Blue Laws Curb Consumerism Where Pilgrims Gave Thanks

Charlie Mahoney for The New York Times

The annual Thanksgiving celebration in Plymouth, Mass., is held the weekend before the holiday, so as not to interfere.

PLYMOUTH, Mass. — Here in the birthplace of Thanksgiving, where the Pilgrims first gave thanks in 1621 for their harvest and their survival, some residents are giving thanks this year for something else: the Colonial-era blue laws that prevent retailers from opening their doors on the fourth Thursday of November.

Charlie Mahoney for The New York Times

Participants in Saturday's town parade.

While shoppers in the rest of the country will skip out on Thanksgiving to go to Walmart or Kmart or other big-box stores, William Wrestling Brewster, whose ancestors arrived on the Mayflower and participated in that first Thanksgiving, will limit his activities to enjoying a traditional meal here with his extended family at his parents’ house.

“Thanksgiving is supposed to be about giving thanks for all you have,” said Mr. Brewster, 47, who runs a computer repair business. “I cringe to think what society is doing to itself,” he said of the mercantile mania that threatens one of the least commercial holidays.

Some of the nation’s biggest retailers — Sears, Target and Toys “R” Us among them — announced this month that they would be moving up their predawn Black Friday door-buster sales to Thanksgiving Day or moving up their existing Thanksgiving sales even earlier on Thursday. Walmart, which has already been open on Thanksgiving for many years, is advancing its bargain specials to 8 p.m. Thursday from 10 p.m.

But in Maine, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, the stores will sit dark until the wee hours of Friday. Even Walmart will not open in Maine until just after midnight Friday or in Massachusetts or Rhode Island until 1 a.m.

New England’s blue laws were put down by early settlers to enforce proper behavior on Sundays. (The origin of the term is unclear. Some have said the laws were printed on blue paper, while others have said the word “blue” was meant to disparage those like the “blue noses” who imposed rigid moral codes on others.)

Over decades, many of those laws — which banned commerce, entertainment and the sale of alcohol, among other things — were tossed aside or ignored, or exemptions were granted. In some cases, the statutes were extended to holidays and barred retailers specifically from operating on Thanksgiving or Christmas.

Maine granted an exception to L. L. Bean, whose store in Freeport is open around the clock every day, including Christmas. When the blue laws, which had faded, were revived in the 1950s, the store in Freeport was already operating 24/7, said Carolyn Beem, a spokeswoman. She said that the store, which originally catered to hunters and fishermen who shopped at odd hours, was grandfathered in and allowed to stay open on the holidays.

Nationwide, a protest is developing against Thanksgiving Day sales. Workers at some stores have threatened to strike, saying the holiday openings were disrupting their family time. Online petitions have drawn hundreds of thousands of signatures protesting the move. The stores say that many of their workers have volunteered to work on the holiday, when they will get extra pay, and that consumers wanted to shop early. It is not yet clear what effect the protests might have.

At the same time, this corner of New England is serving as something of a bulwark against the forces of commercialism.

Even the Retailers Association of Massachusetts is treading gently on the notion of Thanksgiving sales.

“There hasn’t been any outcry from our members over the years pushing this,” said Bill Rennie, vice president of the association.

But, as Thanksgiving shopping becomes more common, he said, “it may be time to have a discussion about it.”

Blue laws seem anachronistic when people can shop anytime online, he said.

There is also the case of simple economics. These states are already at risk of losing sales to stores in New Hampshire, which has no sales tax. Now, Mr. Rennie pointed out, they could lose even more in the holiday bargain rush when stores in New Hampshire are open and stores here are closed.

Still, Barry Finegold, a Massachusetts state senator whose district abuts New Hampshire, said that so far, none of the retailers in his district had asked for a change in the law.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 20, 2012

An earlier version of this article misstated William Wrestling Brewster’s occupation. He runs a computer repair business, not a computer store.

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The New Old Age Blog: Patience, Consciousness and White Lies

My wife and I are blessed with having three “semi-independent” parents in their mid-80s living within a few blocks of us. Our children grew up knowing their grandparents as integral parts of our nuclear family, within walking distance for most of their childhoods. But now that our nest is empty, we find ourselves reliving many of the parenting issues we faced when our children were little — now in geriatric versions, at close range. As it turns out, parenting was good practice for the issues we face with our own parents.

What exactly does semi-independence mean as applied to elderly parents? Among our three, we have two canes, five walkers, one wheelchair (for long walks), four artificial joints, a pacemaker, four hearing aides and a knee brace. The list of medical conditions is long, and the list of medications even longer, requiring different color pill box organizers for morning, afternoon and evening.

Our parents all live in the same homes they have been in for many years. Keeping them safe and healthy there, as well as when they leave the house, has become a big part of our day-to-day work these days. Therein the yin and yang of parenting has returned — independence versus helicoptering.

Children’s yearning for independence begins in toddlerhood: “I can do it myself!” It escalates through childhood, accelerates with the driver’s license, and crescendos, with pomp and circumstance, at high school graduation.

The urge for independence is seen in all animal species, but relinquishing independence and accepting assistance in old age is unique to humans. For most elderly, it comes with a struggle, reflecting how hardwired our brains are for independence. The thought of getting in-home help is antithetical to our parents’ sense of self worth, exceeded only by the dread of leaving their homes for assisted living facilities. So, as tasks that were once mundane and automatic have become onerous and stressful for them, we attempt to foster autonomy while protecting them from harm, as we did with our children just a few short years ago.

Childproofing – Our home has again become hazardous, as have theirs. Furniture must be rearranged, booster seats placed on chairs to ease standing up, slippery rugs removed, lighting improved, bathrooms accessorized with handles and rails.

Dressing – Body shapes change in childhood and in old age. Our parents’ wardrobes, like those of our children’s before them, need frequent attention to preserve self-esteem. Their unwillingness to part with old clothes turns us into tailors. And, once again, we shop for slip-on sneakers with Velcro ties.

Driving – For our teens, driving was the symbolic liberation from childhood to young adulthood. For our parents, driving is the symbolic resistance to infirmity and old age. Our attempt to wean them from their cars, in precisely the reverse order we used to phase our teens into driving, has been torture for our parents and for us.

