A Coat With Pockets for Every Gadget

The Tropiformer polyester shell has 22 pockets, including ones that are specifically designed for tablets, phones, glasses and pens. There are even pockets within pockets.

Women of the Senate Are Obama’s Latest Dinner Guests

The informal caucus of women in the Senate â€" now a record 20 strong â€" will take its monthly bipartisan dinner tradition on Tuesday night to the White House, where they will meet with President Obama to discuss budget issues and other legislative matters.

The monthly dinners, a ritual organized by the longest-serving female senator, Barbara Mikulski, Democrat of Maryland, are intended to create personal and policy bonds across party lines among the women, a minority in the history of the Senate since its inception. The meals are strictly off the record â€" and except for the occasional detail about a lobster roll, they largely stay that way â€" and are generally held at a senator’s home or on Capitol Hill. (Once Few, Women Hold More Power in Senate, March 21, 2013)

While traveling this year aboard Air Force One with Mr. Obama, Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, told the president about the dinners, she said, and the two cooked up the idea to do one at the White House. While a final R.S.V.P. list will be distributed by the White House later Tuesday, 18 senators were expected to attend. The conversation likely will be wide ranging, several senators said, but with a focus on the budget.

“I have always thought that the women of the Senate who have come together on issues before,” said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, “could come together on budget and fiscal issues. If the leaders of the committees of jurisdiction were unable to come up with a solution,” she added, perhaps the group of women, who occasionally form a collation on bills, might.

The dinner is one of a series that Mr. Obama has hosted, some exclusively with Republicans, to try and build some relations across party lines and on Capitol Hill generally, where he has often been criticized as failing to try and lure lawmakers with his agenda.

It is likely that the subject of failed gun safety legislation last week will come up; most of the women who are attending voted for the compromise, although some Republicans and one Democrat, Senator Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, did not. “It was a tough vote, but it was a rational vote,” said Senator Mary L. Landrieu, Democrat of Louisiana, one of two vulnerable Democrats who voted for a measure to expand background checks for gun buyers. “I’d be happy to see any president any time he wants to talk about the issues important to the people of Louisiana,” Ms. Landrieu said, smiling.

Senator Deb Fischer, Republican of Nebraska, said she expected the format to be similar to one she attended recently for Republicans at the White House, in which lawmakers volley out their issues for Mr. Obama to respond to. “He’s a really good listener,” Ms. Fischer said. “He’s responsive.”

Hacked A.P. Twitter Feed Sends Erroneous Message About Explosions at White House

The Twitter account for the Associated Press was hacked on Tuesday and erroneously sent out a tweet saying there had been explosions at the White House, injuring President Obama.

Within a few minutes, Twitter suspended the account and Julie Pace, the chief White House correspondent for the A.P. announced at the White House briefing that the account had been hacked.

Jay Carney, Mr. Obama’s press secretary, confirmed that the president was unharmed.

Editors at the A.P. soon followed with a statement saying that “The (at)AP twitter account has been hacked. The tweet about an attack at the White House is false. We will advise more as soon as possible.”

The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted more than 130 points when the news broke on Twitter â€" an indicator of traders’ presence on the social media platform â€" before immediately recouping the losses after it became clear that there had been no incident at the White House.

The A.P. typically uses Social Flow, a social media tool, to distribute tweets. But in this case, the attackers tweeted directly from the Web, according to the meta data associated with the Tweet.

In the past few days, the A.P. discovered that malware had infected some of its company computers, according to an AP spokeswoman. Hackers can use malware to gain a foothold inside a company’s computer network and from there, can gain access to a company’s usernames and passwords to e-mail, administrative and social media accounts.

This is the third high-profile account to be hacked in recent months. In February, Burger King’s Twitter account was hacked, the company’s logo was replaced by a McDonald’s logo and rogue announcements began to appear. A day later the Twitter account for Jeep was also attacked.

But the attackers used the A.P.’s Twitter account for more nefarious means. Within seconds, the erroneous A.P. headline about explosions at the White House had spread all over Twitter and been retweeted hundreds of times.

The incident, and hacking episodes before it, continue to raise questions about the security of social media passwords and the ease of access to brand-name accounts. Logging on to Twitter is the same process for a company as it is for a consumer, requiring just a user name and one password.

Twitter has tried to take an active role in ridding malicious content from its platform. It has manual and automatic controls in place to identify malicious content and fake accounts, and last year the company sued those responsible for five of the most-used spamming tools on the site.

But preventing hacking and identifying fake accounts continues to be more art than science. Security researchers estimate that as many as 20 million Twitter accounts on the platform are fakes, and real accounts continue to be catnip for hackers.

Republicans Object to Reid’s Call for Budget Negotiating Committee

WASHINGTON â€" For nearly two years, Congressional Republicans made the Senate’s failure to pass a budget plan “Exhibit A” in their indictment of what they called the Democrats’ manifest failure to grapple with the government’s fiscal misfortunes.

