NEWARK THE new United States Attorney for New Jersey, the son of a State Senator and one-time candidate for Governor, promises to step up the Government's fight against organized crime and political corruption.

He is W. Hunt Dumont, whose father is Senator Wayne Dumont Jr., Republican of Phillipsburg. ''The public fails to recognize that the mob would be out of business if it were not for their political connections,'' Mr. Dumont said at his recent swearing-in ceremony, adding that many people were aware of some of the activities of organized crime.

He said that the acceptance of bribes by public officials, thus violating their public trust, ''is a vice that cannot and will not be tolerated.''

At the swearing-in ceremony, which was held at the Federal Courthouse here, the 40-year-old Mr. Dumont told a packed audience that included Governor Byrne and Governor-elect Thomas H. Kean, as well as Federal judges, lawyers and well-wishers, that, although his predecessors had made substantial inroads against corruption, ''we must do more.''

The new Federal prosecutor asserted that ''zeal and hard work'' would make up for budget cuts that the Reagan Administration had targeted for his office. In the fight against corruption, he said, ''we will go into the cities and counties, we will utilize investigative grand juries and we will be a place where the citizenry can come when they are fed up.''

Mr. Dumont, who has severed his 10-year partnership with the law firm of Robinson, Wayne and Greenberg, said that political corruption and organized crime would be his two ''prime areas'' of concern. However, he also pledged to ''fearlessly and courageously prosecute'' criminal activity in other areas.

A special effort will be made against labor racketeering, Mr. Dumont said, adding that ''certain labor unions have been at the vortex of criminal activity'' and had become the vehicle for taking money out of legitimate businesses.

Such activity, he said, ''puts a tariff'' on goods passing through the state. In addition, Mr. Dumont pledged to continue the fight against white-collar crime, the illegal disposal of toxic wastes and narcotics traffic.

At one point during his remarks, the dark-haired, bespectaled Mr. Dumont almost lost his composure. His voice choked and faltered as he spoke of his father, a veteran Republican lawmaker from Phillipsburg.

He said that 30 years ago, when he was 10 years old, he held the Bible when his father was sworn in as a State Senator for the first time, and that he was honored that his father could do the same for him at his swearing in.

Mr. Dumont takes over an office that has been the scene of controversy regarding the Abscam investigation into political corruption. Top members of the staff have been very vocal in their criticism of the Government's handling of the proceeding, and there have been accusations that the office had ''dragged its feet'' in the inquiry.

Mr. Dumont pledged that, under his leadership, the United States Attorney's office here would be run on a nonpartisan, nonpolitical basis and that it would be his policy not to attend political events or political functions.

''This office will stand for integrity in public office,'' he said. ''This office will stand for a government in which the public servants serve the public, and not enrich themselves or a political party.''

Mr. Dumont said that he planned to structure the priorities of the office so as not to burden the Federal courts ''with matters that could be handled at the local level.''

He also emphasized that he would continue the strong cooperation between Federal and state law-enforcement authorities that had been begun by Robert J. Del Tufo. Mr. Dumont's predecessor is William B. Robertson, who had succeeded Mr. Del Tufo.

Illustrations: photo of Wayne Dumont


What with the holidays and vacation, it's taken us until now to clean out all the political papers that accumulated during the 1980 campaign - a process that discloses an anniversary.

It was just a year ago that six Republican candidates mounted a Des Moines stage for the first nationally televised event of the campaign, the Iowa debate. That snowy Saturday night seems long gone, irrelevcant: Ronald Reagan didn't even participate. And yet one wonders, leafing through the ragged old notes and clippings, is it?

Two paramount issues that faced the country then and now are Soviet expansionism and the economy. Both were the subject of paradoxes noted in the Iowa debate by John Anderson.

- On the invasion of Afghanistan, he needled Mr. Reagan, who was sharply critical of President Carter's punitive embargo on grain sales to the Soviet Union. ''It's not easy sitting here in the heart of Iowa, in farm country,'' he said, ''to support an embargo on the ship-ment of grain, but it seems to me that it is passing strange that those who are critical of our foreign policy as ... weak are unwilling to accept ... some of the cost that admittedly has to be borne if we are going to send a clear, certain signal to the Russians that we will not tolerate the kind of conduct that they have just engaged in in Afghanistan.''

Last week, President Carter renewed the grain embargo. What does Mr. Reagan, so strong an advocate of standing up to the Soviets, now say about the embargo? ''Well, I think this is something for a great deal of study.''

- On the economy, Mr. Anderson did some more needling: ''How do you balance the budget, cut taxes and increase defense spending at the same time? It's very simple. You do it with mirrors.''

It's now a year later, there are just two weeks until Inauguration, and guess what the Reaganauts are proposing to do? Balance the budget, cut taxes and increase defense spending.


JERUSALEM FOUR years since Anwar el-Sadat journeyed to Jerusalem, Israelis are having difficulty recalling the exhilaration of that time. The joy has faded into apprehension. The peace process the Egyptian leader initiated - still the region's solitary structure of accord - seems a flimsy shelter of sanity, requiring zealous and passionate protection.

Israel, soon to play its last card of concession under the treaty with Egypt by completing its withdrawal from Sinai, is frantically defending that vulnerable peace. After the assassination of President Sadat, after Senate approval of the Awacs sale to Saudi Arabia, after the Reagan Administration's approving noises about Saudi Crown Prince Fahd's peace plan - which demands five Israeli compromises but offers no explicit Arab guarantees in return - the threshold of alarm here has fallen to a dangerous low. The Government of Menachem Begin points an angry finger at every utterance that fails to fit the intricate provisions of the Camp David accords, while Israelis inside and outside the Government mutter darkly about reconsidering the Sinai withdrawal, mandated for April.

Black and frantic moods tend to rise quickly in this region and then pass. But they can do damage. If anxious impulse replaces calculation in this crucial period, conflicts are waiting to flare.

In southern Lebanon, the Palestine Liberation Organization has used the American-arranged cease-fire in effect since July to double its deployment of heavy artillery and rocket launchers, the Israelis say. In eastern Lebanon, Syrian antiaircraft missiles remain in place, despite Prime Minister Begin's threat to destroy them. Mr. Begin has been stung by domestic criticism for having, in effect, acquiesced in their deployment, which he did under an American promise to work diplomatically for their removal. New Crackdown on the West Bank

In the occupied West Bank, disorder has bubbled up after months of calm. Widespread student demonstrations last week provoked a harsh response: Defense Minister Ariel Sharon closed down Bir Zeit University, the main Palestinian university in the West Bank and a bastion of pro-P.L.O. activism.

In occupied Sinai, well-armed Jewish settlers have taken up positions in abandoned motel rooms and apartments to oppose the return of the land to Egypt. Their resistance reflects apprehension which reaches into the Israeli Cabinet about Egypt's future commitment to peace.

In Cairo, the new Government of President Hosni Mubarak is still consolidating power against the Moslem fundamentalists and secular opponents of the treaty with Israel. Whatever the internal dynamics of Egyptian politics, Mr. Mubarak's task would be complicated by strident Israeli behavior in Lebanon or the West Bank.

The post-Sadat uncertainty has prompted Britain, France and other Common Market countries to consider contributing troops to a Sinai peacekeeping force, which is to take up stations in March. Since the West Europeans have been cool on Camp David, Israel has tried to portray such participation as an endorsement of the accords. But the Common Market favors broadening the negotiations and has asserted that the Palestine Liberation Organization has a right to be ''associated'' with any talks.

When Lord Carrington, the British Foreign Secretary and current president of the Common Market Council of Ministers, reiterated these views on a visit to Riyadh last week - and praised the Saudi peace plan as ''a sound basis for steps forward'' - he drew strong rebukes from both Washington and Jerusalem. Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr. told American Jewish leaders he had advised Lord Carrington ''to cool it'' and be ''more circumspect with his adjectival pronouncements.'' Prime Minister Begin branded as ''intolerable'' Lord Carrington's statement to the Saudis that British troops would be sent to Sinai only ''on the basis of seeing the return of Arab territory to the Arabs.'' Mr. Begin warned that he might not accept peace-keepers from countries that criticized Camp David. American officials in Washington disclosed that they had persuaded the Common Market not to issue a statement tying agreement to send troops to the need for a comprehensive settlement recognizing Palestinian rights. European participation in the force looked uncertain.

The problem for the Europeans, and Arab moderates, is that the framework hammered out at Camp David during 12 grueling days in September 1978 treated the Palestinian question only tangentially. It basically deferred the issue, prescribing limited and temporary self-administration for the 1.2 million Arab inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Even this goal has not been reached, the talks stalled because Egypt wants more powers for the Palestinians than Israel has been willing to grant. 'Autonomy' Was Begin's Word

The idea was to establish autonomy, within an envelope of continued Israeli occupation, for a transitional period of five years, after which a more permanent solution was to be implemented as the result of negotiations among Israel, Egypt, Jordan and the elected representatives of the West Bank and Gaza Palestinians. A peace treaty between Israel and Jordan was to be signed during the transition period.


Dona Guimaraes's article ''Landmarks for Rent in Britain'' (Travel Section, Nov. 16) was of special interest to me since I spent 10 weeks rent-free in 1944-45 in a house she mentioned, Wightwick Manor, near Wolverhampton.

I was one of 550 other nontourists, members of the 747th Field Artillery Battalion, United States Army, Lieut. Col. John A. McEwan commanding. We arrived just after Christmas, following a 12-day voyage in a 35-ship convoy.

The large first floor of the manor house became our battalion headquarters, message center and post office. The upper floors had enough rooms to accommodate all the officers in the battalion; each room had its own fireplace. On one or two occasions when the flues needed servicing, our sergeant major (a proud Cajun from New Iberia, La.) hastily summoned a soot-stained, high-hatted chimney sweep right out of Dickens, who pedaled out from Wolverhampton, happy to help the visiting Yanks.

The people of the Wolverhampton area were (with few exceptions) friendly to Yanks. If you asked directions, they invariably assured you that your destination was just a five-minute walk away (''You cawnt miss it!''), and sometimes they walked along with you to be sure that you didn't.