Toys – We have filled our parents’ shelves with new toys to help them with everything from opening cartons of milk (I would like a word with whoever designed those plastic pull loops) and zipping their clothes, to opening jars and removing the protective seals from over-the-counter medicines. A “picker-upper” device helps them avoid bending too low, and a key turner gives them leverage to open their door. Large digital clock faces, easy-to-read telephone keypads, and magnifying glasses keep them in touch with the world, and an e-mail printer keeps them in touch with their grandchildren.

Medicating – Filling those plastic pill box organizers with a week’s worth of medicines has become a personal barometer of competence for our parents, yet, as with our children when they were young, we feel compelled to oversee the dosing.

Mobility – Despite numerous falls, it was only with much teeth gnashing (or denture gnashing, as the case may be) that our mothers consented to use canes; more gnashing when canes gave way to walkers. For long walks, we hide the wheelchair half way there and back so the neighbors don’t see.

The more we do for our parents, the more frail and guilty they feel. Our efforts are sometimes resented. Helping them get in and out of the car, or bracing them under the arm as they negotiate a bumpy sidewalk, can be an affront. “I can do it myself!”

Can I ride my bike to tennis practice if I’m really careful crossing Holly Street? Why can’t I take a cab home from the seniors program at the community center? Can I walk to grandma’s by myself this time? Can I take the bus to the supermarket today? Everyone is hanging out at the park after school, can I go? I’ll just walk down the block to the neighbor’s house this afternoon, O.K.?

What wisdom did we gain the first time around to help us now? Patience, consciousness and white lies.

Patience to wait for them to come to the same conclusions we did. Mom, do you think Rosalind would have fallen and broken both wrists if she had been using a walker?

Consciousness about their need for independence as ballast to our need for their well-being. Why don’t you just let us drive you at night for now?

And white lies: I’m going to the supermarket anyway, we can shop together.

The longer we can protect our parents from harm, the more we can share our lives with them and the more joy they can have from their grandchildren. The trick is doing it without hurting them in other ways.

We have been through this before. It was worth it then, and it is worth it now.

Dr. Harley A. Rotbart is professor and vice chairman of pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and the author of “No Regrets Parenting.”

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The New Old Age Blog: Patience, Consciousness and White Lies

My wife and I are blessed with having three “semi-independent” parents in their mid-80s living within a few blocks of us. Our children grew up knowing their grandparents as integral parts of our nuclear family, within walking distance for most of their childhoods. But now that our nest is empty, we find ourselves reliving many of the parenting issues we faced when our children were little — now in geriatric versions, at close range. As it turns out, parenting was good practice for the issues we face with our own parents.

What exactly does semi-independence mean as applied to elderly parents? Among our three, we have two canes, five walkers, one wheelchair (for long walks), four artificial joints, a pacemaker, four hearing aides and a knee brace. The list of medical conditions is long, and the list of medications even longer, requiring different color pill box organizers for morning, afternoon and evening.

Our parents all live in the same homes they have been in for many years. Keeping them safe and healthy there, as well as when they leave the house, has become a big part of our day-to-day work these days. Therein the yin and yang of parenting has returned — independence versus helicoptering.

Children’s yearning for independence begins in toddlerhood: “I can do it myself!” It escalates through childhood, accelerates with the driver’s license, and crescendos, with pomp and circumstance, at high school graduation.

The urge for independence is seen in all animal species, but relinquishing independence and accepting assistance in old age is unique to humans. For most elderly, it comes with a struggle, reflecting how hardwired our brains are for independence. The thought of getting in-home help is antithetical to our parents’ sense of self worth, exceeded only by the dread of leaving their homes for assisted living facilities. So, as tasks that were once mundane and automatic have become onerous and stressful for them, we attempt to foster autonomy while protecting them from harm, as we did with our children just a few short years ago.

Childproofing – Our home has again become hazardous, as have theirs. Furniture must be rearranged, booster seats placed on chairs to ease standing up, slippery rugs removed, lighting improved, bathrooms accessorized with handles and rails.

Dressing – Body shapes change in childhood and in old age. Our parents’ wardrobes, like those of our children’s before them, need frequent attention to preserve self-esteem. Their unwillingness to part with old clothes turns us into tailors. And, once again, we shop for slip-on sneakers with Velcro ties.

Driving – For our teens, driving was the symbolic liberation from childhood to young adulthood. For our parents, driving is the symbolic resistance to infirmity and old age. Our attempt to wean them from their cars, in precisely the reverse order we used to phase our teens into driving, has been torture for our parents and for us.

Toys – We have filled our parents’ shelves with new toys to help them with everything from opening cartons of milk (I would like a word with whoever designed those plastic pull loops) and zipping their clothes, to opening jars and removing the protective seals from over-the-counter medicines. A “picker-upper” device helps them avoid bending too low, and a key turner gives them leverage to open their door. Large digital clock faces, easy-to-read telephone keypads, and magnifying glasses keep them in touch with the world, and an e-mail printer keeps them in touch with their grandchildren.

Medicating – Filling those plastic pill box organizers with a week’s worth of medicines has become a personal barometer of competence for our parents, yet, as with our children when they were young, we feel compelled to oversee the dosing.

Mobility – Despite numerous falls, it was only with much teeth gnashing (or denture gnashing, as the case may be) that our mothers consented to use canes; more gnashing when canes gave way to walkers. For long walks, we hide the wheelchair half way there and back so the neighbors don’t see.

The more we do for our parents, the more frail and guilty they feel. Our efforts are sometimes resented. Helping them get in and out of the car, or bracing them under the arm as they negotiate a bumpy sidewalk, can be an affront. “I can do it myself!”

Can I ride my bike to tennis practice if I’m really careful crossing Holly Street? Why can’t I take a cab home from the seniors program at the community center? Can I walk to grandma’s by myself this time? Can I take the bus to the supermarket today? Everyone is hanging out at the park after school, can I go? I’ll just walk down the block to the neighbor’s house this afternoon, O.K.?

What wisdom did we gain the first time around to help us now? Patience, consciousness and white lies.

