Consumers Start Using Coverage Under Health Law

“I’ve had some heart palpitations, and my mom’s side has a history of heart problems starting early,” she said Wednesday in a telephone interview. “So it’s mostly just to double-check that everything is O.K.”

Ms. Hornbach, who has had breast cancer and retired early from the technology industry, said that insurance companies in Arizona had refused to cover her until about two years ago, when she got a policy with monthly premiums of $285 and a deductible of $5,500 a year. Last month, using the federal insurance exchange, she bought a midlevel silver plan with lower premiums and deductible.

“It’s a better policy — lower out-of-pocket, more choice of doctors,” she said. “This is a very happy day.”

Consumers around the country began using coverage provided by the new health care law on Wednesday, the same day that Medicaid expanded to hundreds of thousands of people in about half the states. Many provisions of the 2010 health care law offering new benefits and protections to consumers, including those with pre-existing conditions, also took effect.

Hospitals said they were getting ready for an influx of newly insured patients, but many health care providers said the pace was slower than usual because of the New Year’s holiday. In a typical report, Clay Holtzman, a spokesman for Swedish Medical Center in Seattle, said the system’s hospitals were not seeing an immediate surge.

“We might at some point down the road, since we have spent a lot of time informing uninsured patients of their options under the exchange and expanded Medicaid,” Mr. Holtzman said in an email. “But it depends on if those patients chose plans that include us.”

Swedish is one of the largest hospital systems in the region, but Mr. Holtzman said it had been excluded from the networks of providers used by the two largest health plans on the state’s insurance exchange.

Some people using their new insurance discovered that they could be responsible for substantial co-payments and other out-of-pocket costs.

Nancy M. Schlichting, the chief executive of the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, said that one patient who visited the emergency room of the system’s flagship hospital on Wednesday tried to fill a prescription and found that the co-payment would be $84 — more than she was accustomed to paying. She got a similar drug with a lower co-payment, illustrating the need for patients to pay close attention to details of their drug coverage, Ms. Schlichting said.

In San Antonio, at a 24-hour Walgreens store, only a few vehicles were lined up at the drive-through window at midday, and no one was waiting in line to pick up prescriptions at the indoor pharmacy counter.

“It’s dead,” said Leslie Castillo, a pharmacist on duty. “We’ve had a few regulars come by, but no one has come in today with a new insurance card or wanting us to look up their benefits under Obamacare.”

One reason, Ms. Castillo said, was that most doctors were not seeing patients on the New Year’s holiday. But she added, “We’ll probably be packed tomorrow.”

Kenneth E. Raske, the president of the Greater New York Hospital Association, said: “Today is a historic occasion for the health care community. The coverage expansion kicks in for hundreds of thousands of people in New York State and millions across the country, who will enjoy the comfort of knowing they won’t have to worry about health care bills if they get sick.”

Danny Cottrell, the owner of a pharmacy in Brewton, Ala., said he had helped several people sign up for coverage. One customer, who has $3,500 to $4,000 a year in prescription drug costs, qualified for federal subsidies and chose a plan with a premium of about $300 a month and an annual deductible of $500.

“He will definitely come out ahead,” Mr. Cottrell said. “He will save at least $7,500 a year on medical bills.”

Dr. Michael W. Cropp, the president of Independent Health, an insurer in Buffalo, said, “I anticipate a lot of uncertainty and confusion and some frustration” as consumers begin to use their new insurance policies.

“The website for the New York exchange is now working for most enrollment purposes,” Dr. Cropp said. “But I have concerns about how funds will flow from the federal government to health plans for members receiving federal subsidies.”

Expecting a continued battle over health care, the White House moved Wednesday to recruit volunteers for its campaign to defend and promote the law, which is likely to be a defining issue in many congressional races this year. A White House website invites supporters and beneficiaries of the law to provide their names, email addresses and personal experiences.

“Whether you have new coverage today or know someone who does, we want to hear your story,” David Simas, an aide to President Obama, said in an email to people who had expressed interest in the issue.