Ruddy-cheeked youngsters, backpacking their books to school, usually greeted our passing vehicles with Churchill's ''V'' for victory sign, and often shouted, ''Got any gum, chum?'' The sergeants at the Royal Air Force base at Perton-on-Wergs invited us to one or two of their parties, and we reciprocated.

Wightwick Manor is not far from Stratford-on-Avon, a propinquity that enabled us to walk the roads that Shakespeare once trod. A few of us were lucky enough to garner three-day passes to visit London (still getting occasional V-1 and V-2 rockets early in 1945).

I was especially glad to read Dona Guimaraes's comment to the effect that as a Landmark Trust home, Wightwick Manor is ''no stuffy museum house; it is still lived in, and shows it.''

When our battalion eventually received orders to leave Britain early in March 1945, we arose several hours before dawn on the day of departure and performed a unique Wightwick farewell ritual. Every enlisted man in the battalion emerged from his Nissen hut shouldering the straw-filled mattress cover that had been his bedding, carried it up to the highest hill of the manor, and lined up behind fellow G.I.'s who were already feeding their straw into the high-leaping flames of an outdoor fireplace. To the English people of the neighboring villages, that friendly fire must have been a familiar signal that another force of Yanks out at Wightwick were about to shove off.

Within a few hours, the 551 men of our motorized battalion rolled out of Wightwick Manor and formed up in a long line of vehicles on Tinacre Hill Road, with Lieutenant Colonel McEwan riding ahead in his command car. Only then did the mission of a somewhat mysterious stranger who had arrived earlier at our headquarters become evident. That tall, lean Texan was the designated motorcycle outrider for our convoy of vehicles, an enlisted man from whom even the battalion commander now had to take direction as we made our way south along unmarked roads to the Channel port where a landing craft was waiting to take us to France. C.J. CONBOY, Seaford, L.I.

Summary: To the Editor:   Dona Guimaraes's article ''Landmarks for Rent in Britain'' (Travel Section, Nov. 16) was of special interest to me since I spent 10 weeks rent-free in 1944-45 in a house she mentioned, Wightwick Manor, near Wolverhampton.   I was one of 550 other nontourists, members of the 747th Field Artillery Battalion, United States Army, Lieut. Col. John A. McEwan commanding. We arrived just after Christmas, following a 12-day voyage in a 35-ship convoy.


Commodity prices tumbled broadly yesterday as traders sold off their holdings on the assumption that lower interest rates were still some distance away.

Significant declines were posted in metals, grains, livestock and financial instruments. Moving counter to the trend were orange juice, cotton and heating oil, which was lifted sharply by uncertainty over how tension in the Middle East might affect oil supplies, analysts said.

Friday's Federal Reserve Board report showing an unexpectedly large increase in the nation's money supply was said to be the primary force behind yesterday's declines. Slow growth of the money supply in recent weeks and a decline in other economic indicators have encouraged analysts to think that the Federal Reserve Board would ease its credit policy. But Friday's report damped hopes that the cost of borrowing money would ease soon.

''The real problem is that you had a buildup for about 10 to 14 days of people who were convinced that they saw the beginning of lower interest rates, and they made their commitments on that basis,'' said Jack Boyd of Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc. in New York. ''And the minute the money figure was published, it became quiet apparent that these expectations were not about to be fulfilled immediately. People are discouraged and are simply stepping away from the market.''

On the New York Commodity Exchange, gold for July delivery fell to $408.90 an ounce; silver to $8.665 an ounce and copper to 75.75 cents a pound.

Grain and soybean futures prices fell sharply, with soybeans losing as much as 24 cents and corn falling the 10-cent allowable daily limit in all contracts on the Chicago Board of Trade.

In addition to high borrowing costs, analysts cited the associated strength of the United States dollar overseas. Unfavorable currency exchange rates tend to weaken demand among potential foreign buyers.

Also weighing on grain prices were reports of good growing weather -rains over the weekend and yesterday in parts of the corn and soybean belts and forecasts for more rain later this week - which would tend to benefit yields and supplies and therefore depress prices.

Soybeans for July delivery fell to $7.18 a bushel, wheat was at $3.82 1/2 a bushel and corn slumped to $3.32 1/2 a bushel.Interest rate futures prices, which move inversely to interest rates, fell sharply, with Treasury bonds losing as much as they are allowed to in a day according to exchange rules.

Livestock and meat prices fell as cash prices weakened and traders evened up their contract positions in anticipation of a Government cattle inventory report and another report on the amount of pork bellies in frozen storage. ''But the overriding factor today was the poor performance of Treasury bills,'' which reflects the outlook for higher short-term interest rates said Joe Szymonik of Cargill Investor Services.


Chief executive officer: Kiyoshi Kawashima ... Estimated sales, year ending February: $6.3 billion ... Major stockholders: Mitsubishi Bank (4.4 percent), Honda Kosan (4.3 percent), Tokio M&F Insurance (3.6 percent), Mitsubishi Trust (3.2 percent), Tokai Bank (2.8 percent), Bank of Tokyo (2.7) ... Foreign ownership: 3.6 percent ... Sales breakdown: automobiles 62 percent, motorcycles 25 percent, agricultural machinery and other 13 percent ... Exports: 69 percent of sales ... Major models sold in the United States: Accord, Civic, Prelude.

Chief executive officer: Katsuji Kawamata ... Estimated sales, year ending March: $15.3 billion ... Major stockholders: Industrial Bank (6.9 percent), Fuji Bank (5.5 percent), Dai-ichi M. Life Insurance (5.3 percent), Nippon Life Insurance (3.8 percent), Sumitomo Bank (3.3 percent), Kyowa Bank (2.8 percent) ... Foreign ownership: 0.7 percent ... Sales breakdown: automobiles 89 percent, auto parts and other 11 percent ... Export ratio: 45 percent ... Major models: Datsun.

Chief executive officer: Masaji Iwasawa ... Sales, year ended June: $5 billion ... Major stockholders: Ford Motor (25 percent), Sumitomo Bank (3.8 percent), Sumitomo Trust (3.3 percent), Sumitomo M&F Insurance (2.6 percent), Tokio M&F Insurance (2.6 percent), Yasuda F&M Insurance (2.6 percent) ... Foreign ownership: 25.7 percent ... Sales breakdown: automobiles 57 percent, trucks 27 percent, auto parts 7 percent, other 9 percent ... Export ratio: 54 percent ... Major models: Mazda.

Chief executive officer: Masaya Hanai ... Sales, year ended June: $16 billion ... Major stockholders: Mitsui Bank (4.9 percent), Tokai Bank (4.8 percent), Sanwa Bank (4.7 percent), Toyoda Automatic Loom Works (4.4 percent) Nippon Life Insurance (3.8 percent), Long-Term Credit Bank (3.5 percent) ... Foreign ownership: 0.7 percent ... Sales breakdown: automobiles 59 percent, trucks and buses 22 percent, other 19 percent ... Export ratio: 39 percent ... Major models: Celica, Corolla, Corona, Cressida, Starlet, Supra, Tercel.

Summary: HONDA MOTOR   Chief executive officer: Kiyoshi Kawashima ... Estimated sales, year ending February: $6.3 billion ... Major stockholders: Mitsubishi Bank (4.4 percent), Honda Kosan (4.3 percent), Tokio M&F Insurance (3.6 percent), Mitsubishi Trust (3.2 percent), Tokai Bank (2.8 percent), Bank of Tokyo (2.7) ... Foreign ownership: 3.6 percent ...  Sales breakdown: automobiles 62 percent, motorcycles 25 percent, agricultural machinery and other 13 percent ... Exports: 69 percent of sales ... Major models sold in the United States: Accord, Civic, Prelude.   NISSAN MOTOR   Chief executive officer: Katsuji Kawamata ... Estimated sales, year ending March: $15.3 billion ... Major stockholders: Industrial Bank (6.9 percent), Fuji Bank (5.5 percent), Dai-ichi M. Life Insurance (5.3 percent), Nippon Life Insurance (3.8 percent), Sumitomo Bank (3.3 percent), Kyowa Bank (2.8 percent) ... Foreign ownership: 0.7 percent ... Sales breakdown: automobiles 89 percent, auto parts and other 11 percent ... Export ratio: 45 percent ... Major models: Datsun.


PRODUCED several years ago for Britain's Granada Television, ''The Christians'' is now getting a showcase in this country. This 13-part series will be carried, beginning tonight, on WOR-TV on Mondays at 8 o'clock. The programs, written and narrated by Bamber Gascoigne, trace the history of Christianity from the birth of Christ through the Holy Roman Empire and the questionings of modern science, to the state, albeit dated, of the church in 20th-century Russia, Poland and Italy.

Mr. Gascoigne, educated at Eton, Cambridge and Yale, is a British television personality in addition to having been a drama critic for several publications. He has written, among other books, ''World Theater'' and ''Treasures and Dynasties of China.'' In ''The Christians,'' made in more than 30 countries, he carefully avoids polemics and any hint of proselytizing to concentrate on a fairly dispassionate history of how Christianity came to exert such enormous influence on all aspects of the world as we know it.

The premiere episode is called ''A Peculiar People,'' taken from the comment of an early pope: ''God chose our lord Jesus Christ, and us through Him, to be a peculiar people.'' Christians, said to number ''a thousand million'' today, are certainly a diverse people. In a quick tour of the world, from Ethiopia to Guatemala, from Jerusalem to Tanzania, from Rome to a black Baptist church in the United States, the program finds ''people so different, it's hard to believe they worship the same God.''

The first half of the hour focuses on the life of Jesus. Mr. Gascoigne notes that whether or not he was God cannot be proved or disproved. It is a matter of faith. However, he adds, ''one thing is certain - no one has had a greater effect on human history.'' He contrasts the ''distant figure'' of God in the Old Testament with the Christian's going to another extreme of an ''immediate and simple appeal.'' An ordinary woman was selected to give birth to their God. In a sequence typical of the series, this observation is supplemented with depictions of the Madonna and Child as realized by artists through the centuries.

