read More..

Another Look at a Drink Ingredient, Brominated Vegetable Oil

James Edward Bates for The New York Times

Sarah Kavanagh, 15, of Hattiesburg, Miss., started an online petition asking PepsiCo to change Gatorade’s formula.

Sarah Kavanagh and her little brother were looking forward to the bottles of Gatorade they had put in the refrigerator after playing outdoors one hot, humid afternoon last month in Hattiesburg, Miss.

But before she took a sip, Sarah, a dedicated vegetarian, did what she often does and checked the label to make sure no animal products were in the drink. One ingredient, brominated vegetable oil, caught her eye.

“I knew it probably wasn’t from an animal because it had vegetable in the name, but I still wanted to know what it was, so I Googled it,” Ms. Kavanagh said. “A page popped up with a long list of possible side effects, including neurological disorders and altered thyroid hormones. I didn’t expect that.”

She threw the product away and started a petition on Change.org, a nonprofit Web site, that has almost 200,000 signatures. Ms. Kavanagh, 15, hopes her campaign will persuade PepsiCo, Gatorade’s maker, to consider changing the drink’s formulation.

Jeff Dahncke, a spokesman for PepsiCo, noted that brominated vegetable oil had been deemed safe for consumption by federal regulators. “As standard practice, we constantly evaluate our formulas and ingredients to ensure they comply with federal regulations and meet the high quality standards our consumers and athletes expect — from functionality to great taste,” he said in an e-mail.

In fact, about 10 percent of drinks sold in the United States contain brominated vegetable oil, including Mountain Dew, also made by PepsiCo; Powerade, Fanta Orange and Fresca from Coca-Cola; and Squirt and Sunkist Peach Soda, made by the Dr Pepper Snapple Group.

The ingredient is added often to citrus drinks to help keep the fruit flavoring evenly distributed; without it, the flavoring would separate.

Use of the substance in the United States has been debated for more than three decades, so Ms. Kavanagh’s campaign most likely is quixotic. But the European Union has long banned the substance from foods, requiring use of other ingredients. Japan recently moved to do the same.

“B.V.O. is banned other places in the world, so these companies already have a replacement for it,” Ms. Kavanagh said. “I don’t see why they don’t just make the switch.” To that, companies say the switch would be too costly.

The renewed debate, which has brought attention to the arcane world of additive regulation, comes as consumers show increasing interest in food ingredients and have new tools to learn about them. Walmart’s app, for instance, allows access to lists of ingredients in foods in its stores.

Brominated vegetable oil contains bromine, the element found in brominated flame retardants, used in things like upholstered furniture and children’s products. Research has found brominate flame retardants building up in the body and breast milk, and animal and some human studies have linked them to neurological impairment, reduced fertility, changes in thyroid hormones and puberty at an earlier age.

Limited studies of the effects of brominated vegetable oil in animals and in humans found buildups of bromine in fatty tissues. Rats that ingested large quantities of the substance in their diets developed heart lesions.

Its use in foods dates to the 1930s, well before Congress amended the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act to add regulation of new food additives to the responsibilities of the Food and Drug Administration. But Congress exempted two groups of additives, those already sanctioned by the F.D.A. or the Department of Agriculture, or those experts deemed “generally recognized as safe.”

The second exemption created what Tom Neltner, director of the Pew Charitable Trusts’ food additives project, a three-year investigation into how food additives are regulated, calls “the loophole that swallowed the law.” A company can create a new additive, publish safety data about it on its Web site and pay a law firm or consulting firm to vet it to establish it as “generally recognized as safe” — without ever notifying the F.D.A., Mr. Neltner said.

Read More..

Gadgetwise Blog: Q&A: Filling Your iPhone's E-Wallet

How exactly does this Passbook app work on the new iPhone?

Passbook is Apple’s version of an electronic wallet. It can be used for storing things like digital boarding passes sent by your airline, customer loyalty cards from stores like Target, Walgreen’s and Starbucks, coupons and advance movie tickets from sites like Fandango. The Passbook app works on iOS 6 for iPhone and the iPod Touch, but is not currently available for the iPad.

