In brewing rivalry, Instagram trims ties to Twitter

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Facebook Inc’s recently acquired photo-sharing service Instagram removed a key element of its integration with Twitter, signaling a deepening rift between two of the Web’s dominant social media companies.

Instagram Chief Executive Kevin Systrom said Wednesday his company turned off support for Twitter “cards” in order to drive Twitter users to Instagram’s own website. Twitter “cards” are a feature that allows multimedia content like YouTube videos and Instagram photos to be embedded and viewed directly within a Twitter message.

The move marked the latest clash between Facebook and Twitter since April, when Facebook, the world’s no. 1 social network, outbid Twitter to nab fast-growing Instagram in a cash-and-stock deal valued at the time at $ 1 billion. The acquisition closed in September for roughly $ 715 million, reflecting Facebook’s recent stock drop.

The companies’ ties have been strained since. In July, Twitter blocked Instagram from using its data to help new Instagram users find friends.

Beginning earlier this week, Twitter’s users began to complain in public messages that Instagram photos did not seem to display properly on Twitter’s website.

Systrom confirmed Wednesday that his company had decided its users should view photos on Instagram’s own Web pages and took steps to change its policies.

“We believe the best experience is for us to link back to where the content lives,” Systrom said in a statement, citing recent improvements to Instagram’s website.

“A handful of months ago, we supported Twitter cards because we had a minimal Web presence,” Systrom said, noting that the company has since released new features that allow users to comment about and “like” photos directly on Instagram’s website.

The move escalates a rivalry in the fast-growing social networking sector, where the biggest players have sought to wall off access to content from rival services and to their ranks of users.

“They’re both competing for slices of the same pie, the pie being users’ attention,” said Ray Valdes, an analyst with research firm Gartner.

If Facebook decides to offer advertising on Instagram, it’s important that the users visit Instagram’s own website, said Valdes. “If the eyeballs are elsewhere, you have less to work with in terms of monetization,” he said.

Photos are among the most popular features on both Facebook and Twitter, and Instagram’s meteoric rise in recent years has further proved how picture-sharing has become a key front in the battle for social Internet supremacy.

Instagram, which has 100 million users, allows consumers to tweak the photos they take on their smartphones and share the images with friends, a feature that Twitter has reportedly also begun to develop. Twitter’s executive chairman, Jack Dorsey, was an early investor in Instagram and had hoped to acquire it before Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made a successful bid.

When Zuckerberg announced the acquisition in an April blog post, he highlighted Instagram’s inter-connectivity with other social networks.

“We think the fact that Instagram is connected to other services beyond Facebook is an important part of the experience,” Zuckerberg wrote. “We plan on keeping features like the ability to post to other social networks.”

A Twitter spokesman declined comment Wednesday, but a status message on Twitter’s website confirmed that users are “experiencing issues,” such as “cropped images” when viewing Instagram photos on Twitter.

(Reporting By Alexei Oreskovic and Gerry Shih; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Leslie Adler)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Bryant eclipses 30,000, Lakers beat Hornets 103-87

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Kobe Bryant scored 29 points, making him the fifth player in NBA history to score 30,000, and the Los Angeles Lakers snapped a two-game skid with a 103-87 victory over the New Orleans Hornets on Wednesday night.

Bryant entered the game needing only 13 points to eclipse the scoring milestone and did so with a short jumper late in the first half that was perhaps the least spectacular of his baskets, which included the usual array of soaring dunks, demoralizing transition 3-pointers and turnaround, off-balance jumpers.

Dwight Howard added 18 points and five blocked shots for the Lakers, who trailed 48-47 at halftime but seized control with a 13-0 run to open the third quarter, and the lead grew as large as 20 in the fourth.

Ryan Anderson scored 31, hitting 5 of 8 3-pointers for the Hornets, who were playing their ninth straight game without top overall draft choice Anthony Davis. Greivis Vasquez added 16 points, while Robin Lopez scored 15 points and blocked five shots.

Antawn Jamison scored 15 and Metta World Peace 11, and Chris Duhon had 10 assists for Los Angeles, which is playing without Steve Nash and Pau Gasol and won for only the second time on the road this season. The Hornets fell to 3-7 at home and lost for the 10th time in 12 games overall.

The Hornets led from early in the first quarter until halftime, going up by as many as eight points when Al-Farouq Aminu slammed down an alley-oop lob from Vasquez, energizing the largest crowd of the season at the New Orleans Arena.