Mr. Gascoigne scores his sharper points gently but effectively. Standing on the Mount of the Beatitudes, he recalls how Jesus said, ''Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.'' He pronounces the statement ''almost dotty in its otherworldliness.'' And watching a modern Passover meal, using the same rituals of bread and wine adopted by Christians, he declares, ''It's a sad comment that Christians, with their origins in the Jewish faith, should have had such a long history of anti-Semitism.''

The rest of the hour describes how Christianity began spreading its message, especially through the journeys of Paul of Tarsus. It was his radical message that finally prevailed: there is no such thing as Jew and Greek, slave and freeman, male and female - all are one in the eyes of Jesus. The turning point for this new religion came with the conversion of Constantine, the young Roman officer who became emperor in the year 306. As Mr. Gascoigne puts it, Christianity turned the corner from heresy to orthodoxy. This lavishly produced series provides a project of unsual substance for the summer television doldrums.

Before venturing into precincts that many consider sacred, WOR-TV is also dabbling today in the profane, though not without some trepidation. The vehicle is ''The Stanley Siegel Show,'' formerly of WABC, WCBS, and now Mondays through Fridays, trying its syndicated luck on Channel 9 at 5:30 P.M.

Stanley (to watch him once is to be on a first-name basis) is brash, ambitious, opinionated and, depending on one's gut reaction, either obnoxious or irresistible. This time around, he is clearly determined to give his fans something different, constantly explaining that ''we want to break some new ground.''

His premiere show was supposed to feature Marilyn Chambers, the pornography performer, but the station pre-empted that session because of some references to kinky sex. Stanley did manage to score his own peculiar points, though. Before bringing on Miss Chambers, he conceded, ''I know it's wrong, but we gotta do it - otherwise, you're going to tune in 'Dialing for Dollars,' and I'll be off the air again.''

Instead, Stanley can be seen today with a group of female impersonators from a nightclub called La Cage aux Folles. As the camera opens on Stanley flanked by what looks like a newly fattened Dolly Parton and an emaciated Marlene Dietrich, he says, ''I want you to meet my parents.'' In fact, despite several attempts by Stanley to go for easy sleaze, the half-hour comes off well.

The entertainers, doing the usual impersonations of Marilyn Monroe, Liza Minnelli and Diana Ross, are quite good and manage to retain their composure in the manic Siegel presence. ''Hey, that was great - seriously!'' he keeps insisting. He ends up happy with the show because his guests ''had some heart,'' which prompts him to observe, ''Wherever there's a disease, you can be sure Danny Thomas will be there.'' The irrepressible Stanley is definitely back.


WASHINGTON, Dec. 27— Eight years ago, long before it was a fashionable theme for Democrats, Gary Hart wrote that the 1972 Presidential campaign of George McGovern showed that ''American liberalism was near bankruptcy'' because its intellectual creativity had dried up.

In the current high tide of Reagan conservativism, that prediction haunts Democratic Party leaders as the 1982 elections approach. And it goads Mr. Hart, Mr. McGovern's former campaign manager who is now a Senator from Colorado, to focus his energies on a pragmatic pruning of Democratic liberalism and a restless search for new ideas to rejuvenate his party.

Fellow Democrats, knowing he appears in behalf of other Democratic candidates and speaks on revision of the military, energy independence or economic revitalization, suspect that Senator Hart is angling for a spot on the Democratic Presidential ticket in 1984 or in 1988. Against the Reagan-Republican landslide of 1980, he proved to be the lone survivor among besieged Western Democratic Senators.

But Mr. Hart denies his eye is on 1984. ''I'm not running,'' he insists. ''I don't have a political action committee or any organization. I don't have a political staff. I'm not raising money or doing polling. I'm not operating in the traditional way. I'm focusing on this effort to redefine the party.'' The Source of Leadership

''What you're really talking about is leadership,'' he goes on, ''and in the 1980's, I think this will come more from a person's mind than from traditional organization.''

Still, Charles T. Manatt, the Democratic national chairman, quickly includes the 43-year-old Senator on his list of potential contenders along with former Vice President Walter F. Mondale, Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, Senator John Glenn of Ohio and Gov. John D. Rockefeller 4th of West Virginia.

''I pick up a sense of party people wanting to get to know Gary Hart better, a feeling that he's quite modern, not particularly an ideologue but someone with a third viewpoint between liberals and conservatives,'' Mr. Mannatt said. ''He's got a potential political base in the West and a personal network from the old McGovern crowd.''

Despite his experience in the McGovern campaign, the Coloradan is not mainly a nuts-and-bolts politician. Fellow Democratic Senators praise his intellect and his efforts at innovation, but do not cite him as an outstanding legislative tactician. Does Well on Television

Handsome, stylishly conservative in dress, serious and forcefully articulate, Mr. Hart comes across best on television. Sometimes he acts shy about traditional handshake politics among crowds.

Quite naturally for a former Yale divinity and law student and a would-be philosophy teacher, his forte is ''mixing it up intellectually'' whether with Republican corporate executives, Democratic Party activists, or League of Women Voters audiences. On Nov. 11, he spoke at Cornell University's convocation against nuclear war, getting added satisfaction from kicking around ideas at a small campus lunch with some young economists.

Although Senator Hart resists political labels, others call him a neo-liberal who opposes wasteful bureaucracy, overregulation and the ineffectiveness of some Great Society programs and seeks more workable approaches, but who rejects the ''social inequities'' of the Reagan program and elimination of programs like job training.

''Our challenge now is not to retreat to the 1920's as Reagan would have us do, but to seek economic alternatives that will give us both economic growth and social equity,'' Senator Hart says, his lanky, agile figure stretched back across an armchair, arms clasped behind his head. Seeking a New Route

Like many Democrats adjusting to the new political climate, he seeks a third avenue between more doctrinaire New Deal liberals like House Speaker Thomas P. O'Neill Jr. and the conservative Boll Weevil Democrats who repeatedly joined forces with President Reagan last year.

Characteristic of the Hart approach is the movement to change the military, which involves a Congressional group that has tried to break out of the customary debate over how much to spend on the military to seek new, more cost-efficient approaches.

For example, he favors different tactics for ground forces in Europe to overcome Soviet firepower advantages; less complex weapons systems to reduce mechanical failures; smaller, cheaper aircraft carriers; and ships that would prolong the life of old hulls by replacing outdated superstructures with modern modules.

The Senator has six members of his staff of 20 here ''rethinking'' three areas - the military, energy and the economy. In energy, his goal is independence from Persian Gulf oil by 1990 through conservation, new energy sources and an import fee of $10 a barrel. Unsuccessfully, he fought for a ban on imports of Libyan oil this year. His Views on the Economy

On the economy, he emphasizes tax incentives to hold down wage and price increases and to boost small, high-risk, high-technology businesses which promise good productivity and international competitiveness.

His political evolution mirrors a broader shift among Democrats in Congress, who are now less idealistic and more hard-headed toward generous-minded, expensive programs but who are still dedicated to protecting individual liberties and the little people in America and still averse to big business and now big government.

But how would the liberal Gary Hart of 1972 get along with the new Gary Hart? ''Of course, I've changed,'' the Senator concedes. ''I'd be disappointed if I hadn't. In Congress, I'm part of a nation in transition. My political roots are in the John Kennedy wing of the Democratic Party - pragmatic liberalism as opposed to the ideological liberalism of Eleanor Roosevelt and Adlai Stevenson. I worked for McGovern in '72 because I was opposed to our intervention in Vietnam and he stood in for the Kennedy wing of the party. Gene McCarthy was the representative of the Roosevelt-Stevenson wing.''

Illustrations: photo of Gary Hart


BOSTON, March 3— Doctors have reported their first success in using an experimental antibody treatment to achieve a long-lasting remission of B-cell lymphoma, an uncommon type of cancer.

The researchers said that monoclonal antibodies, a form of the disease-fighting proteins produced by white blood cells, were ''remarkably effective'' in halting an advanced case of the disease in a 67-year-old man. The cancer attacks antibody-producing cells, weakening the body's natural disease-fighting system.

The results are the most positive yet in this new field of research. However, the researchers cautioned that much more study was needed before the work would have any practical use.

The therapy uses large batches of monoclonal antibodies to attack a single cancerous molecule. Monoclonal antibodies are produced by fusing antibody-producing cells called lymphocytes with cancer cells. The resulting cells, called hybridomas, retain the ability to produce antibodies, which attack cancerous cells when reintroduced into the body.

''The improvement of this patient's lymphoma with monoclonal antibody administration is a single observation that must be confirmed in other patients before we can draw any conclusions about the effectiveness of this technique,'' Dr. Ronald Levy, who directed the research, said in a statement released today. Study Conducted at Stanford

The research was conducted at Stanford University and reported in the issue of The New England Journal of Medicine dated March 4. The Stanford patient had not responded to standard chemotherapy and the antiviral substance interferon, another experimental treatment. However, his cancer disappeared after eight doses of antibodies over four weeks, and he has remained free of the disease for nine months.

The doctors emphasized that the chemistry involved in the treatment was slow and tedious. Monoclonal antibodies must be custom-made to fit each patient's cancer, a process that takes six months.

So far, the Stanford doctors have tested monoclonal antibody therapy on 10 patients with varying results. The Stanford case is the first in which long-lasting remission was achieved.

Research is continuing on several more cancer victims, but Dr. Levy said no more patients were now being accepted into the experimental program.


Problems in mortgage refinancing have become a threat to the future of New York City's rental housing, according to real estate experts. Mortgages generally made for 10-year terms are coming due on existing properties, and they must be renewed at much higher rates. In many cases lenders want most of the principal repaid when the loan is renewed - and in a few cases paid off entirely.

''We're in serious trouble,'' said Jack E. Sonnenblick, chairman of the Sonnenblick-Goldman Corporation, a mortgage brokerage concern. ''The fellow who has a loan of one or two million dollars coming due and the bank wants 18 percent - the owner has no choice. In some cases there's not enough income.'' The only long-term solution is cooperative conversion, he said.

