You're the Boss Blog: Our Vision: Make Sales to End Sweatshops

There have been a lot of grim stories lately involving the manufacture of clothing.

Over the last few months, there have been factory fires in Bangledesh that have taken the lives of hundreds of men and women who endured depressing sweatshop environments in order to feed their families. These factories were producing products for global brands like Wal-Mart, Disney, and Enyce. And a recent study by Greenpeace International concluded that Calvin Klein, GAP, Zara, Diesel, and other top apparel brands produce clothes that contain high levels of dangerous chemicals.

Does it make sense that these and other brands are allowed to make products that expose people throughout their supply chains — cotton farmers to garment workers to consumers — to cancer-causing and endocrine-disrupting agents that can cause birth defects, learning disorders, and even death? If clothing were food, wouldn’t there be a recall?

In most cases, these brands have little to fear in the way of regulation. What they do fear is a loss of sales – and that is where my start-up, Fashioning Change, hopes to play a role. We have built a marketplace that offers stylish, money-saving, safe, sustainable, and sweatshop-free alternatives. Our goal is to support manufacturers that are doing things right – and to leave the big brands no option but to adopt authentic practices that protect health, the Earth, and human rights. That’s our plan, any way.

When we share that plan with venture capitalists, we are often told, “but shoppers won’t pay more for products that are green or socially responsible.” And we don’t think they should have to. That’s why, in addition to showcasing socially responsible brands, we are using our marketplace to demonstrate that shopping “green” doesn’t have to mean spending more or compromising on style and quality.

To prove our point, we built a feature on our Web site that we call Wear This, Not That (see photo above). Here’s how it works: We look for styles that are trending within mainstream brands, and then we review the Fashioning Change catalog for items that are comparable in price and style. When we find a match, we feature a side-by-side comparison of the Fashioning Change alternative to the mainstream product. Every comparison presents the fashion aesthetics and the price and also highlights the brand’s manufacturing process. Here’s an example, Wear This, Not That: Reuse Jeans vs Guess.

We did an analysis comparing more than 100 products from 27 mainstream brands to the Fashioning Change equivalent, and the data showed that shoppers can save an average of 27 percent with our alternatives. From Black Friday through Cyber Monday, we calculated that shoppers buying through Fashioning Change saved $25,509.84 — the difference between our retail price and what these shoppers would have spent on the mainstream option.

All of this may sound simple but making it happen isn’t easy, especially when you don’t have a huge budget to spend on marketing. To help us connect with each member of our growing audience, we built a targeted e-mail system that reviews shared preferences and site behavior to help us understand what e-mail content is relevant for each person. We use that data to share relevant information with each person who signs up for Fashioning Change. Every day, we work to increase our relevancy to each person so that we can make more sales while reducing pollution and the use of sweatshops.

So far, all of the money we make goes back into building Fashioning Change. My co-founder Kevin and I have forgone salaries until we can get Fashioning Change to profitability (something we look forward to in the near future). In order to live without a salary, I gave up my two-bedroom apartment, sold all of my furniture, and moved into my parent’s guest room. I lived there for more than a year on savings while getting the company started. Now I split time between the Fashioning Change house in Santa Monica and my parent’s house in San Diego. (I also gave up health insurance, which I will discuss in my next post.)

We see fashion as just the beginning for us. We have built a Web platform that will eventually allow us to provide access to authentic, great-looking, money-saving, sustainable, and sweatshop-free alternatives to almost everything that goes on (or in) our bodies, in our homes, or into our communities: clothes, food, detergents, cars, bedding, toothpaste, etc. While we could start adding all different types of products, I believe our success will lie in attacking one vertical at a time. We will see how quickly our vision gains momentum.

Some of the older investors we meet seem skeptical that we can create this mix of business and ethics. We’re looking forward to proving them wrong.

Questions? Thoughts? Lets connect, talk shop, and build some original and meaningful start-ups in the process. You can leave a comment below, or e-mail me at adriana@fashioningchange.com. You can also find me on Twitter at @adriana_herrera.

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Super Bowl — Joe Flacco’s Precision Typical of Elite Quarterbacks

Doug Mills/The New York Times

The Ravens’ Joe Flacco, looking to pass in the first half, was 22 of 33 for 287 yards and three touchdowns — his 9th, 10th and 11th of the postseason without an interception.

NEW ORLEANS — Neither of Joe Flacco’s two brothers was on the field in the Super Bowl on Sunday night. Flacco, the Baltimore Ravens’ quarterback, was not part of any pregame controversies involving deer antler spray, and he did not turn this game into a much-publicized finale of his retirement tour. At this point, there is no such thing as Flacco-ing.