Bryant helped the Lakers trim their deficit after that, hitting five free throws and his milestone on 3-foot jumper in the last 2:15 of the second quarter.

Jamison opened the third-quarter onslaught with 3, Howard followed with a fast-break layup and Bryant had two straight fast-break dunks, one of which he created himself with a steal.

Howard finished the surge with a layup.

Anderson's shooting helped the Hornets pull to 70-62 late in the third period, but Bryant hit an 18-footer and Jodie Meeks added one of his three 3-pointers to give Los Angeles a 13-point lead heading into the final period. Meeks and Darius Morris then added 3s early in the period and New Orleans could not recover.

Notes: NBA Commissioner David Stern attended the game and said he was happy to be in attendance for Bryant's milestone moment, even if the scheduling was pure coincidence. Stern was making a regularly scheduled visit with first-year Hornets owner Tom Benson, who is also the owner of the NFL's Saints, to see how Benson's plans for the NBA franchise were taking shape. Stern visited Saints headquarters, where new construction has begun on additions that will also accommodate Hornets offices and practice courts. Stern said he wanted to shake hands with Bryant after the game. "As a talent, a competitor, I think that he is up there on the pedestal with Michael Jordan. He is one of the greatest." ... Stern also discussed the possibility of a team name change, something Benson has said he wants since buying the club last spring. Stern says the club has not yet applied for a name change but that the league would likely accept whatever name the Hornets want and expedite the transition.

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McAfee Antivirus Software Pioneer Arrested in Guatemala City

MEXICO CITY — The antivirus software pioneer John McAfee was arrested in Guatemala City on Wednesday after he slipped over the border from his home in Belize where police want to question him in their investigation of the murder of his neighbor.

The interior minister, Mauricio Lopez Bonilla, told The Associated Press that Mr. McAfee, 67, had been arrested on charges of entering Guatemala illegally. He said that Mr. McAfee had been arrested at a hotel in the capital and taken to a detention center for migrants who are in the nation illegally.

Mr. McAfee had been on the run for almost a month since his neighbor, Gregory Faull, on the Belizean island of Ambergris Caye was found dead at his home on Nov. 11. Police there cited Mr. McAfee as a “person of interest” in their investigation, but Mr. McAfee disapppeared.

But he did not disappear from the Internet. He kept up a continuous stream of comment on his blog and on Twitter, alleging that he was being persecuted by the Belizean authorities.

On Tuesday, he resurfaced in Guatemala, dressed in a suit, his blond curls dyed dark brown.

Accompanied by his 20-year-old Belizean girlfriend, Samantha Venagas, and his Guatemalan lawyer, Telésforo Guerra, Mr. McAfee said that he would seek political asylum in Guatemala. Mr. Guerra, a former Guatemalan attorney general, who has defended some of the country’s more notorious politicians, told reporters at a chaotic news conference outside the Supreme Court that his client was being persecuted because he refused to pay Belizean authorities off any longer.

Mr. McAfee has not been associated with the software company that bears his name since 1994, when he sold it and began to pursue his other interests. He ran a yoga retreat and then built a complex in New Mexico to indulge his hobby of flying motorized ultralight airplanes.

He moved to Belize about four years ago, buying properties on the mainland and on Ambergris Caye. It was there that he clashed with Mr.

Faull, who complained about the unleashed dogs Mr. McAfee kept on his property.

On November 9, several of the dogs were found dead. They had been poisoned.

During his time in Belize, Mr. McAfee had apparently become interested in developing a designer drug called MDPV. He posted extensively about his experiments on a Web site.

But he attracted the attention of Belizean authorities, who raided one of his properties in April. He spent a night in jail, but law enforcement officials found no evidence that he was producing methamphetamine and dropped the charges.

After that experience, though, Mr. McAfee appeared to become increasing convinced that he was being persecuted by the Belizean government. Officials deny that they are persecuting him and Belize’s Prime Minister Dean Barrow has said only that Mr. Mcfee is “bonkers.”

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Willis Whitfield, Clean Room Inventor, Dies at 92

The enemy was very small but it was everywhere. World peace, medical advancement, iTunes — all would eventually be threatened.

Half a century ago, as a rapidly changing world sought increasingly smaller mechanical and electrical components and more sanitary hospital conditions, one of the biggest obstacles to progress was air, and the dust and germs it contains.

Stray particles a few microns wide could compromise the integrity of a circuit board of a nuclear weapon. Unchecked bacteria could quickly infect a patient after a seemingly successful operation. Microprocessors, not yet in existence, would have been destroyed by dust. After all, an average cubic foot of air contained three million microscopic particles, and even the best efforts at vacuuming and wiping down a high-tech work space could only reduce the rate to one million.