All income-producing properties, whether they are office buildings, shopping centers or residential dwellings, need access to mortgage financing on a continuing basis if they are to thrive as investments for their owners and usable shelters for their occupants. The different forms of property compete for the available capital, as real estate itself competes for capital with other forms of investment.

As mortgage financing dries up, the properties become less attractive to buy or keep. In New York City, the combination of inflation in operating costs and lagging rents set this process in motion years ago. Accordingly, there has been little production of new rentals or little new investment in existing buildings, except where opportunities for eventual conversion to cooperatives or condominiums are foreseen. Money for 'Top-Notch' Projects

As for prospects of additional capital to let owners take profits out of their property or make the major improvements older buildings require, ''forget it,'' said William S. Brennen, former president of the Greenwich Savings Bank.

The general picture does not hold for all properties. ''Over all, there's an adequate supply of money available to finance any topnotch project that comes along,'' said Andrew J. Singer, partner in the mortgage brokerage concern of Ackman Bros. & Singer. A ''topnotch'' project is one in a strong market location with average rents above $200 a room per month, he said. That is about $700 for a onebedroom apartment.

But he said there were ''a slew of apartments in the city'' without the income to refinance their loan balances at current rates. The median monthly rent in the city last year was $265 an apartment, according to the rental housing study published by the city in February.

A new and more ominous chapter began in 1980, when mortgage rates took a sudden leap, persisting at extraordinary levels since late 1980. Not only did inflation erode the level of building income available to carry mortgage debt, but also the savings banks and savings and loan associations, the traditional mortgage lenders, suffered large decreases in the amount of money on deposit. The decreases have in some cases put them out of business.

The savings banks have ''no way to provide the capital infusion necessary to keep rental housing going,'' said Kathryn Wylde, assistant to the president of the Anchor Savings Bank.

For the many people in the city who would like to live in decent and affordable rental housing, the prospect, according to real estate experts, would seem to be an ever-shrinking supply. Little new housing will be built, the experts said, and what remains of the existing stock will tend to be converted to cooperatives where possible.

''It's sad,'' said the chief mortgage officer of a large commercial bank, one with few rental loans, who has examined the balance sheets on a number of rental properties. ''With all the rent increases over the last several years, the price increases have eaten it up. There's no way to go back and pay double the rate for money.'' He described the effect of the drastic increases in mortgage rates in the last two years as a ''time bomb ticking away.'' 'As Liquid as Possible'

Michael Martinelli, assistant regional director of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, said that thrift institutions suffering the effects of deposit losses were trying to stay ''as liquid as possible'' and did not have the money for additional loans.

''Unless interest rates drop drastically - to 10 or 12 percent - you're not going to find the banks making mortgage loans on these properties,'' he said, referring to the prospects for the funds needed for major repairs and improvements.

The properties with uninsured non-self-liquidating mortgages are the most vulnerable to the increasing toughness of the hard-pressed lenders on credit extensions, owners and lenders agreed. The Manhattan-based savings banks, among the largest lenders to conventionally financed rentals, have also been among the hardest hit by deposit withdrawals as depositors seek higher yields.

Moreover, there is no recent record of appreciation in the value of rental property, unless it is in a location where it can be purchased speculatively for a cooperative conversion, the experts said. Thus, they said, there is no opportunity for so-called shared equity financing, in which the lender gives more favorable terms in a financing but expects to share the profits in a future sale. This type of financing has become common as an offset to high interest rates in providing financing to commercial and office properties. Financing Factors Differ

The Rent Stabilization Association, whose members own 900,000 stabilized apartments in the city, is expected to seek from the Rent Guidelines Board some system to make interest rates figure systematically in the calculations of allowable rent increases.

Although the board has tried to account for this factor in past rent guidelines, it runs into the problem that financing factors differ radically from building to building. Some buildings, for example, still benefit from 4 percent, 40-year mortgages incurred by the Federal Housing Administration. Others have benefited from turnover and are in strong market areas, and still produce a high return for their owners.

Most tenant groups and tenant spokesmen on the guidelines board have long contended that it is not proper to build a factor for financing costs into the price index for operating needs, on which the rent increases set by the board under stabilization are based. At the time rent stabilization went into effect, in the late 1960's, interest rates were relatively stable, and the theory was that stabilization would provide landlords with a ''fair return'' if rent increases were geared to the rise in operating costs.

In the early 1970's, so-called ''balloon'' mortgages, usually running for 10 or 15 years, were placed on many buildings. In this standard method of rental finance, large amounts of principal are still owed when the mortgage comes due.

The approach that the lender takes varies with the owner, the building, the location and the bank itself. ''When the loan comes up, we appraise and inspect the property and evaluate the owner's ability to pay,'' said David O'Shea, senior vice president of the Metropolitan Savings Bank, which now has merged with the Brooklyn Savings Bank and the Greenwich Savings Bank. ''He has to live also or else he's going to walk, and we don't want that.''

The Metropolitan generally renews loans for soundly managed properties at 16 or 17 percent, Mr. O'Shea said, but only for five years based on an amortization schedule that varies on the basis of the owner's ability to make payments and still have a return.

But other institutions are reported by building owners to be seeking to get the principal on outstanding loans substantially repaid. In some cases they are ''calling'' the loan - demanding that they be paid off - or asking that they run ''open,'' with no assured term, at interest rates occasionally above 20 percent.


There’s been a lot of turmoil in the online-media world over the past few months, what with Gigaom shutting down (and then apparently being re-born), Re/code being acquired by Vox and The Huffington Post and TechCrunch now owned by Verizon. Part of what led Re/code’s founders to seek shelter was an awareness of the increasing stakes in the publishing business, where even 6 million unique visitors a month — the number Gigaom had before it shut down — isn’t enough to guarantee success.

So where then does that leave Fusion, the ambitious joint effort from Disney/ABC and Univision? So far, the media company has spent tens of millions over the past year, in part on hiring a team of star writers, but appears to have very little to show for it.

According to a leaked screenshot of Fusion’s web traffic that was posted by Gawker, the site had less than 35 readers looking at its top story on a recent day. The screenshot comes from a widely-used analytical tool called Chartbeat, which shows how many readers are on the site at any given moment, and how many are reading each post.

If the screenshot is accurate, then Fusion had less than 700 people on its website reading any of its stories, and the top story — about the dark side of amateur pornography — had just 32 people reading. Many of the top news sites would have 10 or 100 times as many readers for their main story on a given news day. Gawker posted its own Chartbeat graph in the comments below its post, and its Fusion story had more than 1,200 concurrent readers.

Late last year, Fusion seemed full of promise: the company was hiring a number of leading writers and editors, such as former Atlantic editor Alexis Madrigal and former Reuters writer Felix Salmon, and was spending fairly large sums of money in order to do so. It recently got another $30 million in funding from its backers, and now has 250 employees in five offices.

As a recent piece in the New York Times pointed out, however, the vision for what Fusion is supposed to be, or who it is supposed to appeal to, is murky. The original idea was to try and attract young Latino and Hispanic readers and viewers, but that has since broadened to include millennials as a whole — a market that everyone from Vice News to Snapchat claim to have a lock on. Salmon said when he joined that Fusion would be “post text.”

Starting a brand new website and publishing venture is not easy, obviously. And Fusion and its financial backers may feel that they are getting enough value out of their staff in other ways apart from just raw traffic to their website — and giving the company $30 million more suggests they have confidence in its vision. But in what has become an even more high-pressure marketplace for online media, numbers like the ones above are probably not going to help anyone sleep easily.

Update: After this piece was published, Fusion editor-in-chief Alexis Madrigal posted a screenshot of his own that he said showed the number of users the site got last month — a number over 5 million. A Fusion spokesman confirmed that the screenshot came from the site’s Google Analytics dashboard, and said that it has doubled its traffic since February.

Summary: Fusion, the site that Disney/ABC and Univision created to reach millennials, appears to be reaching only a tiny number of web users


Facebook, Google Buzz, Gawker, Wikileaks, Chinese government hackers — last year, the wheels fell off Internet privacy. So, aberration, or new normal?

Was it only a year ago that Mark Zuckerberg was accused of declaring the age of privacy over?

Of course, he never said any such thing — he was trying to say that blogging had gotten people to feel more comfortable about sharing information online – but the meme took flight anyway.

Rogue memes go viral because they have a kernel of truth to them: Only a few months later, Facebook ignited a privacy firestorm with changes to its site’s design that left nearly everyone confused about how to keep their data private. Some users boycotted the site in protest.

By year’s end, though, all was forgiven: Time named Zuckerberg its Person of the Year, many of the boycotters returned to Facebook, and Goldman Sachs GS bought a pricey piece of Facebook’s success — a success built on the back of all our personal data.

Maybe the age of privacy is over after all. Zuckerberg may not have said so, but he did what he could to snuff out web privacy.

Oddly, if you want to catch a tech CEO’s boldly declaring that privacy is done for, you have to go back to 1999, when Sun Microsystems’ Scott McNealy scoffed, “You already have zero privacy. Get over it.” In 2011, the remarkable thing about McNealy’s candid statement wasn’t how early in the web’s history he made it, but how long it took most of us to believe him.

As we hang our new calendars up on the wall, we pause to look back on the previous year with wistfulness or dread. As I look back on the web in 2010, I see two things, both represented in Facebook’s trajectory through the year: Web companies harvesting personal data had their best years ever. And the web became a lot less fun — in many ways as dangerous a place to visit as it’s ever been.

In an important way, those two developments are related. Personal data is the fuel powering the social web — as well as the profits of web giants.

In the web’s early, Wild West days, the chief hazards used to came from online highwaymen — spammers, scammers, phishers and malware peddlers. They are all still chronic problems, but it’s gotten easier to work around them. Now that the web is growing up, gotten much harder to get around is the evolution of the web into a platform that is designed to benefit companies at the expense of the freedom of web users.