So yes, most of the Super Bowl’s story lines had little to do with Flacco. But this was nothing new for Flacco, who, despite his own professions of self-confidence, has rarely been seen as a member of the N.F.L.’s coterie of top quarterbacks.

After the Ravens’ victory over San Francisco, however, the facts can no longer be ignored: at 28, Flacco now has the same number of postseason wins (nine) and Super Bowl titles (one) as Peyton Manning, who happens to be one of the three explosive quarterbacks that Flacco outplayed during the Ravens’ magical run to their franchise’s second Super Bowl championship.

First, Flacco beat Manning on a bitterly cold day in Denver. Then he knocked off New England’s Tom Brady on the road two weeks ago in the A.F.C. championship game. Finally, after taking down two icons, Flacco beat the wunderkind Colin Kaepernick, whose read-option versatility may well be the wave of the future but was not the style of the moment here Sunday night.

Quite simply, Flacco was better: he completed 22 of 33 passes for 287 yards and 3 touchdowns and, perhaps most important, did not throw an interception. Flacco, whose contract expires after this season, was named the game’s most valuable player in what might be the best start to a player’s free agency in the history of professional sports.

“Joe was phenomenal,” Ravens Coach John Harbaugh said. “He’s got the guts of a burglar. He was doing it all night making plays.”

Last April, Flacco was almost universally mocked when he said he did not think he was among the top five quarterbacks in the league, but rather, that he was the best quarterback of all, better than Brady and Manning and Green Bay’s Aaron Rodgers. “I don’t think I’d be very successful at my job if I didn’t feel that way,” he said.

Now, the sentiment does not seem so absurd. Flacco made every kind of throw on Sunday, from in-the-pocket strikes to on-the-run heaves. There was the 30-yard pass to Anquan Boldin in the first quarter where Flacco slipped out of San Francisco linebacker Aldon Smith’s flailing grasp. There was the 56-yard touchdown pass to Jacoby Jones in the second quarter in which Flacco flung the ball 50 yards in the air.

Then there was, finally, the critical fourth-quarter third-and-1 completion to Boldin on a perfect back-shoulder throw that moved the Ravens into position for their final field goal.

“I don’t think it’s going to settle in for a while,” Flacco said afterward. “We’ll have this thing forever.”

When it was over, and the Ravens poured out on to the field, Flacco’s typically understated personality was on display. While linebacker Ray Lewis and safety Ed Reed pranced and preened, sprinting up and down the field, Flacco stayed mostly low-key. He exchanged a few hugs and high-fives and embraced the Ravens’ owner, Steve Bisciotti.

In a rare moment of candor for him, television cameras appeared to catch Flacco utter an exuberant expletive, but otherwise he was mostly at ease.

Of course, this is Flacco’s style. He generally deals in platitudes and bromides, leaving the visible signs of leadership to other players. Before the game, Lewis was the one in the middle of the Ravens’ huddle, shrieking and swaying, whipping his teammates into a frenzied lather.

After the game, too, Flacco seemed content to stay in the background. When the Ravens gathered on the stage for the presentation of the Vince Lombardi Trophy, Jim Nantz of CBS had to call Flacco up to the front for the typical interview with the game’s M.V.P. and, after giving a short answer to one question, Flacco again made way for Lewis to step up to the microphone.

“It’s just who I am,” Flacco said of his personality. “I don’t really know if your demeanor off the field impacts that but it may.”

Certainly it did not hurt Flacco, who thrived during a season in which he saw negotiations on a new contract break down and had to adapt to a new offensive coordinator after Harbaugh fired Cam Cameron and moved Jim Caldwell into the play-calling role in December. Then, on Sunday, he did not allow the Ravens to break after a power failure seemed to spark the 49ers to a late-game rally.

Unruffled, Flacco shone when it mattered most. He did not throw an interception in the postseason (his last one was on Dec. 16) and he threw 11 touchdown passes in the Ravens’ four playoff wins.

“The moment doesn’t get too big,” Flacco said. “We are comfortable. We’ve been there before. We’ve failed before. We’ve succeeded before. We are not worried about the outcome. We just go out there and play football, execute and we believe that if we do that, and do that to our ability, then eventually it is going to work out.”

Is he the best quarterback in the league? Some will surely continue to say no. But it is impossible to deny what Flacco accomplished this season. And even though history may remember Sunday as Lewis’s last ride or the Harbaugh brothers’ reunion, it may also have been the true beginning of Flacco’s legacy.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 4, 2013

An earlier version of a summary for this article misidentified the team for which Colin Kaepernick is the quarterback. It is the 49ers, not the Giants.