When you visit a Passbook-friendly establishment, the pass stored in the app can be scanned by the employee and you can get onto the plane, into the theater or save some money on drugstore purchases. If you have the phone’s location services turned on and it senses you are near a store that you have set up to use with Passbook, the card will even appear on your lock screen, ready to go.

If you have opened the Passbook app at least once, you have probably seen a screen that invites you to download some Passbook-compatible apps from the App Store. If you find one you can use, download it to your phone. You can also add passes to Passbook from store Web sites or those that have been sent by mail or Apple’s iMessage service.

Once you get some passes in there, open the Passbook app and tap the one you want to use. (The independent site, Apps For Passbook, also keeps a running log of what is out there. Apple has its own guide to using Passbook. Reports from users testing a software update to iOS 6 say that Apple is trying to make Passbook easier to understand for those just starting out with it, so things may get better soon.

Read More..

Nurse in Royal Prank Call Was Found Hanged, British Inquest Is Told

LONDON — A nurse who apparently committed suicide after being tricked by a prank call from an Australian radio station involving the pregnant Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge, was found hanging by a scarf and had left several notes, a preliminary inquest hearing was told on Thursday.

The details were the first to emerge of how the nurse, Jacintha Saldanha, 46, had died.

The episode transfixed many in Britain and Australia, seeming to combine a fascination with the royal family, particularly the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, with horror at the outcome of what two Australian disc jockeys pretending to be Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Charles have said began as a harmless stunt.

The radio hosts convinced Ms. Saldanha that they were members of the royal family, and persuaded her to pass on their call to another nurse whom they duped into disclosing medical information about the duchess, who was being treated for acute morning sickness at the King Edward VII hospital.

The call was broadcast on Australian radio and went around the world.

Police officials initially declined to offer details of what had happened to Ms. Saldanha, who was married and had two children, beyond saying that an ambulance crew had found her body.

Detective Chief Inspector James Harman told the preliminary inquest hearing at Westminster Coroner’s Court in central London on Thursday that Ms. Saldanha “was found by a colleague and a member of security staff. Sadly, she was found hanging.”

There also “injuries to her wrist,” and three notes were found — two in her room and the third among her possessions. Details of the notes were not disclosed.

“At this time there are no suspicious circumstances,” Mr. Harman said, meaning the police did not suspect the involvement of other people. Ms. Saldanha had been found hanging by a scarf from a wardrobe in her room in the nurses’ quarters at the hospital, the coroner, Fiona Wilcox, was told.

The hearing lasted a matter of minutes and will resume next March 26, Ms. Wilcox said.

Between now and then, Mr. Harman said, he expected officers from Scotland Yard to be in touch with police detectives in Australia to interview witnesses so as to “put the best evidence before you” when the inquest resumes.

British inquests are supposed to determine the cause of death but do not apportion blame.

The family of Ms. Saldanha, who was born in India, did not attend Thursday’s hearing.

The events leading up to the nurse’s death are also unclear. The hospital where she worked — an upscale private facility favored by the British royal family — said it had not disciplined her after the hoax but rather had been “supporting her during this difficult time.”

The royal family also indicated that it had not raised a fuss about the prank by the D.J.’s, Mel Greig and Michael Christian, whose impersonations of the duchess’s in-laws seemed unconvincing to many listeners. The queen is the grandmother of Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge; Prince Charles, the heir to the throne, is his father.

Australian regulators are investigating whether the 2DayFM station breached the terms of its license to broadcast or the code of practice adopted by Australian broadcasters.

Read More..

DealBook: Live Blog: DealBook's Post-Election Conference

The fiscal cliff in the United States, the European debt crisis and the slowdown in China’s economy have all weighed on deal-making. The 2012 election results were supposed to provide some clarity to our fiscal future, but the outcome of the much-debated tax increases and budget cuts remains uncertain. Our inaugural conference, “DealBook: Opportunities for Tomorrow,” will explore the challenges and the possibilities in this environment.

Writers and editors at The New York Times will interview leaders and chief executives from Wall Street to Silicon Valley in a day-long conference at the Times Center in New York. Whether you’re attending in person or watching our video feed above, you can read up-to-minute analysis from our live blog of the day’s events and take part in the conversation on Twitter with the hash tag #DBconf.

The official conference web site includes biographies of the speakers and an agenda for the day’s events.

Read More..