Web profits and web privacy don’t have to be mutually exclusive. But too often personal data is harvested and used in a thoughtless or hamfisted fashion. Take the launch of Google GOOG Buzz, a move against Facebook’s emergence that ended up being a bigger privacy debacle than anything Mark Zuckerberg ever dreamed up. Buzz sucked Gmail contacts into to its instant social network, creating instant problems when people received emails from abusive ex-husbands.

After Buzz fizzled, Google CEO Eric Schmidt would frequently appear to talk about how important safeguarding privacy was to Google. He’d say earnest things like, “I don’t believe society understands what happens when everything is available, knowable and recorded by everyone all the time,” A fair point, but what happens when Google doesn’t understand?

To be sure, there were plenty of threats on the web that didn’t originate from companies. Google itself was the target of Chinese hackers, who may have been working at the behest of the Chinese government, according to U.S. diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks.

Wikileaks had trouble receiving online donations when the State Department pressured PayPal and Mastercard ma and others into blocking funds. PayPal and Mastercard had their sites taken down by Anonymous, the legion of hackers who gather on 4chan.org. 4Chan’s message board was also knocked offline. And so on.

It was all one big long daisy chain of online headaches. And it’s part of a broader trend in which, even as the web is playing a bigger part of our lives, it’s threatening to become a bigger hassle for us as well.

Fittingly, the year ended with a rash of bad news that suggests 2011 isn’t likely to be any better. Gawker Media’s servers were hacked and the emails and passwords of 1.25 million of its readers uploaded to the Pirate Bay. Some of the most popular iPhone apps were found to be sending personal data like location and phone numbers to advertisers. The FCC passed a set of neutrality rules that fell far short of the openness that people are used to on the web, particularly on the mobile web.

In most of these areas — the corporate control of personal data, the risk of malware and stolen passwords, the ability of ISPs to throttle bandwidth — battles will continue to wage over protecting individual interests. But there is also a growing resignation that these problems are the price to pay for being on the web. At some point, when the price gets to be too high, it may be too late to go back to the kind of open web we enjoyed for years.

Summary: Facebook, Google Buzz, Gawker, Wikileaks, Chinese government hackers -- last year, the wheels fell off Internet privacy. So, aberration, or new normal? By Kevin Kelleher, contributor Was it only a year ago that Mark Zuckerberg was accused of declaring the age of privacy over? Of course, he never said any such thing -- he was trying to say that blogging…


Two pilots flying wing-to-wing through an aircraft hangar – what could possibly go wrong?

Tap the video above to see what happened.

Energy drink company Red Bull has produced a mini-documentary featuring two stunt pilots as they perform what is likely a world first – flying in formation through an open aircraft hangar.

“I can’t think of anything that I’ve done in the past that was quite as risky as this,” said Steve Jones, one of the pilots involved in the stunt.

“Ultimately if we get it wrong, we hit a building.”

Paul Bonhomme, the second half of the aviation duo, reflected on the purpose behind the stunt in the lead-up to the attempt.

“It’s human nature, isn’t it? I think instinctively we are programmed to compete, we all want to channel that in different directions, and it just so happens that we like flying airplanes.”

The two pilots make up the Matadors Aerobatic Team, a British-based aerobatics stunt group.

The duo exclusively fly the XtremeAir XA41, an aerobatics aircraft with a top speed of 389km/h and weighing not much more than a large family car.

Do you have any news photos or videos?


On Wednesday, a second Clinton Correctional facility worker

for helping two convicted murderers escape prison earlier this month.

to passing prisoners Richard Matt and David Sweat a package of

, but he denied having any knowledge that there were hacksaw blades hidden in the beef. He also confessed to providing Matt with "benefits" in exchange for information about the "illegal acts that inmates were committing within the facility," according to charging documents obtained by PEOPLE. Palmer has yet to enter a plea.

District Attorney Andrew Wylie said Thursday that he believed Palmer's claims that he may have been "misled" into helping the two convicts, adding that though his behavior – trading prison contraband for intel – is commonplace in prisons, it's "improper."

"It violates the rules and procedures of the Department of Corrections. It violates the penal law of official misconduct," he said, according to

. For that reason, Palmer faces the same amount of time in prison as Joyce Mitchell, who was previously

for aiding the two escapees and who allegedly had an affair with one or both of them.

So who is Gene Palmer and what was his relationship with the violent criminals? Here are five things to know about the corrections officer:

Sketches of prison escapees Richard Matt (left) and David Sweat as they may appear after weeks on the run.

in 2000, Palmer described Clinton as having a "kindergarten kind of atmosphere," referring to the inmates repeatedly as children and damaged "puppies."

However, he also spoke about the dark side of working at a prison. "With the money that they pay you, you'll go bald, you'll have high blood pressure, you'll become an alcoholic," he said, adding that workers "become hard on issues." "You'll divorce, and then you'll kill yourself," he said.

According to charging documents obtained by PEOPLE, Matt and Sweat painted a number of pictures for Palmer, who buried the paintings and then burned them after the two inmates made their escape. In a statement in those documents, Palmer admitted to providing the two with painting supplies he purchased at the Michael's in Plattsburgh. He then helped Matt hide those supplies during a cell inspection. "I took the paint tubes from him and hid them on top of the air vent," he said.

When asked why he allowed Sweat out of his cell to change the electrical wiring in the cell boxes, he said he did it because Matt had asked him to and "I was doing him a favor," he said. The alterations allowed the inmates "to enhance their ability to cook in the cells."

Our lead player Gene Palmer in 1978 with a friend....same guitar...hes been banging on that les paul custom black beauty for a long time!

Palmer is the lead guitarist in the band, who shared the photo above on their

June 14, just a week and a half before he was arrested for his part in the convicts' escape. "Our lead player Gene Palmer in 1978 with a friend," the photo is captioned, "same guitar...hes been banging on that les paul custom black beauty for a long time!"

Palmer, who's been in the band for 10 years, also sings and plays rhythm guitar and keyboard.

The painting was of TV character Tony Soprano, a source familiar with the investigation told

, and the woman sold it on eBay for $2,000.

Matt and Sweat remain at large since escaping on June 6.

Summary: Richard Matt and David Sweat remain at large since escaping on June 6


NEW YORK — Apple CEO Tim Cook said that so-called ‘‘religious objection’’ legislation being introduced in a number states is dangerous and bad for business.

The bills, like the one enacted last week in Indiana, create a legal framework for individuals, mostly business owners, to claim that a law or regulation mandated by the government infringes on their religious beliefs.

In an op-ed piece for The Washington Post, the leader of the nation’s largest corporation said that the bills under consideration ‘‘have the potential to undo decades of progress toward greater equality.’’

He cited actions taken by lawmakers in Texas, Indiana, and Arkansas, but said that a ‘‘wave of legislation’’ has been introduced in more than two dozen states.

Cook said he was opposing the legislation on behalf of Apple Inc. He came out as gay in October, saying that he wanted to make a difference for others.

In a letter he wrote then, Cook said, ‘‘there are laws on the books in a majority of states that allow employers to fire people based solely on their sexual orientation. There are many places where landlords can evict tenants for being gay, or where we can be barred from visiting sick partners and sharing in their legacies. Countless people, particularly kids, face fear and abuse every day because of their sexual orientation.’’

Cook said in his criticism of religious objection laws that he has great respect for religious freedom, but that it can never be ‘‘used as an excuse to discriminate.’’

The legislation is not a political or religious issue, but rather ‘‘about how we treat each other as human beings,’’ Cook said.

‘‘Opposing discrimination takes courage. With the lives and dignity of so many people at stake, it’s time for all of us to be courageous,’’ Cook said.

Summary: Apple CEO Tim Cook said that so-called “religious objection” legislation being introduced in a number states is dangerous and bad for business.


Justin Bieber's friend was attacked by a shark

07/06/2015 AT 01:35 PM EDT

may now hit a little too close to home for

The pop star's friend Joe Termini suffered injuries from a shark attack in Australia this weekend, a grisly incident that Bieber and the director documented on social media.

In one of the graphic photos, Termini lays on a deck with his eyes closed as he bleeds from his chest.

"Exactly why I hate sharks they told us reef sharks don't bite," Bieber wrote on Sunday.

A second photo, posted by Termini this time, shows a close up of the deep, bloody wound.

"It's been a good day," he wrote, in assumed sarcasm.

Bieber later Tweeted at his pal about the incident's parallel to Discovery's

, which started airing on Sunday.

"Hey @joe_termini it's #SharkWeek lol," the 21-year-old wrote.

Hey @joe_termini it's #SharkWeek lol

Reef sharks, like the one that allegedly attacked Termini, are typically docile to humans, according to

. While they're curious about divers and may swim closely, the website says they lose interest quickly and usually only attack when food is present or they feel threatened.

Summary: The singer showed off his pal Joe Termini's injury from an encounter with a reef shark


The state’s largest health system plans to open as many as a dozen urgent care clinics over the next three years, a move that could shake up the fast-growing market for convenient, walk-in medical care.

Partners HealthCare will open its first clinic in Brookline’s Coolidge Corner at the end of August. The next two clinics, in Newton and Watertown, are scheduled to open in the fall.

Urgent care centers cater to patients who have health problems — such as colds, infections, cuts, and fractures — that aren’t serious enough to warrant a visit to the emergency room. Such clinics have been on the rise as more patients, facing long waits for doctor visits and high costs at hospital emergency rooms, seek new options for care.

Partners is late to urgent care. Steward Health Care System, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Lahey Health, and others also are already in the business, either directly or with partners.

But Partners has advantages in its size and reputation. It is the parent of 10 hospitals, including Massachusetts General and Brigham and Women’s, and has 6,000 doctors, the largest network in the state. It also is planning more urgent care locations than most of its competitors.

“This is more than a pilot for us,” said Dr. Gregg S. Meyer, chief clinical officer of Partners. “These are meant to be extensions of availability and convenience for patients. We know we are not always as available as possible for our patients.”

The clinics, to be branded Partners Urgent Care, are a joint venture of Partners and MedSpring Urgent Care, a subsidiary of Fresenius Medical Care, an international kidney dialysis-services company with US headquarters in Waltham.

