Ipswich Journal: Paul Mason Is One-Third the Man He Used to Be

Paul Nixon Photography

Paul Mason in 2012, two years after gastric bypass surgery stripped him of the unofficial title of “the world’s fattest man.”

IPSWICH, England — Who knows what the worst moment was for Paul Mason — there were so many awful milestones, as he grew fatter and fatter — but a good bet might be when he became too vast to leave his room. To get him to the hospital for a hernia operation, the local fire department had to knock down a wall and extricate him with a forklift.

That was nearly a decade ago, when Mr. Mason weighed about 980 pounds, and the spectacle made him the object of fascinated horror, a freak-show exhibit. The British news media, which likes a superlative, appointed him “the world’s fattest man.”

Now the narrative has shifted to one of redemption and second chances. Since a gastric bypass operation in 2010, Mr. Mason, 52 years old and 6-foot-4, has lost nearly two-thirds of his body weight, putting him at about 336 pounds — still obese, but within the realm of plausibility. He is talking about starting a jewelry business.

“My meals are a lot different now than they used to be,” Mr. Mason said during a recent interview in his one-story apartment in a cheerful public housing complex here. For one thing, he no longer eats around the clock. “Food is a necessity, but now I don’t let it control my life anymore,” he said.

But the road to a new life is uphill and paved with sharp objects. When he answered the door, Mr. Mason did not walk; he glided in an electric wheelchair.

And though Mr. Mason looks perfectly normal from the chest up, horrible vestiges of his past stick to him, literally, in the form of a huge mass of loose skin choking him like a straitjacket. Folds and folds of it encircle his torso and sit on his lap, like an unwanted package someone has set there; more folds encase his legs. All told, he reckons, the excess weighs more than 100 pounds.

As he waits to see if anyone will agree to perform the complex operation to remove the skin, Mr. Mason has plenty of time to ponder how he got to where he is. He was born in Ipswich and had a childhood marked by two things, he says: the verbal and physical abuse of his father, a military policeman turned security guard; and three years of sexual abuse, starting when he was 6, by a relative in her 20s who lived in the house and shared his bed. He told no one until decades later.

After he left school, Mr. Mason took a job as a postal worker and became engaged to a woman more than 20 years older than him. “I thought it would be for life, but she just turned around one day and said, ‘No, I don’t want to see you anymore — goodbye,’ ” he said.

His father died, and he returned home to care for his arthritic mother, who was in a wheelchair. “I still had all these things going around in my head from my childhood,” he said. “Food replaced the love I didn’t get from my parents.” When he left the Royal Mail in 1986, he said, he weighed 364 pounds.

Then things spun out of control. Mr. Mason tried to eat himself into oblivion. He spent every available penny of his and his mother’s social security checks on food. He stopped paying the mortgage. The bank repossessed their house, and the council found them a smaller place to live. All the while, he ate the way a locust eats — indiscriminately, voraciously, ingesting perhaps 20,000 calories a day. First he could no longer manage the stairs; then he could no longer get out of his room. He stayed in bed, on and off, for most of the last decade.

Social service workers did everything for him, including changing his incontinence pads. A network of local convenience stores and fast-food restaurants kept the food coming nonstop — burgers, french fries, fish and chips, even about $22 worth of chocolate bars a day.

“They didn’t deliver bags of crisps,” he said of potato chips. “They delivered cartons.”

His life became a cycle: eat, doze, eat, eat, eat. “You didn’t sleep a normal sleep,” he said. “You’d be awake most of the night eating and snacking. You totally forgot about everything else. You lose all your dignity, all your self-respect. It all goes, and all you focus on is getting your next fix.”

He added, “It was quite a lonely time, really.”

He got infections a lot and was transported to the hospital — first in a laundry van, then on the back of a truck and finally on the forklift. For 18 months after a hernia operation in 2003, he lived in the hospital and in an old people’s home — where he was not allowed to leave his room — while the local government found him a house that could accommodate all the special equipment he needed.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 6, 2013

The headline on an earlier version of this article misstated Paul Mason’s current weight relative to what he weighed nearly a decade ago. He is now about one-third, not two-thirds, the weight he was then.

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Economic Scene: Immigration Reform Issue: The Effect on the Budget

The stars could hardly have shone brighter on the prospects for immigration reform than in the early months of 2007.

The coalition pushing for change included the oddest of bedfellows — roping together business groups like the United States Chamber of Commerce with the Service Employees International Union, the fastest-growing union in the country. It had an impeccable bipartisan pedigree, including President George W. Bush and Senator Jon Kyl, a staunchly conservative Republican, as well as the Democrats’ liberal lion, Senator Ted Kennedy.

The economy was growing. The unemployment rate was at its lowest level since the dot-com bubble burst six years before. And the flaws of our immigration laws — impotent to stop a river of unauthorized immigrants drawn across the border by job opportunities — were obvious to all.

Immigration reform, however, was not to be.

