Researcher to demo hack that destroys MacBook batteries

Your Apple notebook might be vulnerable to an attack that could cause its battery to die, harbor malware or even explode, according to security researcher Charlie Miller. Speaking with Forbes, Miller explained that modern laptop batteries contain a controller that monitors their power level and regulates when they start and stop charging. After examining various MacBook, MacBook Pro and MacBook Air batteries, he found a way to manipulate the chip to cause some disastrous effects.

The batteries ship with a default password that restricts access to the controller's firmware, but that can be bypassed fairly easily. Miller discovered two of Apple's battery passwords by dissecting a 2009 software update released to fix a glitch with MacBook batteries. With those keys in hand, he managed to reverse engineer the controller's firmware, allowing him to reprogram the chip so it reports the wrong readings and eventually burns itself out -- be that figuratively or literally.

Batteries slain by Miller's hand

Potentially more startling than a flaming battery, an attacker could infect the firmware with malware, allowing them to harvest the victim's personal data. Miller noted that it would be especially nasty because few IT professionals would consider the battery as a source for the malware, allowing it to reinfect the machine perpetually. Someone could install a new hard drive, a fresh operating system, flash the system's BIOS and the malware-laden battery would live on to reattack the machine.

During his research, Miller claims to have bricked seven batteries, but he didn't attempt to push them far enough to catch fire because he works at home. "You read stories about batteries in electronic devices that blow up without any interference. If you have all this control, you can probably do it," he said. Miller will demonstrate the flaw during next month's Black Hat conference along with releasing a tool for MacBook users called "Caulkgun" that changes the battery's default password.

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Source: http://www.techspot.com/news/44800-researcher-to-demo-hack-that-destroys-macbook-batteries.html

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Can Google beat Twitter and Facebook as a tool for journalists?

Google+ has taken off like no other social network before it. While it?s still in ?limited field trial? mode, it?s already being seriously considered as a contender to take on Twitter and Facebook. Journalists already use both those networks to great effect. Could Google+ see similar usage?

Some journalists have already started experimenting with Google+ as a way to share, discuss or source news. Here are a few examples:

  • Alexis Madrigal, Senior Editor at The Atlantic, is running an ?experiment in real-time news? called The Atlantic PLUS, which he posts each day to his Google+ account. It comprises links to Atlantic stories, details of what he and other Atlantic journalists are working on that day, links to news on other websites and a photograph for the day.
  • Sarah Hill, an American television journalist at KOMU in Missouri, used a Google+ video chat Hangout yesterday to bring together Norwegians to talk together from different locations about the Oslo bombing. This was recorded and broadcast on TV.
  • Robert Schultz has been taking advantage of  the ability to edit posts on Google+ by turning it into a liveblogging tool.
  • Benjamin Cohen, the technology correspondent for Channel 4 News at ITN in the UK, has used Google+ as a multimedia extension to his tweets, posting breaking news relating to the News International phone-hacking scandal, and then linking to it in tweets to help drive traffic to them from Twitter.

So, what makes Google+ an appealing journalistic tool? Benjamin Cohen tells me that the combination of speed, ease of use and the way it encourages discussions makes it potentially very powerful.

?If you take the example of the statement Rupert and James Murdoch were refused permission to give at the (UK government) Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, News Corporation released that to the press and I had it up on Google+ within twenty seconds of receiving it. If I had put it on the Channel 4 News website, it would have taken a lot longer ? I?d have had to wait for the content management system to load, and perhaps had my article checked by an editor before it was published,? Cohen explains.

?The feedback is better than Twitter too,? he continues. ?While I might get a lot of replies on Twitter, it?s difficult for others to see the full scope of the conversation because they can?t necessarily see what others are saying. Google+ may lack brevity, but it?s better for discussion.?

Cohen adds that Google+ is also useful for identifying where mistakes might have been made. Users being able to ?+1? comments as well as posts makes it potentially easy to see where a particular commenter might have an important point that needs addressing. Additionally, there?s the potential to easily identify new leads for stories amongst the comments ? leads which may be lost on Twitter as retweets can quickly push them off the Mentions stream.

What about Facebook?

Facebook has made a concerted effort of late to encourage journalists to use its platform in their work. There are definitely strengths to Facebook as a reporting tool, not least access to its 750,000,000 active users. However, while he admits Facebook is a much greater driver of traffic to news websites such as the Pink News site he also runs, Benjamin Cohen sees Google+ as offering a number of advantages despite its current small user-base.