The locations will be staffed by doctors who have the same credentials as doctors at Brigham and Mass. General, the health system said. They will be open from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. every day and will offer lab tests, X-rays, vaccinations, and physicals.

Partners did not immediately disclose how much it will spend to open the clinics. The health system sees millions of patients and generated $11 billion in revenues last year.

Urgent care clinics appeal to patients who need care when their regular doctor’s office is closed or is too busy to squeeze in a last-minute appointment. These clinics are less expensive than hospital emergency rooms and are meant to attract patients with minor problems who might otherwise seek care in emergency rooms.

“We’re doing this because, in the long run, this will hopefully improve care and might save some costs,” Meyer said. “But we’re also doing it because our patients are asking for it.”

Retailers, such as CVS Health, also have been opening clinics to respond to demand for fast and convenient care. Retail clinics are generally staffed by less highly trained providers, such as nurse practitioners, while urgent care clinics are staffed by doctors.

The number of urgent care clinics in Eastern Massachusetts has soared, from about half a dozen in 2010 to more than 60 this year, according to AFC Doctors Express, a Birmingham, Ala., company that operates 15 locations in Massachusetts.

Last year, Beth Israel Deaconess opened two urgent-care centers, in Chestnut Hill and Norwood, that have attracted existing Beth Israel patients as well as new ones. “We continue to explore all opportunities that meet our patients’ evolving needs,” spokeswoman Jennifer Kritz said.

The community hospital network that Steward is affiliated with has about 30 urgent-care centers, including several operated by Doctors Express. The partnership allows Doctors Express to refer patients who need follow-up care to Steward’s doctors.

“We started seriously investing in this strategy several years ago,” said Brooke Thurston, a Steward spokeswoman.

Another company, CareWell Urgent Care of Quincy, operates centers affiliated with Burlington-based Lahey Health and plans to open locations in Central Massachusetts that are affiliated with Worcester-based UMass Memorial Health Care.

“Consumer-driven health care, that’s what we provide,” said Shaun Ginter, chief executive of CareWell. “We see ourselves as completing the continuum of health care access.”

Opening urgent care centers is a smart business strategy, said Ellen Janos, a health care lawyer at Mintz Levin in Boston. “It’s a way to provide convenient care to existing patients and keep them in the system, as well as attracting new patients.”

Summary: The state’s largest health system plans to open as many as a dozen urgent care clinics over the next three years, starting with Brookline, Newton, and Watertown.


"After its latest pullback, though, I find Sonic a lot more approachable, and it's possible management was trying to be conservative with their guidance because they didn't want the expectations getting out of hand," Cramer said.

Three other restaurants that had bad reactions to terrific comps were Chipotle, Fiesta Restaurant Group and Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen.

Then there were companies that actually had their stocks go higher when they reported strong numbers. Those were Cracker Barrel and Zoe's Kitchen, as most investors just didn't expect the numbers to be so good.

Next up were the restaurants that had lousy reporting and uninspiring same-store sales growth in the past quarter.

Click here to watch the "Mad Money" video on restaurant losers

"With losers, or to be more diplomatic about it, underperformers, you need to do a lot more analysis to figure out what exactly is going wrong," Cramer added.

Sometimes it could be scary numbers that could signal that the company is in trouble, and sometimes a good company stumbles—which could create a great buying opportunity.

Cramer pulled together a group of restaurant stocks that he called the "don't touch" group. Those are the ones with such bad numbers he wouldn't touch them with a 10-foot pole.

First up was Noodles & Company, which doubled the first day of trading when it came public in 2013 but has been a total dog since with a report of 1.3 percent same-store sales growth.

Then there were the special circumstance stocks, where disappointing numbers didn't necessarily dictate the direction of the stock.

---------------------------------------------------------- Read more from Mad Money with Jim Cramer Cramer: I'm making a call on oil unrest Cramer: The market isn't out of the woods, yet Cramer: Yemen's unusual impact on oil ----------------------------------------------------------

Both McDonald's and Yum Brands had same-store sales decreases of about 1 percent last quarter. However, both companies are going through long-term changes that overshadow the results in the short term.

So after conducting his analysis of restaurant winners and losers from the last quarter, Cramer's takeaway was that investors can't just look at the numbers to determine the direction of a stock.

"You need to analyze the trend to see if a restaurant's comps are accelerating or decelerating, because that's what determines whether or not the stock goes higher."

Summary: Jim Cramer found some restaurant stocks are sizzling, and some left a foul taste in his mouth. Could these be lurking in your portfolio?


Fischer is a voting member on the Fed's policymaking committee. When the Fed removed "patient" from its most recent policy statement last week, it raised questions of when exactly the U.S. central bank would move to normalize interest rates.

Read MoreFed removes 'patient' but says no April rate hike coming

The Fed has tools to control the federal funds rate after the first rate hike, Fischer said. He noted that rate increases will likely not follow a "smooth path upward."

He distinguished the movement from the regular increases implemented by the Fed between 2004 and 2007. "Post-liftoff economics" will influence the Fed's decision making after the first hike, Fischer said.

Summary: Federal funds rate will likely increase before the end of this year, but the Federal Reserve has "no plans" to hike regular rates, according to Fed's Fischer.


Malaysia's biggest glove maker in terms of market value is also stepping up on innovation amid intensifying price competition in the sector.

"Innovation is the guiding principle within the company and the Kuan family, but to innovate a product so simple and semi-commoditized is very challenging," said the 38-year-old, whose father, Kuan Kam Hon, founded Hartalega in 1981.

Despite the challenges, the company was the first in the industry to produce polymer-coated natural rubber gloves in 1994 and set a precedent again by inventing lightweight nitrile gloves in 2002. Now, the manufacturer is aiming to leapfrog its competitors by expanding its Next Generation Integrated Glove Manufacturing Complex (NGC) in Malaysia's Sepang town.

The expansion will be a huge boost for productivity and in turn, the company's margins, according to Kuan. "At NGC, we are able to produce 24 billion pieces of gloves per year, with a workforce of just 5,000. Compared to [our plants in] Bestari Jaya where we make about 11 billion pieces of gloves with 4,000 workers, we believe NGC is 60 percent higher in productivity. If everything [such as cost input and selling price] remains status quo, it should give us a few percent in margin improvement."

The 2.2 billion ringgit project which began in late-2013 is already in operation, with 14 production lines churning out 45,000 pieces of glove per hour, a report by Malaysian media outlet The Star on August 25 said. Hartalega is planning to build two more plants in the NGC by mid-2016, so as to increase its production capabilities to 42 billion pieces of glove a year by 2021.

"This is a very important part of our strategy, which is to reap the benefits of economies of scale," he told CNBC. "We need to work harder to maintain our leadership position [because] as a leader, we have no benchmark to follow. We have to find our own way."

Read MoreMalaysia's anti-government protests: What's next?

So far, analysts have given Hartalega's move to improve productivity a thumbs-up.

Malaysian-based Affin Hwang Capital expects the ramp up in production capacity to bring about "stronger sequential earnings momentum" after current operations at the NGC lifted earnings by 14 percent on-quarter in the first quarter of fiscal 2016.

The asset management company has a 'hold' call on the glove maker's stock with a target price of 9.00 ringgit, it said in a note last month following Hartalega's earnings release.

Kenanga Research echoes that sentiment and maintains an 'outperform' rating on the Kuala Lumpur-listed stock with a target price of 9.50 ringgit, said the research arm of Kenanga Investment Bank in August.

Shares of Hartalega finished 1.2 percent higher at 8.380 ringgit on Thursday, outpacing the broader FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI index which advanced 0.79 percent.

Summary: While some businesses fear that a stronger dollar could limit profitability, Malaysia's glove maker Hartalega said it isn't too worried.


Lauren, Ashleigh and Christian Conner have been studying music since they were toddlers. Violinists and a cellist, the trio of siblings has long had a heart for music.

But when they moved to New York from New Jersey last year and saw the number of homeless people in the city's streets, they realized they had a heart for much more.

"I saw [the homeless people] on the street and I felt sad for them," Christian, 9, tells PEOPLE.

The three moved from Sussex County in October with their parents, Zenobia and Keith Conner. Zenobia says that from the moment the family got to the city, Christian wanted to help.

She tells PEOPLE that the young cellist would repeatedly ask her for money to give to the less fortunate and, after awhile, she said, "If you want to give some money to the homeless, then go out there and play your cello."

And play he did. Christian and his sisters, 10-year-old Ashleigh and 11-year-old Lauren (both violinists), decided to take to the Fulton Street subway station to play music with hopes of raising enough money to give to the less fortunate.

From left: Lauren, 11, Ashleigh, 10, and Christian Conner, 9

Last week, the three siblings set up their music stands in a corner of the bustling station. Ashleigh tells PEOPLE that on their first day, they played for two hours and raised a little more than $240. The three play works by composers like Beethoven, Bach and Karl Jenkins as onlookers in the station watch in amazement.

So far, the musicians have raised nearly $500, Zenobia tells PEOPLE. The kids plan to give the money to the homeless once they raise a large amount. But Ashleigh says that her little brother is eager to help out as soon as he can.

"[Christian] gets sad. If he doesn't have money to give to [the homeless], he gets sad," Ashleigh tells PEOPLE. "So he's like, 'I really need that money.' "

(From left) Christian, Lauren and Ashleigh Conner

Keith Major / The Conner Family

The kids say they plan to give a portion of the money they raise to the poor and will put the rest toward a new computer for the family. Once they buy the device, they plan to allocate more money for the homeless.

As the school year gets underway, the kids plan to play on the weekends. But their efforts to help the less fortunate don't end with the homeless.

Lauren tells PEOPLE that she and her siblings will busk around Halloween time for

, a fundraising program for children in need.

(From left) Lauren, 11, Ashleigh, 10 and Christian Conner, 9

When they aren't busy wowing commuters in the subway, the three siblings, who also play classical music for sick children at Columbia Presbyterian Children's Hospital, are pretty much like any other children. When they're not playing music, they enjoy writing, reading and watching movies.