Patience to wait for them to come to the same conclusions we did. Mom, do you think Rosalind would have fallen and broken both wrists if she had been using a walker?

Consciousness about their need for independence as ballast to our need for their well-being. Why don’t you just let us drive you at night for now?

And white lies: I’m going to the supermarket anyway, we can shop together.

The longer we can protect our parents from harm, the more we can share our lives with them and the more joy they can have from their grandchildren. The trick is doing it without hurting them in other ways.

We have been through this before. It was worth it then, and it is worth it now.

Dr. Harley A. Rotbart is professor and vice chairman of pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and the author of “No Regrets Parenting.”

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DealBook: Hewlett’s Loss: A Folly Unfolds, by the Numbers

For Hewlett-Packard, the alarm bells started ringing less than a year after the technology company bought a British software maker for $11.1 billion.

Unhappy with the business’s sagging performance, H.P. ousted the software company’s mercurial Cambridge-educated founder and sent a team to England to review its books last May. It was then that a senior finance official at the British company stepped forward, raising questions about the accuracy of the numbers.

Months of investigation followed, prompting Hewlett’s accusations on Tuesday that the British software maker, Autonomy, had engaged in “serious accounting improprieties.” Before the deal, H.P. claimed, Autonomy inflated its sales. The problems went undetected by outside accountants — both Autonomy’s auditors and a firm H.P. hired to vet the deal.

The accounting issues at Autonomy, which sells software that examines data for patterns, cost Hewlett more than $5 billion.

Now, the Autonomy matter has been referred to regulators in two countries, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation has opened a case, according to people briefed on the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly. H.P. is also considering its own legal action. “This took time” to uncover, said Meg Whitman, H.P.’s chief executive. The issues, she said, “were designed to be hidden.”

Hewlett can’t escape the onslaught of bad news.

In recent years, what was once a giant of Silicon Valley has been buffeted by management turnover, board controversy and waning profits. The company, which previously rivaled the likes of I.B.M., Cisco and SAP, has watched the value of its stock erode sharply.

Even before the accounting problems, the Autonomy acquisition looked troubled. Within weeks, the deal contributed to the downfall of the chief executive at H.P. and led to squabbles among company’s directors, including Ms. Whitman, who took over in September 2011.

In the latest quarter, the company reported a $6.9 billion loss, dragged down by the Autonomy mess and continuing problems in the business that resulted in an overall charge of $8.8 billion. On Tuesday, the stock continued falling, dropping 12 percent to less than $12, its lowest point since 2002. “We intend to be very aggressive in recovering value for our shareholders,” said John Schultz, H.P.’s chief counsel. Individuals will be examined as well as accounting firms, he said, adding, “we’re not limiting it to Autonomy.”

Autonomy’s founder, Mike Lynch, rejected Hewlett-Packard’s claims, denying that his former company committed any accounting chicanery or misled anyone about its financial information. He indicated that the company’s practices were in line with international accounting standards. “It’s completely and utterly wrong,” Mr. Lynch said.

The deal was criticized at the outset.

In August 2011, H.P.’s chief executive at the time, Léo Apotheker, shifted strategy unexpectedly. All in the same announcement, Mr. Apotheker disclosed plans to buy Autonomy, killed two major products and publicly mused about selling the company’s personal computing business.

While many Wall Street analysts said H.P. was overpaying for Autonomy, Mr. Apotheker believed that H.P., which sells printers and computer servers as well as PCs, needed to move more aggressively into software. In buying Autonomy, he was buying into one of the biggest trends in tech, the analysis of voluminous data.

Autonomy specializes in finding patterns among so-called unstructured data, like e-mails, online video, or web surfing. Mr. Lynch is a Cambridge-trained Ph.D. in signal processing who previously founded a company that searched for fingerprint patterns. He made a reported $800 million from the sale of Autonomy. A brilliant man known for a brutish office manner, he bonded with Mr. Apotheker, a multilingual German software executive.

But within weeks of striking the deal, Mr. Apotheker was out, and Ms. Whitman was named to the top spot. During the deal negotiations, she had complained about the Autonomy price to other board members, according to several people briefed on the matter. Mr. Lynch’s other close ally at H.P. during the sale of Autonomy, a chief technology officer named Shane Robison, left H.P. toward the end of 2011.

Early in her tenure, Ms. Whitman resolved to increase Autonomy’s customer base with existing H.P. clients, and to look for ways to put the software inside H.P. products. Ms. Whitman and other executives gushed about the opportunities, describing ways Autonomy’s number-crunching technology could take on I.B.M. in data analysis, and Amazon.com in cloud computing services.

Behind the scenes, the situation was less sunny.

After securing the deal, Mr. Lynch tried to keep Autonomy far from H.P.’s bureaucracy. He mostly worked in London, and initially kept Autonomy’s main office in a San Francisco high-rise decorated with pictures of famous theoretical mathematicians, and not at H.P.’s Palo Alto headquarters.

“He told his people, Meg, anyone who’d listen, that H.P. should not get involved with Autonomy,” said an executive who worked with both companies who asked not to be named to preserve professional relations. “Meg figured we should leave them alone, so they could stay entrepreneurial.”

The lack of cooperation between the two companies quickly became evident. At a going-away party, an H.P. lawyer presented Mr. Lynch with a sweatshirt with the word “integration” and a line through it.

Autonomy, too, was facing challenges after years of fast growth but poor customer relations, according to Leslie Owens, an analyst with Forrester Research. “They didn’t invest in R&D; they didn’t have regular software releases; they weren’t transparent with a road map of where they were going; they didn’t seek customer feedback,” she said. “Customers complained, but the promise of managing all their information and making better decisions was so attractive. They bought more.”

Soon after the H.P. acquisition, Ms. Owens said, Autonomy announced a new version of its core product. “We asked for a demo,” she said, and “we’re still waiting.”

Sales plummeted soon after Autonomy became part of H.P. Ms. Whitman said she initially thought this was because of Mr. Lynch’s lack of experience running a big company. In hindsight, however, she ascribed it to Autonomy conforming to H.P.’s rules.