?Being able to edit mistakes is an important thing ? you can?t edit something you?ve posted to Facebook once it?s published, you have to delete it and then all the comments and likes are lost too. On Google+ you can edit as you go. If you write something inaccurate on Twitter or Facebook, it?s difficult to deal with, but posts on Google+ can be edited for accuracy as needed.? Cohen has also built a larger audience on Google+ than his professional Page on Facebook. At the time of writing, his Facebook Page has 752 ?Likes?, while he?s in 1,364 people?s circles on Google+.

Not everyone sees Google+ as the future?yet

However, not everyone sees Google+ with such a rosy glow. Anthony DeRosa, the Social Media Editor at news agency Reuters, tells me that he finds it currently has too small and specific an audience to be useful as a mainstream journalistic tool.

?It?s good for discussion, sort of like the old school BBS (Bulletin Board System), but morphed with the Facebook wall,? says DeRosa. ?It?s mostly full of tech and media people so it?s a bit too insidery to really spread across many topics. It tends to be a bit geeky and not mainstream enough to be interesting beyond the topics that my media and tech friends care about. Our readers want to know about a wide variety of topics and Google+ just doesn?t have diverse enough an audience yet to get into them. I?ll go to Google+ as my last social media platform, usually when I am trying to kick back a bit and have time to read more and respond in a longer format.?

While DeRosa uses Twitter as his go-to social network (?It?s a signal and a way to gather more information by way of sources, be it a traditional journalist or just someone who happened to be in the right place at the right time.?) and sees Facebook as attractive due to its audience size and the ability to create ?a slightly more personalized space?, he notes another service as worth considering ? Tumblr.

?Tumblr actually, in my opinion, gives a journalist the most creative platform to really personalize their space completely,? says DeRosa. ?Brian Stelter and CJ Chivers are two really great examples of that. There are countless other journalists there, I?m actually surprised they don?t yet have their own Vadim Lavrusik (Facebook?s Journalism Program Manager) type person at Tumblr. They?re missing a great opportunity there to really help get journos what they need. Mark Coatney is the closest thing they have to that. While he was with Newsweek, they were the first mainstream media publication, along with BlackBook, to make a splash on Tumblr.?

How Google+ can improve its offering to journalists

Both Benjamin Cohen and Anthony DeRosa have practical suggestions for how Google can better serve journalists with its social network.

Cohen notes that television journalists like him may use it in a different way to online journalists due to the fact that they don?t necessarily have to worry about driving traffic to their websites and can instead use it to break news in a way that may help surface new leads to use in their TV reports. This is an argument borne out by Sarah Hill?s successful use of a Hangout to cover the Norwegian tragedy, as mentioned above. However, Cohen notes that official short URLs to profiles are essential so that TV shows can direct viewers to Google+ to continue a discussion.

For DeRosa, meanwhile, it?s all about scale and Google playing to its strengths by integrating its other services. ?Until they have as many (users) as Facebook, it will be a niche that (journalists will) use last and focus their attention where the most eyeballs are. The level of feedback and engagement at Google+ seems high, despite much lower numbers than Facebook, so that?s in their favor. I think Google should try to do something interesting to tie together what a journalist has on Google News and create some custom feed just for that journalist that they can somehow pull into their profile.?

Meanwhile, on his Google+ profile yesterday, DeRosa made a pertinent observation in light of the events in Norway. Google+ lacks a proper search function and the convenient tool that is the hashtag. ?I Love Google+ but it doesn?t hold a candle to following #Oslo news today. I woke up and didn?t leave TweetDeck pretty much the entire time. Google+ will be great to discuss it at some point but for fast breaking news and stories, Twitter is and always will be king.?

The future of Google+ lies with the user-base it develops and how those users choose to use it, but early experiments show that it?s certainly getting off to an interesting start as a way to source and report stories. Still, it has a long way to go to seriously challenge Twitter.

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Source: http://thenextweb.com/google/2011/07/23/can-google-beat-twitter-and-facebook-as-a-tool-for-journalists/

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Is There Still a Need for Water-Cooling?

For me, water-cooling began out of necessity. I water-cooled my first PC nearly ten years ago, when, living in a house with a flat roof, my bedroom got incredibly hot in the summer months. I was already hooked on overclocking at the time and strove to save money by buying cheap, but very overclockable hardware. Unfortunately, the combination of the house's architecture and high system temperatures meant that my PC was intolerably noisy and unstable.