Jessica Santillo, a White House spokeswoman, said the invitation was part of a systematic new effort by the administration to “highlight stories of everyday Americans benefiting from the law.”

The administration hopes to encourage enrollment and reverse public opinion polls that show approval of the health care law lagging behind disapproval.

Lisa Maria Garza contributed reporting from San Antonio, and Kimiya Shokoohi from Los Angeles.

Another Promising Night for Fox and Its Early Start to TV Season

On its second night of jump-starting the new television season a week before its network competition, the Fox network again got some positive results.

A new comedy, “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” got some promising ratings; another, “Dads,” fared well enough to hold out some hope, and one returned comedy, “New Girl,” showed some renewed strength.

Only one comedy, “The Mindy Project,” generated disappointing numbers, probably disappointing as much to critics as to Fox executives because “Mindy” had been widely extolled before its second-season premiere. The premiere also featured a guest appearance by James Franco.

Even so, Fox will probably take the overall performance on a Tuesday night, where it struggled badly last season. Probably the best news was the strong showing for “Brooklyn,” another favorite of critics, which drew six million viewers and a solid 2.5 rating among the group Fox sells to advertisers, viewers between the ages of 18 and 49.

The other new series, “Dads,” which had been excoriated by critics for what they charged was racially insensitive humor, managed a 2.1 in that 18-49 group and 5.6 million viewers, both respectable numbers for a newcomer. “New Girl” returned with 5.6 million viewers and the best 18-49 rating of the night, a 2.9. Both numbers were up slightly from the show’s premiere episode a year ago.

“The Mindy Project” however, showed what may be a worrisome falloff from “New Girl,” dropping to just under four million viewers and a 1.9 rating in the 18-49 group. Fox, which is also offering projections of how its shows will fare when delayed viewing is counted, offered some hope for “Mindy,” suggesting it could eventually reach more than six million viewers and climb to a 2.7 rating among those younger adult viewers.

That would still be a sizable falloff from “New Girl,” which Fox thinks could get as high as more than 10.5 million viewers and perhaps a 4.7 rating in the 18-49 category.

Tapering of Stimulus Could Start as Soon as September, 2 Fed Presidents Hint

Charles L. Evans, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, said he would not rule out the possibility that the Fed could start tapering as early as next month.

The remarks came at a breakfast with reporters in Chicago and echoed through the markets during the day, because Mr. Evans is a voting member of the Federal Open Market Committee, which sets Fed policy, and because he has generally supported more aggressive efforts to stimulate the economy in the past.

In a separate interview with Market News International, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Dennis P. Lockhart, also indicated a September move was an option. Mr. Lockhart is not a voting member of the committee, however, so his comments carry a bit less weight than those of Mr. Evans.

On Wall Street, which has benefited from the Fed’s accommodative stance, stocks dropped after the comments, and major market indexes closed lower by a little more than half a percentage point.

The Fed and its chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, have signaled that the central bank’s policy of buying $85 billion a month in government bonds and mortgage-backed securities will be wound down if the economy improves further and unemployment continues to fall.

Mr. Bernanke has said he envisions the stimulus program coming to an end by the middle of next year if unemployment falls to about 7 percent. Last Friday, the Labor Department reported that unemployment in July fell to 7.4 percent, from 7.6 percent in June.

Mr. Bernanke has not said, however, when the tapering will begin, only that the speed and timing of any easing is contingent upon continued signs of strength in the economy.

Traders and economists expect bond purchases to be reduced before the end of 2013, but opinion is divided about whether that will start as early as next month, or come as late as December.

The Fed’s ultimate decision will have wide-reaching impact. The Fed’s aggressive bond buying has helped keep long-term interests rates low; mortgage rates have risen by roughly a full percentage point since Mr. Bernanke first raised the possibility of tapering in May. In addition, the stimulus has also helped prop up the big rally on Wall Street.

While the remarks by Mr. Evans and Mr. Lockhart on Tuesday did not resolve the debate, their tone suggested that tapering was indeed on the horizon if the economy held up.

“Adjustments to asset purchases are going to be conditional on our outlook materializing,” Mr. Evans said. “It’s going to be data-dependent.”