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The Future of BlackBerry 10 Sales Looks Hazy

Early sales figures from abroad suggest high demand for one of BlackBerry‘s two big comeback phones… in the struggling Canadian company’s strongest market. As the U.S. market remains on standby for sales and even ads, reports from both analysts and suppliers suggest sold-out new models in the United Kingdom, the first and only place the BlackBerry Z10 is available yet. “We believe Carphone Warehouse is seeing widespread sell-outs, while O2, Vodafone, Orange and EE are seeing robust demand,” Jefferies analyst Peter Misek writes. “We estimate sell-in to be at least several hundred thousand units,” he added. It’s not that these sales aren’t deserved — the gadget reviewers loved the touchscreen Z10, for the most part, and the full-keyboard Q10 model that also works with the new BlackBerry 10 OS isn’t on sale anywhere yet. But if any place would like a touchscreen BlackBerry, it would be the UK. Because the British may not have abandoned the smartphone keyboard, but they fell out of love it with a lot more slowly than Americans did  — BlackBerry held on to 12 percent of its market share there last year, compared to the 2 percent in the U.S. Unfortunately for the company formerly known as Research in Motion, the earliest signs suggest the Z10 may not change that lack of enthusiasm in the states.

RELATED: Everything You Need to Know About BlackBerry 10

The lack of stateside BlackBerry enthusiasm starts with American wireless carriers. U.S. customers can’t even buy the Z10 until sometime in March — we’ll be the last country to get it in this initial wave. The delay stems from a Federal Communications Commission approval process that will take weeks. While that might sound like a regulatory technicality, it may also reflect a lack of excitement to get the phone out there. None of the cellphone companies have started taking pre-sale orders, and all but one failed to provide an executive quote playing up the new BlackBerry, as PC Mag’s Sascha Segan pointed out. Sprint won’t even sell the Z10, opting to push out the more traditional Q10 and its signature keyboard when that phone starts to hit carriers in April. 

RELATED: Blackberry’s New OS Met With Resounding ‘Meh’

The Z10 sales delay could work in BlackBerry’s favor in one peculiar way — it should give consumers enough time to forget about the very weird, very desperate product unveiling. Still, two months is also enough time for initial hype to wear off, as other, newer phones get more and more attention — the much anticipated Samsung Galaxy SIV will supposedly come out around March as well. To keep Americans excited, BlackBerry has spent hundreds of millions on an ad campaign in the U.S., reports The Wall Street Journal. But the company’s new Super Bowl ad, which focused on all the things the new BlackBerry can’t do, has techies baffled:

RELATED: Look How Desperate the BlackBerry 10 Unveiling Event Actually Was

RELATED: RIM Says Sorry to Customers with Free Apps

“It’s just hard to see how you can introduce a new product without covering a single feature,” wrote The Verge’s T.C. Sotteck of the new spot. Lucky for BlackBerry, the ad was a one-time Super Sunday move. Its “Keep Moving” campaign, which focuses on what the phone can do, will debut today. The 60-second preview sampled over at The Verge sounds like it does a better job selling Z10′s features. “[The ad] featured a side-scrolling view of people moving through different variations on work and play: a nod to the company’s enterprise-focused heritage,” Sottech writes.

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Following Super Bowl, Beyonce announces world tour

NEW YORK (AP) — Beyonce was just warming up at the Super Bowl: The singer has announced a world tour.

"The Mrs. Carter Show World Tour" will kick off April 15 in Belgrade, Serbia. The European leg of the tour will wrap up May 29 in Stockholm, Sweden.

The tour's North American stint starts June 28 in Los Angeles and ends Aug. 3 in Brooklyn, N.Y., at the Barclays Center.

It was also announced Monday that a second wave of the tour is planned for Latin America, Australia and Asia later this year.

Beyonce was the halftime performer at Sunday night's Super Bowl, where the Baltimore Ravens defeated the San Francisco 49ers. She performed a 13-minute set that included hits "Crazy in Love," ''Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)" and a Destiny's Child reunion.

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Online:

http://www.beyonceonline.com/us/home

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The New Old Age Blog: Therapy Plateau No Longer Ends Coverage

Ellen Gorman, 72, a New York psychotherapist, can’t walk very far and gets around the city mainly by taxi, “which is really expensive,” she said. Twice since 2008 her physical therapy was discontinued because she wasn’t progressing. But after a knee replacement last year, she is getting physical therapy again, exercising with her therapist and building up her endurance by walking in the hallway of her Manhattan apartment building.