Infuriated, I made the move to water-cooling - not a particularly easy one as there were few guides and even fewer off-the-shelf components back then, which resulted in regular trips to the local DIY store to search for parts. I initially water-cooled my CPU, and my overheating and noise issues were solved instantly - my PC went from a hot, noisy box to a cool and quiet machine of wonder. I had more overclocking headroom than before too.

Every one of my main rigs since then has also seen me spend entire weekends building and leak-testing. In fact, the last three PCs I've built have had a water-cooled CPU and GPU, as well as the various hotspots on the motherboard too. However, a lot of today's hardware simply doesn't need water-cooling as urgently as its equivalent back in the day. People still want water-cooling, but it seems to be a desire that's separate from the need to actually cool the hardware.

Even as far back as the release Intel's first mainstream quad-core CPUs, such as the Core 2 Quad Q6600, air coolers were quickly becoming potent enough for newcomers to question the significant outlay involved with water-cooling. The new heatpipe-clad tower coolers were becoming more efficient at every step, and there's usually an air cooler that will enable you to push all but the hottest running CPUs to the max, albeit with additional noise.

However, with Intel's LGA1155 CPUs, we've seen time and time again that air coolers such as Thermaltake's Frio and BeQuiet Dark Rock Advanced are more than able to provide just as much overclocking headroom as a decent water-cooling kit, and with similar noise levels too. Our current LGA1155 thermal test kit is a case in question - we've overclocked our Core i7-2600K to a lofty 4.6GHz, and both the aforementioned coolers handled this overclock admirably.


Graphics cards are a slightly different matter, however, as we've found just as much reason to water-cool the current graphics cards such as the GeForce GTX 590 3GB as any previous generation. In fact, even mid-range graphics cards such as the GTX 560 Ti 1GB get quite warm and noisy under load, and many third party coolers haven't been able to tame them significantly.

Motherboards are a bit of mixed bag, though. I'd go as far as saying that I've had far fewer failures and stability issues since I've been water-cooling the motherboard in my PCs - the hot-running chipset on LGA1366 motherboards, for example, is almost certainly the reason for quite a few dead systems in our lab, as well as other problems I've read about in various forums.


However, water-cooling your motherboard is an expensive business - full cover blocks can retail for over £100, and most LGA1155 motherboards simply don't require shedloads of voltage either. With Intel and AMD's next-generation high-end CPUs on the horizon, it will be interesting to see how future families of motherboards fare on a day to day basis - will LGA2011 be another hot-running LGA1366 for example?

Aside from noise reduction, where water-cooling still has the edge in a few key areas, there is one other reason to invest in water-cooling. It looks fantastic. There's a reason why we award points to cases that look good, and why modding projects are so popular. Lots of us want to have a cool-looking PC and are willing to spend money achieving that goal. Thankfully, the water-cooling industry has taken notice and strived to meet the demand for a diverse and flexible range of hardware.

You only have to look at websites such as Aquatuning, Chilled PC and FrozenCPU to see the huge the range of components on offer these days, which makes it very easy to make a unique water-cooled PC. In addition, the huge range of gear is appealing to those who want to go one step further than just bolting a load of off-the-shelf parts together, and instead want to either mod their PC or even build it from scratch.

Even if the next generation of hardware doesn't notably benefit from water-cooling, there's always a small gap between air cooling and extreme cooling, and there will still be a huge market for it, for the simple reason that it's cool.

What do you think the future has in store for water-cooling? Have you been put off for any reason, or do you swear by it? Let us know in the forums.

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'Guerilla Activist' Releases 18,000 Scientific Papers

Yesterday, in response to this week's indictment of a 24-year-old Harvard researcher and Internet activist for allegedly hacking into MIT's network and collecting nearly five million scholarly articles, a second hacker released more than 18,592 (32 gigabytes) of subscription-only research obtained from the same service. The second man identified himself as Greg Maxwell, a 31-year-old "technologist, recreational mathematician, and scientific hobbyist" from northern Virginia.

The Harvard researcher, Aaron Swartz, was indicted on federal charges of downloading articles from the nonprofit online academic database JSTOR last year. Swartz is a prominent programmer who founded a company acquired in 2005 by Reddit, and a fellow at Harvard's Center for Ethics. In a 2008 "Guerilla Open Access Manifesto," Swartz called for activists to "fight back" against services that held academic papers hostage behind paywalls. "We need to download scientific journals and upload them to file-sharing networks," wrote Swartz.

