The Haggler: When Customer Service Is a Dead-End Street

SEVERAL readers have surprised the Haggler by rising to the defense of McDonald’s and its in-store ad for the McRib sandwich — “It’s real pork!” — as described in our last episode. The ad suggests that McDonald’s thinks that its customers have pathetically low expectations about the chain’s raw materials. Just as bad, it breaks the Haggler’s unwritten rule that companies should never boast about the realness of any product that consumers have every right to assume is real.

Au contraire, argued a fearless few. One reader said he thought McDonald’s might simply be trying to alert people who don’t eat pork — Muslims and kosher-observant Jews, for instance.

But would someone with a dietetic restriction against pork ever even consider ordering something called a McRib? Even if the answer is yes, there is another problem here. If the point of the ad is to give a heads-up to the pork-averse, it would need only say “It’s pork!” The world “real” in this context is unnecessary.

Of course, if McDonald’s posted ads for the McRib that merely stated “It’s pork!” the subtext of the ad would be, “We believe our customers are really stupid.”

Someone else argued that the ad helps because pigs aren’t the only animals with ribs that are barbecued. Beef ribs are popular, too. Fair enough. Yet, again, if the goal is to eliminate any doubts about the origins of the meat, “It’s pork!” would suffice. No need for “real.”

But another reader made a point that the Haggler believes must be shared.

“I thought you were going to note that there are no ribs in the McRib,” wrote Jack Schwartz of Baltimore. “It’s parts of the pig that have been formed to look like ribs.”

Actually, according to a McDonald’s spokeswoman quoted in a Business Insider article in December, the McRib is made of “simple ground pork.” Which sounds like a combination of pig parts that could very well include ribs. But the rib look of the McRib — that is indeed an illusion.

So perhaps a more illuminating slogan might be “McRib: Only the look is fake!” That might not sell as many sandwiches, but it is certainly more informative.

O.K., letter time.

Q. On May 9, 2012, a certificate of title was awarded to Bank of America as part of a foreclosure on property I own — a vacant lot that I had hoped to build on. But Bank of America has continued to report delinquent payments to credit-score agencies, like Equifax. This means that I could have bad credit reports for all eternity, with no hope of ever improving my credit score.

Rectifying this problem has proved impossible. The call-in procedure at Bank of America seems designed to frustrate. No one seems to know the correct number to call. When I finally reached service reps, they were not allowed to call me back and could only repeat a robotic litany: “We have no record of a foreclosure sale. Would you like to make a payment?”

 I finally reached a supervisor, but she would not provide me with a direct number.  I had to go  through another generic number.  Two people who answered said they did not know who my contact person was.  “We have no knowledge of a foreclosure sale,” onesaid. Round and round we go.

Can you help? CONRAD REVAK

Naples, Fla.

A. First, the Haggler would like to point out that this is the first mortgage-related question ever posted in this space. That seems crazy, given that millions of Americans have been complaining for years that their bank won’t return calls or has mishandled paperwork, entered incorrect data and so on. Mortgages surely have caused more consumer heartburn than anything else since the housing crisis began.

But for some reason, only a handful of people have ever thought the Haggler could help. And the other cases were either too convoluted or were resolved before interventions could be made.

So you think the Haggler can’t handle a mortgage? Phooey. If you’ve got a good, clear case and can summarize it in less than 300 words, do share.

In this instance, the Haggler wrote to Bank of America, which resolved the entire problem in about a day and a half. The details here are that Mr. Revak — or more specifically, his lawyer — asked a court to grant what is called a deed-in-lieu, a financial instrument that lets a borrower give the title of a property to a bank, bypassing the standard and more arduous foreclosure proceeding.

A spokeswoman at Bank of America, Jumana Bauwens, said the wheels were grinding slowly in Mr. Revak’s case because his deed-in-lieu approach was unusual, and the “bank’s legal team felt they needed to do some more research to ensure that we wouldn’t have title issues when we sold the property in the future.”