“I do expect though that the outlook will materialize, and we are quite likely to reduce the flow purchase rate starting later this year — couldn’t tell you which month that will be — and it’s likely to wind down, over time, in a couple or a few stages,” he said.

In terms of September, Mr. Evans said, “I clearly would not rule it out, it’s going to depend on the data — the data have been not so bad.”

For his part, Mr. Lockhart, the Atlanta Fed president, also said there was plenty of wiggle room for the central bank, depending on how economic growth shaped up over the coming months.

If growth turns out to be weaker than expected, he said, a reduction in stimulus efforts could be put off.

“If we see a deterioration from this point, and I would say my more realistic fear is just a kind of ambiguous picture of mixed data that signal neither accelerating strength nor necessarily deterioration, but that kind of moping along in the middle, then I think it’s not a foregone conclusion that the asset purchase program should be removed or removed rapidly,” he said.

Dean Maki, chief United States economist at Barclays, said: “Neither Fed president was willing to commit to September nor rule it out. What this is telling us is the F.O.M.C. is keeping its options open and awaiting further data.”

Federal Judge Halts Plans to Start Horse Slaughters

Judge Christina Armijo of Federal District Court issued a restraining order in a lawsuit brought by the Humane Society of the United States and other groups in a case that has set off an emotional national debate about how best to deal with the tens of thousands of unwanted and abandoned horses across the country.

Judge Armijo scheduled another hearing for Monday in the lawsuit. The move stops what would have been the resumption of horse slaughters for the first time in seven years in the United States.

The groups contend the Department of Agriculture failed to do the proper environmental studies before issuing permits that allowed the companies to open horse slaughterhouses, which they had said they planned to open as soon as Monday.

The horse meat would be exported for human consumption and for use as zoo and other animal food.

The Valley Meat Company of Roswell, N.M., has been at the fore of the fight, pushing for more than a year for permission to convert its cattle plant into a horse slaughterhouse.

The Agriculture Department in June gave the company the go-ahead to begin slaughtering horses. Federal officials said they were legally obligated to issue the permits, even though the Obama administration opposes horse slaughter and is seeking to reinstate a Congressional ban that was lifted in 2011.

Another permit was later approved for Responsible Transportation in Sigourney, Iowa.

The move has divided horse rescue and animal welfare groups, ranchers, politicians and American Indian tribes about what is the most humane way to deal with the country’s horse overpopulation.

Some American Indian tribes, including the Navajo and Yakama nations, are among those who are pushing to let the companies open. They say the exploding horse populations on their reservations are trampling and overgrazing rangelands, decimating forage resources for cattle and causing environmental damage.

On the other side, the actor Robert Redford, former Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, current Gov. Susana Martinez and the attorney general, Gary King, are among those who strongly oppose a return to domestic horse slaughter, citing the animals’ longtime role as companion animals in the West.

DealBook: Dell Adjourns Vote on Deal as Some Big Investors Start to Shift

Kimihiro Hoshino/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMichael S. Dell, founder of the computer company that bears his name.

9:21 p.m. | Updated

Dell bought itself six more days to win backing for its proposed $24.4 billion sale to its founder, but the fight for additional support remained tough.

On Thursday, Dell, the computer maker, adjourned a meeting for shareholders to vote on the deal only minutes after opening the gathering. The vote is now scheduled for July 24 at 6 p.m.

Thursday’s decision, which many had expected, prolongs the drama surrounding the former giant of the personal computer industry. Dell has been shrouded in uncertainty for several months, as investors have questioned whether the $13.65-a-share bid by Michael S. Dell and the investment firm Silver Lake would succeed.

The meeting was adjourned after preliminary tallies showed that the deal would almost certainly have been defeated. With more time, a committee of Dell’s board and the company’s proposed buyers will try to twist more arms.

The two groups have already made headway. On Wednesday night, a number of big institutional investors switched their votes to “yes,” people who had been briefed on the matter said. Those investors included big asset managers like the Vanguard Group, BlackRock, the State Street Corporation, the Bank of New York Mellon and Invesco.