Maxwell says he released the papers for similar reasons. He says the papers come from the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society and were published before 1923, which means they're in the public domain (his claim has not been independently verified). "This knowledge belongs to the public," he argues. For the sake of scientific progress, Maxwell says, such databases shouldn't keep research under lock and key at all, let alone beyond their copyright expiration, as is the current practice. "Progress comes from making connections between others' discoveries, from extending them, and then from telling people," he says.

Though Swartz voluntarily returned the data to JSTOR, and MIT did not seek legal action, he could nonetheless face up to 35 years in prison and $1 million in fines as a result of the federal indictment. No charges have yet been brought against Maxwell.

Swartz's arrest, and Maxwell's actions, are part of a broader trend of digital vigilantism. Swartz's arrest has also sparked debates on access to information and on what some see as the government's extreme reaction. That government response may itself be a reaction to a spate of recent attacks on Sony, Citibank, and numerous government departments by the hacker collectives LulzSec and Anonymous?and by the release of thousands of classified government documents by Wikileaks.

"I think there's a lot of room for online protest," says Mark Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C., "but that doesn't mean that what people do online, even with good intentions, may not cause harm to others."

In a press release, Carmen M. Ortiz of the United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, said: "Stealing is stealing whether you use a computer command or a crowbar, and whether you take documents, data or dollars."

Proponents of information freedom and of undermining censorship are increasingly turning to more radical means of making a point. But critics say that their actions could cause problems for others. "Part of the true protest tradition is people making some sacrifice of their own so that others may benefit," says Rotenberg. But he warns that, in recent cases of hacktivism, "there may be some innocent bystanders hurt in the process."

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Researcher to demo hack that destroys MacBook batteries

Your Apple notebook might be vulnerable to an attack that could cause its battery to die, harbor malware or even explode, according to security researcher Charlie Miller. Speaking with Forbes, Miller explained that modern laptop batteries contain a controller that monitors their power level and regulates when they start and stop charging. After examining various MacBook, MacBook Pro and MacBook Air batteries, he found a way to manipulate the chip to cause some disastrous effects.

The batteries ship with a default password that restricts access to the controller's firmware, but that can be bypassed fairly easily. Miller discovered two of Apple's battery passwords by dissecting a 2009 software update released to fix a glitch with MacBook batteries. With those keys in hand, he managed to reverse engineer the controller's firmware, allowing him to reprogram the chip so it reports the wrong readings and eventually burns itself out -- be that figuratively or literally.

Batteries slain by Miller's hand

Potentially more startling than a flaming battery, an attacker could infect the firmware with malware, allowing them to harvest the victim's personal data. Miller noted that it would be especially nasty because few IT professionals would consider the battery as a source for the malware, allowing it to reinfect the machine perpetually. Someone could install a new hard drive, a fresh operating system, flash the system's BIOS and the malware-laden battery would live on to reattack the machine.

During his research, Miller claims to have bricked seven batteries, but he didn't attempt to push them far enough to catch fire because he works at home. "You read stories about batteries in electronic devices that blow up without any interference. If you have all this control, you can probably do it," he said. Miller will demonstrate the flaw during next month's Black Hat conference along with releasing a tool for MacBook users called "Caulkgun" that changes the battery's default password.

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Source: http://www.techspot.com/news/44800-researcher-to-demo-hack-that-destroys-macbook-batteries.html

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Debt Ceiling Talks Collapse as Boehner Walks Out

The latest turn in the summer?s epic clash between the White House and Congressional Republicans came little more than a week before the government hits its borrowing ceiling, and set off accusations from both sides about who was to blame.

A visibly angry President Obama, in a hastily scheduled White House news conference, demanded that Congressional leaders come to the White House on Saturday morning. ?I want them here at 11 a.m. tomorrow,? he said. ?They are going to have to explain to me how it is that we are going to avoid default.?

Mr. Obama said Mr. Boehner had stopped returning his calls when it became clear that rank-and-file House Republicans would not agree to raise revenues on wealthy Americans as part of a debt-reduction deal, despite Mr. Obama?s concessions on reducing future spending for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Both sides have sought a deficit-reduction agreement as part of the essential vote to raise the government?s $14.3 trillion debt limit, which will be reached Aug. 2.