All three of the children began playing music when they were around 3 years old. Christian says he saw cellist Yo-Yo Ma play in concert when he was younger and knew then that he wanted to play the cello. His mom immediately paired him up with his first teacher, Sue Tsay of Sussex County, New Jersey.

(From left) Lauren, Christian and Ashleigh Conner

Lauren and Ashleigh have studied for most of their lives under Aimee Morrill Briant of Mine Hill, New Jersey. All three are also part of

a non-profit organization dedicated to the performance and promotion of chamber music in the city.

The kids have spent most of their lives cultivating their passion for music. But Ashleigh says she and her brother and sister do it all for one reason: to "make money so I can pay for college."

Ashleigh is debating between attending Harvard University or an arts college. But Lauren has her mind made up, she wants to attend Harvard Medical School (she says she enjoys people calling her a "smarty pants").

The trio of music lovers is a tight-knit group. And Ashleigh says they always plan to stick together. The 10-year-old tells PEOPLE that she and her siblings will all live in "one big mansion."

As for Zenobia, her plans for her children include nothing short of their own happiness.

"I really want them to do something that has meaning for them, that they love doing," the mother of three tells PEOPLE. "As far as I'm concerned, if you can get paid for doing something you would do for free, you've pretty much got it made, so I want them to do something that they really love."

Summary: Lauren, Ashleigh and Christian Conner use their gift of music to raise money for the homeless by busking in the subway


PUNTO FIJO, Venezuela, Aug 31 (Reuters) - A gas treatment plant of PDVSA on the western coast of Venezuela was hit by an explosion on Monday evening though there were no injuries, the state oil company said.

The explosion was the result of a ruptured fuel system heater that is being tested, PDVSA said on Twitter. Flames were immediately controlled and causes as well as damage are being assessed, it said.

Workers at the plant, who asked not to be identified because they are not allowed to speak to the press, said at the time of the explosion the unit was near empty because shifts were being swapped.

PDVSA did not immediately respond to requests for further information. It was not immediately clear if the plant might have been damaged.

The plant, located in the Tiguadare sector of Punto Fijo, in the state of Falcon, processes gas extracted from the Cardon IV block, a field in the vast Perla reservoir, operated by Spanish-company Repsol and Italian company Eni . The Cardon IV block began operating in recent weeks.

Union leader Ivan Freites told Reuters there were no reports of casualties.

Perla is located 50 kilometers off the western coast of the Paraguana peninsula. It is the largest of Latin America's largest offshore gas fields, with a volume of 17 trillion cubic feet, according to Eni.

(Reporting by Mircely Guanipa in Punto Fijo and Eyanir Chinea in Caracas; Writing by Girish Gupta in Caracas; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)

Summary: PUNTO FIJO, Venezuela, Aug 31- A gas treatment plant of PDVSA on the western coast of Venezuela was hit by an explosion on Monday evening though there were no injuries, the state oil company said. The plant, located in the Tiguadare sector of Punto Fijo, in the state of Falcon, processes gas extracted from the Cardon IV block, a field in the vast Perla reservoir, operated...


While there has been some backlash about the redesigned $10 bill, which is set to have a woman on it, the United States Treasury Department hosted a Twitter chat to address the public's questions about currency and #TheNew10.

Here are seven fun facts we learned from the chat:

1. The average cost of producing each new $10 bill is 9.5 cents.

2. Credit cards may be ubiquitous, but cash is king. When Twitter user @JeffreyBorup asked about eliminating paper money completely, the Treasury said, "The demand for cash remains strong and many people prefer cash. There is over $1.3 trillion in circulation."

3. When asked why Hamilton is being replaced rather than Andrew Jackson, the Treasury responded by saying, "The Advantage Counterfeit Deterrence Committee advised the $10 bill to be redesigned in 2013. Women have waited over 100 years."

4. Ever wonder what share of U.S. currency is not inside the U.S.? The Treasury says some two-thirds of U.S. currency circulates abroad.

5. The department is looking into changing portraits and other aspects of the note and did not reject the possibility of putting a new building on the back of the bill, which would replace the U.S. Treasury Building.

6. Did you know that your face could potentially be on the new $10 bill? User @glennsjourney asked, "Is there a contest for a submission? Can I submit my own design for the new $10 or other denominations?" It turns out that, yes, the department is accepting any submissions for consideration.

7. Does the public backlash about the currency change bother the department? Not so much—the Treasury simply stated, "In a democracy, we value everyone's voice. We are doing public outreach to hear what [people] are thinking."

All tweets from the Treasury's Twitter chat are available below.

Summary: The U.S. Treasury Department hosted a Twitter chat to address the public's questions about currency and #TheNew10.


There is a batch of important data in the coming week, starting with existing home sales Monday, then the third look at third-quarter GDP, durable goods and personal consumption Tuesday, and weekly jobless claims on Wednesday.

"The consensus is GDP is up a few tenths, 4.2 percent with another upward revision," said Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi. "It's really more important to see what's going on with the fourth quarter. It almost feels like Fed officials need to see 3 percent GDP to inch closer to rate liftoff."

For that reason, he is focused on Tuesday's personal consumption and spending and the inflation gauge within that indicator. "Yellen said actual inflation isn't that important. It's the outlook. I don't think the market buys that. The market is thinking there's some kind of deflation out there. We want to see what the PCE/deflator, the core is going to do on Tuesday," said Rupkey.

The Treasury curve continued its flattening move in the past week. The two-year note was yielding 0.638 late Friday, and the 10-year was at 2.16, up from the 2.10 it was at the week earlier.

"The best economy in the world has the highest yields. It's bringing in some buying," Rupkey said. "The yield curve runs mostly off of the expectations for Fed policy. It is still flattening since the Fed meeting Wednesday. The market seems to have the message that the Fed is going" (to hike rates).

The market generally expects the Fed to raise rates from zero for the first time after the first half of 2015.

Levkovich said the stock market should not run into problems when the Fed makes its initial hike next year, and he expects the S&P 500 to reach 2,200 by the end of 2015.

The decline in oil should be a net positive, he said. "My concern about energy is not about (lost) jobs," he said. "My focus is mainly around the idea that if credit markets get disrupted enough by it, does it raise the cost of capital for everybody. … We don't want a leaching out of higher capital costs to the rest of the community."

"It's a net positive in terms of the consumer and the public is getting a massive improvement," he said. High-yield energy corporate debt continued to get hit hard this past week.

As for companies in the sector, they will feel the pinch from lower prices but other companies could as well, he said. Traders sought bargains in energy stocks this past week, pushing the S&P energy sector 9.2 percent higher.

Read MoreHoward Marks: Oil prices expose 'debt's weaknesses'

"There will be ripple effects into other industrial companies that have greater energy exposure than even the managements know," he said. "If we pulled back on rig activity globally then you'll have fewer helicopter rides, fewer aerospace parts for those helicopters. … The industrial companies are not necessarily aware of how big their energy exposure is."

1000 am Existing home sales

0100 pm $27 billion two-year note auction

0830 am Real GDP Q3 (third)

0900 am FHFA home price index

1000 am New home sales

0100 pm $35 billion 5-year note auction

1130 am $29 billion 7-year note auction

0100 pm Stock markets close

Summary: After a week of high-octane turbulence, stocks have a good chance of drifting higher in the week ahead, giving the year a bullish finale.


Overweight cash positions have tumbled to 17 percent of investors surveyed by the bank, down from 28 percent in December. Average cash positions in portfolios have also fallen to the lowest in six months, making up 4.5 percent of managers' funds, down from 5 percent last month.

"Global investors have put some of their cash to work in spite of a more downbeat assessment of global growth and corporate profits," said Michael Hartnett, chief investment strategist at BofA Merrill Lynch Global Research, adding that "muted risk appetite" had been regained.

Read MoreYour portfolio in 2015: $1,000 gold, US bulls, banks

The oil price collapse has meant that investors have lowered their expectations when it comes to inflation and profits, the bank said -- but not lower growth expectations, as investors remain long U.S. dollar, stocks, and consumer assets.

Fund managers are also starting to see value in oil and energy stocks, but it is still too soon for them to make a move it seems. Some 45 percent of investors surveyed said that oil is undervalued, up from 36 percent in December and at the highest level in exactly six years.

At the same time, 30 percent of the panel said energy stocks are the most undervalued – up from 21 percent the previous month.

"Lower oil prices and hopes for policy stimulus are sustaining both global growth expectations and investor confidence," Hartnett said.

In terms of central bank action, expectations of stimulus from the European Central Bank (ECB) are high, with 72 percent of managers predicting quantitative easing to start in the first quarter of the year.

ECB President Mario Draghi is expected to announce a program of government bond purchases when the central bank meets on Thursday, as he steps up the fight against deflation in the euro zone.

The third quarter is now the most likely timing for a rate hike by the U.S. Federal Reserve, according to the survey. This is a shift from last month, when investors polled by the bank said they expected a Fed interest rate move in the second quarter.

Summary: Global investors have regained some of their risk appetite and invested more of their cash in spite of global growth concerns.


American Airlines said its computers were back online after experiencing a widespread outage on Thursday, according to NBC affiliate WMAQ.

The company later took to Twitter to announce the problems had been resolved.

The Federal Aviation Administration first reported the outage and said only that the cause of the ground stop was "airline issues."

The airline also responded to customers amid the outage, but did not specify what caused the outage.

American's stock was up about 2.5 percent in afternoon trading.

Read More This airline stock could rally 13%: Technician

Computers at O'Hare reportedly started to come back online mid-afternoon, and only 10 departures had been delayed, WMAQ said.

Earlier, the airline told the NBC affiliate that it was working on resolving the issue and that it did not know how long it would take to resolve.

A company spokesman had told Reuters that all domestic flights departing from Dallas-Fort Worth, Chicago O'Hare and Miami had been halted.

Summary: American Airlines said its computers were back online after experiencing a widespread outage, according to NBC affiliate WMAQ.