For the votes already cast, the race looks like a dead heat, one of these people said. But an estimated 23 percent of Dell votes have not been cast, effectively counting as no votes. And any votes can be changed before the new shareholder meeting, meaning that the landscape may change yet again.

The bar for approving the deal is high. More than 42 percent of Dell’s shares would have to be cast in favor of the deal. The billionaire Carl C. Icahn and Southeastern Asset Management, who have proposed an alternative to the leveraged buyout, together own almost 12.7 percent.

“It is unfortunate, although not surprising, that Dell’s board and special committee have delayed the date of the special meeting at which stockholders can vote on the Michael Dell/Silver Lake freeze out transaction,” Mr. Icahn and Southeastern said in a statement. “We believe that this delay reflects the unhappiness of Dell stockholders with the Michael Dell/Silver Lake offer, which we believe substantially undervalues the company.”

Instead, Mr. Icahn and Southeastern have proposed that the company buy back 1.1 billion shares for $14 each, and offer warrants to buy additional shares for $20 each. The two investors valued their plan at $15.50 to $18. But the committee of Dell’s board rejected the idea as too risky and not in the best interests of other shareholders.

Both sides have argued that Dell must continue to move away from personal computer manufacturing, which once propelled its profits but now weighs down its prospects. The embattled business is trying to build a more profitable corporate software and services operation.

But Mr. Dell and Silver Lake argue that such a transformation can only succeed if carried out in private, away from analysts and public investors. Mr. Icahn and Southeastern dismiss that contention, while arguing that the current offer is too low.

Many investors appear to hope that the prospect of defeat will force Mr. Dell into raising the bid. He acquiesced before, increasing the purchase price to its current level from $13.60.

The committee will try to persuade the bidders in raise their price again, the people briefed on the matter said. But people close to Mr. Dell and Silver Lake insist that no such increase is coming, given the declining financial health of the company and the overall weakness of the personal computer industry.

If that is the case, the Dell committee will likely seek a letter from Mr. Dell and Silver Lake confirming that $13.65 a share is their best-and-final offer, erasing any illusions about an increase. Shares in Dell rose 1.9 percent on Thursday, to $13.12, suggesting that investors feel somewhat more optimistic that the buyout will succeed.

Why Witness Preparation Should Start With the Basics

All too often we are presented with the challenge of a difficult witness who seems intent on doing more damage than good for the case. It?s the corporate executive impatient with being on the receiving end of a question. It?s the medical professional personally offended by having his or her care criticized. It?s the person scared to the point of anger who doesn?t understand why he or she is involved in the case and is afraid of the outcome.

U.S. and Europe to Start Ambitious but Delicate Trade Talks

Mr. Obama said that the first round of talks would begin next month in Washington between the United States and the 27-nation Europe Union. “The U.S.-E.U. relationship is the largest in the world — it makes up almost half of global G.D.P.,” Mr. Obama said, referring to gross domestic product. “This potentially groundbreaking partnership would deepen those ties.”

But President François Hollande of France expressed disbelief at comments José Manuel Barroso, the European Commission president, made over the weekend. In an interview, Mr. Barroso had criticized as “reactionary” France’s insistence on protecting its film and television industries as a condition of supporting the trade negotiations.

“I do not want to believe that the president of the European Commission could have made the statements about France, or even about the artists, that were made,” Mr. Hollande said, according to the Web sites of several French news organizations.

Mr. Hollande did not appear in a media tent here at the Lough Erne Resort when Mr. Obama and Mr. Barroso — with Herman Van Rompuy, president of the European Council, and David Cameron, the British prime minister — announced the timing of the trade negotiations. French reporters said Mr. Hollande was busy preparing for his meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

Aside from trade, the two-day Group of 8 meeting was likely to be dominated by the civil war in Syria. Other financial issues on the agenda were measures to clamp down on tax evasion and the legal ruses multinational companies use to limit their tax liabilities.