Immigrants’ rights groups balked at the hurdles put in immigrants’ path toward legalization. The A.F.L.-C.I.O. hated a provision creating temporary work visas, arguing that it was a license for businesses to bring in cheap foreign labor. Then, a Senate Democrat, Byron Dorgan, offered the coup de grâce with an amendment to phase out the worker visa program after five years. Though proposed at the behest of organized labor, the amendment got the support of some of the most anti-union Republicans in the Senate. And it killed the entire enterprise, stripping away corporate America’s main reason to support a deal.

Today, the economy is not growing much. Unemployment remains stubbornly high. Yet President Obama thinks the stellar alignment may be  better than six years ago. He is proposing a wholesale change to the same flawed immigration laws. He trusts that Republicans, who lost the Hispanic vote by an enormous margin in November, cannot afford to further alienate Hispanics by voting against their top priority.

Despite the strong case for an overhaul, however, changing our immigration laws may be tougher than the president appears to believe. While we may have overcome some of the obstacles of 2007, reform will probably face deep-seated opposition from many Americans — including most conservative Republicans — to what they will view as a potentially large expansion of welfare.

President Obama’s proposal is based on principles similar to those of the 2007 attempt: a path to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants in the country, a legal channel for future immigrant workers and their families, and a plan to better enforce the nation’s borders and immigration laws.

Yet immigration reform today means something quite different than it did in 2007. Notably, the elements needed to stop the flow of illegal immigrants north are much less important to the enterprise. The Obama administration has already spent huge amounts of money on border enforcement. Today, border policing costs about $18 billion a year — nearly 50 percent more than it did in 2006. And deportations have soared. What’s more, illegal immigration has slowed to a trickle, as Mexico has grown more robustly than the United States. The illegal immigrant population has even been shrinking in the last few years. And it may continue to do so as the Mexican population of prime migration-age people stops growing.

Also, many employers have already gotten some of what they wanted: the number of workers entering the United States on temporary visas for low-end jobs in agriculture and other industries has increased sharply.

“The discussion is in a different environment,” said Gordon H. Hanson, an expert on the economics of immigration at the University of California, San Diego. “The flow of new immigrants is not the story anymore.”

This might help the cause of reform in some ways. It could allow the discussion about work visas to focus on the highly educated workers coveted by technology companies and pre-empt the kind of argument between business and labor over visas for cheap immigrant workers that sank reform in 2007. The A.F.L.-C.I.O., for instance, has heartily embraced President Obama’s plan.

But what supporters of an overhaul of immigration law seem to be overlooking is that these very changes could also make it more difficult to build a coalition across the political divide. If reform is mainly about granting citizenship to 11 million mostly poor illegal immigrants with relatively little education, it is going to land squarely in the cross hairs of our epic battle about taxes, entitlements and the role of government in society.

It’s hard to say with precision what impact offering citizenship would have on the budget, but the chances are good that it would cost the government money. Half to three-quarters of illegal immigrants pay taxes, according to studies reviewed in a 2007 report by the Congressional Budget Office. And they are relatively inexpensive, compared with Americans of similar incomes. Their children can attend public schools at government expense — putting a burden on state and local budgets. But they are barred from receiving federal benefits like the earned-income tax credit, food stamps and Medicaid. Only their American-born children can get those.

Government revenue might not change much with legalization. Most illegal immigrants who don’t pay taxes probably work in the cash economy — as nannies or gardeners — where tax compliance among citizens is low. Costs, of course, would increase. Once they became citizens, immigrants would be entitled to the same array of government benefits as other Americans. For Social Security and Medicare alone, offering citizenship to illegal immigrants would mean losing a subsidy worth several billion dollars a year in payroll taxes from immigrants who can’t collect benefits in old age.

The White House and other backers of reform have made much of a 2007 Congressional Budget Office analysis concluding that the failed immigration overhaul would have increased government revenue by $48 billion over a decade while adding only $23 billion to direct spending on entitlements and other programs. But the report also said that including the costs of carrying out the new law would actually increase the budget deficit by $18 billion over the decade and several billion a year after that. What’s more, it noted that most of the expected new tax revenue came from new immigrant workers, not from the newly legalized population.

Our history suggests we could have much to gain by turning illegal immigrants into citizens and putting an end to unauthorized immigration. The last time we permitted illegal immigrants to legalize, in 1986, incomes jumped for those who took advantage of the opportunity. Their children became more proficient in English and completed more years of school — becoming more productive and paying more taxes over their lifetimes.

But the same history underscores how immigration sets off fears about further sharing of government resources. Ten years after the immigration reform of 1986, reeling from some public anger, Congress passed a law barring legal immigrants from means-tested government services. The same issue is likely again to be a major flash point. Professor Hanson pointed to “the older white man who sees his entitlements at risk because of the demands placed by legalization on our fiscal resources.”

Conservative Republicans set on cutting government spending share those concerns. And for all their reasons to reach out to Hispanics, they might not find making illegal immigrants legal politically advantageous. On Tuesday, Republicans in the House argued against granting citizenship to illegal immigrants at all.

Hispanics are more liberal than the general population on economic matters, polls suggest, and more supportive of Big Government initiatives. Granting them citizenship would give them the vote.

As Steven A. Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, an advocacy group in Washington that favors more limits on immigration, said, “They will see legalization as a voter-registration drive for Democrats.”

