California to Give Web Courses a Big Trial

A plan to offer an array of online college classes at a California state university could, if the students are successful, open the door to teaching hundreds of thousands of California students at a lower cost via the Internet.

Udacity, a Silicon Valley start-up that creates online college classes, will announce a deal on Tuesday with San Jose State University for a series of remedial and introductory courses.

Because the courses are intended to involve the classroom instructor, it could also help to blunt professors’ unease with the online classes. 

The state university’s deal with Udacity is also the first time that professors at a university have collaborated with a provider of a MOOC — massive open online course — to create for-credit courses with students watching videos and taking interactive quizzes, and receiving support from online mentors.

Eventually, such courses could be offered to hundreds of thousands of students in the state.

California Gov. Jerry Brown, who has been pushing state universities to move more aggressively into online education, approached the company to come up with a technological solution for what has become a vexing challenge for the state.

Ellen N. Junn, provost and vice president for academic affairs at the university in San Jose, said the California State University System faces a crisis because more than 50 percent of entering students cannot meet basic requirements.

“They graduate from high school, but they cannot pass our elementary math and English placement tests,” she said.

The Udacity pilot program will include a remedial algebra course, a college-level algebra course and introductory statistics.

For the pilot project starting this month, however, the courses will be limited to 300 students — half from San Jose State University, and half from local community colleges and high schools — who will pay lower than usual tuition. The cost of each three-unit course will be $150, significantly less than regular San Jose State tuition. Sebastian Thrun, one of the founders of Udacity, would not disclose how much the company would be paid for its participation.

San Jose State will receive funds from the National Science Foundation to study the effectiveness of the new online classroom design.

Open online courses exploded in American higher education in 2011 after Mr. Thrun, a nationally known artificial-intelligence researcher at Stanford, and Peter Norvig, Google’s director of research, offered to teach an introductory artificial-intelligence course online. More than 160,000 students initially registered for the class.

After two other Stanford courses each attracted more than 100,000 students, Dr. Thrun started his venture. Two other Stanford computer scientists, Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller, also established a competing private company, Coursera, to develop technologies necessary to change the reach and effectiveness of online education.

The courses have rapidly moved from the periphery to the center of higher education policy as a growing number of schools have begun experimenting with ways to offer the courses for credit toward a degree.

EdX, a university collaboration initiated by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard last year, this month will begin offering some of its courses at two Massachusetts community colleges, in a blended format.

Recently edX completed a pilot offering of its difficult circuits and electronics course at San Jose State to stunning results: while 40 percent of the students in the traditional version of the class got a grade of C or lower, only 9 percent in the blended edX class got such a low grade.

Last fall, for the first time, Udacity’s courses were tried on a small group of struggling high school students, at the Winfree Academy Charter School system, a cluster of schools near Dallas-Fort Worth created to help struggling students and reclaim dropouts.

“I was a little scared to put our kids, who are struggling and at risk of dropping out, into a class written by a Stanford professor,” said Melody Chalkley, Winfree’s founder. “But of the 23 students who used Udacity, one withdrew from the school, and the other 22 all finished successfully. And two young women got through the whole physics course in just two weeks.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 15, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the name of a California university faculty group. It is the California Faculty Association, not the California Teachers Association. The article also misstated the nature of the courses that San Jose State University will offer with Udacity. The courses will involve students watching videos and taking interactive quizzes; they will not be blended courses with students first watching videos on their own, and then coming to class to work on assignments with a professor.

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Chuck Hagel's opponents switched gears

WASHINGTON — For all the controversy over President Obama's choice for Defense secretary, many of Chuck Hagel's most outspoken critics were for the former Nebraska senator before they were against him.

In 2006, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who forged a close bond with Hagel over their shared service in Vietnam and penchant for bucking the Republican establishment, said, "I'd be honored to have Chuck with me in any capacity."