“Before this, I was getting weaker and weaker, and I just kept caving in,” she said.

Because of an action by Congress and a recent court settlement, Medicare probably won’t cut off Ms. Gorman’s physical therapy again should her progress level off — as long as her doctor says it is medically necessary.

Congress continued for another year a little-known process that allows exceptions to what Medicare pays for physical, occupational and speech therapy. The Medicare limits before the exceptions are $1,900 for physical and speech therapy this year, and $1,900 for occupational therapy.

In addition, the settlement of a class-action lawsuit last month now means that Medicare is prohibited from denying patients coverage for skilled nursing care, home health services or outpatient therapy because they had reached a “plateau,” and their conditions were not improving. That will allow people with Medicare who have chronic health problems and disabilities to get the therapy and other skilled care that they need for as long as they need it, if they meet other coverage criteria.

The settlement is expected to affect thousands, and possibly millions, of Medicare beneficiaries with chronic health problems like Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s disease, stroke, multiple sclerosis and spinal cord injuries. It could also help families, as well as the overburdened Medicare budget, delay costly nursing home care by enabling seniors to live longer in their own homes.

“Under this settlement, Medicare policy will be clarified to ensure that claims from providers are reimbursed consistently and appropriately and not denied solely based on a rule-of-thumb determination that a beneficiary’s condition is not improving,” said Fabien Levy, a spokesman for the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services, which includes the Medicare program.

The lawsuit was filed by the Center for Medicare Advocacy and Vermont Legal Aid on behalf of four Medicare patients and five national organizations, including the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, Parkinson’s Action Network and the Alzheimer’s Association. A tentative settlement had been reached in October and on Jan. 24 a federal judge in Vermont approved the deal.

For seniors getting skilled services at home under a doctor’s order, the settlement means Medicare’s home health coverage has no time limit, Margaret Murphy told lawyers attending the annual meeting of the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys in Washington, D. C., shortly after the then-tentative settlement was announced.

The coverage “can go on for years and years, if your doctor orders it,” said Ms. Murphy, the center’s associate director, who added that patients must be homebound (though not bedbound) and need intermittent care — every couple of days or weeks – that can only be provided by a physical therapist, nurse or other trained health care professional. When physical therapy is provided as part of Medicare’s home health benefit, the therapy dollar limits may not apply.

The settlement ensures that nursing home residents will also get coverage for skilled care regardless of improvement, but does not change the duration, which is still limited to up to 100 days per “benefit period.” That begins when a patient is admitted as an inpatient to a hospital or a nursing home for skilled care and ends after 60 days without skilled care. The agreement preserves the requirement that they must also have spent at least three days as inpatients in a hospital.

Federal officials say the settlement is not a change in Medicare coverage rules, but that statement may surprise many beneficiaries and providers.

“If someone isn’t making progress, I say, ‘Listen, I’m sorry but Medicare’s not going to cover this so you can come in for a few more sessions but then I have to let you go,’ ” said Greg Babiec, a physical therapist and one of the owners of Evolve, a private therapy practice with offices in Manhattan and Brooklyn. He had not heard about the settlement.

Beneficiaries also often lose Medicare coverage for outpatient therapy because they hit the payment limit. But under the exceptions process Congress continued for another year, the health care provider can put an additional code on the claim that indicates further treatment above the $1,900 limit is medically necessary. When treatment costs reach $3,700, the provider can submit medical documentation to support a request for another exception to cover 20 more sessions. (A Medicare fact sheet provides some additional details, but has not been updated for 2013.)

In 2011, nearly five million seniors received therapy services at a cost of $5.7 billion, and about one out of every four received an exception to the then-$1,870 limit, according to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, an independent government agency that advises Congress.

Just a few hours before the settlement was approved, Rachel DeGolia learned that her 87-year-old father in Chicago was going to have to stop therapy because he stopped showing improvement — again.

“Every time he stops going to physical therapy, he starts to backslide in terms of his balance, his strength and his mobility,” said Ms. DeGolia, executive director of the Universal Health Care Action Network, a national advocacy group in Cleveland. His physical therapist did not know Medicare will cover therapy to prevent her father’s condition from getting worse.

Under the settlement, Medicare officials have until next January to straighten things out by notifying health care providers. Beneficiaries are not among those to be contacted, and so far the federal officials have not issued a formal statement on the settlement.

But patients don’t have to wait for their provider to get the official word, said Judith Stein, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs and executive director of the Center for Medicare Advocacy. “This isn’t a clandestine settlement,” she said.