O.K., but what’s up with the Bank of America’s phone system, which runs customers from one dead end to another? Might the company want to rethink that issue?

The Haggler tried to get the spokeswoman to say anything about this subject, but with no success. Which is maddening. How about just telling the Haggler that it’s working on the phone problem, or wants to, or is really bummed that it hasn’t already? Anything would be better than ignoring the issue.

As for Mr. Revak, he wrote to say that Bank of America got in touch by phone with a whole new and far more helpful attitude. Apologies were offered, and a promise was made that the bank would contact the credit scoring agencies and correct the record.

If Bank of America follows through with that promise, Mr. Revak wrote, “I will consider the case closed. The big unanswered question, though, is how many Americans are taking a hit on their credit score for no reason?”

E-mail: haggler@nytimes.com. Keep it brief and family-friendly, include your hometown and go easy on the caps-lock key. Letters may be edited for clarity and length.

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From Front Lines, Women Offer Evidence on Ability in Combat

Stacy Pearsall

Staff Sgt. Stacy Pearsall, who was a photographer in Iraq, in a self-portrait over Baghdad during her first deployment in 2003.

During her second deployment to Iraq, Staff Sgt. Stacy Pearsall of the Air Force found herself attached to an Army ground unit that was clearing roadside bombs. They had just found their 26th device of the day when one of their armored personnel carriers exploded. An ambush was on.

The chaos that unfolded over the next few hours was not a typical day for Sergeant Pearsall. But under the Pentagon’s decision to allow women into front-line combat units, officially announced Thursday, it could become much closer to the norm for women in American uniforms.

As Sergeant Pearsall tells the story, her vehicle came under intense fire that day in 2007, near the city of Baquba. The male soldiers in her carrier had already dashed out to join the fight, so she jumped onto the machine gun and began returning fire.

Outside a soldier lay unconscious. Sergeant Pearsall opened the rear door and crawled to the man, who was 6-foot-2 and more than 200 pounds, twice her weight. From behind him, she clasped him in a bear hug and dragged him toward the vehicle. She fell once, then again. Somehow, she hauled him into the armored safety of the carrier.

After tearing off his protective vest, she realized his carotid artery had been torn by shrapnel. As blood spurted all over, she closed her eyes, stuck her fingers into his neck and squeezed. He screamed, and she thanked the heavens. He was still kicking.

What happened next seemed almost cinematic. Emerging from a purplish haze outside, a medic jumped into the carrier and set his kit beside her. “Are you a medic?” he asked.

Heck no, Sergeant Pearsall replied. “I’m the photographer.”

The question that now looms over the Pentagon as it moves toward full gender integration is whether female service members like Sergeant Pearsall, for all their bravery under fire, can perform the same dangerous and physically demanding tasks day in and day out, for weeks at a time, as permanent members of ground combat units like the infantry or armored cavalry.

Since 1994, women have technically been barred from serving in those front-line units. But throughout the post-9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, women — working as medics, intelligence officers, photographers, military police officers and in a host of other jobs — have been routinely “attached” to all-male ground combat units, where they have come under fire, returned fire, been wounded and been killed.

To supporters of Secretary of Defense Leon E. Panetta’s decision to rescind the prohibition on women in combat, the experiences of those women proved that the distinction between being “attached” to a combat unit and actually serving in one was outdated, and pointless.

“When the military goes to full integration, it allows commanders to put the best person in the job, not just the best man,” said Greg Jacob, a former Marine Corps officer who is now policy director for the Service Women’s Action Network, an advocacy group for women in the military. “If the best shot in the platoon is a woman, I can make her a sniper. But until now, I couldn’t do that.”

But to skeptics of the policy change, it is one thing for women to perform well when they come under fire while temporarily attached to all-male combat units. It is a far different thing, they argue, to carry out the daily mission of hunting down and engaging enemy forces as an infantry soldier or tank commander.

Representative Duncan Hunter, Republican of California and a Marine Corps veteran with combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, defines it as a difference between “incidental combat,” as women have faced in convoys or attacks on bases, and “the direct combat duties of our advanced and most elite ground operators.”