In 2007, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell acknowledged that many of Hagel's dire predictions about the Iraq war had come true. He praised Hagel at an Omaha fundraiser as "one of the premier foreign policy voices" and "one of the giants in the United States Senate."

Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) worked with Hagel for years on efforts to ease the embargo against Cuba and promote trade policies to help Midwestern farmers. He tolerated playful ribbing from Hagel when the University of Nebraska beat Kansas schools in football.

Now, McCain says he worries about his fellow Republican's "worldview." McConnell said, "I'm going to take a look at all the things that Chuck has said over the years and review that … in terms of his qualifications to lead our nation's military." And Roberts has said flatly that he won't back his onetime friend for the Pentagon post, citing "a lot of concern about Chuck."

Several factors are behind the opposition to Hagel, including the anger he caused among many Republicans by criticizing the George W. Bush administration's Iraq policies and by endorsing some Democrats for office.

At least in public, the opposition to his nomination has focused on remarks he's made on Israel and Iran, particularly one 2006 interview in which he said the "Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people" in Congress. Critics have objected to his referring to the lobbying as "Jewish" rather than "pro-Israel."

Supporters note that Israeli leaders haven't voiced any such worries about Hagel, who has often called Israel "a close friend and ally." They say he's been the victim of a U.S. political landscape that has become not only more partisan but less tolerant of criticism of Israel. Particularly on the Republican side of the aisle, unwavering support for Israeli policies has become a litmus test over the last decade.

"The debate about the U.S. relationship with Israel has certainly moved to the right," said Bob Kerrey, a Nebraska Democrat who served alongside Hagel in the Senate until 2001. "You could oppose settlements in the 1990s," he said, referring to Israelis building on land beyond Israel's 1968 borders. "Not anymore."

A review of Hagel's history shows a worldview, particularly on the Middle East, that does not fit easily into current political divisions.

Shaped by a tour in Vietnam — where mine explosions left him with burns and shrapnel lodged in his chest — Hagel, 66, has long been a reliable if sometimes blunt voice for caution in using military force. He has called for engaging with America's enemies instead of isolating them and for a healthy but restrained defense budget.

He first ran for the Senate in 1996 on a pledge to increase defense spending, which had been cut sharply after the end of the Cold War. By the time he ran for his second term, defense spending had begun to soar in the buildup after the Sept. 11 attacks. In recent years he's called the Pentagon budget "bloated."

Hagel had been in the Senate barely a year when, during a Foreign Relations Committee hearing in 1998, he cited a "perception in the Arab world that we've tilted way too far toward Israel in the Middle East peace process."

But at the same time he was building ties to Israeli leaders. In December 2000, a surge of deadly violence threatened President Clinton's bid to seal an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal in the final weeks of his presidency. At the request of the incoming Bush administration, Hagel carried an urgent message to Israeli leaders.

In a private meeting at the Israeli defense ministry, Hagel assured embattled Prime Minister Ehud Barak that Bush would support the peace deal if he signed it. It was a crucial promise from the American president-elect, who was then little known in the Middle East. In the end, Palestinian opposition killed the peace bid.

Martin Indyk, then-U.S. ambassador to Israel and the only other person in the meeting, said Hagel was "very sensitive, sympathetic and most of all supportive. He helped to calm Barak."

In recent years, Hagel has rejected unilateral sanctions against Iran, arguing that they only inflame anger in the Muslim world, but has said he supports sanctions imposed in concert with U.S. allies. He has argued against military action to stop Iran from building a nuclear weapon but, in a September opinion article in the Washington Post, called for "keeping all options on the table, including the use of military force."

That skepticism about sanctions has a long history with Hagel. In 2001, he was one of two senators to vote "no" on renewing unilateral U.S. sanctions against Iran and Libya.

"Somebody has to give another point of view here," Hagel said at a Senate Banking Committee hearing in which he questioned whether the sanctions worked.