Mr. Cameron, the host of the meeting, was by far the most effusive of the leaders who spoke about their trade ambitions. “We’re talking about what could be the biggest bilateral trade deal in history, a deal that would have a greater impact than all the other trade deals on the table put together,” he said.

A trade pact between the United States and the European Union has long been an ambition of policy makers. According to the European Commission, the executive arm of the bloc, such a deal would allow European companies to sell an additional 187 billion euros, $250 billion, worth of goods and services a year to the United States.

The angry French response highlighted the delicacy of the negotiations, which will aim to reduce trans-Atlantic tariffs and streamline regulations to stimulate economic growth in the United States and Europe.

Last Friday, after a campaign by French artists and politicians, European Union trade ministers agreed to accede to France’s demands to protect the audiovisual sector.

In his interview after the agreement, Mr. Barroso said France’s Socialist government was advocating an “anti-globalization agenda” that was “completely reactionary.”

Mr. Barroso’s comments were described as “scandalous and dangerous” in a statement on Monday from the French Socialist Party.

In addressing reporters on Monday, Mr. Barroso took no questions and did not comment on the French reaction.

Speaking in Brussels, Olivier Bailly, a spokesman for the European Commission, said that Mr. Barroso’s comments had referred not to the French government but to those who had “made personal attacks” against him before the negotiations. Mr. Bailly did not identify them.

In response to the French objections, some Europeans worry that the United States will seek to exclude financial services from the talks, reducing their scope significantly.

Mr. Obama acknowledged those concerns. “There are going to be sensitivities on both sides,” he said. “There are going to be politics on both sides. But if we can look beyond the narrow concerns to stay focused on the big picture — the economic and strategic importance of this partnership — I’m hopeful we can achieve the kind of high-standard, comprehensive agreement that the global trading system is looking to us to develop.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: June 17, 2013

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article stated incorrectly the timing of an interview with José Manuel Barroso. The interview was on Friday before trade ministers agreed to accede to France’s demands to protect the audiovisual sector, not after the agreement.

Bucks Blog: Incentives to Start a 529 College Savings Plan

EPA Students at Morehouse College’s commencement ceremonies.

College graduation season is in full swing, marking an annual rite of passage — and serving as a reminder that higher education isn’t getting any cheaper. One option available to help families put away money for college, and avoid borrowing too much, is a 529 college savings plan.

In general, 529 plans are college savings and investment accounts sponsored by state governments. Money deposited in the accounts grows tax free, as long as the funds are used for educational purposes when withdrawn. You don’t have to be a resident of a particular state to use its plan, although some states offer additional tax benefits to in-state plan participants.

Most 529s are designed as traditional savings-and-investment vehicles, but some states offer prepaid 529 plans, which allow savers to pay tuition at certain schools in advance at current rates.

To raise awareness of the savings plans, the College Savings Plans Network, a nonprofit group that represents the plans, is promoting Wednesday (that is, 5/29), as National 529 College Savings Day. More than 30 states are organizing events to promote their 529 plans, and some are offering incentives for families to create accounts.

Florida, for instance, is waiving the $50 enrollment fee for plans opened from May 20 through June 30.

Washington State is also waiving a $50 enrollment fee, for plans meeting certain conditions; the account must be established by midnight Wednesday.

And Utah is offering matching contributions of $25, for accounts opened on Wednesday with contributions of at least $25.

The College Savings Plans Network itself is offering a chance to win $529 toward a new or existing savings plan. To enter, you must “like” the network on Facebook.

The network has created an interactive map showing what various states are doing. To see what your state’s plan is offering, click on your state.

Do you take part in a 529 savings plan? If not, will your state’s promotional event entice you to start?

Drinker Isn't Only Firm to Start E-Discovery Shop

Drinker Biddle bought its own software and is looking to replicate what e-discovery vendors are offering their clients. They are avoiding conflicts by setting it up as a subsidiary separate from the law firm.

Boeing Jet Returns to the Air, but It’s Only a Start

“We kept on checking the voltage again and again, because we were so nervous,” he said in an interview after the 787 jet landed at Haneda Airport in Tokyo, apparently without incident. “Everything was fine, absolutely fine.”