Then, in 1962, Willis Whitfield invented the clean room.

“People said he was a fraud,” recalled Gilbert V. Herrera, the director of microsystems science and technology at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque. “But he turned out to be right.”

Mr. Whitfield, who worked at Sandia from 1954 to 1984, died on Nov. 12 in Albuquerque. He was 92. The cause was prostate cancer, his wife, Belva, said.

His clean rooms blew air in from the ceiling and sucked it out from the floor. Filters scrubbed the air before it entered the room. Gravity helped particles exit. It might not seem like a complicated concept, but no one had tried it before. The process could completely replace the air in the room 10 times a minute.

Particle detectors in Mr. Whitfield’s clean rooms started showing numbers so low — a thousand times lower than other methods — that some people did not believe the readings, or Mr. Whitfield. He was questioned so much that he began understating the efficiency of his method to keep from shocking people.

“I think Whitfield’s wrong,” a scientist from Bell Labs finally said at a conference where Mr. Whitfield spoke. “It’s actually 10 times better than he’s saying.”

Willis James Whitfield was born in Rosedale, Okla., on Dec. 6, 1919. In addition to his wife, his survivors include his sons, James and Joe; a sister, Amy Blackburn; and a brother, Lawrence.

Mr. Whitfield became fascinated with electronics as a young man and received a two-year degree in the field after high school. He served in the Navy late in World War II, working with experimental electronic systems for aircraft. In 1952, he received a bachelor’s degree in physics and math from Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Tex.

By 1954 he was working at Sandia, which was involved in making parts for nuclear weapons and at the time was overseen by the Atomic Energy Commission. Mr. Whitfield’s duties soon included contamination control. By 1960, he had established his basic idea for the clean room.

“I thought about dust particles,” Mr. Whitfield told Time magazine in 1962. “Where are these rascals generated? Where do they go?”

The clean room was patented through Sandia, and the government shared it freely among manufacturers, hospitals and other industries.

Mr. Whitfield’s original clean room was only about six feet high, built as a small, self-contained unit. Some modern electronic devices, including the iPhone, are now built in China in huge clean rooms in structures that are more than a million square feet. Workers wear protective clothing, and other anticontamination methods have been added, but they still depend on Mr. Whitfield’s approach to suck up dust.

“Relative to these electronics, the particles are just massive boulders that would short out all of your electronics and make them not work,” Mr. Herrera said. “The core technology, just the cleaning part, hasn’t really changed a lot.”

Mrs. Whitfield said she was often been asked if her husband was a particularly fastidious man, and she always noted that he tended not to put his shoes away. He did live in a tidy house, though, and colleagues say he never tired of getting out a flashlight and shining it sideways across his coffee table to illuminate the prevalence of tiny dust particles that most people never notice.

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Changing of the Guard: How Crash Cover-Up Altered China’s Succession

BEIJING — “Thank you. I’m well. Don’t worry,” read the post on a Chinese social networking site. The brief comment, published in June, appeared to come from Ling Gu, the 23-year-old son of a high-powered aide to China’s president, and it helped quash reports that he had been killed in a Ferrari crash after a night of partying.

It only later emerged that the message was a sham, posted by someone under Mr. Ling’s alias — almost three months after his death.

The ploy was one of many in a tangled effort to suppress news of the Ferrari crash that killed Mr. Ling and critically injured two young female passengers, one of whom later died. The outlines of the affair surfaced months ago, but it is now becoming clearer that the crash and the botched cover-up had more momentous consequences, altering the course of the Chinese Communist Party’s once-in-a-decade leadership succession last month.

China’s departing president, Hu Jintao, entered the summer in an apparently strong position after the disgrace of Bo Xilai, previously a rising member of a rival political network who was brought down when his wife was accused of murdering a British businessman. But Mr. Hu suffered a debilitating reversal of his own when party elders — led by his predecessor, Jiang Zemin — confronted him with allegations that Ling Jihua, his closest protégé and political fixer, had engineered the cover-up of his son’s death.

According to current and former officials, party elites, and others, the exposure helped tip the balance of difficult negotiations, hastening Mr. Hu’s decline; spurring the ascent of China’s new leader, Xi Jinping; and playing into the hands of Mr. Jiang, whose associates dominate the new seven-man leadership at the expense of candidates from Mr. Hu’s clique.