But at the same hearing, he invoked Israel's needs, saying, "I don't think you bring more security to Israel by this kind of policy — which, again, unless you can tell me otherwise, has not produced any results."

In a 2006 speech at the Brookings Institution, Hagel criticized U.S. boycotts of talks with Hamas, Iran, Syria and other foes, saying that approach impeded efforts to end crises in the region.

"I don't know how the world has gotten better" by the U.S. refusal to talk, he said. "Things have gotten worse by any measure. And so it tells me that we'd better take some serious review of our current policy."

Many of Hagel's words echo those of Obama, who, like many Israeli military leaders, is said to be reluctant to launch a military strike on Iran. Obama has imposed tough sanctions on Iran but resisted more severe measures pushed by some in Congress because they could weaken a broad coalition of nations — including China — that backs the measures currently in place.

Hagel's supporters say that in his two terms in the Senate — he now serves as chairman of the Atlantic Council, a think tank that promotes multilateralism — he was a consistent realist.

"The principles he came away with from Vietnam are still there," said Charlyne Berens, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln journalism professor who wrote a 2006 biography on Hagel. "He's been saying these things for more than a decade."

shashank.bengali@latimes.com

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E-Ink on a Smartphone? This Android Phone Has 2 Displays

Times Up

You can use the rear of the YotaPhone as a clock, or to display wallpapers.

Click here to view this gallery.

[More from Mashable: Hands On With Pebble, the Internet’s Favorite Smart Watch]

LAS VEGAS — What if your phone had two displays? Announced in mid-December, YotaPhone aims to change how people use their smartphones by bringing together a full-color LCD display on one side of the phone and an e-ink display on the other.

I caught up with Yota Device’s Vladislav Martynov at CES to give the phone a closer look.

[More from Mashable: 5 Chinese Tech Brands You’ll Be Hearing From in 2013]

In essence, the two displays on the handset each have their own unique purpose. The front display is used just as you might your traditional smartphone screen to run apps, browse the web or watch videos.

The rear display on the YotaPhone is what makes it stand out. An electronic paper display, it shows content you push to it from the front of the device. Less for interacting with and more for reference information, you can use the display for a map to your next destination, a clock, or a place to keep the boarding pass for your flight handy.

Martynov showed me a few applications designed specifically to use with the screen as well, including an app that shows low long you’ve kept a particular goal, such as not smoking. The company plans to release an API for other developers to make applications that take advantage of the dual-screen functionality as well.

Running Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, Martynov says that he plans to keep Android as vanilla as possible, something he feels is very important. He also wants to make sure that the phone is on-par with high-end Android smartphones, spec-wise. The current iteration uses the Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM 8960 platform, and Corning’s 3D Gorilla Glass. It’s also a multi-band LTE handset that can run on LTE networks anywhere in the world.

YotaPhone is expected to go one sale during the second half of 2013.

What uses do you see for an e-ink second screen? Let us know your thoughts in the comment.

This story originally published on Mashable here.

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“Outraged” Amy Pascal: “Zero Dark Thirty” does not advocate torture

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Sony Chairman Amy Pascal refuted criticism of “Zero Dark Thirty” by a member of the Oscar voting academy on Friday, saying her studio’s movie “does not advocate torture.”

“‘Zero Dark Thirty’ does not advocate torture,” she said. “To not include that part of history would have been irresponsible and inaccurate. We fully support Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal and stand behind this extraordinary movie.”

David Clennon, an Emmy Award-winning actor, wrote an op-ed column for Truthout this week, explaining that he would not be voting for “Zero Dark Thirty” in any categories because it portrays torture as being an effective tool in the hunt for Osama Bin Laden.

“Torture is an appalling crime under any circumstances,” Clennon wrote.” “‘Zero’ never acknowledges that torture is immoral and criminal. It does portray torture as getting results.”