The center’s Web site offers free “self-help” packets explaining how to challenge a denial of coverage that is based on the lack of improvement. Ms. Stein also advises beneficiaries to show a copy of the settlement — also available from the Web site — to your health care provider at your next physical therapy appointment if you are concerned about losing Medicare coverage. (If you follow this advice, let us know what happens.)

The Web site also explains how beneficiaries can request a review of their case if they received skilled nursing or therapy services in a skilled nursing facility, at home or as outpatients and were denied Medicare coverage because of a lack of progress after Jan. 18, 2011, when the lawsuit was filed.

Dean Lerner relied on the settlement last month to ensure that his brother-in-law would continue to receive Medicare physical therapy coverage.

“My brother-in-law in St. Louis suffers from Parkinson’s disease, and has for many years, and my sister is having a devil of a time helping him as his disease progresses,” said Mr. Lerner, a retired lawyer and state health official in Des Moines, who is also a Medicaid consultant.

A physical therapist teaches his brother-in-law to stand, turn and use a walker and maintain what little strength he still has. But because his condition hasn’t improved, the therapist said Medicare would not pay for additional sessions.

“But for my being an attorney, the outcome may well have been very different, and that shouldn’t be,” he said. “Why should you have to fight?”

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Thomas Tull of Legendary Entertainment Faces a Critical Juncture

LOS ANGELES — During the baseball strike of 1995, Thomas Tull, then a 24-year-old laundromat owner, was audacious enough to turn up at a training camp for the Atlanta Braves. They looked at his swing and sent him home.

No matter. Mr. Tull swatted through the entrepreneurial minor leagues, from laundries to tax prep centers to dot-com start-ups, and into Hollywood.

His aggressiveness and aw-shucks charm made him one of the most successful walk-on players in movie history. “The Dark Knight,” “300,” “The Hangover” and “Clash of the Titans” were all made with backing from his company, Legendary Entertainment, a Warner Brothers affiliate, which picked up more than $700 million in new financing last year.

But the coming months will tell if Mr. Tull really is the latest outsider to win an insider’s game.

Legendary is a supplier of six major releases by Warner from March to August, giving it an unusually large portion of the blockbuster season. If they are successful, Mr. Tull, 42, may come to be viewed as a budding Steve Ross, who used the resources of Kinney National Services, which operated parking lots, to build Time Warner: Legendary’s goal is to continue to grow. But failure could tip Legendary in the direction of the original DreamWorks SKG. That company, backed by Paul Allen, the Microsoft co-founder, started big and fizzled.

Already, some thorny problems have surfaced. Last month, Mr. Tull became embroiled in two lawsuits over an expensive “Godzilla” remake that is supposed to begin production shortly. Legendary’s forays into China as well as television and comic book publishing have failed or had a shaky start.

The Warner-Legendary relationship oscillates between cool and frosty, with Mr. Tull at times telling cohorts that he is taken for granted and various studio executives vexed by his success and efforts to be seen as a creative force and not just a writer of checks.

Mr. Tull, who declined to comment, is betting hundreds of millions of dollars on his next films. Sequels to “The Hangover” and “300” are almost guaranteed hits. But others are substantial risks. “Jack the Giant Killer,” an embellishment of “Jack and the Beanstalk,” comes on the heels of several fairy tale adaptations that disappointed at the box office.

“Man of Steel” is an expensive attempt to revive a well-worn Superman franchise. The less costly “42” is something Legendary once said it would never make — a drama, in this case the life story of Jackie Robinson.

The biggest gamble is “Pacific Rim.” Directed by Guillermo del Toro, it is a $150 million movie, set to open July 12, about human-piloted robots and alien monsters. Legendary is breaking its pattern of equal partnership with Warner by shouldering 75 percent of the cost, and is hoping the film will jump-start a merchandise business. Mr. Tull is also counting on “Pacific Rim” to convince skeptical industry peers that he has the creative acumen to generate a critical smash without Warner to lean on.

(Mr. del Toro is already a convert. “With Thomas,” he said in a phone interview, “the reactions are the same reactions you would get from another filmmaker.”)

Soon, Legendary must make a crucial decision about its future. Mr. Tull’s deal with Warner expires at the end of this year. So far, no serious talks about a renewal have started, according to both companies, partly because Mr. Tull was waiting for Warner to pick a chief executive to succeed Barry M. Meyer, who is retiring. Kevin Tsujihara was named to the post last Monday.

Warner declined to comment on its relationship with Mr. Tull. The studio would like him to stay, but it would not suffer terribly if he left, according to two high-level executives inside the company who requested anonymity to speak candidly. Warner, for instance, can rely on another financing partner, the newly revitalized Village Roadshow, these people said.