According to H.P., Autonomy sold hardware like servers, but the company booked these as software sales in some instances, thus underplaying expenses and inflating the margins. “They used low-end hardware sales, but put out that it was a pure software company,” said Mr. Schultz. Computer hardware typically has a much smaller profit margin than software. “They put this into their growth calculation.”

An H.P. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of continuing inquiries by regulators, said the hardware was sold at a 10 percent loss. But the loss was disguised as a marketing expense.

The amount registered as a marketing expense appeared to increase over time, the official said. This was notable, because H.P. was reviewing a period in which Mr. Lynch appeared to be shopping Autonomy to H.P. and other companies.

“It was a willful effort by some company executives to mislead investors and potential buyers,” Ms. Whitman said.

H.P. also contended that Autonomy relied on value-added resellers, middlemen who sold software on behalf of the company. Those middlemen, which the H.P. official characterized as “small companies that relied on Autonomy products for the majority of their sales,” reported sales to customers that didn’t actually exist.

H.P. also claimed that Autonomy was taking licensing revenue upfront, before receiving the money. That improper assignment of sales inflated the company’s gross profit margins.

H.P. said it discovered the problems only after Mr. Lynch’s departure. Soon after he was fired, several senior Autonomy executives also resigned from H.P. Mr. Lynch said he has started another company, and expected these executives to join him.

Now, H.P. is dealing with the fallout. Last week, H.P. passed along its findings to the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Serious Fraud Office in Britain.

The problems complicate an already difficult turnaround effort, as Hewlett-Packard continues to face weakness in its core businesses. Revenue for the full fiscal year dropped 5 percent, to $120.4 billion, with the personal computer, printing, enterprise and service businesses all losing ground. Earnings dropped 23 percent, to $8 billion, over the same period.

“I knew H.P. was going to be a challenge,” said Ms. Whitman. “I’ve been around long enough to know you have to play the hand you’re dealt.”

Ben Protess contributed reporting.

A version of this article appeared in print on 11/21/2012, on page A1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Hewlett’s Loss: A Folly Unfolds, By the Numbers.

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Fighting Continues as U.S. Seeks Truce in Gaza

JERUSALEM — To a backdrop of airstrikes and mounting casualties, American efforts to negotiate a cease-fire in the latest Gaza fighting between Israel and Hamas continued on Wednesday but the struggle to achieve even a brief pause in the fighting emphasized the obstacles to finding any lasting solution.

Israeli airstrikes overnight continued into Wednesday morning, hitting government buildings, the smuggling tunnels under the southern Rafah border crossing and a bridge on the beach road that is one of three linking Gaza City to the central area of the strip. The Hamas health ministry said the Palestinian death toll stood at 140 at noon, with 1,100 injured. At least a third of those killed are believed to have been militants.

The eight-day conflict in the Gaza Strip also appeared to have spilled onto the streets of Tel Aviv on Wednesday, with what the police described as a bomb blast aboard a civilian bus. Eleven people were injured, one of them seriously.

The latest exchanges, which included the interception of at least two rockets fired from Gaza, came as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was reported to have held talks with Palestinian leaders in the West Bank and Israeli leaders in Jerusalem. She was scheduled to fly on Wednesday to Cairo where Egyptian-brokered cease-fire talks have been inconclusive.

Around noon on Wednesday in the Gaza Strip, according to the Hamas government media office, a bomb hit the house of Issam Da’alis, an adviser to Ismail Haniya, the Hamas prime minister. The house had been evacuated. Earlier, a predawn airstrike near a mosque in the Jabaliya Refugee Camp killed a 30-year-old militant, a spokesman said, and F-16 bombs destroyed two houses in the central Gaza Strip.

There were 23 punishing strikes against the southern tunnels that are used to bring weapons as well as construction material, cars and other commercial goods into Gaza from the Sinai Peninsula.

Within Gaza City, Abu Khadra, the largest government office complex, was obliterated overnight. Damage was also caused to shops, including two banks and a tourism office, and electricity cables fell on the ground and were covered in dust.

Separately, an F-16 bomb created a 20-foot crater in an open area in a stretch of hotels occupied by foreign journalists. Several of the hotels had windows blown out by the strike around 2 a.m., but no one was reported injured. By morning, the hole in the ground had filled with sludgy water, apparently from a burst pipe, appearing almost like a forgotten swimming hole with walls made of sand and cracked cinder block.

Surveying damage near a government complex, Raji Sourani of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights said Gaza civilians were “in the eye of the storm,” and accused Israel of “inflicting pain and terror” on them. Israeli officials accuse Hamas of locating military sites in or close to civilian areas.

Overnight, as the conflict entered its eighth day, the Israeli military said in Twitter posts that “more than 100 terror sites were targeted, of which approximately 50 were underground rocket launchers.” The targets included the Ministry of Internal Security in Gaza, described as “one of the Hamas’ main command and control centers.”

While there was no immediate or formal claim of responsibility for the bus bombing in Tel Aviv, a message on a Twitter account in the name of the Al Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Hamas authorities in the Gaza Strip, declared: “We told you IDF that our blessed hands will reach your leaders and soldiers wherever they are, ‘You opened the Gates of Hell on Yourselves.’ ” The letters I.D.F. refer to the Israel Defense Forces.

On several occasions since the latest conflagration seized Gaza last week, militants have aimed rockets at Tel Aviv but they have either fallen short, landed in the sea or been intercepted. Hundreds of rockets fired by militants in Gaza have struck other targets.

But the bombing seemed to be the first time in the current fighting that violence had spread directly onto the streets of Tel Aviv.

On Tuesday — the deadliest day of fighting in the conflict — Mrs. Clinton arrived hurriedly in Jerusalem and met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to push for a truce. Her planned visit to Cairo on Wednesday to consult with Egyptian officials in contact with Hamas placed her and the Obama administration at the center of a fraught process with multiple parties, interests and demands.

Before leaving for Cairo, news reports said, Mrs. Clinton headed to the West Bank to meet Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Authority, which is estranged from the Hamas rulers of the Gaza Strip and has increasingly strained ties with Israel over a contentious effort to upgrade the Palestinian status at the United Nations to that of a nonmember state. Mrs. Clinton was to meet again with Mr. Netanyahu before heading for Egypt, the reports said.