At a media event on Friday in downtown Los Angeles at the federal building, protesting the Guantanamo Bay detention center, Clennon repeated the criticism, noting:

“I’m a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The Motion Picture Academy clearly warns its members not to disclose their votes for Academy Awards. Nevertheless, I firmly believe that the film ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ promotes the acceptance of the crime of torture, as a legitimate weapon in America’s so-called War on Terror. In that belief, following my conscience, I will not vote for ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ in any category… I cannot vote for a film that makes heroes of Americans who commit the crime of torture.”

“Zero Dark Thirty” has come under fire by some for its depiction of torture in the quest to kill Bin Laden. Last month, three senators – John McCain, Dianne Feinstein and Carl Levin — wrote a letter to Sony Pictures Chairman and CEO Michael Lynton, a prominent supporter of President Barack Obama, claiming that the film suggests that torture led investigators the terrorist leader.

The movie, which has already picked up several awards, on Thursday received five Oscar nominations, including a nod for Best Picture, but Bigelow was snubbed in the Best Director category.

Pascal issued a statement Friday that read in full:

“Zero Dark Thirty does not advocate torture. To not include that part of history would have been irresponsible and inaccurate. We fully support Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal and stand behind this extraordinary movie.

“We are outraged that any responsible member of the Academy would use their voting status in AMPAS as a platform to advance their own political agenda. This film should be judged free of partisanship. To punish an Artist’s right of expression is abhorrent. This community, more than any other, should know how reprehensible that is. While we fully respect everyone’s right to express their opinion, this activity is really an affront to the Academy and artistic creative freedom.

While we fully respect everyone’s right to express their opinion, this activity is really an affront to the Academy and artistic creative freedom. This attempt to censure one of the great films of our time should be opposed. As Kathryn Bigelow so appropriately said earlier this week, ‘depiction is not endorsement, and if it was, no artist could ever portray inhumane practices; no author could ever write about them; and no filmmaker could ever delve into the knotty subjects of our time.’”

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Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, Psychologist Who Studied Depression in Women, Dies at 53

Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, a psychologist and writer whose work helped explain why women are twice as prone to depression as men and why such low moods can be so hard to shake, died on Jan. 2 in New Haven. She was 53.

Andrew Sacks

Susan Nolen-Hoeksema at the University of Michigan in 2003. Dr. Nolen-Hoeksema's research showed that women were more prone to ruminate, or dwell on the sources of problems rather than solutions, more than men.

Her death followed heart surgery to correct a congenitally weak valve, said her husband, Richard Nolen-Hoeksema.

Dr. Nolen-Hoeksema, a professor at Yale University, began studying depression in the 1980s, a time of great excitement in psychiatry and psychology. New drugs like Prozac were entering the market; novel talking therapies were proving effective, too, particularly cognitive behavior therapy, in which people learn to defuse upsetting thoughts by questioning their basis.

Her studies, first in children and later in adults, exposed one of the most deceptively upsetting of these patterns: rumination, the natural instinct to dwell on the sources of problems rather than their possible solutions. Women were more prone to ruminate than men, the studies found, and in a landmark 1987 paper she argued that this difference accounted for the two-to-one ratio of depressed women to depressed men.

She later linked rumination to a variety of mood and behavior problems, including anxiety, eating disorders and substance abuse.

“The way I think she’d put it is that, when bad things happen, women brood — they’re cerebral, which can feed into the depression,” said Martin Seligman, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, who oversaw her doctoral work. “Men are more inclined to act, to do something, plan, beat someone up, play basketball.”

Dr. Seligman added, “She was the leading figure in sex differences in depression of her generation.”

Dr. Nolen-Hoeksema wrote several books about her research for general readers, including “Women Who Think Too Much: How to Break Free of Overthinking and Reclaim Your Life.” These books described why rumination could be so corrosive — it is deeply distracting; it tends to highlight negative memories — and how such thoughts could be alleviated.

Susan Kay Nolen was born on May 22, 1959, in Springfield, Ill., to John and Catherine Nolen. Her father ran a construction business, where her mother was the office manager; Susan was the eldest of three children.