E-mail: eporter@nytimes.com; Twitter: @portereduardo

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 5, 2013

An earlier version misspelled the first name of one of the two United States senators from Arizona.  His name is Jon Kyl, not John.

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British Ministers Seek Support for Gay Marriage Law

LONDON — As the British Parliament prepared to vote Tuesday on a law permitting same-sex marriage that has divided church and state, senior cabinet ministers launched a last-minute attempt to deflect an embarrassing rebellion by Conservative lawmakers against Prime Minister David Cameron’s support for the new legislation.

A day after the newly-confirmed archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, took office saying he shares the Church of England’s opposition to marriage between people of the same gender, three cabinet officials said in a letter published in The Daily Telegraph that the new legislation was “the right thing to do at the right time.”

“Marriage has evolved over time. We believe that opening it up to same-sex couples will strengthen, not weaken, the institution. Attitudes toward gay people have changed. A substantial majority of the public now favor allowing same sex couples to marry, and support has increased rapidly.”

The three ministers — George Osborne, the chancellor of the Exchequer, Foreign Secretary William Hague and Home Secretary Theresa May — also asked whether it was “any longer acceptable to exclude people from marriage simply because they love someone of the same sex.”

The debate has divided Britain’s Conservatives, who rule in uneasy coalition with the smaller Liberal Democrats. Political analysts forecast that, when the vote is held on Tuesday evening in Parliament, it will be approved despite opposition by scores of Conservative lawmakers because the bulk of Liberal Democrat and opposition Labour legislators are in favor.

However, that outcome could embarrass Mr. Cameron since he will be securing approval for a change that he has championed with the support of his political adversaries and in the teeth of opposition from within his own ranks. The size of the likely revolt among Conservative lawmakers is uncertain, but Mr. Cameron’s allies are trying to reduce it, seeing the vote as a test of his authority.

Opponents of the legislation say it will alienate traditional Conservative voters, jeopardizing Mr. Cameron’s prospects at the 2015 national election. But supporters say it will bring in new backing from outside the party.

Coincidentally, the vote is scheduled a day after Archbishop Welby, 57, was confirmed in his new post to replace the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, who has retired 10 years in office.

The new archbishop, the spiritual head of the world’s 77 million Anglicans, endorsed the traditional view that while the Church of England has no objection to civil partnerships between people of the same gender, it is, as a recent church statement put it, “committed to the traditional understanding of the institution of marriage as being between one man and one woman.”

Ed Miliband, the leader of the opposition Labour Party, said Monday that he would be “voting for equal marriage in the House of Commons, and I’ll be doing so proudly.” He also said he would urge his 255 legislators in the 649-member body to vote with him, although a small group will likely vote against.

“I’ll be voting for equal marriage for a very simple reason: I don’t think that the person you love should determine the rights you have,” Mr. Miliband said on Monday.

The legislation, which applies to England and Wales, would permit civil marriage between same-sex couples, but specifically exempt the Church of England and other faiths from an obligation to perform such ceremonies. Some faith groups, including the Quakers, have said they want the legal right to perform same-sex marriages.

In their letter, Mr. Osborne, Mr. Hague and Ms. May said: “Our party also has a strong belief in religious freedom, a vital element of a free society. The Bill ensures that no faith group will be forced to conduct same-sex marriages. The legal advice is clear that these protections for religious groups cannot be overturned by the courts.”

“Religious freedom works both ways. Why should faith groups, such as the Quakers, that wish to conduct gay marriages be forbidden from doing so? This Bill will enhance religious freedom, not restrict it.”

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Superdome officials worried about a power outage

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The cause of a 34-minute blackout at the Super Bowl remains under investigation, but public records released Monday show that Superdome officials were worried about a power outage several months before the big game.

An Oct. 15 memo released by the Louisiana Stadium & Exposition District, which oversees the Superdome, says tests on the dome's electrical feeders showed they had "some decay and a chance of failure."

Entergy New Orleans, the company that supplies the stadium with power, and the structure's engineering staff "had concerns regarding the reliability of the Dome service from Entergy's connection point to the Dome," the memo says. Those concerns were due in part to "circumstances that have previously occurred with the electrical service regarding transient spikes and loads."

The memo also cites 2011 blackouts that struck Candlestick Park, where the San Francisco 49ers were playing a nationally televised Monday night football game, as a reason for ordering the tests.

The board later authorized spending nearly $1 million on Superdome improvements, including more than $600,000 for upgrading the dome's electrical feeder cable system.

"As discussed in previous board meetings, this enhancement is necessary to maintain both the Superdome and the New Orleans Arena as top tier facilities, and to ensure that we do not experience any electrical issues during the Super Bowl," says a LSED document dated Dec. 19.

An attorney for the state board that oversees the Superdome said the blackout did not appear to be related to the replacement in December of electrical equipment connecting the stadium to Entergy. Officials with the utility and the Superdome noted that an NFL game, the Sugar Bowl and another bowl game were played there in recent weeks with no apparent problems.