Representative Hunter said in a statement, “The question here is whether this change will actually make our military better at operating in combat, specifically finding and targeting the enemy.”

Ask Sergeant Pearsall, who was decorated for her actions in Baquba and received a medical retirement from the Air Force in 2008, and the answer is simple: Yes, women can do it, and I already have.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 25, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the standards that female service members have to meet to pass their physical fitness tests. They must meet the same sit-up standard as men, they are not allowed to pass with fewer sit-ups. Women are also allowed to run a slower 2-mile run, not a 1.5-mile run.

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DealBook: Compuware Rejects Elliott's $2.3 Billion Bid

11:46 a.m. | Updated

Compuware said on Friday that its board had rejected a $2.3 billion takeover bid by Elliott Management, arguing that the hedge fund’s offer was too low.

Instead, the business software maker said that it was focused on its own corporate turnaround blueprint, including a three-year plan to cut costs and an effort to spin off its Covisint business communication products arm. It also unveiled plans to pay a 50-cent quarterly dividend, beginning next quarter.

Compuware said that Elliott’s offer of $11 a share, made last month, would not deliver enough value to shareholders, compared to the improvements that its self-help plan would yield.

“We believe that selling the company at $11.00 per share does not take into account our progress returning the business to profitable growth and our future prospects,” Bob Paul, the company’s chief executive, said in a statement.

The decision by Compuware sets up a potential clash with Elliott, which has managed to score some big wins in its battles with technology companies. It bid for Novell, leading the software maker to sell itself to Attachmate for $2.2 billion.

People close to Elliott have argued that the hedge fund was fully prepared to pay the $2.3 billion it had offered for Compuware. But the hedge fund also believed that private equity firms would also express interest.

Though shares in Compuware began rising after Elliott disclosed an 8 percent stake in the company in November, they have remained largely below the $11-a-share offer, implying investor skepticism about a deal being done. The stock closed on Thursday at $10.76.

Jesse Cohn, the Elliott portfolio manager overseeing the hedge fund’s bid, said in a statement: ““This is a good outcome. Compuware has granted our request for access to diligence to confirm an offer for the company. We will immediately reach out to negotiate an appropriate N.D.A. and look forward to moving quickly to engage in diligence with the help of our legal and financial advisors. We remain very interested in the company.”

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F.D.A. Panel to Vote on Restricting Hydrocodone Products Like Vicodin

Trying to stem the scourge of prescription drug abuse in the United States, an advisory panel of experts to the Food and Drug Administration plans to vote Friday on whether to toughen restrictions on hydrocodone products like Vicodin, the most widely used narcotic painkillers in the country.

The recommendation, which the F.D.A. would likely follow, would limit access to the drugs by making them harder to prescribe, a major policy change that advocates said could help ease the growing problem of addiction to painkillers.

The change would have sweeping consequences for doctors, pharmacists and patients. Under the new rules, refills without a new prescription would be forbidden, as would faxed prescriptions and those called in by phone. Only written prescriptions from a doctor would be allowed and pharmacists and distributors would be required to store the drugs in special vaults. The vote comes after similar legislation in Congress failed last year, after intense lobbying by pharmacists and drugstores.

Prescription drugs account for about three-quarters of all drug overdoses in the United States, with the number of deaths more than tripling since 1999, according to federal data. Since 2008, deaths from overdoses have outpaced deaths from car accidents.

The F.D.A. convened the panel, made up of scientists and other experts, after a request by the Drug Enforcement Administration, which contends that the drugs are among the most frequently abused painkillers in the country.

“This is the federal government saying, ‘we need to tighten the reins on this drug,'” said Scott R. Drab, associate professor of pharmacy and therapeutics at the University of Pittsburgh. “Pulling in the rope is a way to rein in abuse, and consequently, addiction.”

