ARTICLES MODERN.COM

By CAROL VOGEL : A rectangular patch of sand in Central Park may be the last place you’d expect to find a gleaming “Star Trek”-style spacecraft. But an art pavilion that resembles just that will make a temporary landing there this fall.

Called Mobile Art, the structure itself was designed by the renowned London architect Zaha Hadid and will occupy the Rumsey Playfield, midpark at 70th Street, from Oct. 20 to Nov. 9. (It is Ms. Hadid’s first New York building, albeit temporary, and has already made stops in Hong Kong and Tokyo and is headed later for London, Moscow and Paris.) Read more…

art pavilion, Artistic Mission, Arts, Central Park, Design, fashion brand

By BRAD STONE : SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook, the rapidly growing social network, unveiled some new features on Wednesday as it works to broaden its reach online and to recalibrate its sometimes contentious relationship with the thousands of developers writing programs for the service.

In a speech at his company’s annual conference for developers, called F8, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s 24-year-old chief executive, also demonstrated the company’s new design. He predicted that there would soon be a wave of social Web sites built on top of the information users give to social networks.

“We are going to see the big social networks start to decentralize into a series of social applications across the Web,” Mr. Zuckerberg said. “I think we are at the beginning of a movement and the beginning of an industry.”

To carve out a piece of that future, the company announced Facebook Connect, a way that other Web sites can integrate parts of Facebook’s service. Web sites can ask users for their Facebook user name and password, instead of creating an identity verification system themselves, and offer their users the ability to import their list of friends from Facebook. Read more…

Facebook, new design, new features, New Tool, social applications, social network, Technology

By VIKAS BAJAJ : Mortgage rates are rising because of the troubles at the loan finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, threatening to deal another blow to the faltering housing market.
Even as policy makers rushed to support the two companies, home loan rates approached their highest levels in five years.

The average interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages rose to 6.71 percent on Tuesday, from 6.44 percent on Friday, according to HSH Associates, a publisher of consumer rates. The average rate for so-called jumbo loans, which cannot be sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, was 7.8 percent, the highest since December 2000.

Loan rates are rising because of concern in the financial markets about the future of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which own or guarantee nearly half of the nation’s $12 trillion mortgage market. The federal government has proposed a rescue, and has urged Congress to approve it quickly. Read more…

Business, Finance, fixed rate mortgages, home loan rates, homeowners, interest rate, loan finance, mortgage, mortgage market, policy makers

By KEVIN SACK : It is one of the most audacious promises in a campaign that has been thick with them.
In speech after speech, Senator Barack Obama has vowed that he will lower the country’s health care costs enough to “bring down premiums by $2,500 for the typical family.” Moreover, Mr. Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, has promised that his health plan will be in place “by the end of my first term as president of the United States.”

Whether Mr. Obama can deliver is a matter of considerable dispute among health analysts and economists. While there is consensus that the American health care system is bloated with waste, eliminating enough to save $2,500 per family would require simultaneous and synergistic solutions to a host of problems that have proved intractable for decades. Read more…

American health care, Campaign, Economists, Health, health analysts, Health Insurance, Health Plan, Politics, Senator Barack Obama, U.S.

By NICHOLAS KULISH and GRAHAM BOWLEY : BELGRADE, Serbia — The infamous fugitive, long charged with war crimes, was not in a distant monastery or a dark cave when caught at last, but living in Serbia’s capital. Nor was Radovan Karadzic lurking inconspicuously, but instead giving public lectures on alternative medicine before audiences of hundreds. Read more…

alternative medicine, Belgrade, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Radovan Karadzic, Ratko Mladic, Serbia, World News

By NICHOLAS WADE :CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — One day last month, clad in white plastic garments from head to toe, Dr. David Sinclair showed a visitor around his germ-free mouse room here at Harvard Medical School.

The mice, subjects in studies of health and longevity, are kept in wire baskets under intensive nursing care. A mouse gym holds a miniature exercise machine that tests the rodents’ ability to balance on a rotating bar. In a nearby water maze, mice must recall visual cues to swim to safety on a hidden platform, a test of their powers of memory. Read more…

COUNTING CALORIES, exercise machine, mouse gym, nursing care, plastic garments, restricted diet, Science