Mr. Ogami may have gotten over his own jitters, but he and his colleagues at All Nippon, the largest operator of Boeing’s 787 batteries, now must convince an uneasy public of the reliability of the jets — most of which were grounded for three months because of concerns that the batteries crucial to the planes’ sophisticated electrical systems might catch fire.

Even as Boeing and the operators of its Dreamliners move swiftly toward getting the jets back in the air, they now face the delicate task of selling passengers on the idea that the jet is safe, even though engineers have still not figured out what exactly caused batteries to burn on two separate planes earlier this year.

In the past week, regulators in the United States, Europe and Japan — all of which grounded the 787 fleet after those incidents — signed off on fixes to the batteries proposed by Boeing.

Smaller airlines are already moving ahead in reintroducing the jet to their fleets, including Ethiopian Airlines, which used a 787 on Saturday on a two-hour commercial flight from Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, to Nairobi.

But the resumption of 787 flights at All Nippon and Japan Airlines, which together own nearly half the 50 Dreamliner jets Boeing has delivered so far, will prove the real test of whether the modified batteries will eliminate further mishaps.

So both Japanese airlines are being cautious about bringing the Dreamliners back into service, saying they hope to resume scheduled commercial flights only in June. That will give them more time to conduct test flights, retrain their crew and to educate the public about the safety of the improved batteries. (All Nippon said it might introduce Dreamliners on some flights before June, however.)

“It’s up to us to explain how we’ve made these planes safer,” Shinichiro Ito, chief executive of All Nippon and Mr. Ogami’s boss, said at a press conference after flying on the test jet, together with executives from Boeing. “We won’t decide to resume commercial flights until we’re sure our passengers are comfortable with boarding a 787.”

The other airlines that already own 787s are all eager to resume service, although the timing varies. United has scheduled its 787s to start flying domestic routes on May 31 and plans to begin international flights on June 10, from Denver to Tokyo and Houston to London. The airline will then fly its 787s in August from Houston to Lagos, as well as from Los Angeles to Shanghai and Tokyo.

LOT, the Polish national airline, plans to begin commercial 787 flights on June 5 between Warsaw and Chicago. Later, it expects to fly its planes to New York, Toronto and Beijing.

Air India said it hoped to have flights by mid-May. The other airlines that own 787s are Qatar Airlines and LAN of Chile.

But it is in Japan where the 787 has a particularly difficult task in winning back confidence. The Japanese public has been subject to intense coverage of what first appeared to be teething problems of Boeing’s next-generation 787 jet: a cracked cockpit window and a fuel leak.

Then a battery fire on a parked Japan Airlines jet in Boston in January, followed closely by a meltdown of batteries aboard a domestic All Nippon flight, catapulted the story into the nation’s top headlines.

The All Nippon incident, which prompted an emergency landing, has been particularly damaging to the 787’s image in Japan. All day, TV stations played footage of the incident, emergency chutes splayed on the tarmac, with testimony from distressed passengers to boot.

“I was terrified. I didn’t feel alive,” Masaaki Ishikawa, a 40-year-old office worker, told the Sankei newspaper at the time.

Now, some Japanese are understandably worried.

Why Witness Preparation Should Start With the Basics

All too often we are presented with the challenge of a difficult witness who seems intent on doing more damage than good for the case. It?s the corporate executive impatient with being on the receiving end of a question. It?s the medical professional personally offended by having his or her care criticized. It?s the person scared to the point of anger who doesn?t understand why he or she is involved in the case and is afraid of the outcome.

Why Witness Preparation Should Start With the Basics

All too often we are presented with the challenge of a difficult witness who seems intent on doing more damage than good for the case. It?s the corporate executive impatient with being on the receiving end of a question. It?s the medical professional personally offended by having his or her care criticized. It?s the person scared to the point of anger who doesn?t understand why he or she is involved in the case and is afraid of the outcome.

Media Decoder Blog: Andrew Sullivan Leaving Daily Beast to Start Subscription Web Site

3:06 p.m. | Updated Andrew Sullivan, the prolific writer who has built up his following for his blog “The Dish” first at the TheAtlantic.com and then at the Daily Beast, announced on Wednesday he is striking out on his own with a Web site dependent entirely on subscription revenue.