The exact cause of Sunday night's blackout — and who's to blame — remained unclear late Monday, though a couple of potential culprits had been ruled out.

It wasn't Beyonce's electrifying halftime performance, according to Doug Thornton, manager of the state-owned Superdome, since the singer had her own generator. And it apparently wasn't a case of too much demand for power. Meters showed the 76,000-seat stadium was drawing no more electricity than it does during a typical New Orleans Saints game, Thornton said.

The lights-out game Sunday proved an embarrassment for the Big Easy just when it was hoping to show the rest of the world how far it has come since Hurricane Katrina in 2005. But many fans and residents were forgiving, and officials expressed confidence that the episode wouldn't hurt the city's hopes of hosting the championship again.

To New Orleans' great relief, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said the city did a "terrific" job hosting its first pro football championship in the post-Hurricane Katrina era, and added: "I fully expect that we will be back here for Super Bowls."

Fans watching from their living rooms weren't deterred, either. An estimated 108.4 million television viewers saw the Baltimore Ravens beat the San Francisco 49ers 34-31, making it the third most-viewed program in television history. Both the 2010 and 2011 games hit the 111 million mark.

The problem that caused the outage was believed to have happened around the spot where a line that feeds current from Entergy New Orleans connects with the Superdome's electrical system, officials said. But whether the fault lay with the utility or with the Superdome was not clear.

Determining the cause will probably take days, according to Dennis Dawsey, a vice president for distribution and transmission for Entergy. He said the makers of some of the switching gear have been brought in to help figure out what happened.

The blackout came after a nearly flawless week of activity for football fans in New Orleans leading up to the big game.

"I hope that's not what they'll remember about this Super Bowl," French Quarter artist Gloria Wallis said. "I hope that what they'll remember is they had a great time here and that they were welcomed here."

Ravens fan Antonio Prezioso, a Baltimore native who went to the game with his 11-year-old son, said the outage just extended the experience.

"The more time we could spend at the game was a good thing, as long as it ended the way it did," he said, laughing.

The city last hosted the Super Bowl in 2002, and officials were hoping this would serve as the ultimate showcase for the city's recovery since Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The storm tore holes in the roof of the Superdome and caused water damage to its electrical systems, and more than $330 million was spent repairing and upgrading the stadium.

Sunday's Super Bowl was New Orleans' 10th as host, and officials plan to make a bid for an 11th in 2018.

Mayor Mitch Landrieu told WWL-AM on Monday that the outage won't hurt the city's chances, and he joked that the game got better after the blackout: "People were leaving and the game was getting boring, so we had to do a little something to spice it up."

The chairwoman of the New Orleans City Council's Utility Committee has called an emergency meeting for Friday to discuss the power outage.

Jarvis DeBerry, a columnist for nola.com and The Times-Picayune, wrote that the power outage gave the media "an opportunity to laugh at the apparent ineptitude or suggest that the ghosts of Hurricane Katrina were haunting the Superdome."

"That's not the kind of attention the city was looking for, obviously," he wrote, "but it's certainly too soon to say if people will remember the power shortage over San Francisco's furious comeback attempt against Baltimore or if this will harm the city's future opportunities to host the Super Bowl."

Bjorn Hanson, dean of New York University's Center for Hospitality and Sports Management, said the episode shouldn't hurt the city's reputation as a big convention destination. "I think people view it for what it was: an unusual event with a near-record power draw," he said. "It was the equivalent of a circuit breaker flipping."

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Associated Press writers Beth Harpaz, Brett Martel, Stacey Plaisance and Barry Wilner contributed to this report.

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Well: Expressing the Inexpressible

When Kyle Potvin learned she had breast cancer at the age of 41, she tracked the details of her illness and treatment in a journal. But when it came to grappling with issues of mortality, fear and hope, she found that her best outlet was poetry.

How I feared chemo, afraid
It would change me.
It did.
Something dissolved inside me.
Tears began a slow drip;
I cried at the news story
Of a lost boy found in the woods …
At the surprising beauty
Of a bright leaf falling
Like the last strand of hair from my head

Ms. Potvin, now 47 and living in Derry, N.H., recently published “Sound Travels on Water” (Finishing Line Press), a collection of poems about her experience with cancer. And she has organized the Prickly Pear Poetry Project, a series of workshops for cancer patients.

“The creative process can be really healing,” Ms. Potvin said in an interview. “Loss, mortality and even hopefulness were on my mind, and I found that through writing poetry I was able to express some of those concepts in a way that helped me process what I was thinking.”

In April, the National Association for Poetry Therapy, whose members include both medical doctors and therapists, is to hold a conference in Chicago with sessions on using poetry to manage pain and to help adolescents cope with bullying. And this spring, Tasora Books will publish “The Cancer Poetry Project 2,” an anthology of poems written by patients and their loved ones.

Dr. Rafael Campo, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard, says he uses poetry in his practice, offering therapy groups and including poems with the medical forms and educational materials he gives his patients.

“It’s always striking to me how they want to talk about the poems the next time we meet and not the other stuff I give them,” he said. “It’s such a visceral mode of expression. When our bodies betray us in such a profound way, it can be all the more powerful for patients to really use the rhythms of poetry to make sense of what is happening in their bodies.”