At a two-day hearing at F.D.A. headquarters in Silver Spring, Md., many speakers opposed the change, including advocates for nursing home patients, who said older, frail residents needing pain medication would be required to make the arduous trip to a doctor’s office to continue using hydrocodone products. Other experts questioned how effective the change would be. Oxycodone, another highly abused painkiller, has been in the more restrictive category since it came on the market, but the limited access does not seem to have stemmed abuse, they said.

But others including parents who had lost their children to prescription drug abuse, as well as doctors and pharmacists, testified, sometimes emotionally. Senator Joe Manchin III, a Democrat of West Virginia, where the scourge has been particularly deadly, made an impassioned plea for tougher restrictions.

“When I go back to West Virginia, I hear how easy it is for anybody to get their hands on hydrocodone drugs,” Mr. Manchin said on Friday. “For underage children, these drugs are easier to get than beer or cigarettes.”

He added that the current, less restrictive status “is fueling the prescription drug epidemic today.”

Dr. James P. Rathmell, chief of the division of pain medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, said hydrocodone products have similar biological effects as oxycodone products, and should unquestionably be in the same category of restrictiveness.

“Knowing what we know today, it was a mistake,” Dr. Rathmell said, referring to hydrocodone products being placed in the looser category when they came to market. “It should be corrected.”

Dr. Timothy Deer, chief doctor at the Center for Pain Relief in Charleston, W.Va., said that he feared for older patients, particularly in rural areas, who would have to drive great distances to get prescriptions renewed. But, he said, hydrocodone products have been by far the most widely prescribed painkiller because the restrictions were so loose. And on balance, particularly in a hard-hit state like his, the public health benefits of a recommendation to toughen restrictions on the drug probably outweigh the harm of additional burdens on legitimate pain patients.

“At the end of the day, the benefits of reducing abuse will outweigh the harm to legitimate pain patients,” he said. “This will likely reduce the amount of drug falling into the wrong hands.”

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DealBook: Rumble on Basic Cable, as Ackman Takes On Icahn Live

For about 15 minutes on Friday afternoon, all of Wall Street was tuned into the battle that everyone wanted to see: William A. Ackman taking on Carl C. Icahn, live on air.

And the battle proved even stranger than anyone would have expected: Profanities were dropped; old battles were refought; taunts were slung.

Years of bad blood between the two hedge fund magnates spilled publicly onto CNBC’s airwaves, with Mr. Icahn deriding his younger counterpart as a “crybaby,” and Mr. Ackman declaring the veteran investor a “bully.” It was a smackdown that regularly prompted whoops from traders on the New York Stock Exchange floor, especially on the occasions that Mr. Icahn flung an occasional reference to bovine excrement.

Nominally, the two were set to talk about Herbalife, the health supplements company in which Mr. Ackman has publicly bet against. Speculation has ripped across Wall Street that Mr. Icahn has taken a contrary bullish bet on the company.

Of course, that’s not all that they argued about.

Instead, the two men squabbled over a nearly decade-old court case involving a real estate company, where Mr. Ackman sold his investment to Mr. Icahn. (You can read all about the lengthy battle here.) Mr. Ackman to this day alleges that Mr. Icahn reneged on a deal to share profits from a stock sale; the elder investor sees things differently.

How did that shape the battle between the two rich men? It became perhaps the financial world’s most-watched schoolyard match, in which Mr. Icahn shouted repeatedly and Mr. Ackman passionately argued his position at length.

Mr. Icahn dubbed Mr. Ackman “the crybaby in the schoolyard” and called his opponent “the quintessential example of on Wall Street, if you want a friend get a dog.” Clearly the more inflamed combatant, Mr. Icahn declared to his foe, “I wouldn’t want to invest with you if you were the last man on Earth.” He even picked a fight with CNBC host Scott Wapner, declaring him the bully. “I don’t give a damn what you want to know, I came on to talk about what I want to talk about,” the investor thundered, refusing to declare his position on Herbalife. [That said, Mr. Icahn mused that Herbalife could be "the mother of all short squeezes."]