The case also shows how the profligate lifestyles of leaders’ relatives and friends can weigh heavily in backstage power tussles, especially as party skulduggery plays out under the intensifying glare of media.

Numerous party insiders provided information regarding the episode, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals from the authorities. Officials have investigated the aftermath of the car wreck, they say, including looking into accusations that a state oil company paid hush money to the families of the two women.

Under Mr. Hu, Mr. Ling had directed the leadership’s administrative center, the General Office, but was relegated to a less influential post in September, ahead of schedule. Last month, he failed to advance to the 25-person Politburo and lost his seat on the influential party secretariat.

Mr. Hu, who stepped down as party chief, immediately yielded his post as chairman of the military, meaning he will not retain power as Mr. Jiang did. “Hu was weakened even before leaving office,” said a midranking official in the Organization Department, the party’s personnel office.

Mr. Ling’s future remains unsettled, with party insiders saying that his case presents an early test of whether Mr. Xi intends to follow through on public promises to fight high-level corruption.

“He can decide whether to go after Ling Jihua or not,” said Wu Guoguang, a former top-level party speechwriter, now a political scientist at the University of Victoria in British Columbia. “Either way, this is a big card in Xi Jinping’s hand.”

Mr. Ling, 56, built his career in the Communist Youth League. At an early age, he secured the patronage of Mr. Hu, who led the Youth League in the early 1980s and brought Mr. Ling to the General Office in 1995. “Hu didn’t come with a lot of friends, but Ling was someone he knew he could trust,” said the Organization Department official. “Officials said that if Ling called, it was like Hu calling.”

Mr. Ling played a central role in moving Youth League veterans into high offices and undermining Mr. Hu’s adversaries. Mr. Ling also wielded leverage over Internet censorship of leaders’ affairs, and sought to use it to benefit his patron.

“Negative publicity, including untruths, about Xi Jinping were not suppressed the way publicity about Hu Jintao was,” said one associate of party leaders.

As his influence grew, Mr. Ling tried to keep a low profile. About a decade ago, his wife closed a software company she owned and formed a nonprofit foundation that incubates young entrepreneurs. The couple sent their son, Ling Gu, to an elite Beijing high school under an alias, Wang Ziyun. “Ling Jihua told his family not to damage his career,” a former Youth League colleague said. “But it seems it can’t be stopped.”

Still living under an alias, Ling Gu graduated from Peking University last year with an international relations degree and began graduate studies in education. One of his instructors said his performance plunged later in his undergraduate years. “I think there were too many lures, too much seduction,” he said.

Before dawn on March 18, a black Ferrari Spider speeding along Fourth Ring Road in Beijing ricocheted off a wall, struck a railing and cracked in two. Mr. Ling was killed instantly, and the two young Tibetan women with him were hospitalized with severe injuries. One died months later, and the other is recovering, party insiders said.

Ian Johnson and Edward Wong contributed reporting.

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Toshiba’s 10-inch Excite 10 SE tablet sells for $349.99, comes with Jelly Bean

While every other company is busy chasing the 7-inch tablet market, Toshiba (TOSBF) is keeping its eye on people interested in 10-inch tablets. Its new Excite 10 SE Android tablet is fairly similar to its Excite 10 LE, sporting a 10.1-inch 1280 x 800 resolution display, NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core processor, 16GB of internal storage, 3-megapixel rear camera, HD front camera, microSD card slot and Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. It doesn’t have the iPad’s eye-popping Retina display or the Samsung (005930) Nexus 10′s crisp 2,560 x 1,600 resolution with 300 pixels per inch, but it’s more than adequate for most basic tablet tasks. And at $ 349.99, it’s not a bad deal for a 10-inch tablet. The Excite 10 SE goes on sale December 6th and will be available from ToshibaDirect.com and select retail stores. Toshiba’s press release follows below.

Toshiba expands excite family of tablets with new 10-inch model

New Excite 10 SE Tablet Powered by Android 4.1 Starting at $ 349.99 MSRP

IRVINE, Calif. — Dec. 4, 2012 — Toshiba’s Digital Products Division (DPD), a division of Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc., today announced the availability of the Excite™ 10 SE tablet, a multimedia-rich tablet with a 10.1-inch touchscreen, powered by Android™ 4.1, Jelly Bean. The Excite 10 SE offers an affordable option for people looking for a powerful and versatile tablet for the home, starting at only $ 349.99 MSRP[i].