On return visits, Dr. Campo’s patients often begin by discussing a poem he gave them — for example, “At the Cancer Clinic,” by Ted Kooser, from his collection “Delights & Shadows” (Copper Canyon Press, 2004), about a nurse holding the door for a slow-moving patient.

How patient she is in the crisp white sails
of her clothes. The sick woman
peers from under her funny knit cap
to watch each foot swing scuffing forward
and take its turn under her weight.
There is no restlessness or impatience
or anger anywhere in sight. Grace
fills the clean mold of this moment
and all the shuffling magazines grow still.

In Ms. Potvin’s case, poems related to her illness were often spurred by mundane moments, like seeing a neighbor out for a nightly walk. Here is “Tumor”:

My neighbor walks
For miles each night.
A mantra drives her, I imagine
As my boys’ chant did
The summer of my own illness:
“Push, Mommy, push.”
Urging me to wind my sore feet
Winch-like on a rented bike
To inch us home.
I couldn’t stop;
Couldn’t leave us
Miles from the end.

Karin Miller, 48, of Minneapolis, turned to poetry 15 years ago when her husband developed testicular cancer at the same time she was pregnant with their first child.

Her husband has since recovered, and Ms. Miller has reviewed thousands of poems by cancer patients and their loved ones to create the “Cancer Poetry Project” anthologies. One poem is “Hymn to a Lost Breast,” by Bonnie Maurer.

Oh let it fly
let it fling
let it flip like a pancake in the air
let it sing: what is the song
of one breast flapping?

Another is “Barn Wish” by Kim Knedler Hewett.

I sit where you can’t see me
Listening to the rustle of papers and pills in the other room,
Wondering if you can hear them.
Let’s go back to the barn, I whisper.
Let’s turn on the TV and watch the Bengals lose.
Let’s eat Bill’s Doughnuts and drink Pepsi.
Anything but this.

Ms. Miller has asked many of her poets to explain why they find poetry healing. “They say it’s the thing that lets them get to the core of how they are feeling,” she said. “It’s the simplicity of poetry, the bare bones of it, that helps them deal with their fears.”

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Have you written a poem about cancer? Please share them with us in the comments section below.

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DealBook: Dell Nears a Buyout Deal of More Than $23 Billion

Dell Inc. neared an agreement on Monday to sell itself to a group led by its founder and the investment firm Silver Lake for more than $23 billion, people briefed on the matter said, in what would be the biggest buyout since the financial crisis.

If completed, a takeover would be the most ambitious attempt yet by Michael S. Dell to revive the company that bears his name. Such is the size of the potential deal that Mr. Dell has called upon Microsoft, one of his most important business partners, to shore up the proposal with additional financial muscle. The question will now turn to whether taking the personal computer maker private will accomplish what years of previous turnaround efforts have not.

The final details were being negotiated on Monday evening, and a deal could be announced as soon as Tuesday. Still, last-minute obstacles could cause the talks to collapse, the people briefed on the matter cautioned.

The consortium is expected to pay $13.50 to $13.75 a share, these people said. Mr. Dell is expected to contribute his nearly 16 percent stake to the deal, worth about $3.8 billion under the current set of terms. He is also expected to contribute hundreds of millions of dollars in fresh capital from his own fortune.

Silver Lake, known as one of the biggest investors in technology companies, would most likely contribute roughly $1 billion, these people added. Microsoft is expected to put in about $2 billion, though that would probably come in the form of preferred shares or debt.

Dell is also expected to bring home some of the cash that it holds in offshore accounts to help with the financing.

A spokesman for Dell declined to comment.

For decades, Dell benefited from its status as a pioneer in the market for personal computers. Founded in 1984 in a dormitory room at the University of Texas, the company grew into one of the biggest computer makers in the world, built on the simple premise that customers would flock to customize their machines.

By the late 1990s, its fast-rising stock created a company worth $100 billion and minted a class of “Dellionaires” whose holdings made for big fortunes, at least on paper. Mr. Dell amassed an estimated $16 billion and formed a quietly powerful investment firm to manage those riches.

But growing competition has sapped Dell’s strength. Rivals like Lenovo and Samsung have made the PC-making business less profitable. Last month, the market research firm Gartner reported that Dell sold 37.6 million PCs worldwide in 2012, a 12.3 percent drop from the previous year’s shipments. Perhaps more significant is the emergence of the smartphone and the tablet, two classes of devices that have eaten away at sales of traditional computers.

Mr. Dell has sought to move the company into the more lucrative and stable business of providing corporations with software services, spending billions of dollars on acquisitions to lead that transformation. The aim is to refashion Dell into something more like I.B.M. or Oracle. Even so, manufacturing PCs still makes up half of the company’s business.

The company’s stock had fallen 59 percent in the 10 years ended Jan. 11, the last business day before word of the buyout talks emerged. That has actually made Dell more tempting as a takeover target for its founder and Silver Lake, which see it as undervalued.