Mr. Sullivan said in an announcement posted on “The Dish” that starting on Feb. 1, he plans to charge readers $19.99 a year or whatever they might want to pay to subscribe to his site. He said that he spent the last dozen years blogging and trying to figure out how to make his venture profitable. He tried pledge drives for six years and then shifted to partnering with larger institutions like the Atlantic and the Daily Beast. He said he decided to make this change now since his contract with the Daily Beast was finished at the end of 2012.

“We felt more and more that getting readers to pay a small amount for content was the only truly solid future for online journalism,” Mr. Sullivan wrote. He added “the only completely clear and transparent way to do this, we concluded, was to become totally independent of other media entities and rely entirely on you for our salaries, health insurance, and legal, technological and accounting expenses.”

Mr. Sullivan is starting his new company, Dish Publishing LLC, with his two colleagues and executive editors, Patrick Appel and Chris Bodenner. Mr. Sullivan said that he has received the support of Tina Brown, the Daily Beast’s editor in chief, and Barry Diller, its owner, to keep “The Dish” on the Daily Beast Web site through Feb. 1. Then the site will shift to his old address, www.andrewsullivan.com.

Mr. Sullivan said in an e-mail message that he could have remained at the Daily Beast under a new contract. But he said that as he and his two partners started negotiating, they “began to see the overpowering logic of real independence.”

He added that the Dish is going to stay in New York City, where he and his two business partners are based, “for the foreseeable future.” He added, “We need to be together as a group.”

In his announcement, he wrote that the new venture had decided not to depend on advertising for revenue because of “how distracting and intrusive it can be, and how it often slows down the page painfully.” He added that advertisers also require too much effort for a small company. “We’re increasingly struck how advertising is dominated online by huge entities, and how compromising and time-consuming it could be for so few of us to try and lure big corporations to support us,” he wrote.

Why Witness Preparation Should Start With the Basics

All too often we are presented with the challenge of a difficult witness who seems intent on doing more damage than good for the case. It?s the corporate executive impatient with being on the receiving end of a question. It?s the medical professional personally offended by having his or her care criticized. It?s the person scared to the point of anger who doesn?t understand why he or she is involved in the case and is afraid of the outcome.

Why Witness Preparation Should Start With the Basics

All too often we are presented with the challenge of a difficult witness who seems intent on doing more damage than good for the case. It?s the corporate executive impatient with being on the receiving end of a question. It?s the medical professional personally offended by having his or her care criticized. It?s the person scared to the point of anger who doesn?t understand why he or she is involved in the case and is afraid of the outcome.

Why Witness Preparation Should Start With the Basics

All too often we are presented with the challenge of a difficult witness who seems intent on doing more damage than good for the case. It?s the corporate executive impatient with being on the receiving end of a question. It?s the medical professional personally offended by having his or her care criticized. It?s the person scared to the point of anger who doesn?t understand why he or she is involved in the case and is afraid of the outcome.

Bits Blog: Microsoft Surface to Start at $500

David Mcnew/Reuters The Surface tablet, as displayed by Microsoft in June.

As the days tick down to Microsoft’s introduction of its Surface tablet, the company has revealed how it plans to price the product — more like Apple than Amazon.

Instead of adopting Amazon’s lower pricing on the Kindle Fire, Microsoft said it would sell Surface for a starting price of $500, the same starting price as the current generation of Apple’s iPad. People who buy that Surface model will get some extra perks though, including 32 gigabytes of storage — twice the amount of the cheapest third-generation iPad — and a 10.6-inch display, rather than the iPad’s 9.7-inch display.

Microsoft said it would sell a 32-gigabyte Surface bundled with a black Touch Cover, a keyboard that doubles as a protective shield for the tablet, for $600. A similar bundle with a 64-gigabyte Surface will cost $700. Microsoft will sell Touch Covers separately in a wider assortment of colors for $120, and a different type of keyboard cover with moving keys, called Type Cover, will sell for $130.