For his part, Mr. Ackman repeatedly argued that Mr. Icahn was a bully who had taken advantage of a young investor stumbling in the early part of his career. The younger hedge fund manager repeatedly defended his bet against Herbalife, positing himself as the target of a major campaign by the health products marketer.

“He’s not an honest guy, he doesn’t live up to his word, and he takes advantage of little people,” Mr. Ackman flatly declared of Mr. Icahn.

Later in the exchange, Mr. Icahn sneered to his opponent, “I appreciate you called me a great investor.” Then he added, “I can’t say the same about you.”

And based on the reaction on Twitter, viewers could not get enough:

@CNBC you can’t end this. Noooooo. Who was that masked interviewer who Icahn shredded?

— @mdecambre (@mdecambre) 25 Jan 13

Gotta believe trading volume is very low right now. #ackmanvsicahn

— Lou Whiteman (@lwhiteman_TD) 25 Jan 13

This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen! I love it!

— Paul Vigna (@paulvigna) 25 Jan 13

This better become a daily lunchtime feature, #CNBC. #JerkyHedgies

— John Shipman (@jhcshipman) 25 Jan 13

We are breathless over here. ^DW MT @CNBCSocial: If tweeting about Icahn vs. Ackman while #WatchingCNBC, use hashtag #BillionaireShowdown.

— E*TRADE (@etrade) 25 Jan 13

Couldn’t agree more with Cramer. This was journalism at its highest level. Not a joke.

— Joseph Weisenthal (@TheStalwart) 25 Jan 13

Just when that Cramer “they’re nuts” clip was getting a little long in the tooth, we get this decade’s new most popular CNBC segment.

— Nick Montoya (@montoyan) 25 Jan 13

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India Ink: India Rape Trial Starts With Renewed Ban on Media Coverage

The trial of five men accused in the gang rape of a 23-year-old woman in a moving bus in New Delhi is being watched closely as a symbol of India’s commitment to justice for women, but information about the ongoing court proceedings may be scarce.

As court proceedings began Thursday, the presiding judge said  there would be a blanket ban on reporting on the trial. The judge, Yogesh Khanna,  also warned defense lawyers, who have been openly speaking about the case, not to provide information about the proceedings to the press.

The five men accused in the Dec. 16 rape and murder of a physiotherapy student were ushered into the special fast-track court in South Delhi on Thursday at noon, flanked by policemen, with their faces were covered with gray woolen caps. During the two-hour court proceedings, the prosecution used the opening arguments to lay out charges against the men, which include gang rape, murder, robbery and destruction of evidence.

The police allege that the five accused men and a sixth teenager, who is being tried as a juvenile, committed a premeditated, vicious crime that included plans to kill their victim. The woman died nearly two weeks after the rape from injuries suffered during the attack, which included an assault with an iron rod. Her companion, a 29-year-old man, was also beaten, and is expected to testify  at the trial.

The court proceedings took place in room 305 of the Saket District Court complex, a small wood-paneled chamber. The next hearing will be on Monday, when the defendants’ lawyers will respond to the charges the prosecution has laid out.

Separately on Thursday, India’s Juvenile Justice Board rejected a plea that the juvenile, who according to school records is 17 years old, be tried as an adult. The petition, filed by Subramanian Swamy, president of the Janata Party, claimed that the extreme malice of the alleged actions of the juvenile showed that he was not of the “tender age and mind” of a juvenile.

Indian law requires that rape cases be held “in-camera,” allowing only those directly connected with the case to be present in the courtroom, to protect the victim’s identity, and bans publishing of information about the proceedings. The victim has not been named by the media, but her family has spoken openly to the press about her life and their willingness to let her name be used if it were for something that benefitted the public, like new legislation to protect women.

Some are agitating for the proceedings of this trial to be made public, because of the high profile nature of the case. “In this case, what is on trial is the criminal justice system — investigating agencies, the administration and the judiciary,” said Meenakshi Lekhi, a Delhi-based lawyer who has filed a petition in the Delhi High Court challenging the media ban.  The case has “brought women’s rights to the center stage of public discourse,” she said. “This would not have been possible without the media,” she said.

