Academic Articles

The United States is facing intense competition from foreign countries, especially China, that are seeking to persuade highly skilled citizens who have settled in this country to return home to start businesses there, according to a report released Tuesday by an immigration group led by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York. ”China is proving the most aggressive and ambitious” among the United States’ economic competitors in seeking to reverse a brain drain and lure back their scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs, the report by Mr. Bloomberg’s group, the Partnership for a New American Economy, found.

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CORRECTION APPENDED Federal prosecutors, claiming that they had found widespread fraud in Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s much-vaunted job placement program, filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit on Tuesday against a nonprofit agency that was once among New York City’s favorite contractors. The United States attorney for the Southern District found that the agency, Seedco, had received more than $8 million in federal money to operate job placement centers and that its managers reported hundreds, and most likely thousands, of fake job placements over three years.

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KABUL, Afghanistan — The leading American diplomat in Afghanistan, Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, will leave his post this summer for health reasons after serving here less than a year, a State Department official said Tuesday. His departure comes as the American-Afghan relationship enters a new stage, with thousands of American troops beginning to come home and the Afghans taking on increasing responsibility not only for security but also for governance.

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Imagine ”Pygmalion” written by the Marx Brothers. Starring Gordon Gekko from ”Wall Street.” On speed. That about sums up ”The President,” a madcap comedy that deserves such a quick description, given that its breathless characters never slow down. The rarely performed play also deserves this high-energy revival, with a cast of 20 who race across the stage, then dance around it at their curtain call.

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When Carson McCullers explores her own mind these days on a stage at the Public Theater, the sound of a banjo goes with her. Now a banjo might seem too obvious a choice for the musical underlining of the thoughts of a Southern writer adrift in the North. But then you haven’t heard the banjo music composed by Gabriel Kahane for ”February House,” the very literary new musical that opened on Tuesday night at the Public Theater. It’s a far twang from ”My Old Kentucky Home” or ”Foggy Mountain Breakdown.” Fragmented and dissonant, full of fragile melody and tensile strength, this music, played by Andy Stack, evokes the cracked-glass lyricism of McCullers’s prose. And when Kristen Sieh, the haunting actress portraying McCullers, lifts her reedlike voice in wondering song, you may feel for this long-dead writer what Carson says she feels when she visits the freaks at Coney Island: an ineffable sense of communion.

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Two remarkable statistics: The Rangers are 0-7 during the Stanley Cup playoffs when they have a series lead; 9-1 when a series is tied. Those records suggest that the Rangers and Coach John Tortorella will have an effective response for the Devils on Wednesday night in Game 5 at Madison Square Garden after they were tactically outfoxed in Monday’s 4-1 loss in Newark.

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The English conductor Jonathan Nott is becoming less of a stranger to New York audiences, but not quickly enough. He has visited most years since 2005, usually with the Bamberg Symphony, though he has also made a strong impression conducting the Ensemble Intercontemporain and as a guest of the New York Philharmonic. He is a thoughtful interpreter, with fresh ideas and a fluid yet focused technique, and as he demonstrated in concerts with his Bamberg ensemble at Avery Fisher Hall on Sunday afternoon and Monday evening, he can confound expectations, even in programs that rest heavily on the commonplace.

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What can we afford to do about the financial industry? Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase would have us believe that regulators’ attempts to clip the wings of financial companies are about as misguided as trying to curb spam by shutting down the Internet. To most Americans, a financial crisis that lopped $19.2 trillion off household wealth and produced the deepest recession since the 1930s may be reason enough to limit what financial institutions can do. Andrew G. Haldane, executive director for financial stability at the Bank of England, estimates that the crisis wiped out one to 3.5 years’ worth of the world’s economic output, in present value.

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WASHINGTON — The revelation that China is the sole country that can bid on and buy debt directly from the United States Treasury, rather than through a financial intermediary, has raised concerns that the Obama administration is giving a secret, sweetheart deal to its biggest creditor. But experts said that the arrangement was probably beneficial to both parties, and was a product of changing trends in the market for Treasury debt as much as the deep economic ties between the two countries.

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Afood-focused book club lighted the oven for Erin Patinkin and Agatha Kulaga. Ms. Patinkin, who was working for a nonprofit, and Ms. Kulaga, a psychiatry researcher, met through the club and discovered they shared entrepreneurial ambitions. So they started Ovenly, a wholesale bakery in Greenpoint, Brooklyn; building on its success over the last two years, they have added a retail store. It opens Friday, and though they turn out red velvet cakes, chocolate chip cookies (bottom photo) and carrot spice cupcakes, most of their specialties offer uncommon flavors. Black olive shortbread, blue cheese-pecan scones, coconut date pistachio coffee cake (top), and a jelly doughnut muffin are all buttery and intriguingly savory-sweet, thanks to a good pinch of salt. Even the chocolate pudding frosting on the blackout cake is salted. The shop has a few seats for those wishing to indulge on the spot, with Stumptown coffee. Ovenly, 31 Greenpoint Avenue (West Street), Greenpoint, Brooklyn, (347) 689-3608, www.oven.ly. Cakes are $6 a slice ($65 whole); cookies, $2.25; muffins, $3; scones, $3.50; shortbread, $2.50; quiche, $5 a slice; and savory hot tarts (turnovers), $4.50.

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