It’s clear Microsoft is aiming Surface at what is shaping up to be the premium portion of the tablet market, which Apple currently dominates. Amazon, in contrast, seems intent on using price as a weapon to gain market share against its rivals. The company recently introduced an 8.9-inch-screen Kindle Fire that starts at $300.

Microsoft has not yet said whether it will bring out a version of Surface that competes in the small-screen tablet category. Google’s Nexus 7 tablet starts at $200, while Amazon’s seven-inch Kindle Fire starts at $160. Apple is expected to announce a new, smaller iPad next week.

Surface will go on sale Oct. 26 in Microsoft retail stores in the United States and Canada. The company said the product would be sold online in Britain, China, France, Germany and several other countries. Microsoft said a limited quantity will be available for ordering on Tuesday at noon Eastern time.

The company also began showing a new Surface television commercial on Monday evening, featuring an odd collection of foot-stomping girls in school uniforms and dancers using their Surface tablets as percussion instruments.

Why Witness Preparation Should Start With the Basics

All too often we are presented with the challenge of a difficult witness who seems intent on doing more damage than good for the case. It?s the corporate executive impatient with being on the receiving end of a question. It?s the medical professional personally offended by having his or her care criticized. It?s the person scared to the point of anger who doesn?t understand why he or she is involved in the case and is afraid of the outcome.

Bucks: A Simple Place to Start: Your Net Worth

Carl Richards

Carl Richards is a certified financial planner in Park City, Utah, and is the director of investor education at BAM Advisor Services. His book, “The Behavior Gap,” was published this year. His sketches are archived on the Bucks blog.

The world is a crazy place. We hear reports that say the economy is getting better. Next month, we hear that things don’t look so good. It feels like a tug-of-war, and we’re caught in the middle. Looking around, you may feel like the only thing you have any hope of controlling is your financial situation. So you want to make some changes and put a framework around your financial future.

But there’s so much information! Credit card statements, mortgage payments, insurance renewals, student loan bills and every other piece of financial data about your life can be overwhelming. It’s incredibly easy to throw up your hands and say, “I don’t know where to start.”

The best place to start is with your current reality. Seems obvious, right? But if it’s so obvious, then why haven’t we done it?

It can be painful. The reason you’re looking to change things is because something isn’t working. That something may be incredibly personal, like how you talk about money with your spouse. So we avoid our current reality and tell ourselves things will get better tomorrow.There are a million other things to do. We’re all busy. Thinking about what’s right and wrong with your current reality probably doesn’t make anyone’s Top Ten list.

But if you find yourself in a situation where you’re ready to make a change, the best place to start is at the beginning by creating a personal balance sheet. Your goal is to discover where you stand financially right now.

You don’t need a fancy spreadsheet or even a computer for this exercise. Just grab a blank piece of paper and a pen. Then draw a line down the middle.

On the left side, list all your assets in detail. Bank accounts, the fair market value of your home, investment portfolio. For every asset, list it and its value.

On the right side, list all your liabilities. Credit card debt, mortgage, school loans. Again, get specific and list the actual amounts of each liability.

If you don’t know, call your bank, credit card company or your adviser. In this exercise, guessing isn’t allowed, so ask the questions and get the real numbers on paper.

Then, add up all your assets and subtract all your liabilities. You now have your net worth.

What does it look like? If you’re not happy with the number you see, you have two choices that will probably involve some hard work:

Increase your assetsDecrease your liabilities

If you’re wondering why I suggest starting with something so simple, it’s because I keep crossing paths with people who don’t know how their assets compare to their liabilities. And the reality is that if you don’t know where you stand today, then how will you ever figure out where you want to be tomorrow?

So the next time you think you don’t know where to start, ask the question, “What does my current reality look like?” Once you know where you stand, then you can make an honest assessment of your options and what comes next.

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: October 1, 2012

It is the fair market value of your home that should be listed on the asset side of the ledger. This post originally suggested putting "home equity" there, but with "mortgage" already listed on the liability side, that would lead to an incorrect result.

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