Mr. Abbas’s faction is favored by the United States, but it is not directly involved in either the fighting in Gaza or the effort in Cairo to end it. Like Israel and much of the West, the United States regards Hamas as a terrorist organization.

Officials on all sides had raised expectations that a cease-fire would begin around midnight, followed by negotiations for a longer-term agreement. But by the end of Tuesday, officials with Hamas, the militant Islamist group that governs Gaza, said any announcement would not come at least until Wednesday.

Ethan Bronner reported from Jerusalem, and David D. Kirkpatrick from Cairo. Reporting was contributed by Jodi Rudoren and Fares Akram from Gaza; Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem; Alan Cowell from London; Peter Baker from Phnom Penh, Cambodia; David E. Sanger and Mark Landler from Washington; Andrea Bruce from Rafah, and Rick Gladstone from New York.

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DealBook: Hostess Brands and Bakers Union Agree to Mediation Session

6:43 p.m. | Updated

Pushed by a bankruptcy judge eager to save thousands of jobs, Hostess Brands and one of its biggest unions agreed to mediation on Monday, in a last-ditch effort to avoid winding down Hostess, the bankrupt maker of Twinkies and Wonder Bread.

At the behest of the judge, Hostess Brands and the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers Union, which represents 5,600 Hostess workers, will meet with a mediator on Tuesday to try to narrow their differences toward a labor agreement.

If the mediation succeeds, it could prevent the liquidation of the company and save 18,500 jobs. Otherwise, Hostess is likely to auction off its well-known brands, leaving the fates of those workers in limbo.

In January, Hostess, an 82-year-old company, filed for Chapter 11, just three years after emerging from bankruptcy. At the time, the company said it was unable to pay its debts and needed to make deep cuts in labor costs to survive.

Hostess was able to reach a new contract with the Teamsters, its largest union. But talks between the company and the bakery workers deadlocked, and the union went on strike on Nov. 9. With production slowing and its finances dwindling, the company announced plans on Friday to liquidate.

Judge Robert D. Drain of the Federal Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York pushed hard for the two sides to try one last round of talks. The judge expressed worry that neither side had exhausted all efforts to avoid liquidation. He especially urged the bakery union to seek mediation, suggesting that it might face significant legal claims if Hostess is forced to liquidate.

“I’m giving the union, as well as the debtor and their lenders, a chance to work out their issues in private,” Judge Drain said. “If they don’t take it, it’s not that the issues won’t be worked out. They will, but it will be done in public and in an expensive way.”

The unions have been at the center of the struggle for Hostess’s survival.

When Hostess filed for bankruptcy, the company insisted that its labor costs and union rules were unsustainable, and it moved to renegotiate the contracts. One work rule required that two separate trucks be used to ship bread and cake products to a single retailer. The company also indicated that it faced $52 million in workers’ compensation claims.

The two main unions, the bakery workers and Teamsters, countered that years of mismanagement were to blame. The private equity backers had loaded the company with debt, the unions said, making it difficult to modernize Hostess’s bakeries or product offerings. The bakery workers’ president, Frank Hurt, called the private equity owners “vulture capitalists.”

The two unions took different approaches to the labor negotiations.

The Teamsters hired a financial consultant, Harry J. Wilson, who had worked on the General Motors restructuring. He laid out just how much the union could get and still allow for a recovery of the company.

“We’re pragmatic when it comes to this situation,” said Ken Hall, the Teamsters’ secretary-treasurer. “We know that it’s a tough situation. We knew that because of mismanagement, the company was in a real hole.”

After eight months, the Teamsters eventually reached an agreement with the company. The union agreed to a contract that cut pay by 8 percent immediately — with that cut shrinking to 5 percent next year. The Teamster workers, most of whom drive trucks for Hostess, average about $20 an hour; the bakery union workers, $16 an hour.

The Teamsters contract reduced the company’s health contributions by 17 percent and suspended its pension contributions until 2015. The company had originally insisted on freezing the pension plan permanently and ceasing all contributions.

The Teamsters insisted on numerous concessions from management. The company eventually agreed to give Hostess’s unions two seats on its board, a 25 percent share of company stock and a $100 million claim in bankruptcy. Last March, the Teamsters helped push out Hostess’s former chief executive after the board proposed tripling his salary even as he was demanding steep concessions from the workers.

In September, the Teamsters members voted narrowly to approve the deal, 53 percent to 47 percent.

The bakery workers union took a far more adversarial stance.

After Hostess’s unions had agreed to more than $100 million in annual cost concessions during Hostess’s previous bankruptcy, the bakery union thought it made little sense to agree to further cuts. It feared a deal would pull down wages and benefits throughout the industry, without saving Hostess.

“Our consultant said the debt load on the company was too heavy, and that we would be back in bankruptcy and facing liquidation in 12 to 16 months from now, even if we took more concessions,” David B. Durkee, the union’s secretary-treasurer, said.

The bakery union often derided Hostess’s management, saying it was composed of Wall Street investors and “third-tier managers” from nonbaking companies. It said the investors were trying to “resolve the mess by attacking the company’s most valuable asset — its workers.”

Both sides refused to budge, and the bakery union went on strike at 24 of the company’s 33 bakeries.

With the threat of liquidation looming, the Teamsters, in an unusual move, called on the bakery workers to hold a vote to determine whether the rank-and-file workers wanted to end their strike and accept Hostess’s offer — or face layoffs. Last Thursday, Mr. Hall of the Teamsters told the bakery workers that Teamsters members could not believe liquidation and layoffs were what the bakery workers “ultimately wanted to accomplish when they went out on strike.”

But the bakery union declined to hold such a vote. The next day, the company announced plans to liquidate and sell off its assets.

“There was this whole theory that the company was bluffing about liquidation and there was some white knight that was going to come and buy the company” Mr. Hall said.