A Dell deal would be a watershed moment for the leveraged buyout industry: It would be the largest takeover since the Blackstone Group paid $26 billion for Hilton Hotels in the summer of 2007. No leveraged buyout since the financial crisis has surpassed the $7.2 billion that Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and others paid for the Samson Investment Company, an oil and gas driller, in the fall of 2011.

Private equity executives have hungered for the chance to strike a deal worth more than $10 billion, an accomplishment believed difficult because of the sheer size of financing required. Dell would take on more than $15 billion in debt, an enormous amount arranged by no fewer than four banks.

But the debt markets have been soaring over the last two years, as the cost of junk bonds has stayed low. Persistent low interest rates have prompted debt buyers to seek investments that carry higher yields

Dell was unusually well-placed to make a deal with private equity. The company carries $4.9 billion in long-term debt, which some analysts have regarded as a manageable amount. And its management has signaled a willingness to bring back at least some of the company’s cash hoard held overseas, despite potentially ringing up a hefty tax bill.

It is unclear whether the company’s biggest investors will accept a deal at the levels that the buyer consortium is advocating. Shares of Dell fell 2.6 percent, to $13.27, on Monday after reports of the proposed price range emerged.

Biggest Private Equity-Backed Leveraged Buyouts

DEAL, IN BILLIONS	TARGET	BUYER	ANNOUNCED
Source: Thomson Reuters *At time of deal, including assumption of debt, not adjusted for inflation.
$44.3	TXU	Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Lehman Brothers Holdings, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Texas Pacific Group and Goldman Sachs	February 2007
37.7	Equity Office Properties Trust	Blackstone Group	November 2006
32.1	HCA	Bain Capital, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Merrill Lynch Global Private	July 2006
30.2	RJR Nabisco	Kohlberg Kravis Roberts	October 1988
30.1	BAA	Grupo Ferrovial SA, Caisse de Depot et Placement and GIC Special Invest	March 2006
27.6	Harrah’s Entertainment	Texas Pacific Group and Apollo Management	October 2006
27.4	Kinder Morgan	GS Capital Partners, The Carlyle Group and Riverstone Holdings	May 2006
27.2	Alltel	TPG Capital and GS Capital Partners	May 2007
27.0	First Data	Kohlberg Kravis Roberts	April 2007
26.7	Hilton Hotels	Blackstone Group	July 2007

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IHT Rendezvous: IHT Quick Read: Feb. 4

NEWS A secret legal review on the use of the United States’ growing arsenal of cyberweapons has concluded that President Barack Obama has the broad power to order a pre-emptive strike if the United States detects credible evidence of a major digital attack looming from abroad, according to officials involved in the review. David E. Sanger and Thom Shanker report from Washington.

As a Russian loan runs out and Cyprus seeks aid, Germany finds itself in a fierce debate over whether to help bail out the island nation. Liz Alderman reports from Paris.

Accounts from captives held in the siege of a Saharan gas plant in Algeria last month reveal that militants sought to orchestrate a spectacular, deadly explosion. Adam Nossiter reports from Tiguentourine, Algeria, and Nicholas Kulish from Berlin.

A sometimes frustrated figure who prized her role as a team player, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s instincts were often more activist than those of a White House that has kept a tight grip on foreign policy. Michael R. Gordon and Mark Landler report from Washington.

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy of Spain is pledging to make public this week his tax returns and financial assets to refute what he described over the weekend as ‘‘apocryphal’’ documents showing that he and other senior conservative politicians had received payouts from a secret account maintained by their party. Raphael Minder reports from Madrid.

In the aftermath of the financial crash, Britain’s politicians acknowledged that they had put too much faith in a bloated financial sector that plunged the country into crisis. But rebalancing the skills of the British labor force may require a shift that is as much social and cultural as it is economic. Stephen Castle reports from North Shields, England.

In France, companies have their wings clipped by onerous social charges paid to the government and severance packages that make companies think twice before hiring and firing– but some entrepreneurs are still figuring out ways to succeed. Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura reports from Paris.

ARTS With wit and ingenuity, the British graphic designer David Pearson is rekindling interest in paperbacks. Alice Rawsthorn reviews from London.

SPORTS The Baltimore Ravens won Super Bowl XLVII. For the latest, visit http://www.nytimes.com/pages/sports/football/index.html.

The Six Nations rugby tournament kicked off with Ireland getting a hard-earned victory over the reigning champion Wales, while England scored a home victory over Scotland and Italy beat France. Huw Richards reports.

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Looks Like Alicia Keys Will Play Piano During Super Bowl National Anthem

Alicia Keys woke up on Super Bowl Sunday and apparently had the urge to tweet, sharing a rehearsal photo of herself behind a piano in an empty Mercedes-Benz Superdome.

Keys, who was just named Blackberry’s global creative director, will sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” before kickoff and the photo suggests she’ll do so while playing piano.

[More from Mashable: Super Bowl 2013 Commercials: Watch Them All Here]

If Keys does pound the keys tonight, she will be the first musician to do so during a Super Bowl national anthem performance since Billy Joel in 2007 (see video in gallery below).

Update: Keys also tweeted the red dress she’ll wear during her performance.