Legendary is equally cool; a person with knowledge of Mr. Tull’s options, who asked for anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said that Legendary had interest from other studios, mentioning a bond between Mr. Tull and several senior executives at Universal and Comcast.

This high-powered jockeying occurs a long way from the outskirts of Binghamton, N.Y., where Mr. Tull was raised poor by a single mother, a dental hygienist. Even he seems stunned by his rise in Hollywood, complete with a mansion in suburban Calabasas, Calif. — the nouveau riche nesting place of the Kardashians — and a small ownership stake in the Pittsburgh Steelers. (He made a failed bid for the San Diego Padres last summer.)

“If somebody came in and pitched me as a script, I would say it’s too far-fetched,” Mr. Tull said in a 2010 television interview.

He arrived here about a decade ago as a midlevel venture capitalist, working on technology start-ups with the Convex Group, based in Atlanta. He helped hatch an ill-fated plan to create disposable DVDs that would self-destruct in 48 hours, making for return-free rentals.

In 2004, Mr. Tull and William Fay, a friend and producer, decided to buy a film library from which they could produce effects-driven remakes and sequels. They settled on Orion Pictures, owned by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. A third partner, Scott Mednick, soon joined.

But Sony and others took MGM’s assets off the market, leaving Mr. Tull stuck on Hollywood’s doorstep.

“Let’s just forget about the library,” Mr. Fay recalls Mr. Tull saying. “Let’s just build a film company around the precepts we’ve developed.”

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Chris Kyle, Author of ‘American Sniper’ Reported Killed in Texas

GLEN ROSE, Texas — The authorities in Texas said a man had been charged in the shooting deaths of a former Navy SEAL and author of "American Sniper," Chris Kyle, and a second man at a Texas gun range.

Brandon Thibodeaux for The New York Times

Chris Kyle at his home in Dallas in March 2012.

Sgt. Lonny Haschel with Texas Department of Public Safety said Sunday in a statement that Eddie Ray Routh, 25, of Lancaster was arraigned late Saturday on two counts of capital murder.

Mr. Kyle wrote the best-selling book, “American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History,” detailing his 150-plus kills of insurgents from 1999 to 2009.

Mr. Haschel said Erath County deputies responded to a shooting at the Rough Creek Lodge west of Glenn Rose at about 5:30 p.m. Saturday and found the bodies of Mr. Kyle, 38, and a second man, 35-year-old Chad Littlefield. Glenn Rose is about 50 miles southwest of Fort Worth.

The police said Mr. Routh opened fire on the two men at about 3:30 p.m. Saturday, then fled in a Ford pickup truck. At about 8 p.m., Mr. Routh arrived at his home in Lancaster, about 17 miles southeast of Dallas. Police arrested him after a brief pursuit and took him to the Lancaster Police Department.

The Lancaster Police Department referred all calls to the Texas Department of Public Safety in Garland, and a phone message about where Mr. Routh is being held was not immediately returned Sunday.

The motive for the shooting was unclear.

A statement from Travis Cox, director of FITCO Cares, a nonprofit Mr. Kyle helped start, said he had served four tours of duty. He is survived by his wife, Taya, and their children, the agency’s statement said.

Mr. Kyle was sued by the former governor of Minnesota, Jesse Ventura, over a portion of the book that claims Mr. Kyle punched Mr. Ventura in a 2006 bar fight over unpatriotic remarks. Mr. Ventura says the punch never happened and that the claim by Kyle defamed him.

Mr. Kyle had asked that Ventura’s claims of invasion of privacy and "unjust enrichment" be dismissed, saying there was no legal basis for them. But a federal judge said the lawsuit should proceed. Both sides were told to be ready for trial by Aug. 1.

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Can a Robot Clean Your Windows Better Than You Can?

Home robots like the Roomba and the Neato have legions of fans, myself included. They truly make vacuuming a snap. So could a window-washing robot that costs $ 300 do the same – and is it worth the money? The Winbot is coming to market this spring; to find out if it’s worth your hard-earned dollars, I test it out.

How It Works
The Winbot uses suction (in fact, it sounds like a powerful vacuum) to hold itself onto your windows. You plug it in and give it a base charge, but in addition, you run it plugged in to a socket. The internal battery is only there in case the power goes out – so it won’t lose suction while an alarm alerts you to the power outage.

There is a cleaning pad on the front, a squeegee in the center, and a drying pad on the back. You spray cleaning fluid on the front pad; they provide their own brand and strongly advise it over traditional cleaning fluids, which may have ammonia and which they say could damage the Winbot. Once the pads are dirty, you remove them (they affix with Velcro) and toss them in the washing machine.

