Bipartisan Rebuke for Republican Congressman Who Used Slur

Under pressure from Congressional leaders and advocacy groups, Representative Don Young, Republican of Alaska, has apologized for describing Hispanic farm workers who picked tomatoes on his father’s ranch as “wetbacks” in an interview.

“I apologize for the insensitive term I used during an interview in Ketchikan, Alaska,” Mr. Young said in a statement on Friday. “There was no malice in my heart or intent to offend; it was a poor choice of words. That word, and the negative attitudes that come with it, should be left in the 20th century, and I’m sorry that this has shifted our focus away from comprehensive immigration reform.”

On Thursday, after the interview was released, Mr. Young tried to explain his remarks, saying that he “meant no disrespect” by using the term in a discussion about the labor market. He said that its usage was common when he was growing up in central California.

But leaders from both parties demanded a fuller apology. Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio said Friday that there was “no excuse” for the remarks, which he deemed “offensive and beneath the dignity of the office he holds.”

“I don’t care why he said it - there’s no excuse and it warrants an immediate apology,” Mr. Boehner said.

Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 Senate Republican, said the remarks did not reflect the party’s views.

“Migrant workers come to America looking for opportunity and a way to provide a better life for their families,” he said in a statement. “They do not come to this country to hear ethnic slurs and derogatory language from elected officials. The comments used by Representative Young do nothing to elevate our party, political discourse or the millions who come here looking for economic opportunity.”

Mr. Young, 79, is serving his 20th consecutive term.

Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader, demanded an apology on Twitter for “deeply offensive comments that were not appropriate in his youth or now.”

Representative Rubén Hinojosa of Texas, the Democratic chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, said Friday that his colleague should have known better than to use the “hateful” word.

“He has served alongside Hispanics in Congress since 1973, so he should know terms like ‘wetback’ have never been acceptable,” Mr. Hinojosa said.

Mr. Young’s gaffe came as a bipartisan group of lawmakers is set to unveil legislation to overhaul the nation’s immigration laws and create a pathway to citizenship for the nation’s estimated 11 million illegal immigrants.

“When elected officials use racial slurs, it sets back our nation and sets back legislators who are seriously working toward real, bipartisan solutions,” Mr. Hinojosa said.

In recent weeks, leading Republicans have expressed a desire to change the party’s tone toward Latinos and immigration policy, with the Republican National Committee pledging to spend $10 million on outreach to women and minorities, after a report revealed deep disconnects with those pivotal groups.

Reince Priebus, the party chairman, said Mr. Young’s words “emphatically do not represent the beliefs of the Republican Party.”

“As I have continued to say, everyone in this country deserved to be treated with dignity and respect,” he said in a statement. “Our party represents freedom and opportunity for every American and a beacon of hope to those seeking liberty throughout the world.”

Mr. Young, the second most senior Republican member of Congress, is no stranger to political difficulties. He has held on to his Congressional seat for 40 years, despite a number of missteps and tough races. The House is currently investigating whether he broke House rules by improperly using campaign funds for personal use and not reporting hunting trips he took that were paid for by an unknown third party, after an inquiry by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The Original Digital Pet Returns for a New Generation

The Tamagotchi L.I.F.E. app from Bandai.

Making the most of a recent nostalgia trend in technology that has brought back brands like Furby and Pac-Man, Bandai is reintroducing Tamagotchi, the digital pet from the 1990s, as a lifestyle brand called Tamagotchi L.I.F.E. (for Love Is Fun Everywhere).

The original Tamagotchi was a tiny toy that fit on a keychain; the new version is a smartphone app. An iOS version was released on Thursday, following the introduction of an Android app last month. The app is free, but comes with banner ads; an ad-free version is available for 99 cents.

Tamagotchi appears to be aimed at girls and young women. The app recreates the same nurturing play that Tamagotchi offered when it was introduced in the United States 16 years ago. It eats, it sleeps and it poops. It can die, too, so you have to take care of it by feeding it, playing games with it and giving it medicine when it gets sick. To increase awareness of your parenting duties, the little guy sends alerts when it needs attention, at least a half-dozen times a day. Fortunately, Tamagotchi sleeps through the night.

The app has color graphics and better resolution than the original Tamagotchi, but it still has the same pixelated appearance of the original. If you’re feeling really nostalgic, a toy mode replicates the look of the original, including the shell that housed it. The app also includes a few extras, like a rock-paper-scissors game and the ability to share photos of your bouncing baby blob on Facebook.

The app is a simple pastime, but I can see how it could get tedious after a few days for anyone over the age of 7. The Tamagotchi’s incessant appetite is bested only by the piles of stinking poop it makes (you can tell they are stinky because they have wavy stink lines rising above them).

Unlike other mindless apps, there are no ropes to cut or fruit to slice or birds to sling at pigs. Bandai may have updated the brand for a new audience, but it forgot to advance the concept.