The High Court will hear the petition on February 13.

The new fast-track court will try only cases related to crimes against women, and once trials have started, they will not adjourn for weeks or months, as is common in other courts. Several fast-track courts have already  been set up in Delhi to hear crimes against women in the wake of the Delhi gang rape, which brought thousands of protesters to the streets demanding justice for the victim and other victims of sexual assault.

Judge Khanna ordered  Monday that all court proceedings in ths current case would take place “in camera,” allowing only those directly connected with the case to be present in the courtroom, reiterating an earlier magistrate’s order on the case. He also renewed a blanket ban Monday on the printing or publishing of any information relating to the case’s proceedings.

Defense lawyers were instructed by the court during the proceedings to “honor the spirit” of the gag order, they said, after the special public prosecutor Dayan Krishnan said he would file a petition of contempt of court if lawyers for the defendants continued to brief the media on developments.

V. K. Anand, the lawyer for Ram Singh, one of the accused, confirmed Thursday that he would now also represent Mr. Singh’s brother Mukesh. Mr. Anand and Vivek Sharma, a second lawyer for accused, told the media after Thursday’s court proceedings that they could not answer any further questions.

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Media Decoder Blog: A Resurgent Netflix Beats Projections, Even Its Own

1:51 p.m. | Updated For all those who have doubted its business acumen, Netflix had a resounding answer on Wednesday: 27.15 million.

That’s the number of American homes that were subscribers to the streaming service by the end of 2012, beating the company’s own projections for the fourth quarter after a couple of quarters of underwhelming results.

Netflix’s growth spurt in streaming — up by 2.05 million customers in the United States, from 25.1 million in the third quarter — was its biggest in nearly three years, and helped the company report net income of $7.9 million, surprising many analysts who had predicted a loss.

The results reflected just how far Netflix has come since the turbulence of mid-2011, when its botched execution of a new pricing plan for its services — streaming and DVDs by mail — resulted in an online flogging by angry customers. Investors battered its stock price, sending it from a high of around $300 in 2011 to as low as $53 last year.

“It’s risen from the ashes,” said Barton Crockett, a senior analyst at Lazard Capital Markets. “A lot of investors have been very skeptical that Netflix will work. With this earnings report, they’re making a strong argument that the business is real, that it will work.”

Investors, cheered by the results, sent Netflix shares soaring. By Thursday afternoon the shares were up more than 37 percent to $141.49.

Netflix’s fourth-quarter success was a convenient reminder to the entertainment and technology industries that consumers increasingly want on-demand access to television shows and movies. Streaming services by Amazon, Hulu and Redbox are all competing on the same playing field, but for now Netflix remains the biggest such service, and thus a pioneer for all the others.

“Our growth and our competitors’ growth shows just how large the opportunity is for Internet TV, where people get to control their viewing experience,” Netflix’s chief executive, Reed Hastings, said in a telephone interview Wednesday evening.

Questions persist, though, about whether Netflix will be able to attract enough subscribers to keep paying its ever-rising bills to content providers, which total billions of dollars in the years to come. The company said on Wednesday that it might take on more debt to finance more original programs, the first of which, the political thriller “House of Cards,” will have its premiere on the service on Feb. 1. Netflix committed about $100 million to make two seasons of “House of Cards,” one of five original programs scheduled to come out on the service this year.

“The virtuous cycle for us is to gain more subscribers, get more content, gain more subscribers, get more content,” Mr. Hastings said in an earnings conference call.

The company’s $7.9 million profit for the quarter represented 13 cents a share, surprising analysts who had expected a loss of 12 cents a share. The company said revenue of $945 million, up from $875 million in the quarter in 2011, was driven in part by holiday sales of new tablets and television sets.

Netflix added nearly two million new subscribers in other countries, though it continued to lose money overseas, as expected, and said it would slow its international expansion plans in the first part of this year.