10/20/2015 AT 11:35 AM EDT

is officially the new girl!

The actress was spotted arriving on the set of

in Los Angeles on Monday. She was dressed for comfort, wearing patterned leggings, flip-flops and a light jacket.

on the hit series' fifth season while leading lady

is on real-life maternity leave (She

her 3-month-old daughter's name, Elsie Otter, to PEOPLE on Monday night).

Deschanel, who gets to film one episode with Fox,

premiere on Monday in New York City.

"I'm super excited," Deschanel said. "Essentially, [my character Jess] gets on jury duty and has to be sequestered, so the roommates rent out her room for a few weeks."

Deschanel added that she thinks the

star is "going to be fantastic."

The part will mark Fox's first major TV role in a decade. Her last series regular role was ABC's

, her husband of five years,

in August. They had been together nearly 11 years and have two sons together.

In late September, Green, 42, responded to Fox's divorce filing and

season 5 will premiere on Fox in January.

Summary: The actress will star in the show while Zooey Deschanel finishes up her real-life maternity leave


In his novel Super Sad True Love Story, Gary Shteyngart depicts a near future in which everyone is glued to portable digital devices called "äppäräts". More than mere mobile phones, these track your health, your personality rankings and what percentage of your lifespan has elapsed. And far from being privileged information, these most personal of details are public knowledge in what is now a fully networked society – indeed, your stats are the first thing anyone will check before they decide to sleep with you. All of which makes life rather cruel for our desperate hero, Lenny Abramov ("47% lifespan elapsed … Ailments: high cholesterol, depression"). Lenny may be a salesman in Indefinite Life Extension, but he is failing to make the grade.

Like any well-observed piece of futurism, this picture is both ludicrously far-fetched and just around the corner. For the first generation of these holistic lifestyle monitors is now upon us. The latest is called UP, and it's a device that you wear around your wrist – day and night. It measures your activity levels and your sleep patterns, and you can also use it to monitor your eating habits. All of this data is stored in an app on your iPhone or iPod Touch, and naturally it is there to be shared with friends or colleagues. Together with your "team", you can pursue your collective goals, whether it's losing those extra pounds, running that extra mile or sleeping that extra hour. UP's marketing positions it somewhere between a "fun" consumer product and the answer to a societal epidemic of obesity and declining sleep quality.

Produced by Jawbone, the makers of hands-free headsets and the impressive Jambox portable speaker, UP uses an accelerometer, or motion sensor, that counts the number of steps you take in a day and is sensitive enough to detect whether you are in a light or a deep sleep. Of course, pedometers have existed for years, as have sleep monitors, but UP brings them together in one neat, socially networked package.

The logic is that a healthy lifestyle is not just something we adhere to on our once-, twice- or (in my case) zero-weekly trips to the gym – it's a way of life. So Jawbone, working with product designer Yves Behar, has housed its delicate machinery in a rubber wristband designed to be comfortable and unobtrusive enough to wear all the time. It is, then, step one towards Shteyngart's "äppärät".

But as gadgets go, UP is decidedly ungadget-like. You could easily mistake it for one of those rubber charity wristbands that were all the rage circa 2008. It is not a piece of conspicuous tech, but plug it into the headphone socket of your iPhone and it will tell you that you've walked 8,258 steps today after having slept six hours and 52 minutes (of which 3:03 was deep sleep and 3:49 light sleep). That is, if you were me.

I was awe-struck seeing my first night's sleep dissected into slivers of deepness and lightness. That bar chart seemed full of profound insights into my wellbeing. I was even showing my friends – after all, if someone asks you why you're wearing a "man bracelet", what better riposte than to call up a graph of your sleep rhythms? Here was data that I couldn't even have guessed at – because I was unconscious. In the daytime, we have a sense of whether we've been active or not, but even then there was a morbid fascination in knowing exactly how many steps I was taking. At first, anyway. After a few days, this information became utterly banal. The digital age is very good at feeding back data but, without interpretation, numbers are just numbers. 8,258 steps over 3.94 miles? Wow – but so what?

The problem here was one of goals – my lack of them. UP – as in "up and at 'em" – is unashamedly goal-oriented, aimed at people who want to improve their fitness or their sleep quality, not someone coasting along in the belief that he's fine, thank you. And it won't tell you whether you need more sleep, or more deep sleep, or how to achieve either of those. You have to set the goals yourself and do whatever research you may need to in order to get the data moving towards your target.

Similarly, it won't tell you anything about what you're eating – it's up to you to log your meals and analyse them yourself. Still, whatever these limitations, a lot of people will find this a valuable tool and will seamlessly integrate it into their lives. For me, the chief asset was in being woken up by a vibration at my wrist at the end of a deep sleep cycle (it will wait, you see, instead of catching you in the middle of a deep sleep, which would leave you lethargic) rather than by my alarm clock. Apart from that, as someone who hasn't worn a watch for years, I kept involuntarily looking at my wrist and not finding the time there.

However, UP's social media dimension is full of prurient potential. It takes Nike's "social running" programme, with its inherently competitive aspect, a step further. Now we can share and compete over our activeness, our sleep quality or the healthiness of our meals. Pizza and beer for dinner will elicit OMGs and frowny faces from our "team". Biological data is the new frontier of social media. In the next-generation model we'll all be sharing our bowel movements – LOL. In the model after that we'll be sharing our adrenal-stress index and our sperm counts. What starts as helpful lifestyle monitoring develops into new forms of social unacceptability. Today it's your smoking, tomorrow it's your cholesterol.

But it's not as though we didn't know this was coming. Having conquered mobile telephony and portable music, we still have the endless steppes of healthcare to colonise with our digital consumer products. While UP may not yet be Genghis, it is clearly the first iteration of a product-type that will keep evolving until it's of serious use to Lenny's Indefinite Life Extension firm. And, of course, it wonderfully fulfils the historically circular logic of the consumer product, a logic that runs something like this: gadgets begin by saving us labour and giving us more leisure time; then, to fill that leisure time, we invent gadgets to entertain ourselves; soon we're glued to gadgets in our work life and in our social life so that we're no longer moving enough or sleeping enough. What's the answer? A gadget – what else?

Summary: Justin McGuirk: A rubber wristband called UP devours data on your activity levels, sleep patterns and eating habits and allows you to share this information with a 'team' of friends


If you’ve put off holiday shopping until the last minute, you’re in luck.

In the last few days before Christmas, retailers are offering deep discounts to woo shoppers and clear shelves after what has been a lackluster holiday shopping season. In Massachusetts, sales through mid-December were running only 1.5 percent ahead of last year, compared with a projected increase of 6.5 percent in holiday sales made at the beginning of the season, according to a survey of 3,000 stores, excluding major chains, by the Retailers Association of Massachusetts.

Jon Hurst, president of the trade group, said his members are still holding out hope that they can catch up in the final, frantic days before Christmas. The Saturday before Christmas — “Super Saturday” in industry parlance — is typically the biggest shopping day of the season, Hurst said, while one-third of all holiday purchases are made in the final week.

“Most of us do procrastinate some,” said Hurst, who was off work and shopping in Danvers on Friday.

Holiday sales also are running behind projections nationally, according to the National Federation of Retailers in Washington. The trade group projected the season’s sales would rise 3.7 percent from last year; through November, they were up about 3 percent.

December is when New England is supposed to be at its Currier-and-Ives peak, but this is what Christmas in Dallas must feel like.

Analysts blame unseasonably warm temperatures that are hurting apparel sales, lingering concerns about the direction of the economy, and the lack of hot new products that get shoppers revved up and spending.

Some might not mourn the riots caused by the craze for Cabbage Patch Kids dolls in the 1980s, or the Beanie Baby rampages and Furby fever of the 1990s. But Marshall Cohen, chief retail industry analyst at the NPD Group of Port Washington, N.Y., said “must have” items can drive a holiday shopping season and create a buzz that sends shoppers flocking to stores.

Apart from some Barbie dolls and dollhouses, and certain Star Wars collectibles, Cohen said there haven’t been any new items whipping consumers into a frenzy or sparking the kind of impulse-buying merchants want.

“There’s not a lot of new and exciting merchandise, so there’s no panic setting in,” Cohen said. “Retailers need the consumer nervous, and freaking out that they’re missing out on something.”

Unseasonably warm temperatures have also tamped down shoppers’ desire to buy sweaters, hats, and coats. About a year ago, the forecast called for 2 inches of snow; this year, it’s temperatures in the 40s and 50s that could rise into the 60s on Christmas Eve.

Sales of clothing and accessories are down 1.6 percent from a year ago, according to the most recent data from the US Commerce Department. Sales of another staple of holiday gift-giving, electronics and appliances, are down 1.8 percent.

Major department stores are responding with big discounts on these and other items. Macy’s, for example, is promoting “After Christmas Prices Now,” advertising up to 65 percent off coats and sweaters. Sears is holding a “Countdown Sale” knocking hundreds of dollars off big-screen televisions. Retailers of all kinds are flooding customers’ e-mail inboxes with coupons, $10 gift cards, and other discounts.

At Suphi Furs in Watertown, Lisa Calisir, a manager at the store, said the economy remains a bigger concern to her customers than the weather. Even though the Massachusetts economy is growing strongly, the severe 2008 recession and the lessons of how quickly prosperity can vanish remain fresh in shoppers’ minds, she said. That’s keeping them cautious.

“People are scared to buy expensive things,” she said. “It could be better.”

Softer-than-expected retail sales have produced a bonanza of low prices for consumers, said Jack Kleinhenz, chief economist at the National Federation of Retailers, an industry group in Washington. Kleinhenz cited an analysis by the US Department of Labor showing that overall, retail prices have fallen about 3 percent from about a year ago.

Several factors have influenced the price drop, including a flood of merchandise that followed the end earlier this year of a long-running labor dispute at California ports that slowed shipments.

“Lower prices might be bad news for retailers,” Kleinhenz said. “But they are good news for retailers’ customers.”

Summary: Retailers are trying to woo shoppers and clear shelves amid a lackluster holiday shopping season.