Now, Hostess and the bakery union will meet at the offices of the company’s lawyers. Representatives for the Teamsters and the company’s bankruptcy lenders were also invited to attend. If the two sides cannot agree, Hostess’s lawyers are expected to appear in court on Wednesday morning to seek approval of their liquidation plan.

Potential suitors are already lining up.

Some of Hostess’s rivals may pursue deals for the company’s most popular brands, especially Twinkies. One possible buyer, Flowers Foods, disclosed on Monday that recent revisions to its bank lending agreements would allow the bakery company to borrow up to $700 million. That additional cash may help finance a deal, analysts said. A spokesman for Flowers did not return a call for comment.

Industry analysts say Grupo Bimbo, the world’s largest bread-baking company, is also in the mix. Bimbo, which already owns parts of Entenmann’s, Thomas’ English muffins and Sara Lee bakery, made — and then withdrew — a $540 million bid for Hostess during its previous bankruptcy. The company might just buy pieces, because it could face antitrust issues.

Financial investors like Sun Capital Partners and Metropoulos & Company have also said that they are interested in pursuing a deal for Hostess. Sun’s co-chief executive, Marc Leder, told Fortune, “I think that we could offer a slightly better, more labor-friendly deal than what was on the table last week.”

A version of this article appeared in print on 11/20/2012, on page B4 of the NewYork edition with the headline: At Judge’s Urging, Hostess and Union Agree to Mediation.

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Responding to Illnesses Manifesting Amid Recovery From Storm

Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times

Dr. Aaron Gardener, center, attended to a patient at an ad hoc medical unit in Long Beach, N.Y. Many people have coughs, rashes and other ailments.

Day and night, victims of Hurricane Sandy have been streaming into ad hoc emergency rooms and relief centers, like the MASH-type medical unit on an athletic field in Long Beach, and the warming tent in the Rockaways the size of a small high school gym.

They complain of rashes, asthma and coughing. They need tetanus shots because — house-proud and armed with survivalist instincts — they have been ripping out waterlogged boards and getting poked by rusty nails. Those with back pain from sifting through debris receive muscle relaxants; those with chest pain from overexertion are hooked up to cardiac monitors.

“I’ve been coughing,” said Gabriel McAuley, 46, who has been working 16-hour days gutting homes and hauling debris in the Rockaways since the storm hit. “I’ve never felt a cough like that before. It’s deeper down.”

It is impossible to say how many people have been sickened by what Hurricane Sandy left behind: mold from damp drywall; spills from oil tanks; sewage from floodwater and unflushable toilets; tons upon tons of debris and dust. But interviews with hurricane victims, recovery workers, health officials and medical experts over the last week reveal that some of the illnesses that they feared would occur, based on the toxic substances unleashed by the storm and the experience of other disasters, notably Hurricane Katrina, have begun to manifest themselves.

Emergency rooms and poison control centers have reported cases of carbon monoxide exposure — and in New Jersey, several deaths have been attributed to it — from the misuse of generators to provide power and stoves to provide heat.

In Livingston, N.J., the Burn Center at St. Barnabas Medical Center had 16 burn cases over about six days, three times as many as usual, from people trying to dispel the cold and darkness with boiling water, gasoline, candles and lighter fluid.

Raw sewage spilled into homes in Baldwin and East Rockaway, in Nassau County, when a sewage plant shut down because of the surge and the system could not handle the backup. Sewage also spilled from a huge plant in Newark. “We tried to limit our presence in the house because the stink was horrible,” said Jennifer Ayres, 34, of Baldwin, who has been staying temporarily in West Hempstead. She said that she felt ill for several days, that her son had a scratchy throat, and that her mother, who lives in the house, had difficulty breathing, all problems she attributed to the two days they spent inside their house cleaning up last week. “I had stomach problems. I felt itchy beyond itchy on my face.”

Coughing — locally known as the Rockaway cough — is a common symptom that health officials said could come from mold, or from the haze of dust and sand kicked up by the storm and demolitions. The air in the Rockaways is so full of particles that the traffic police wear masks — though many recovery workers do not, worrying people who recall the fallout of another disaster.

“It’s just like 9/11,” said Kathy Smilardi, sitting inside the skeleton of her gutted home in Broad Channel, wrapped in a white puffy jacket, her breath visible in the afternoon cold. “Everyone runs in to clean up, and they’re not wearing masks. Are we going to wait 20 years to figure out that people are dying?”

Health officials and experts say the risks are real, but are cautioning against hysteria. Some coughing could be due to cold, damp weather. Lasting health effects from mold, dust and other environmental hazards generally require long-term, continuous exposure, they said. And the short-term effects can be mitigated by taking precautions like wearing masks, gloves and boots and removing mold-infested wallboard. “The reality is that cleaning up both muck and sewage and spills and removing walls and reconstruction and dealing with debris all do in fact pose concerns,” Daniel Kass, New York City’s deputy commissioner for environmental health, said Friday. “Are they vast or uncontrollable? No. But they depend on people doing work correctly and taking basic precautions.”

The Katrina cough was found to be temporary, said Roy J. Rando, a professor at Tulane’s School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. Felicia Rabito, an epidemiologist at the school, said that healthy children exposed to mold after Hurricane Katrina showed no lasting respiratory symptoms when they moved back to new or renovated homes.

Immediately after Hurricane Katrina, lead levels in New Orleans’s soil dropped after the top layers of dirt, where lead from paint and gasoline can accumulate, were washed away. But in the two years afterward, soil testing found extremely high lead levels, Dr. Rabito said, which she theorized came from renovating old homes. “That’s a cautionary tale,” she said. Lead in soil can be tracked into homes and pose a health hazard to children playing inside or outside.

Though at least one outbreak of norovirus, a contagious gastrointestinal virus, occurred in a Brooklyn high school that was used as a shelter, New York and New Jersey health officials said they had not seen any significant spike in respiratory or gastrointestinal diseases related to the storm.

In Broad Channel, most homes on Noel Road, where Ms. Smilardi lives, have outdoor oil tanks that were overturned by the storm. The innards of many homes, built when asbestos was used, lie spilled among major and minor roads.