A Big Picture From a Small Projector

Sometimes even a four-inch smartphone screen may not seem enough. If so, would 200 inches do

The iPower Sight can â€" according to the manufacturer, iPowerUp â€" take what is on your phone, tablet or computer screen and enlarge it, projecting an image up to 200 diagonal inches from a device that is itself pocket-size.

Both measures may be a shade optimistic. No doubt the projector is small, at about 4 by 4 by ¾ of an inch and just over three ounces, but you would still need a pretty big pocket. And while it can project a focused image at up to 200 inches, you wouldn’t want to do that unless you had a completely darkened room and a nicely reflective projection screen.

It was easy enough to watch an image enlarged to around 50 inches on a white wall on an overcast day. Considering the size of the projector, the quality was quite good. The Sight uses a DLP chip, which is covered with minuscule mirrors to reflect LED light to the screen. It is the same technology that has long been used in many full-scale, high-end projectors.

The Sight’s lamp kicks out 85 lumens, which is brighter than most similarly sized projectors, and it has resolution of 854 by 480 pixels, which qualifies as high definition, but you will not want this to replace your 1080p plasma TV. Unlike your TV, the Sight can run about two hours on battery power, or plugged in for a movie marathon.

The videos I projected from YouTube looked good. Noise didn’t distract me from Psy’s horsie dance, but I could find it if I looked for it.

The projector’s built-in speaker is as anemic as the one you would find on your phone or tablet. If you want to add some quality sound, you will need to connect to a separate speaker dock.

If what you’re looking for is a decent picture from a small package, perhaps for presentations, entertaining the kids on a trip or making video games wall-size in a dorm room, the iPower Sight is far, far superior to huddling around your phone.

Currently the projector is only available direct from iPowerUp for $350.

App Smart Extra: For the Garden

This week, App Smart was all about gardening because spring has sprung, or is about to. There are many apps that can help you in the garden, like plant reference guides or advice about garden bugs, and even apps that can help you manage your garden and its plants over time.

A useful reference is the free Android app Garden Plants Growing Guide. Unlike some of its peers, this app is a little pedestrian in design because of its plain lists of plants and simple pages full of text. But it contains an impressive database of flowers, vegetables and herbs â€" with more of an emphasis on flowers â€" and each entry has a photo and detailed advice on when to sow a plant and how to take care of it. You’ll have to know the Latin name for many of the flowers, though, because that is how the app lists them and there are no thumbnail photos in the flowers list to help identify them.

Fruit Garden is a slightly similar $0.99 Android and $1.99 iOS app with a focus on fruit plants. It’s a list of common varieties, with details on each to help you understand how to best plant and grow them. The app lacks useful extras like garden management facilities, and its list of plants is not exhaustive. But it has taught me how to better feed the orange trees in my garden.

The Gardening Guide is a much more detailed app that has lots of advice about planting and tending your garden. It’s aimed more at vegetable gardening than flower gardening, but each entry is well written and has comprehensive advice on each crop. For example, I learned that it’s a good idea to harvest lettuce in the morning, after the leaves have plumped with water overnight. It’s listed as The Gardening Guide From Mother Earth News on iTunes, and as Garden Guide in Google’s app store.

If you’re planning a bit of a spring garden redesign, the aptly named Garden Design Ideas, free on Android, may help. It’s a large list of photos of gardens, with no extra details or data on plants and so on because it’s all about a garden’s visuals. It shows all sorts of gardens, like modern ones or Japanese-style ones. This app is fairly simple, but it may frustrate you if you fixate on a particular design and want to know more about it.

Quick call

Pandora, one of the hottest music streaming apps out there, is finally available as a free Windows Phone 8 app â€" and as a sweetener, the app has no ads and no monthly streaming limit through the rest of this year.

The Early Word: Hints of Agreement

In Today’s Times:

• President Obama and Congressional Republicans have quietly brought up making broad changes to Medicare, a move that could result in significant savings and possibly lead to a budget deal, Jackie Calmes and Robert Pear report.

• With Congress increasing its resistance to tougher gun laws, Mr. Obama asked lawmakers and the nation Thursday not to forget about the school shooting in Newtown, Conn., Jeremy W. Peters and Peter Baker report.

• The focus of recent cyberattacks on American financial institutions has shifted to destroying data, with suspicions cast on Iran and North Korea, though a smoking gun has yet to be produced, Nicole Perlroth and David E. Sanger report.

• The Obama administration’s balancing act on enforcement of the Defense of Marriage Act is up for discussion this week after Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. accused the president of not having “the courage of his convictions” by continuing to enforce a law he deemed unconstitutional, Peter Baker reports.

• Craft beer brewers descended on Washington this week for the industry’s first conference, sampling the hometown brew and lobbying Congressional staff members for a tax cut, Andrew Siddons reports.

Washington Happenings:

• Mr. Obama will travel to Miami on Friday to tour a tunnel project and talk about investing in infrastructure.

• The presidents of Cape Verde, Malawi, Senegal and Sierra Leone will speak about encouraging prosperity in Africa at the United States Institute of Peace on Friday.