The Winbot glides along the window, and when it bumps the frame, it turns itself around and edges up the window to eventually go back in the other direction, systematically cleaning in a series of horizontal lines. The higher end model also works on frameless surfaces like mirrors.

[Related: Stupid or Genius: Ten Craziest New Gadgets]

But How Well Does It Clean?
The Winbot did a good job cleaning the inside of my living room windows. It easily handled my kids fingerprints, spots, and general dirt. Outside it did an equally good job, but I did notice later that on a 5’ X 6’ window, it left two horizontal streaks the width of the window. The company says we probably had too much cleaning solution on the pad. They also suggested using the remote control to go back over any streaks and manually clear them. Overall, my hard-to-reach windows were cleaner than they’ve been in years.

For really serious dirty build-up on exterior windows, the company suggests giving a preliminary spray down or wash with a rag, letting it dry and then using the Winbot; the small pads can only handle so much dirt.

Is It Worth the Money?
$ 300 gets you the base model (which we tested), and $ 400 gets one that also works on frameless windows and mirrors, and has an extra extension cord for high windows.

For ordinary interior window washing, I’m not sold. It isn’t like a robotic vacuum cleaner where you set it and forget it. You have to spray the pads, place the device on each window, and then detach it to move it to the next window. You have to wash the pads and sometimes follow behind it to get rid of a streak here or there. But for really big and hard-to-reach windows, the Winbot made a lot of sense. It did a better job than I would have done on a ladder. And if I regularly had to pay someone to reach those high windows, the Winbot would pay for itself very quickly.

[Related: Worst Ways to Clean Your TV]

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Timberlake gives Super Bowl-eve comeback concert

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — One of the most anticipated musical moments of the year so far happened in New Orleans and was connected to the Super Bowl — but it had nothing to do with Beyonce.

Instead, it was another superstar, Justin Timberlake, who had the town buzzing as he gave his first performance in nearly five years — a sizzling, hour-long concert that featured the nattily dressed entertainer with a more than 10-piece band and guest appearances by Timbaland and Jay-Z, who's prominently featured on Timberlake's comeback single, "Suit and Tie."

Timberlake hadn't released new music in years, preferring to concentrate on a blossoming acting career that included star turns in movies such as "Friends With Benefits" and the Oscar-nominated "The Social Network."

But when Timberlake took to the stage on Saturday night for DirecTV's Super Bowl-eve bash, it seemed as if he had never left. Timberlake, dressed in a black tux, betrayed no nerves or rust as he appeared with the backing band dubbed "JT & the Tennessee Kids" and dove into the night's first song, "Like I Love You," his signature falsetto in top form.

There was a bit of irony the setting of Timberlake's comeback concert because he is identified with the most infamous Super Bowl performance of them all, 2004's wardrobe malfunction featuring Janet Jackson. He spoke a little about Sunday's big game as he baited Baltimore Ravens fans against San Francisco 49ers followers.

Other than that, had little else to say, letting his music do all the talking. For the most part, his musical statement consisted a rundown of his greatest hits, including "Senorita," ''Cry Me A River," ''Summer Love" and "My Love" (the latter of which included a verse of Jay-Z and Kanye's "... In Paris").

But he did offer at least two new songs that seemed as if they could have been inspired by his recent marriage to Jessica Biel. Both were slow jams: One was called "Push Your Love Girl," while another had the refrain: "I'm in love with that girl ... don't be mad at me."

Timberlake also drew from others' music, performing a cover of INXS' "What You Need" and delivering a spot-on rendition of the Jacksons' "Shake Your Body Down To the Ground," complete with the Jacksons' trademark choreography.

The standing-room crowd — which included Paul McCartney, Sofia Vergara, John Legend and New England Patriots owner Bob Kraft — was dancing most of the night, and by the time Jay-Z came on to deliver his verse for "Suit and Tie," the party was in full throttle.

Timberlake ended the evening with "SexyBack," bringing his sexy —and more importantly his music — back for the public to enjoy.

Timberlake's comeback will reach an even larger audience next Sunday with his performance on the Grammys. His third album, "The 20/20 Experience," is out next month.

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Online:

http//www.justintimberlake.com

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Concerns About A.D.H.D. Practices and Amphetamine Addiction

Before his addiction, Richard Fee was a popular college class president and aspiring medical student. "You keep giving Adderall to my son, you're going to kill him," said Rick Fee, Richard's father, to one of his son's doctors.