The “flix” in Netflix, its largely forgotten DVD-by-mail business, fared a bit better than the company had projected, posting a loss of just 380,000 subscribers in the quarter, to 8.22 million. The losses have slowed for four consecutive quarters, indicating that the homes that still want DVDs really want DVDs.

On the streaming side, Netflix’s retention rate improved in the fourth quarter, suggesting growing customer satisfaction.

Asked whether the company’s reputation had fully recovered after its missteps in 2011, Mr. Hastings said, “We’re on probation at this point, but we’re not out of jail.”

He has emphasized subscriber happiness, even going so far as to say on Wednesday that “we really want to make it easy to quit” Netflix. If the exit door is well marked, he asserted, subscribers will be more likely to come back.

The hope is that original programs like “House of Cards” and “Arrested Development” will lure both old and new subscribers to the service. Those programs, plus the film output deal with the Walt Disney Company announced in December, affirm that Netflix cares more and more about being a gallery — with showy pieces that cannot be seen anywhere else — and less about being a library of every film and TV show ever made.

“They’re morphing into something that people understand,” said Mr. Crockett of Lazard Capital.

Mr. Hastings said this had been happening for years, but that it was becoming more apparent now to consumers and investors.

Mr. Hastings’s letter to investors brought up the elephant in the room, the activist investor Carl C. Icahn, who acquired nearly 10 percent of the company’s stock last October. Mr. Icahn, known for his campaigns for corporate sales and revampings, stated then that Netflix “may hold significant strategic value for a variety of significantly larger companies.”

Netflix subsequently put into place a shareholder rights plan, known as a poison pill, to protect itself against a forced sale by Mr. Icahn.

The company said on Wednesday, “We have no further news about his intentions, but have had constructive conversations with him about building a more valuable company.”

Factoring in the stock’s 30 percent rise since November and the after-hours action on Wednesday, Mr. Icahn’s stake has now more than doubled in value, to more than $700 million from roughly $320 million.

A version of this article appeared in print on 01/24/2013, on page B1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: A Resurgent Netflix Beats Projections, Even Its Own.

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Question Mark: Why Am I Making So Many Pit Stops?

There are those who have suggested that this feature appears to take an unseemly delight in the decline of the human body: ears that don't hear as well, spines that compress and curve, nose sensors that fade. And did we mention those hairs that start growing out of places other than the head? So we are happy to report on one thing baby boomers may find they do as well as well as ever: urinating. In fact, not only are they still doing it, they may well be doing it more often than ever. A lot more often.

Herman Wouters

Older men may feel more affinity for this  famous fountain in Brussels than they'd like.

O.K. It turns out this may be another one of those decline-of-the-human body pieces. Because for many people, their bedtime routine may now consist of reading, a strategic dash to the bathroom right before lights out, and a plea to Neptune to hold back the waters so they will make it through the night without having to get up.

Even if they do manage to do that, they may feel chagrined if they are parents and see their children roll out of bed, eat breakfast and head off to school without making a single pit stop. Your children may not be better people. But they may have better kidneys, said Dr. Sharon A. Brangman, a professor of medicine at SUNY Upstate Medical University.

People may urinate more as they get older for a number of reasons, including medical problems like hypertension or diabetes. It may also be a symptom of infection. “That’s often the first thing we look at when people complain of frequent urination,” said Dr. Tomas Griebling, vice chairman of urology at the University of Kansas and a spokesman for the American Urological Association. Some medicines can also be the cause.

Getting older, Dr. Griebling said, does not necessarily mean more trips to the bathroom. But many people do notice that they have to go more often, and often the explanation lies with normal changes in the body.

As people age, their kidneys may become less adept at concentrating urine and may draw in more water from elsewhere in the body, said Dr. Brangman, a past president of the American Geriatrics Society. This means more urine is produced and sent on to the bladder which, as it happens, is not getting any younger, either, and may be losing some storage capacity. The urethra, through which the urine exits the body, may also be shortening and its lining thinning.