Ominous red spots covered both sides of Paul Nowinski’s burly torso. After the storm, Mr. Nowinski, a musician, waded into the basement of his childhood home on Beach 146th Street in the Rockaways to try to salvage records, books and instruments. He was up to his chest in water, which he thinks might have been contaminated with sewage. He said that he did not know the cause of the red marks; and that he had been too busy “schlepping” to go to the doctor.

Angela Macropoulos contributed reporting.

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Responding to Illnesses Manifesting Amid Recovery From Storm

Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times

Dr. Aaron Gardener, center, attended to a patient at an ad hoc medical unit in Long Beach, N.Y. Many people have coughs, rashes and other ailments.

Day and night, victims of Hurricane Sandy have been streaming into ad hoc emergency rooms and relief centers, like the MASH-type medical unit on an athletic field in Long Beach, and the warming tent in the Rockaways the size of a small high school gym.

They complain of rashes, asthma and coughing. They need tetanus shots because — house-proud and armed with survivalist instincts — they have been ripping out waterlogged boards and getting poked by rusty nails. Those with back pain from sifting through debris receive muscle relaxants; those with chest pain from overexertion are hooked up to cardiac monitors.

“I’ve been coughing,” said Gabriel McAuley, 46, who has been working 16-hour days gutting homes and hauling debris in the Rockaways since the storm hit. “I’ve never felt a cough like that before. It’s deeper down.”

It is impossible to say how many people have been sickened by what Hurricane Sandy left behind: mold from damp drywall; spills from oil tanks; sewage from floodwater and unflushable toilets; tons upon tons of debris and dust. But interviews with hurricane victims, recovery workers, health officials and medical experts over the last week reveal that some of the illnesses that they feared would occur, based on the toxic substances unleashed by the storm and the experience of other disasters, notably Hurricane Katrina, have begun to manifest themselves.

Emergency rooms and poison control centers have reported cases of carbon monoxide exposure — and in New Jersey, several deaths have been attributed to it — from the misuse of generators to provide power and stoves to provide heat.

In Livingston, N.J., the Burn Center at St. Barnabas Medical Center had 16 burn cases over about six days, three times as many as usual, from people trying to dispel the cold and darkness with boiling water, gasoline, candles and lighter fluid.

Raw sewage spilled into homes in Baldwin and East Rockaway, in Nassau County, when a sewage plant shut down because of the surge and the system could not handle the backup. Sewage also spilled from a huge plant in Newark. “We tried to limit our presence in the house because the stink was horrible,” said Jennifer Ayres, 34, of Baldwin, who has been staying temporarily in West Hempstead. She said that she felt ill for several days, that her son had a scratchy throat, and that her mother, who lives in the house, had difficulty breathing, all problems she attributed to the two days they spent inside their house cleaning up last week. “I had stomach problems. I felt itchy beyond itchy on my face.”

Coughing — locally known as the Rockaway cough — is a common symptom that health officials said could come from mold, or from the haze of dust and sand kicked up by the storm and demolitions. The air in the Rockaways is so full of particles that the traffic police wear masks — though many recovery workers do not, worrying people who recall the fallout of another disaster.

“It’s just like 9/11,” said Kathy Smilardi, sitting inside the skeleton of her gutted home in Broad Channel, wrapped in a white puffy jacket, her breath visible in the afternoon cold. “Everyone runs in to clean up, and they’re not wearing masks. Are we going to wait 20 years to figure out that people are dying?”

Health officials and experts say the risks are real, but are cautioning against hysteria. Some coughing could be due to cold, damp weather. Lasting health effects from mold, dust and other environmental hazards generally require long-term, continuous exposure, they said. And the short-term effects can be mitigated by taking precautions like wearing masks, gloves and boots and removing mold-infested wallboard. “The reality is that cleaning up both muck and sewage and spills and removing walls and reconstruction and dealing with debris all do in fact pose concerns,” Daniel Kass, New York City’s deputy commissioner for environmental health, said Friday. “Are they vast or uncontrollable? No. But they depend on people doing work correctly and taking basic precautions.”

The Katrina cough was found to be temporary, said Roy J. Rando, a professor at Tulane’s School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. Felicia Rabito, an epidemiologist at the school, said that healthy children exposed to mold after Hurricane Katrina showed no lasting respiratory symptoms when they moved back to new or renovated homes.

Immediately after Hurricane Katrina, lead levels in New Orleans’s soil dropped after the top layers of dirt, where lead from paint and gasoline can accumulate, were washed away. But in the two years afterward, soil testing found extremely high lead levels, Dr. Rabito said, which she theorized came from renovating old homes. “That’s a cautionary tale,” she said. Lead in soil can be tracked into homes and pose a health hazard to children playing inside or outside.

Though at least one outbreak of norovirus, a contagious gastrointestinal virus, occurred in a Brooklyn high school that was used as a shelter, New York and New Jersey health officials said they had not seen any significant spike in respiratory or gastrointestinal diseases related to the storm.

In Broad Channel, most homes on Noel Road, where Ms. Smilardi lives, have outdoor oil tanks that were overturned by the storm. The innards of many homes, built when asbestos was used, lie spilled among major and minor roads.

Ominous red spots covered both sides of Paul Nowinski’s burly torso. After the storm, Mr. Nowinski, a musician, waded into the basement of his childhood home on Beach 146th Street in the Rockaways to try to salvage records, books and instruments. He was up to his chest in water, which he thinks might have been contaminated with sewage. He said that he did not know the cause of the red marks; and that he had been too busy “schlepping” to go to the doctor.

Angela Macropoulos contributed reporting.

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DealBook: Hewlett-Packard Takes Big Hit on ‘Improprieties’ at Autonomy

Hewlett-Packard said on Tuesday that it had taken an $8.8 billion accounting charge, after discovering “serious accounting improprieties” and “outright misrepresentations” at Autonomy, a British software maker that it bought for $11.7 billion last year.

It is a major setback for H.P., which has been struggling to turn around its operations and remake its business.

The charge essentially wiped out its profit. In the latest quarter, H.P. reported a net loss of $6.9 billion, compared with a $200 million profit in the period a year earlier. The company said the improprieties and misrepresentations took place just before the acquisition, and accounted for the majority of the charges in the quarter, more than $5 billion.