VIRGINIA BEACH — Every morning on her way to work, Kathy Fee holds her breath as she drives past the squat brick building that houses Dominion Psychiatric Associates.

Matt Eich for The New York Times

MENTAL HEALTH CLINIC Dominion Psychiatric Associates in Virginia Beach, where Richard Fee was treated by Dr. Waldo M. Ellison. After observing Richard and hearing his complaints about concentration, Dr. Ellison diagnosed attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and prescribed the stimulant Adderall.

It was there that her son, Richard, visited a doctor and received prescriptions for Adderall, an amphetamine-based medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. It was in the parking lot that she insisted to Richard that he did not have A.D.H.D., not as a child and not now as a 24-year-old college graduate, and that he was getting dangerously addicted to the medication. It was inside the building that her husband, Rick, implored Richard’s doctor to stop prescribing him Adderall, warning, “You’re going to kill him.”

It was where, after becoming violently delusional and spending a week in a psychiatric hospital in 2011, Richard met with his doctor and received prescriptions for 90 more days of Adderall. He hanged himself in his bedroom closet two weeks after they expired.

The story of Richard Fee, an athletic, personable college class president and aspiring medical student, highlights widespread failings in the system through which five million Americans take medication for A.D.H.D., doctors and other experts said.

Medications like Adderall can markedly improve the lives of children and others with the disorder. But the tunnel-like focus the medicines provide has led growing numbers of teenagers and young adults to fake symptoms to obtain steady prescriptions for highly addictive medications that carry serious psychological dangers. These efforts are facilitated by a segment of doctors who skip established diagnostic procedures, renew prescriptions reflexively and spend too little time with patients to accurately monitor side effects.

Richard Fee’s experience included it all. Conversations with friends and family members and a review of detailed medical records depict an intelligent and articulate young man lying to doctor after doctor, physicians issuing hasty diagnoses, and psychiatrists continuing to prescribe medication — even increasing dosages — despite evidence of his growing addiction and psychiatric breakdown.

Very few people who misuse stimulants devolve into psychotic or suicidal addicts. But even one of Richard’s own physicians, Dr. Charles Parker, characterized his case as a virtual textbook for ways that A.D.H.D. practices can fail patients, particularly young adults. “We have a significant travesty being done in this country with how the diagnosis is being made and the meds are being administered,” said Dr. Parker, a psychiatrist in Virginia Beach. “I think it’s an abnegation of trust. The public needs to say this is totally unacceptable and walk out.”

Young adults are by far the fastest-growing segment of people taking A.D.H.D medications. Nearly 14 million monthly prescriptions for the condition were written for Americans ages 20 to 39 in 2011, two and a half times the 5.6 million just four years before, according to the data company I.M.S. Health. While this rise is generally attributed to the maturing of adolescents who have A.D.H.D. into young adults — combined with a greater recognition of adult A.D.H.D. in general — many experts caution that savvy college graduates, freed of parental oversight, can legally and easily obtain stimulant prescriptions from obliging doctors.

“Any step along the way, someone could have helped him — they were just handing out drugs,” said Richard’s father. Emphasizing that he had no intention of bringing legal action against any of the doctors involved, Mr. Fee said: “People have to know that kids are out there getting these drugs and getting addicted to them. And doctors are helping them do it.”

“...when he was in elementary school he fidgeted, daydreamed and got A’s. he has been an A-B student until mid college when he became scattered and he wandered while reading He never had to study. Presently without medication, his mind thinks most of the time, he procrastinated, he multitasks not finishing in a timely manner.”

Dr. Waldo M. Ellison

Richard Fee initial evaluation

Feb. 5, 2010

Richard began acting strangely soon after moving back home in late 2009, his parents said. He stayed up for days at a time, went from gregarious to grumpy and back, and scrawled compulsively in notebooks. His father, while trying to add Richard to his health insurance policy, learned that he was taking Vyvanse for A.D.H.D.

Richard explained to him that he had been having trouble concentrating while studying for medical school entrance exams the previous year and that he had seen a doctor and received a diagnosis. His father reacted with surprise. Richard had never shown any A.D.H.D. symptoms his entire life, from nursery school through high school, when he was awarded a full academic scholarship to Greensboro College in North Carolina. Mr. Fee also expressed concerns about the safety of his son’s taking daily amphetamines for a condition he might not have.

“The doctor wouldn’t give me anything that’s bad for me,” Mr. Fee recalled his son saying that day. “I’m not buying it on the street corner.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 3, 2013

An earlier version of a quote appearing with the home page presentation of this article misspelled the name of a medication. It is Adderall, not Aderall.

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