In a letter to his Republican colleagues on Friday night, Mr. Boehner said, ?A deal was never reached, and was never really close.? He added: ?In the end, we couldn?t connect. Not because of different personalities, but because of different visions for our country.?

The speaker said Mr. Obama wanted to raise taxes too high and would not make ?fundamental changes? to entitlement benefit programs like Medicare.

But according to a White House official, Mr. Obama had agreed over the coming decade to cut $250 billion from Medicare spending and $310 billion from other domestic entitlement programs, like farm subsidies and education programs. And Mr. Obama was willing to change the formula for Social Security cost-of living adjustments, which many economists say would more accurately reflect inflation, for savings of about $125 billion more.

All of Mr. Obama?s concessions on the benefit programs were contingent, however, on Mr. Boehner and Republicans agreeing to higher taxes for wealthy individuals and corporations.

At the news conference, Mr. Obama said Republicans were forfeiting an ?extraordinarily fair deal? to trim the deficit and raise the debt ceiling. ?I have gone out of my way to make compromises,? the president added.

?Essentially what we had offered Speaker Boehner was over a trillion dollars in cuts to discretionary spending, both domestic and defense,? Mr. Obama said. ?We then offered an additional $650 billion in cuts to entitlement programs Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security. We believed that it was possible to shape those in a way that preserved the integrity of the system, made them available for the next generation and did not affect current beneficiaries in an adverse way.?

Republicans, though, said that the White House pushed for more revenue midway through the talks. ?The White House moved the goal posts,? Mr. Boehner said in a news conference.

In his weekly radio address on Saturday, Mr. Obama continued to press the idea that it was ?not right to ask middle class families to pay more for college before we ask the biggest corporations to pay their fair share of taxes.?

?This debate boils down to a simple choice,? the president said.  We can come together for the good of the country and reach a compromise; we can strengthen our economy and leave for our children a more secure future.  Or we can issue insults and demands and ultimatums at each another, withdraw to our partisan corners, and achieve nothing.?

Representative Jeb Hensarling, Republican of Texas, pressed the idea that the deficit and government spending need to come down to help create jobs and bolster the economy.

?If we're going to avoid any type of default and downgrade ? if we're going to resume job creation in America _ the president and his allies need to listen to the people and work with Republicans to cut up the credit cards once and for all,? Mr. Hensarling said.

The breakdown in negotiations between Mr. Obama and Mr. Boehner was the second time this month that Mr. Boehner had walked away from the table with Mr. Obama after word of their private talks was leaked to the news media, provoking protests from Republican lawmakers and antitax conservative groups.

?I?ve been left at the altar now a couple of times,? Mr. Obama said. ?And I think that one of the questions that the Republican Party is going to have to ask itself is, Can they say yes to anything?? 

This time, however, Mr. Obama had also faced a firestorm from within his party, because of the spending cuts he was considering with Mr. Boehner.

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Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=86ce7c0ef2772190836b013a2e90650e

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'Guerilla Activist' Releases 18,000 Scientific Papers

Yesterday, in response to this week's indictment of a 24-year-old Harvard researcher and Internet activist for allegedly hacking into MIT's network and collecting nearly five million scholarly articles, a second hacker released more than 18,592 (32 gigabytes) of subscription-only research obtained from the same service. The second man identified himself as Greg Maxwell, a 31-year-old "technologist, recreational mathematician, and scientific hobbyist" from northern Virginia.

The Harvard researcher, Aaron Swartz, was indicted on federal charges of downloading articles from the nonprofit online academic database JSTOR last year. Swartz is a prominent programmer who founded a company acquired in 2005 by Reddit, and a fellow at Harvard's Center for Ethics. In a 2008 "Guerilla Open Access Manifesto," Swartz called for activists to "fight back" against services that held academic papers hostage behind paywalls. "We need to download scientific journals and upload them to file-sharing networks," wrote Swartz.

Maxwell says he released the papers for similar reasons. He says the papers come from the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society and were published before 1923, which means they're in the public domain (his claim has not been independently verified). "This knowledge belongs to the public," he argues. For the sake of scientific progress, Maxwell says, such databases shouldn't keep research under lock and key at all, let alone beyond their copyright expiration, as is the current practice. "Progress comes from making connections between others' discoveries, from extending them, and then from telling people," he says.