[More from Mashable: Beyonce’s Super Bowl Show in 10 Fierce Photos]

Kelly Clarkson sang the national anthem in 2012, a year after Christina Aguilera flubbed the song’s lyrics at the previous Super Bowl (watch below). Other past performers include Whitney Houston, Garth Brooks, Mariah Carey, Faith Hill, Neil Diamond, Diana Ross, Jewel, Harry Connick Jr., Dixie Chicks and Cher.

Keys, a 14-time Grammy winner, will embark on a North American concert tour in March. Her fifth studio album, Girl on Fire, debuted atop the Billboard 200 albums chart in November.

Keys is set to perform the national anthem at 6:30 p.m. ET on CBS.

Click here to view the gallery: Previous National Anthem Singers at the Super Bowl

Image via Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images

This story originally published on Mashable here.

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Lights out: Ravens beat 49ers 34-31 in Super Bowl

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Joe Flacco and the Baltimore Ravens were turning the Super Bowl into a rout when, without even a flicker of warning, the power went off. When the game resumed 34 minutes later, the San Francisco 49ers were the ones playing lights out.

Instead of a blowout, the blackout turned the big game into a shootout.

The Ravens survived the frenzied comeback by the 49ers for a thrilling 34-31 win at the Superdome on Sunday night and their second NFL championship in 11 years.

"How could it be any other way? It's never pretty. It's never perfect. But it's us," coach John Harbaugh said after winning the sibling showdown with younger brother Jim. "It was us today."

Barely.

Leading by 22 points when most of the Superdome lights and the scoreboards went dark early in the third quarter, the Ravens used a last-gasp defensive stand to hold on after the momentum strangely swung to the 49ers. San Francisco receiver Michael Crabtree was bumped in the end zone on the 49ers' final offensive play — the contact appeared incidental — but coach Jim Harbaugh insisted a penalty should have been called.

"There's no question in my mind that there was a pass interference and then a hold," Jim Harbaugh said.

As for the foul-up at America's biggest sporting event, officials revealed that an "abnormality" in the power system triggered an automatic shutdown, forcing backup systems to kick in. But no one was sure what caused the initial problem.

Everything changed after that, though, until Ray Lewis and Co. shut it down. But there were plenty of white-knuckle moments and the Ravens (14-6) had to make four stops inside their 7 at the end.

"I think it speaks to our resolve, speaks to our determination, speaks to our mental toughness," John Harbaugh said. "That is what wins and loses games."

For a Super Bowl with so many subplots, it almost had to end with a flourish.

Flacco's arrival as a championship quarterback coincides with Lewis' retirement — with a second Super Bowl ring no less. The win capped a sensational month since the star linebacker announced he was leaving the game after 17 Hall of Fame-caliber years.

At 4 hours, 14 minutes, it was the longest Super Bowl ever.

The loss of power left players from both sides stretching and chatting with each other. It also slowed Baltimore's surge, and that was considerable after Jacoby Jones' 108-yard kickoff return and Flacco's three touchdown passes made it 28-6.

Flacco's big start boosted him to the MVP award.

"They have to give it to one guy and I'm not going to complain that I got it," said Flacco, who soon will get a rich new contract. His current deal expired with this win.

Down by three TDs, back came San Francisco (13-5-1) in search of its sixth Lombardi Trophy in as many tries.

"As far as the power going out, that didn't change anything for us," tight end Vernon Davis said.

Yet they got back in the game almost immediately.

Michael Crabtree's 31-yard touchdown reception on which he broke two tackles made it 28-13. A couple minutes later, Frank Gore's 6-yard run followed a 32-yard punt return by Ted Ginn Jr., and the 49ers were within eight.

Ray Rice's fumble at his 24 led to David Akers' 34-yard field goal, but Baltimore woke up for a long drive leading to rookie Justin Tucker's 19-yard field goal.

San Francisco wasn't done challenging, though, and Colin Kaepernick's 15-yard TD run, the longest for a quarterback in a Super Bowl, made it 31-29. A 2-point conversion pass failed when the Ravens blitzed.

Tucker added a 38-yarder with 4:19 remaining, setting up the frantic finish.

Kaepernick couldn't get the 49ers into the end zone on the final three plays, and Ravens punter Sam Koch took a safety for the final score with 4 seconds left. Koch's free kick was returned by Ginn to midfield as time ran out.

The Harbaughs then met at midfield amid the Ravens' confetti-laden celebrations.

"It's very tough," John Harbaugh said, referring to their conversation. "It's a lot tougher than I thought it was going to be. It's very painful."

Only one other championship game in the NFL's 80-year title game history, Pittsburgh's 35-31 win over Dallas in 1979, featured both teams scoring at least 30 points.

In the first half, Flacco was as brilliant as Tom Brady, Joe Montana or Terry Bradshaw ever were in the NFL's biggest game. The only quarterback to win a playoff game in each of his first five seasons — his coach holds the same distinction — was nearly perfect. Overall, Flacco threw for 11 touchdowns to tie a postseason record, and had no interceptions.