She entered Illinois State University before transferring to Yale. She graduated summa cum laude in 1982 with a degree in psychology.

After earning a Ph.D. in psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, she joined the faculty at Stanford. She later moved to the University of Michigan, before returning to Yale in 2004.

Along the way she published scores of studies and a popular textbook. In 2003 she became the editor of the Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, an influential journal.

Dr. Nolen-Hoeksema moved smoothly between academic work and articles and books for the general reader.

“I think part of what allowed her to move so easily between those two worlds was that she was an extremely clear thinker, and an extremely clear writer,” said Marcia K. Johnson, a psychology professor and colleague at Yale.

Dr. Nolen-Hoeksema lived in Bethany, Conn. In addition to her husband, a science writer, she is survived by a son, Michael; her brothers, Jeff and Steve; and her father, John.

“Over the past four decades women have experienced unprecedented growth in independence and opportunities,” Dr. Nolen-Hoeksema wrote in 2003, adding, “We have many reasons to be happy and confident.”

“Yet when there is any pause in our daily activities,” she continued, “many of us are flooded with worries, thoughts and emotions that swirl out of control, sucking our emotions and energy down, down, down. We are suffering from an epidemic of overthinking.”

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Henry's Tacos stands down

Janis Hood got her start at Henry's Tacos when she was 10.

Her mother allowed her to fasten caps on the hot sauce and serve RC Cola to customers.

Through 51 years, the family business served ground beef tacos and burritos to customers. But on Saturday, the Studio City neighborhood treasure — a favorite of actor Elijah Wood and comedian George Lopez — closed its doors.

The shutting of Henry's Tacos, named for Hood's grandfather, Henry Comstock, came after a yearlong saga with the landlord that Hood said began when she applied for a historic designation. She said the application sparked conflict, and the landlord refused to renew her lease.

"It's a very emotional day for me," Hood said Saturday.

In recent weeks, news of the closure prompted thousands of fans to sign an online petition to save the restaurant and inspired a Twitter hashtag (#SaveHenrysTacos).

At one point, a financial consultant and a TV writer were in talks to purchase the restaurant to keep it open. "It all just took us back to our childhood," said Matt Pyken, a Studio City TV writer who grew up eating at the stand, explaining why he sought to buy it with his former middle-school buddy. "We wanted it to be the same place."

But in the end, Hood decided to work with longtime employee Omar Vega, who wants to relocate the shop but keep the name. Hood said she plans to eventually sell the business to Vega. A preservation group has offered to store the stand's signage, she said.

On Saturday, customers formed a line down the sidewalk for a last meal, and Hood said the stand would keep serving them until the food ran out. Cathy McCroskey, a longtime customer, posed for a picture in front of the stand and pantomimed wiping away a tear. "This is a neighborhood icon," she said.

McCroskey and her husband, Steve, both 55, have lived in the Tujunga Village area since the late 1980s and came to pay one last visit to the stand they'd enjoyed for years. They took photos and, of course, ordered a bean and cheese burrito. They said the stand's Googie-style architectural design and history made it a neighborhood gem.

Near them, a large sheet of paper had been taped to a wall of the stand for people to jot their goodbyes.

"Sacred ground. We have been coming for four generations. It was the first food I ate and my kids ate. It saved my sister ... it was all she would eat when she was sick. Please prevail," wrote Kathryn Vanderveen.

"Henry, please keep the sign and stay in Studio City, we love you," another message said.

Vega, a 21-year veteran of the stand, said he hopes to do just that. He would like to retain the old location's ambience by using the old sign and menu and even hopes to replicate the colorful lettering on the stand's outside wall that spells "Henry's Tacos."

"I hope everything goes well," Vega said.

For Hood, the closure is the end of an era. She said the restaurant is where she grew up and recalled going to elementary school blocks away. After school, she'd walk to the stand to see her mother and linger there.