“Our Excite family of tablets continues to grow with options to suit a wide range of consumer needs, from portability and gaming to versatility and power,” said Carl Pinto, vice president of marketing of Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc., Digital Products Division. “We designed the Excite 10 SE to be a full featured tablet that offers a pure Android, Jelly Bean experience, while maintaining an attractive price point.”

The Excite 10 SE features Android 4.1, Jelly Bean, which improves on the simplicity and usability of Android 4.0. Moving between customizable home screens and switching between apps is effortless, while the Chrome™ browser and new Google Now intelligent personal assistant and Voice Search apps makes surfing the web fast and fluid.

Slim and light at only 0.4 inches thick and weighing 22.6 ounces[ii], the Excite 10 SE is encased with a textured Fusion Lattice finish, making it comfortable to hold and easy to carry. The tablet offers a vibrant 10.1-inch diagonal AutoBrite™ HD touchscreen display[iii] plus the NVIDIA® Tegra® 3 Super 4-PLUS-1™ quad-core processor[iv] that delivers smooth web browsing and outstanding performance for games, HD movies and more.

Stereo speakers with SRS® Premium Voice Pro create an optimized audio experience for music, video and games, while providing greater clarity for video chatting via the tablet’s HD front-facing camera. The Excite 10 SE also includes a 3 megapixel rear-facing camera with auto-focus and digital zoom for capturing HD video and photos. Featuring a wide range of connectivity, the tablet includes 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi®, Bluetooth® 3.0, as well as Micro SD and Micro USB ports for expandability. The tablet also charges conveniently via the Micro USB port.

Availability

The Excite 10 SE will be available starting at $ 349.99 MSRP for the 16GB model at select retailers and direct from Toshiba at ToshibaDirect.com on December 6, 2012.

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Bret Bielema leaves Wisconsin for Arkansas

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. (AP) — Bret Bielema is taking his brand of power football to Arkansas, leaving Wisconsin after seven seasons.

Arkansas released a statement Tuesday night saying Bielema has agreed to a deal to take over the program reeling following the firing of former coach Bobby Petrino.

A person familiar with the situation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the information hasn't been released publicly, says the deal is for six years and $3.2 million annually.

Bielema, Barry Alvarez's hand-picked successor at Wisconsin, was 68-24 with the Badgers, with four double-digit win seasons. He coached Wisconsin to a 17-14 victory over Arkansas in his first season at the Capital One Bowl.

"His tough, aggressive style of play has been successful and will be appealing to student-athletes and Razorback fans," Arkansas athletic director Jeff Long said in a statement. "He not only shares the vision and values for the future of Arkansas football, he embraces them."

Bielema is leaving the Big Ten for the SEC and a Razorbacks program that opened the year with hopes of challenging for a national championship only to get mired in the Petrino scandal before stumbling to a 4-8 finish.

The move was the second stunning hire this year at Arkansas, which brought in John L. Smith as the interim coach after firing Petrino for hiring his mistress to work in the athletic department. Long announced after the season that Smith wouldn't return.

Bielema seems likely to bring a far different approach than what the Razorbacks have become accustomed to. Arkansas continually ranked among the Southeastern Conference's best passing teams under Petrino while Bielema is known for his dominant offensive lines and slew of running backs.

"During my conversation with Jeff (Long), he described the characteristics for the perfect fit to lead this program," Bielema said in a statement. "It was evident we share the same mission, principles and goals."

Wisconsin running back Montee Ball tied Barry Sanders' long-standing single-season record of 39 touchdowns last year, and this year became the FBS career leader in touchdowns. He currently has 82 touchdowns after running for three Saturday night in the Big Ten title game against Nebraska — a 70-31 romp that secured the Badgers third straight trip to the Rose Bowl, where they will play Stanford on Jan. 1.

The 42-year-old Bielema was the defensive coordinator at Wisconsin for two years before being promoted to head coach in 2006. He played for Iowa and started his coaching career there as an assistant under Hayden Fry and later Kirk Ferentz.

"I was very surprised when Bret told me he was taking the offer from Arkansas," said Alvarez, Wisconsin's athletic director and former coach. "He did a great job for us during his seven years as head coach, both on the field and off. I want to thank him for his work and wish him the best at Arkansas."

The Illinois native takes over a program still reeling following the April scandal, one eager for stability and leadership.

"I'm excited about this decision," Arkansas cornerback Tevin Mitchel tweeted.

The Razorbacks improved their win total in four straight seasons under Petrino, including a 21-5 mark in 2010-11, and finished last season ranked No. 5. They had talked openly in the spring about competing for the school's first SEC championship and perhaps a national title.