Adding to the problem is that as people age, their bodies produce less of a hormone that lets them retain fluid. In women, estrogen levels also drop, a change associated with increased urination. And in men, as the prostate gets bigger, it may become harder to urinate, or to do so completely. (Men and women may also develop some incontinence, especially common in women who have borne children.)

Increased urination knows no time of day, but people seem to notice it more at night. The National Sleep Foundation says that when it surveyed people ages 55 to 84, two-thirds reported losing sleep at least a few times a week because of the problem.

Questions about aging? E-mail boomerwhy@nytimes.com

Booming: Living Through the Middle Ages offers news and commentary about baby boomers, anchored by Michael Winerip. You can follow Booming via RSS here or visit nytimes.com/booming. You can reach us by e-mail at booming@nytimes.com.

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The N.T.S.B. Sees Lengthy Inquiry Into 787 Dreamliner

Deborah A.P. Hersman, chairwoman of the board, said a battery that caught fire in a 787 parked at a gate at Logan Airport in Boston showed signs of short-circuiting and of a “thermal runaway,” in which a chemical reaction begins to overheat the battery and speeds up as the temperature increases. But Ms. Hersman described these as “symptoms,” and pointedly declined to say whether those problems were the cause of the incident, which, combined with a similar event in Japan, has led to the grounding of all 50 of the planes in service.

     “These are all symptoms that something’s  wrong,” she said. “Understanding what came first and what triggered the next thing, that’s information we are working to identify.”

     While there were no deaths or injuries, she said, “These events should not happen.”

“There are multiple systems to prevent against a battery event like this,” she said. “Those systems did not work as intended. We need to understand why.”

Ms. Hersman highlighted the seriousness of the problems more bluntly than other officials have, and her comments made clear that Boeing will not be able to get its planes back in the air anytime soon.

The battery damage was so significant, she said, that investigators are having difficulty retrieving information from the battery control system.

Japanese aviation authorities are leading the investigation into the second battery incident, which occurred earlier this month on a 787 flown by All Nippon Airways. It made an emergency landing in Japan after its pilot reported a burning smell in the cockpit while smoke alarms rang.

Ms. Hersman’s briefing, the first by the safety board on the batteries, fleshed out some of the questions facing the forensic engineers but did not identify any cause as particularly likely, or rule any out. And some of the tests on the design of the battery take a week to conduct, she said.

With 50 airplanes grounded and Boeing’s marquee new product in limbo, engineers working for Boeing, its suppliers and government agencies in this country and in Japan are scrambling to determine what happened. But Ms. Hersman was not making any promises.

“It is really very hard to tell at this point how long the investigation will take,” she said. “What I can tell you is we have all hands on deck. We are working hard to determine what the failure mode here is and what actions have to be taken.”

“Lithium-ion” is a vague term that is used in the battery industry to describe a variety of chemistries. This particular battery was built specifically for the 787 and, according to the safety board on Thursday, used an aluminum strip coated in lithium cobalt oxide in its positive electrode. That is an older technology and is more prone to thermal runaway; it also generates oxygen as it heats, making combustion more likely.

 

Hiroko Tabuchi in Tokyo contributed reporting, and Christopher Drew and Jad Mouawad in New York.

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The Lede Blog: Clinton Testifies on Benghazi Attacks

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The Lede is following Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s testimony Wednesday before the House Foreign Affairs Committee about the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks on the American Consulate in the eastern city of Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. Earlier today, she testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee .

At a House Committee hearing last October investigating the attack, as reported on The Lede, State Department officials and security experts who served on the ground offered conflicting assessments about what resources were requested and made available to deal with growing security concerns in Tripoli and Benghazi.

Mrs. Clinton had been scheduled to testify before Congress last month, but an illness, a concussion and a blood clot near her brain forced her to postpone her appearance.

As our colleagues Michael R. Gordon and Eric Schmitt reported, four State Department officials were removed from their posts on last month after an independent panel criticized the “grossly inadequate” security at a diplomatic compound in Benghazi.

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