Hewlett-Packard bought Autonomy in the summer of 2011 in an attempt to bolster its presence in the enterprise software market and catch up with rivals like I.B.M. The takeover was the brainchild of Leo Apotheker, H.P.’s chief executive at the time, and was criticized within Silicon Valley as a hugely expensive blunder. Mr. Apotheker resigned a month later.

Since then, H.P. has moved to revive the company. Last year, Meg Whitman, a former head of eBay, took over as chief executive and began rethinking the product lineup and global marketing strategy.

But the efforts have been slow to take hold. In October, Ms. Whitman told Wall Street analysts that revenue and profit would be significantly lower, adding that it would take several years to complete a turnaround.

“We have much more work to do,” Ms. Whitman said at the time.

The strategic troubles have weighed on the stock. Shares of H.P. have dropped to about $13 from nearly $30 at their high this year. After Tuesday’s announcement, the stock continued to plunge in premarket trading, dropping nearly 11 percent.

The latest results could present another setback for Ms. Whitman’s efforts.

The company said it began looking into potential accounting problems in the spring, after a senior Autonomy executive came forward. H.P. then hired a third-party forensic accounting firm to conduct an investigation.

Hewlett-Packard has turned over its findings to Securities and Exchange Commission in the United States and the Serious Fraud Office in Britain. In a conference call with analysts, Ms. Whitman said the company might consider legal actions against several parties.

A spokesman for Mike Lynch, former chief executive of Autonomy, did not have an immediate comment.

More broadly, Hewlett-Packard continues to face weakness in its core businesses. Revenue for the full fiscal year dropped 5 percent, to $120.4 billion, with the personal computer, printing, enterprise and service businesses all losing ground. Earnings dropped 23 percent, to $8 billion, over the same period.

“As we discussed during our securities analyst meeting last month, fiscal 2012 was the first year in a multiyear journey to turn H.P. around,” Ms Whitman said in a statement. “We’re starting to see progress in key areas, such as new product releases and customer wins.”

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Clinton to Visit Middle East in Effort to Defuse Gaza Conflict

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — President Obama sent Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to the Middle East on Tuesday to try to defuse the conflict in Gaza, the White House announced.

Mrs. Clinton, who accompanied Mr. Obama on his three-country Asia trip, left on her own plane immediately for the region, where she will stop first in Jerusalem to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, then head to the West Bank to meet with Palestinian leaders and finally to Cairo to consult with Egyptian officials.

The decision to dispatch Mrs. Clinton dramatically deepens the American involvement in the crisis. Mr. Obama made a number of late-night phone calls from his Asian tour to the Middle East on Monday night that contributed to his conclusion that he had to become more engaged and that Mrs. Clinton might be able to accomplish something.

With the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon also scheduled to arrive in Israel on Tuesday, a senior official in the prime minister’s office said Israel decided to give more time to diplomacy before launching a ground invasion into Gaza. But Israel has not withdrawn other options.

“I prefer a diplomatic solution. I hope that we can get one but if not, we have every right to defend ourselves with other means and we shall use them,” Mr. Netanyahu said in a statement at the start of a meeting in Jerusalem with the German foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle.

“As you know, we seek a diplomatic unwinding to this, through the discussions of cease-fire,” Mr. Netanyahu added. “But if the firing continues, we will have to take broader action and we won’t hesitate to do so.”

About three hours before Mr. Ban was scheduled to meet Mr. Netanyahu in Jerusalem, sirens sounded across the city in the early afternoon announcing an incoming rocket from Gaza. The military wing of Hamas said it had fired at the city. The rocket fell short, landing harmlessly in the West Bank just south of Jerusalem and the military said it landed on open ground near a Palestinian village.

The rocket attack on the city, which is holy to Jews, Muslims and Christians, was the second in less than a week. The earlier rocket last Friday landed in a similar location, the police said.

The Israeli military said that in the course of the morning its air force had struck at 11 Palestinian squads involved in planting explosives and firing rockets, as well as underground rocket launchers and a store of weapons and ammunition. The military said it had also used tank shells and artillery fire against unspecified targets in Gaza.  

The Health Ministry in Gaza said the death toll had climbed by late Tuesday morning to 112, roughly half of them civilians, including children. Three Israelis died in a rocket attack last week.

After an Asian summit dinner in Phnom Penh on Monday night, Mr. Obama called President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt to discuss the situation, then spoke with Mr. Netanyahu and called Mr. Morsi back. He was up until 2:30 a.m. on the phone, the White House said. He consulted with Mrs. Clinton repeatedly on the sidelines of the Asian summit meetings on Tuesday.

“This morning Secretary Clinton and the president spoke again about the situation in Gaza, and the they agreed that it makes sense for the secretary to travel to the region so Secretary Clinton will depart today,” said Benjamin Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser to Mr. Obama. “Her visits will build on the engagement that we’ve undertaken in the last several days.”

Mr. Rhodes said that “any resolution to this has to include an end to that rocket fire” by Hamas militants on Israeli communities but “the best way to solve this is through diplomacy.”

He added: “It’s in nobody’s interest to see an escalation of the military conflict.”

Mrs. Clinton will not meet with Hamas representatives on her trip, but with the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank, which is at odds with the Hamas rulers of the Gaza Strip. “We do not engage directly with Hamas,” Mr. Rhodes said.

Instead, Mr. Obama is focused on leveraging Egypt’s influence with Hamas to press for a halt to the rocket attacks. “We believe Egypt can and should be a partner in achieving that outcome,” Mr. Rhodes said.

Mr. Rhodes reaffirmed that the United States supports Israel’s right to defend itself and said Mr. Obama did not ask Mr. Netanyahu to hold off a ground incursion into Gaza.

In Jerusalem, an official in the prime minister’s office said that the country’s top nine ministers, who make up the inner security cabinet, held discussions late into the night on the state of the diplomatic efforts and Israel’s military operation in Gaza. The goal of the operation, Israel says, is to end years of rocket fire by Gaza militants against southern Israel.

Peter Baker reported from Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem. Jodi Rudoren contributed reporting from Gaza City.

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