Then came the April 1 motorcycle accident that led to Petrino's downfall. The married father of four initially lied about being alone during the wreck, later admitting to riding with his mistress — a former Arkansas volleyball player he had hired to work in the athletic department.

Smith, who had been an assistant the last three seasons at Arkansas under Petrino, was chosen by Long to guide a team that returned first-team All-SEC quarterback Tyler Wilson and a host of other key playmakers. The decision was lauded by the Razorbacks, who welcomed the personable Smith back with open arms.

The season hit the skids with a stunning overtime loss to Louisiana-Monroe on Sept. 8, starting a four-game losing streak that dropped Arkansas out of the rankings. The Razorbacks finished with the school's lowest win total since 2005, missing a bowl game for the first time since 2008.

"It's very difficult for me to believe that is not a bowl-eligible team," LSU coach Les Miles said following the Tigers' win over the Razorbacks in the season finale. "Watching the talent there, (it's) very capable."

Arkansas struggled to find its identity in the SEC after leaving the former Southwest Conference in 1992, but it appeared to have finally found just that under Petrino, who was hired after leaving the Atlanta Falcons during the season in 2007.

The Razorbacks turned into an offensive powerhouse under Petrino, leading the league in scoring and total offense last season. After winning 10 games and reaching the school's first BCS bowl game in 2010, losing to Ohio State, Arkansas won 11 games in 2011, capped by a Cotton Bowl win over Kansas State.

Still, Arkansas has yet to win the SEC, losing in the conference championship game three times.

While the country watched closely to see how Arkansas would react following Petrino's dismissal, Smith made headlines of his own throughout the season. The former Michigan State and Louisville coach filed for bankruptcy during the season, revealing $40.7 million in debt he blamed on bad land deals.

He was under far more fire from Arkansas fans for the mounting losses and it will be up to Bielema to turn things around in the loaded SEC West, with Alabama, LSU and now Texas A&M.

Long said during the season that the new coach would be tasked with building on the recent success at the school, which is looking into expanding the 72,000-seat Razorback Stadium and is currently building an 80,000-square-foot football operations center.

"The infrastructure in place at Arkansas shows the commitment from the administration to accomplish our goals together and I am excited to begin to lead this group of student-athletes," Bielema said. "This program will represent the state of Arkansas in a way Razorback fans everywhere will be proud of."

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DealBook: HSBC Sells Stake in Chinese Insurer for $9.4 Billion

HONG KONG — HSBC Holdings, one of Europe’s biggest banks, said Wednesday it would sell its entire stake in a leading Chinese insurer to a Thai conglomerate for 72.7 billion Hong Kong dollars ($9.4 billion.)

HSBC said it would sell its 15.6 percent stake in Ping An Insurance, based in Shenzhen, to the Charoen Pokphand Group, controlled by the Thai billionaire Dhanin Chearavanont, in a deal to be financed partly by the China Development Bank, a policy lender wholly owned by the state of China.

HSBC has been shedding assets to cut costs and streamline its business, and at the same time bolstering its balance sheet in the face of tighter global capital requirements for banks. Since Stuart T. Gulliver took over as chief executive at the beginning of 2011, the bank, which is based in London, has sold more than 40 noncore assets and has booked about $4 billion in gains on those sales this year alone.

HSBC disclosed last month that it was in talks over a potential sale of its Ping An stake, which it started building in 2002, and said Wednesday it expected to book a post-tax gain of $2.6 billion on completion of the deal with the Thai company.

‘‘This transaction represents further progress in the execution of the group’s strategy,’’ Mr. Gulliver said in a statement announcing the sale. ‘‘China remains a key market for the group.’’

Founded in Hong Kong and Shanghai almost 150 years ago, HSBC currently operates 133 outlets across 33 branch offices in mainland China. After the Ping An stake sale it will retain minority investments in several Chinese lenders, including a 19.9 percent stake in the Bank of Communications that is worth around $10 billion at current share prices, a stake in Industrial Bank, a midtier institution based in Fujian Province, and an 8 percent stake in the Bank of Shanghai.

The two-part Ping An transaction will see Charoen Pokphand, a conglomerate with businesses ranging from distribution of agricultural products like fresh eggs to operating one of the world’s biggest chains of 7-11 convenience stores, purchase 1.2 billion Ping An shares from HSBC at a price of 59 Hong Kong dollars ($7.61) apiece.