Though Swartz voluntarily returned the data to JSTOR, and MIT did not seek legal action, he could nonetheless face up to 35 years in prison and $1 million in fines as a result of the federal indictment. No charges have yet been brought against Maxwell.

Swartz's arrest, and Maxwell's actions, are part of a broader trend of digital vigilantism. Swartz's arrest has also sparked debates on access to information and on what some see as the government's extreme reaction. That government response may itself be a reaction to a spate of recent attacks on Sony, Citibank, and numerous government departments by the hacker collectives LulzSec and Anonymous?and by the release of thousands of classified government documents by Wikileaks.

"I think there's a lot of room for online protest," says Mark Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C., "but that doesn't mean that what people do online, even with good intentions, may not cause harm to others."

In a press release, Carmen M. Ortiz of the United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, said: "Stealing is stealing whether you use a computer command or a crowbar, and whether you take documents, data or dollars."

Proponents of information freedom and of undermining censorship are increasingly turning to more radical means of making a point. But critics say that their actions could cause problems for others. "Part of the true protest tradition is people making some sacrifice of their own so that others may benefit," says Rotenberg. But he warns that, in recent cases of hacktivism, "there may be some innocent bystanders hurt in the process."

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Source: http://feeds.technologyreview.com/click.phdo?i=f11ebc85aeab8004b761f25cd0ff6d58

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Don?t think you?ll use Google ? It?s only a matter of time?

Slowly rebuilding something as massive as a Google social network is a total pain in the ass. I have requests for invites from friends-of-friends from high school clogging my inbox. And every Google page I turn to: Gmail, Calendar and Google Search has these little pop-up notifications in the top-right corner, beckoning for me to check my Google+ activity.

My willpower has never felt so exhausted. Right now, the process of building Circles are dizzying. But will it be worth it in the long run to sit down and take the time to get it right? Yes. Undoubtedly yes. It?s so obvious people are making Google free commercials saying so. And if you have any reservations, watch this:

Hat tip to @NickFoden for the great find.

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Source: http://thenextweb.com/google/2011/07/22/dont-think-youll-use-google-its-only-a-matter-of-time/

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Romney Seeing Smaller Pool for Donations in Second Run

Mr. Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, is not only raising less money than he did four years ago, but so far he has been relying more heavily on a smaller group of donors, asking many of them to write checks now for the maximum donation that they can give during primary season. While that has given Mr. Romney a considerable lead in fund-raising over other Republican candidates ? he raised $18.5 million during the three months ending June 30, four times more than anyone else ? it also means he will have to quickly expand his universe of large donors to maintain that pace.

Out of 263 state-level finance chairmen and bundlers ? those who raise money on behalf of a candidate ? who appeared in Mr. Romney?s campaign filings in 2008, more than half do not appear to have given him any money so far this year, according to an examination of filings with the Federal Election Commission. Those staying on the sidelines include some of the heaviest hitters in national Republican fund-raising, underscoring one of Mr. Romney?s central challenges: convincing a skeptical Republican establishment that he is their best bet to make Mr. Obama a one-term president.

?I haven?t decided yet. I want to see what the whole field looks like,? said James B. Francis Jr., a Texas financier who was a national finance co-chairman of Mr. Romney?s 2008 campaign but has not signed up for a second tour of duty.

?A presidential campaign is like a child: every one of them is different,? added Mr. Francis, who headed the network of ?Pioneers? that helped George W. Bush break fund-raising records in his first run for president. ?They have different dynamics, they act differently.?

Mr. Romney has until now faced only minimal competition for the allegiance of major Republican donors. But that could change quickly: Gov. Rick Perry of Texas ? home to a significant portion of big Republican donors ? is inching ever closer to entering the race. Both men made trips to California this week to court potential donors, with Mr. Perry presenting himself as the party?s best alternative to Mr. Romney.

While Mr. Romney?s campaign team is already laying plans to go head-to-head with Mr. Perry should he enter the race, Romney advisers said they did not view the fund-raising situation as a sign of weakness. Rather, they emphasized the slow development of the Republican primary: Mr. Romney, like other candidates, entered the race much later this year and has kept a determinedly low profile.

?There is a lot of potential out there that hasn?t been motivated to be tapped,? said Woody Johnson, the owner of the New York Jets and a member of Mr. Romney?s national finance team. ?I think that?s pretty common for a campaign, especially this early. People aren?t as focused. Maybe it?s the environment, maybe it?s because so many candidates are running.?