On Tuesday morning, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, tried to turn that argument on its head.

Mr. Reid took to the Senate floor to formally call for a “conference” â€" a joint House-Senate negotiating committee â€" to resolve the differences between the budgets passed in March by the Republican-controlled House and Democratic-controlled Senate. Only with a negotiated agreement between the two chambers can Washington’s running budget wars be resolved in a bipartisan fashion through “regular order” â€" that is, following the usual rules of Congress.

Speaking for his party, Senator Patrick J. Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, stood sheepishly to object to Mr. Reid’s request.

“Without a single Republican vote in the affirmative, after giving the Republicans what they said they wanted, regular order, countless votes and passage of a budget resolution, a strange thing happened: House Republicans did a complete 180,” Mr. Reid fumed. “They flipped. They’re no longer interested in regular order.”

On Thursday, Speaker John A. Boehner said the House has every intention to try to negotiate a comprehensive budget deal, but Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, chairman of the House Budget Committee, first wants to see how close he can get through direct talks with Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, his counterpart in the Senate. This is standard procedure, since once a conference is formally called, negotiators have a limited time to cut a deal before the talks break down and the minority party can force votes on an alternative budget plan. In 2009, the Democratic House passed a budget March 13 but did not appoint conferees until May 14.

“It is ‘regular order’ for the budget chairs to agree to a framework before conferees are named, and Chairman Ryan and Senator Murray are having those conversations,” said Michael Steel, a spokesman for Mr. Boehner. “It is difficult to see what Senator Reid’s stunt today will do to help if Senate Democrats don’t even agree we need to balance the budget in the first place.”

In truth, the prospects of a negotiated settlement between Ms. Murray and Mr. Ryan are slim. The House and Senate budgets are far apart in policies and numbers. President Obama has set his sights on Senate Republicans, hoping to forge a bipartisan majority around a budget deal that includes changes to entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security and new revenues. If such a deal could be reached, the White House believes an isolated House Republican leadership could be forced to the negotiating table. Without it, Republicans will have little incentive to drop their opposition to any more tax increases.

Follow Jonathan Weisman on Twitter at @jonathanweisman.

Q&A: Linking a Samsung Tablet to a TV

Q.

Can I connect my Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 to my TV with an HDMI cable to play movies?

A.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 comes in two versions, a model with 10.1-inch screen and one with a 7-inch display, and you have more options with the larger tablet. For example, Samsung sells a $40 adapter for the larger Galaxy Tab 2 that links the port on the bottom of the tablet to an HDMI cable connected to a compatible HDTV set. You need to supply the HDMI cable yourself, and the adapter needs to be plugged into the tablet’s charging cable. However, the adapter does not work with the 7-inch model of the Galaxy Tab 2, which does not support HDMI output.

Samsung’s own AllShare Play software can stream music, photos and video from its Galaxy Tab devices to televisions that use the Digital Living Network Alliance standard. Samsung’s wireless-enabled Smart TV sets support it. If you do not own such equipment, though, this is obviously not much of a solution for getting material from the tablet up on the TV screen.

But if using AllShare Play is a possibility for you, About.com has a guide to using the technology. If the movies you want to watch are from the Google Play Store, Google has a help page for watching the videos on a high-definition television set.

The Early Word: Lost in Translation

Today’s Times

• If President Obama cannot translate the support of 90 percent of the public for background checks on gun sales into a victory on Capitol Hill, some in Washington are wondering what he can expect to accomplish legislatively for his remaining three and a half years in office, Michael D. Shear and Peter Baker write.

• Though a bipartisan group of senators finally presented an overhaul for immigration legislation, a new set of divisions began to emerge on Monday, offering an early glimpse at the partisan politics likely to be on display as the bill makes its way through the Senate, Ashley Parker writes.

• Flight delays piled up on the tarmacs on Monday - the first weekday that the nation’s air traffic control system operated with 10 percent fewer controllers - with pilots and gate agents assigning blame to furloughs caused by mandatory across-the-board budget cuts, Matthew L. Wald and Jad Mouawad report. However, the Federal Aviation Administration said it was too soon to point fingers.

• What does it take to make it into the White House Science Fair? Try creating a fully functional prosthetic arm that only costs $250 to build, or an emergency water sanitation system powered by a bicycle. After browsing the 30 or so projects created by young scientists, Mr. Obama committed to giving students the resources they need to pursue education in scientific fields, with efforts aimed at increasing participation among female and minority students, as well as those from low-income and military families, Ashley Southall reports.

Around the Web

• Though the social media site was his downfall in 2011, former Representative Anthony D. Weiner, Democrat of New York, is back on Twitter, Politicker reports.

Happenings in Washington

• President Obama will honor the 2013 National Teacher of the Year and finalists at the White House, followed by a meeting with the emir of Qatar, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani. Later in the evening, he will have a bipartisan group of female senators over to the White House for dinner.

•  Michelle Obama will visit the Department of the Interior to personally thank employees for their public service.