HSBC said it would transfer 21 percent of the shares to the Thai group on Friday. The sale of the remaining 79 percent of the shares at the same price is being financed partly with cash and partly by a loan from the China Development Bank to Charoen Pokphand, and the transfer of those shares is expected to be completed by Jan. 7, contingent on receiving approval from the China Insurance Regulatory Commission.

Shares in Ping An rose 4 percent to 60 Hong Kong dollars in late morning trading in Hong Kong on Wednesday following the announcement — exceeding the stake sale price by 1 dollar in a sign investors are confident the transaction will go ahead. Shares in HSBC rose 1 percent to 79.50 Hong Kong dollars by late morning, and are up around 35 percent in the year to date.

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With Some Hospitals Closed After Hurricane Sandy, Others Pick Up Slack

A month after Hurricane Sandy struck New York City, unexpectedly shutting down several hospitals, one Upper East Side medical center had so many more emergency room patients than usual that it was parking them in its lobby.

White and blue plastic screens had been set up between the front door and the elevator banks in the East 68th Street building of that hospital, NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell. The screens shielded 10 gurneys and an improvised nursing station from the view of people obliviously walking in and out of the soaring, light-filled atrium.

“It’s like a World War II ward,” Teri Daniels, who had been waiting a day and a half with a relative who needed to be admitted, said last week.

Since the storm, a number of New York City hospitals have been scrambling to deal with a sharp increase in patients, forcing them to add shifts of doctors and nurses on overtime, to convert offices and lobbies to use for patients’ care, and even, in one case, to go to a local furniture store to buy extra beds.

At Beth Israel Medical Center, 11 blocks south of the Bellevue Hospital Center emergency room, which was shuttered because of storm damage, the average number of visits to the E.R. per day has risen to record levels. Visits have increased by 24 percent this November compared with last, and the numbers show no sign of dropping. Hospital admissions have risen 12 percent compared with last November.

Most of the rise in volume is from patients who had never been to Beth Israel before. An emergency room doctor at the hospital described treating one patient who said he had been born at Bellevue and had never before gone anywhere else.

Emergency room visits have gone up 25 percent at NewYork-Presybterian/Weill Cornell, which in Bellevue’s absence is the closest high-level trauma center — treating stab wounds, gun wounds, people hit by cars and the like — in Manhattan from 68th Street south. Stretchers holding patients have been lined up like train cars around the nursing station and double-parked in front of stretcher bays.

In Brooklyn, some patients in Maimonides Medical Center’s emergency room who need to be admitted are waiting two or three days for a bed upstairs, instead of four or five hours. Almost every one of the additional 1,100 emergency patients this November compared with last November came from four ZIP codes affected by the storm and served by Coney Island Hospital, a public hospital that was closed because of storm damage.

The number of psychiatric emergency patients from those same ZIP codes has tripled, in a surge that began three days before the hurricane, perhaps fueled by anxiety, as well as by displacement from flooded adult homes or programs at Coney Island Hospital, doctors said.

The Maimonides psychiatric emergency room bought five captain’s beds — which do not have railings that can be used for suicide attempts — at a local furniture store, to accommodate extra patients. The regular emergency room had to buy 27 new stretchers after the hurricane, “and we probably need a few more,” the department’s chief, Dr. John Marshall, said.

The emergency room and inpatient operations of four hospitals remain closed because of flooding and storm damage. Besides Bellevue and Coney Island, NYU Langone Medical Center and the VA New York Harbor Healthcare System, both near Bellevue on the East Side of Manhattan, are closed.

While the surge in traffic to other hospitals has been a burden, it has also been a boon, bringing more revenue.

On the Upper East Side, the storm has helped Lenox Hill Hospital, which has a history of financial problems. It took two or three wards that had been turned into offices and converted them back to space for patients. Emergency room visits are up 10 percent, and surgery has been expanded to seven days a week from five.

“We usually operate at slightly over 300 beds, and now we’re at well over 550,” Carleigh Gustafson, director of emergency nursing, said.

Conversely, administrators at the shuttered hospitals, especially NYU Langone, a major teaching center, worry that their patients and doctors are being raided, with some never to return.

NYU’s salaried doctors are being paid through January, on the condition that they do not take another job. But at the same time, they need a place to practice, so NYU administrators have been arranging for them to work as far away as New Jersey until the hospital reopens. Lenox Hill alone has taken on close to 300 NYU doctors, about 600 nurses, and about 150 doctors in training, fellows and medical students.