Mr. Johnson said that many of the donors he had reached out to in recent weeks were now willing to take a second look at Mr. Romney, in part because other Republican candidates, like former Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota and former Gov. Jon M. Huntsman Jr. of Utah, have had difficulty gaining traction in national polls.

?It clarifies the argument,? said Mr. Johnson, who supported Senator John McCain of Arizona in the race for the Republican presidential nomination four years ago. ?Competition makes you better. And I?m confident that Romney will prevail.?

Mr. Romney is not the only candidate fighting to hold on to his biggest donors: Just one-fifth of Mr. Obama?s bundlers have so far signed on to the president?s re-election campaign, reflecting both burnout and disillusionment. But Mr. Obama has been able to recruit dozens of new bundlers to replace them, while drawing in additional millions of dollars from an enormous network of small donors.

Griff Palmer and Derek Willis contributed reporting.

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Debt Ceiling Talks Collapse as Boehner Walks Out

The latest turn in the summer?s epic clash between the White House and Congressional Republicans came little more than a week before the government hits its borrowing ceiling, and set off accusations from both sides about who was to blame.

A visibly angry President Obama, in a hastily scheduled White House news conference, demanded that Congressional leaders come to the White House on Saturday morning. ?I want them here at 11 a.m. tomorrow,? he said. ?They are going to have to explain to me how it is that we are going to avoid default.?

Mr. Obama said Mr. Boehner had stopped returning his calls when it became clear that rank-and-file House Republicans would not agree to raise revenues on wealthy Americans as part of a debt-reduction deal, despite Mr. Obama?s concessions on reducing future spending for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Both sides have sought a deficit-reduction agreement as part of the essential vote to raise the government?s $14.3 trillion debt limit, which will be reached Aug. 2.

In a letter to his Republican colleagues on Friday night, Mr. Boehner said, ?A deal was never reached, and was never really close.? He added: ?In the end, we couldn?t connect. Not because of different personalities, but because of different visions for our country.?

The speaker said Mr. Obama wanted to raise taxes too high and would not make ?fundamental changes? to entitlement benefit programs like Medicare.

But according to a White House official, Mr. Obama had agreed over the coming decade to cut $250 billion from Medicare spending and $310 billion from other domestic entitlement programs, like farm subsidies and education programs. And Mr. Obama was willing to change the formula for Social Security cost-of living adjustments, which many economists say would more accurately reflect inflation, for savings of about $125 billion more.

All of Mr. Obama?s concessions on the benefit programs were contingent, however, on Mr. Boehner and Republicans agreeing to higher taxes for wealthy individuals and corporations.

At the news conference, Mr. Obama said Republicans were forfeiting an ?extraordinarily fair deal? to trim the deficit and raise the debt ceiling. ?I have gone out of my way to make compromises,? the president added.

?Essentially what we had offered Speaker Boehner was over a trillion dollars in cuts to discretionary spending, both domestic and defense,? Mr. Obama said. ?We then offered an additional $650 billion in cuts to entitlement programs Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security. We believed that it was possible to shape those in a way that preserved the integrity of the system, made them available for the next generation and did not affect current beneficiaries in an adverse way.?

Republicans, though, said that the White House pushed for more revenue midway through the talks. ?The White House moved the goal posts,? Mr. Boehner said in a news conference.

The breakdown was the second time this month that Mr. Boehner had walked away from the table with Mr. Obama after word of their private talks was leaked to the news media, provoking protests from Republican lawmakers and antitax conservative groups.

?I?ve been left at the altar now a couple of times,? Mr. Obama said. ?And I think that one of the questions that the Republican Party is going to have to ask itself is, Can they say yes to anything?? 

This time, however, Mr. Obama had also faced a firestorm from within his party, because of the spending cuts he was considering with Mr. Boehner.

Hours before the tempest, the three top stewards of the nation?s financial system ? Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner; Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, and William C. Dudley, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York ? had met to discuss how to react to shield the economy from the blow if Congress failed to raise the debt limit. But in a joint statement, they said they remained confident Congress would act.

Mr. Obama, too, said he thought that default could be avoided. ?I am less confident at this point that people are willing to step up to the plate and actually deal with the underlying problem of debt and deficits,? he said at his news conference.

Mr. Boehner said he would work now with Senate leaders on a plan to raise the debt limit.

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