The Ravens stumbled into the playoffs with four defeats in its last five regular-season games as Lewis recovered from a torn right triceps and Flacco struggled. Harbaugh even fired his offensive coordinator in December, a stunning move with the postseason so close.

But that — and every other move Harbaugh, Flacco and the Ravens made since — were right on target. Just like Flacco's TD passes of 13 yards to Anquan Boldin, 1 to Dennis Pitta and 56 to Jones in the first half, tying a Super Bowl record.

New Orleans native Jones, one of the heroes in a double-overtime playoff win at Denver, seemed to put the game away with his record 108-yard sprint with the second-half kickoff.

Soon after, the lights went out — and when they came back on, the Ravens were almost powerless to slow the 49ers.

Until the final moments.

"The final series of Ray Lewis' career was a goal-line stand," Harbaugh said.

Lewis sprawled on all fours, face-down on the turf, after the end zone incompletion.

"It's no greater way, as a champ, to go out on your last ride with the men that I went out with, with my teammates," Lewis said. "And you looked around this stadium and Baltimore! Baltimore! We coming home, baby! We did it!"

It was a bitter loss for Jim Harbaugh, the coach who turned around the Niners in the last two years and brought them to their first Super Bowl in 18 years. His team made a similarly stunning comeback in the NFC championship at Atlanta, but couldn't finish it off against Baltimore.

"Our guys battled back to get back in," the 49ers coach said. "I thought we battled right to the brink of winning."

The 49ers couldn't have been sloppier in the first half, damaging their chances with penalties — including one on their first play that negated a 20-yard gain — poor tackling and turnovers. Rookie LaMichael James fumbled at the Baltimore 25 to ruin an impressive drive, and the Ravens converted that with Flacco's 1-yard pass to Pitta for a 14-3 lead.

On San Francisco's next offensive play, Kaepernick threw behind Randy Moss and always dependable safety Ed Reed picked it off. A huge scuffle followed that brought both Harbaughs onto the field and saw both sides penalized 15 yards for unnecessary roughness.

Reed, also a New Orleans native, tied the NFL record for postseason picks with his ninth.

Baltimore didn't pounce on that mistake for points. Instead, Tucker's fake field goal run on fourth-and-9 came up a yard short when Chris Culliver slammed him out of bounds.

The Ravens simply shrugged, forced a three-and-out, and then unleashed Jones deep. Just as he did to Denver, he flashed past the secondary and caught Flacco's fling. He had to wait for the ball, fell to the ground to grab it, but was untouched by a Niner. Up he sprang, cutting left and using his speed to outrun two defenders to the end zone.

Desperate for some points, the 49ers completed four passes and got a 15-yard roughing penalty against Haloti Ngata, who later left with a knee injury. But again they couldn't cross the goal line, Paul Kruger got his second sack of the half on third down, forcing a second Akers field goal, from 27 yards.

When Jones began the second half by sprinting up the middle virtually untouched — he is the second player with two TDs of 50 yards or more in a Super Bowl, tying Washington's Ricky Sanders in 1988 — the rout was on.

Then it wasn't.

"Everybody had their hand on this game," 49ers All-Pro linebacker Patrick Willis said. "We point the fingers at nobody. We win together and we lose together, and today we lost it."

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Medicines Co. Licenses Rights to Cholesterol Drug

The drug, known as ALN-PCS, inhibits a protein in the body known as PCSK9. Such drugs might one day be used to treat millions of people who do not achieve sufficient cholesterol-lowering from commonly used statins, such as Lipitor.

The Medicines Company will pay $25 million initially and as much as $180 million later if certain development and sales goals are met, under the deal expected to be formally announced Monday. It will also pay Alnylam, which is based in Cambridge, Mass., double-digit royalties on global sales.

That is small payment for a drug with presumably a huge potential market, probably reflecting that Alnylam is still in the first of three phases of clinical trials, well behind some far bigger competitors.

The team of Sanofi and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals is already entering the third and final stage of trials with their PCSK9 inhibitor, as is Amgen. Pfizer and Roche are in midstage trials.

ALN-PCS is different from the other drugs. It uses a gene-silencing mechanism called RNA interference, aimed at shutting off production of the PCSK9 protein. The other drugs are proteins called monoclonal antibodies that inhibit the action of PCSK9 after it has been formed.

Alnylam and the Medicines Company hope that turning off the faucet, as it were, will be more efficient than mopping the floor, allowing their drug to be given less frequently and in smaller amounts.

But that has yet to be proved. No drug using RNA interference has reached the market.

The Medicines Company, based in Parsippany, N.J., generates almost all of its revenue from one product — Angiomax, an anticlotting drug used when patients receive stents to open clogged arteries.

Dr. Clive A. Meanwell, chief executive of the company, said that PCSK9 inhibitors are likely to be used at first mainly by patients with severe lipid problems under the care of interventional cardiologists, the same doctors who use Angiomax. “It really is quite adjacent to what we do,” he said.

The Medicines Company licensed Angiomax from Biogen Idec, where the drug was invented and initially developed under a team led by Dr. John M. Maraganore, who is now the chief executive of Alnylam.

“It’s a bit like getting the band back together,” Dr. Maraganore said.

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