Obstetricians and surgeons from the closed hospitals have been particularly disadvantaged, since they are dependent on hospitals to treat their patients. Many displaced surgeons have been reduced to treating only the most desperately ill, and operating on nights and weekends, when hospitals tend to be least well staffed.

“I think there’s no question that a lot of people have postponed anything that they can postpone that is elective,” said Dr. Andrew W. Brotman, senior vice president at NYU.

In mid-November, Dr. Michael L. Brodman, chairman of obstetrics at Mount Sinai Medical Center, sent out a memo saying his department had taken on 26 NYU physicians, as well as nurses and residents, but “clearly, that is too much for us to handle long term.”

Since then, 15 of the physicians have gone to New York Downtown Hospital, while Mount Sinai has retained 11 doctors and 26 nurses.

“We are guests in other people’s homes,” Dr. Brotman of NYU said, “and we are guests who have to some degree overstayed their welcome.”

Joanna Walters contributed reporting.

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Larissa Journal: Greek Brothel Owner Rescues Larissa Soccer Club

Angelos Tzortzinis for The New York Times

Ms. Alevridou's support of Voukefalas has caused an uproar.

LARISSA, Greece — Her soccer club looked ragged. Strikers jumped up for headers only to miss the ball entirely. Players tumbled over one another, shouting out accusations that they had been fouled.

But in the bleachers, Soula Alevridou, or “Madam Soula,” as she is known in these parts, watched intently, a petite woman in a man’s tie smoking ultra thin cigarettes.

“Keep in mind that the home team is very good,” she said, explaining the difficulties that her team, Voukefalas, was having.

Madam Soula, a former prostitute and now, at the age of 67, the owner of two luxury brothels here in Larissa, stepped in this fall to sponsor Voukefalas, a small amateur soccer team that like many others in Greece was having trouble coming up with the cash for uniforms, equipment and playing field fees.

She considers her support a natural thing to do, maybe even a patriotic gesture, because her debt-mired country is in so much trouble that many of life’s extras, like amateur sports, are becoming out of reach.

“A friend asked and I said, ‘I am here,’ ” she said.

But local officials in this once-rich farming area are hardly thanking her for her efforts. In fact, her gift of about $1,300 so far, in part to buy bubble-gum pink training outfits — has caused something of an uproar as officials debate the appropriateness of having a brothel owner step in, even if it is to make up for a bankrupt state and an economy that leaves few businesses with the cash to help young men play sports.

In an interview, Larissa’s mayor, Konstantinos Tzanakoulis, pointedly ignored questions about the matter. And the Larissa soccer league recently informed Voukefalas that team equipment bearing the name of Madam Soula’s brothels — Villa Erotica and House of the Era — would not be tolerated, though brothels are legal in Greece. The league warned that any infraction, not only in games but also during “training, warm-ups, interviews and friendly matches,” would land the team in disciplinary hearings for “defamation of the sport.”

The team’s president, Ioannis Batziolas, 29, a backup goalie, calls the league’s decision hypocritical, and points out that Greece’s professional soccer championship is sponsored by the state-owned lottery and betting company OPAP, which is soon to be privatized. “What is the better idea to promote?” he asks. “Gambling or sex?”

For a time, this city of 200,000 at the foot of Mount Olympus seemed to be weathering the Greek crisis better than most. But the years of recession are piling up and most businesses are suffering. Unemployment is over 20 percent, higher among young people.

Madam Soula said her business had been hurt, too. But not that much. Customers sometimes even fly in from Britain, she said, drawn by Internet ads.

Mr. Batziolas said he looked everywhere for team sponsors, but found nothing until Madam Soula came forward. His own travel agency, L.A. Travel, provided most of the money last year. But it just could not afford to any longer, he said. On top of that, he has not seen the government’s share of support in several years. “They owe me thousands,” he said.

Mr. Tzanakoulis, who has been mayor here for more than a decade, says that the municipality is continuing to support sports, but that the central government has not been delivering, which leaves a great need.

“Sports are important for young men,” he said. “It is a good activity that keeps them out of trouble.” But that is all he will say on the subject of Voukefalas (the team is named after Alexander the Great’s horse) and the team’s new sponsor.

Voukefalas is not the only team to have been creative in looking for sponsors. Another soccer team got a funeral home to act as a sponsor and for a while wore black T-shirts with white crosses. But league officials did not like that either.

Madam Soula tries to shrug off the hullabaloo over her sponsorship. “Do they have anyone else to give them the money?” she asks.

Dimitris Bounias contributed reporting.

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