"A lot of the customers took me under their wing and were helpful to me," she said.

After Hood's mother, LeVonne Eloff, died in 2009 at 82, longtime customers shared stories with Hood, some of which she said she had never known. They told her, for example, that her mother and stepfather had sometimes used the honor system with customers.

Now, Hood said she's acting in the same vein, "paying it forward" by helping Vega get his start running the business, a move she sees as continuing her family's legacy.

nicole.santacruz@latimes.com

ruben.vives@latimes.com

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People’s Choice Awards Will Air on Xbox 360 Tonight

CBS’s televised broadcast of the People’s Choice Awards will also be aired on Xbox 360, Microsoft’s gaming and entertainment-streaming console.

Xbox LIVE Gold subscribers in the United States can tune in and interact with the festivities starting at 8 p.m. EST with the red carpet event. The ceremony begins at 9 p.m. EST.

[More from Mashable: NBC Comedy ’1600 Penn’ Launches Social Media Cupcake Contest]

Using the console’s controller, viewers will be able to answer polls and trivia questions and give their two cents about the red carpet shenanigans, the show and performances in real time.

The People’s Choice Awards honors celebrities and their work in music, film and TV. Performers on tap include Christina Aguilera, Jason Aldean and Alicia Keys.

[More from Mashable: Justin Bieber Will Host and Perform on ‘SNL’]

Notable attendees are Jennifer Aniston, Ellen DeGeneres, Robert Downey Jr., Josh Hutcherson, Jennifer Lawrence, Chris O’Donnell, Marisa Tomei and The Wanted.

Xbox also offered streams last year for the presidential debates and Video Game Awards.

People have cast more than 400 million votes in the many People’s Choice Awards categories via the show’s website, Facebook app and Twitter.

Emojis

See if you can guess the popular television slow in each slide of the gallery. If you need to peek at the answer, simply use your cursor to highlight the text following the word “Answer.” The title will appear like magic — oooOOOooooo!

Click here to view this gallery.

Image courtesy of YouTube

This story originally published on Mashable here.

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Lakers star Kobe Bryant and wife reconcile, won’t divorce

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant and his wife, Vanessa, have reconciled and are no longer planning to divorce, the couple said in separate posts on social media sites.

Bryant, widely considered one of the greatest players ever in the National Basketball Association, and his wife filed for divorce in December 2011 after 10 years of marriage.

But they had been seen out together in recent weeks, leading to speculation about a possible reunion. They have two daughters, aged 10 and 6.

“I am happy to say that Vanessa and I are moving on with our lives together as a family,” Bryant wrote on Facebook on Friday.

Vanessa Bryant posted a statement on her Instagram page that read: “We are pleased to announce that we have reconciled. Our divorce action will be dismissed.”

In 2003, Bryant was accused of sexual assault by an employee at a Colorado hotel. He denied the allegations, and charges were dropped after the woman refused to testify.

Vanessa Bryant, who married the Lakers star in April 2001, stayed with her husband during that scandal.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Tim Gaynor and Peter Cooney)

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City Room: Cuomo Declares Public Health Emergency Over Flu Outbreak

With the nation in the grip of a severe influenza outbreak that has seen deaths reach epidemic levels, New York State declared a public health emergency on Saturday, making access to vaccines more easily available.

There have been nearly 20,000 cases of flu reported across the state so far this season, officials said. Last season, 4,400 positive laboratory tests were reported.

“We are experiencing the worst flu season since at least 2009, and influenza activity in New York State is widespread, with cases reported in all 57 counties and all five boroughs of New York City,” Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said in a statement.

Under the order, pharmacists will be allowed to administer flu vaccinations to patients between 6 months and 18 years old, temporarily suspending a state law that prohibits pharmacists from administering immunizations to children.

While children and older people tend to be the most likely to become seriously ill from the flu, Mr. Cuomo urged all New Yorkers to get vaccinated.

On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta said that deaths from the flu had reached epidemic levels, with at least 20 children having died nationwide. Officials cautioned that deaths from pneumonia and the flu typically reach epidemic levels for a week or two every year. The severity of the outbreak will be determined by how long the death toll remains high or if it climbs higher.

There was some evidence that caseloads may be peaking, federal officials said on Friday.

In New York City, public health officials announced on Thursday that flu-related illnesses had reached epidemic levels, and they joined the chorus of authorities urging people to get vaccinated.

“It’s a bad year,” the city’s health commissioner, Dr. Thomas A. Farley, told reporters on Thursday. “We’ve got lots of flu, it’s mainly type AH3N2, which tends to be a little more severe. So we’re seeing plenty of cases of flu and plenty of people sick with flu. Our message for any people who are listening to this is it’s still not too late to get your flu shot.”

There has been a spike in the number of people going to emergency rooms over the past two weeks with flulike symptoms – including fever, fatigue and coughing – Dr. Farley said.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Mr. Cuomo made a public display of getting shots this past week.

In a briefing with reporters on Friday, officials from the C.D.C. said that this year’s vaccine was effective in 62 percent of cases.

As officials have stepped up their efforts encouraging vaccinations, there have been scattered reports of shortages. But officials said plenty of the vaccine was available.

According to the C.D.C., makers of the flu vaccine produced about 135 million doses for this year. As of early this month, 128 million doses had been distributed. While that would not be enough for every American, only 37 percent of the population get a flu shot each year.

Federal health officials said they would be happy if that number rose to 50 percent, which would mean that there would be more than enough vaccine for anyone who wanted to be immunized.

Two other diseases – norovirus and whooping cough – are also widespread this winter and are contributing to the number of people getting sick.

The flu can resemble a cold, though the symptoms come on more rapidly and are more severe.

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Treasury Will Not Mint $1 Trillion Coin to Raise Debt Ceiling

WASHINGTON — The Treasury Department said Saturday that it will not mint a trillion-dollar platinum coin to head off an imminent battle with Congress over raising the government’s borrowing limit.

“Neither the Treasury Department nor the Federal Reserve believes that the law can or should be used to facilitate the production of platinum coins for the purpose of avoiding an increase in the debt limit,” Anthony Coley, a Treasury spokesman, said in a written statement.

The Obama administration has indicated that the only way for the country to avoid a cash-management crisis as soon as next month is for Congress to raise the “debt ceiling,” which is the statutory limit on government borrowing. The cap is $16.4 trillion.

“There are only two options to deal with the debt limit: Congress can pay its bills, or it can fail to act and put the nation into default,” Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said in a statement. “Congress needs to do its job.”

In recent weeks, some Republicans have indicated that they would not agree to raise the debt limit unless Democrats agreed to make cuts to entitlement programs like Social Security.

The White House has said it would not negotiate spending cuts in exchange for Congressional authority to borrow more, and it has insisted that Congress raise the ceiling as a matter of course, to cover expenses already authorized by Congress. In broader fiscal negotiations, it has said it would not agree to spending cuts without commensurate tax increases.

The idea of minting a trillion-dollar coin drew wide if puzzling attention recently after some bloggers and economic commentators had suggested it as an alternative to involving Congress.

By virtue of an obscure law meant to apply to commemorative coins, the Treasury secretary could order the production of a high-denomination platinum coin and deposit it at the Federal Reserve, where it would count as a government asset and give the country more breathing room under its debt ceiling. Once Congress raised the debt ceiling, the Treasury secretary could then order the coin destroyed.

Mr. Carney, the press secretary, fielded questions about the theoretical tactic at a news conference last week. But the idea is now formally off the table.

The White House has also rejected the idea that it could mount a challenge to the debt ceiling itself, on the strength of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which holds that the “validity of the public debt” of the United States “shall not be questioned.”

The Washington Post earlier published a report that the Obama administration had rejected the platinum-coin idea.

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