Author of Study on Immigrants’ I.Q. Leaves Heritage Foundation

Jason Richwine, a senior policy analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation who argued in a graduate school dissertation that Hispanic immigrants were less intelligent than white Americans, resigned from his post with the foundation on Friday.

“Jason Richwine let us know he’s decided to resign from his position,” the Heritage Foundation said in a terse e-mail statement. “He’s no longer employed by Heritage.”

The foundation declined to comment further, saying, “It is our longstanding policy not to discuss internal personnel matters.”

Mr. Richwine was also the co-author of a Heritage Foundation study that criticized legislation in the Senate to overhaul the nation’s immigration laws, citing high economic costs. The analysis found that the legislation would cost taxpayers roughly $6.3 trillion over the next 50 years.

But reports this week about the content of Mr. Richwine’s 2009 doctorate dissertation, in which he said the lower I.Q.’s of immigrants should be considered when crafting public policy, set off a furor, with some immigration advocates decrying his writing as racist.

The Heritage Foundation had already come under criticism from both Democrats and Republicans for the study on the costs of the immigration proposal, and news of Mr. Richwine’s outside writings further undercut the organization’s attempt to help shape the immigration debate from the outside.

Obama to Bookend Group of Eight Summit With Belfast and Berlin Visits

President Obama and his wife, Michelle, will make a three-day trip to the United Kingdom and Germany around the Group of Eight summit in June, the White House said Friday.

Mr. Obama will look to ease tensions with Russia during the annual meeting of world leaders, scheduled for June 17 and 18 in Lough Erne, a resort in Northern Ireland, by meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin. Relations have soured amid American efforts to punish Russian citizens accused of human rights abuses, but new recognition of shared security concerns after the Boston Marathon bombings has prompted something of a thaw. Mr. Putin skipped last year’s summit when Mr. Obama held it at Camp David.

Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain will host the meeting this year, just a month after his planned visit to the White House on Monday.

Before the conference, Mr. Obama is scheduled to start his trip in Belfast, where he will “engage with the people of Northern Ireland and highlight the hard work, dialogue and institutional development they have undertaken together,” the White House press secretary, Jay Carney, said in a statement.

Mr. Obama will end his June trip in Berlin, where he will meet with Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Joachim Gauck of Germany.

Q.& A.: Getting More (or Less) Mail from Facebook

Q.

Why doesn’t Facebook send me e-mail messages when my friends post on the site?

A.

Over the years, Facebook has cut down on the amount of e-mail messages it sends to its members, particularly the ones who visit the site frequently throughout the day and see notifications on screen anyway when logged into their accounts. If you do not visit the site as much, you may see more messages describing the things your friends are doing on Facebook. Messages from Facebook include an Unsubscribe link, so you may have clicked on it at some point and stopped certain e-mail notifications.

You can adjust the amount of notification messages you get from Facebook in your account settings. To do so, click on the gear-shaped Settings icon on the right side of your Facebook page and select Account Settings. On the left side of the Account Settings page, click Notifications and in the Notifications settings next to Email, click Edit.

Here, you can choose to get all notifications by e-mail or just the “important ones,” like when a friend tags you in a photo. You can also skip all friend-based notifications and just get the ones related to account security and privacy. If your settings are configured to get a lot of notification mail and you are still not getting the messages, a spam filter, either on your mail program or your Internet provider’s server, may be blocking delivery.

App Smart Extra: More Ways to Stay Fit

This week I wrote about apps that can take the place, at least in part, of a personal trainer. These fitness apps can coach and provide encouragement as you try to get fit. With summer fast approaching, now may be a great moment to take advantage of these apps to improve your overall fitness, lose some weight or tone your muscles.

The free Android app Fitness Flow is designed to be more cheerful and quirky than many of its peers. Its text is written in playful-looking fonts, and to pause the app you hit the “take a rest” button, and to stop you hit the red “that’s enough” button. Tapping on the “quick start” button on the app’s home page takes you straight into a random workout. As you exercise, the app’s main display shows a video of what you’re supposed to be doing. Along with the video, a voice tells you how to move properly and relays other information like the time elapsed.

You can adjust the app’s settings to focus your workouts on particular body sections, but the free edition only comes with a short list of exercises and coaching videos. For the full experience of over 100 different exercises you have to pay $3.99. The app displays video only when your device is connected to the Internet, but you can exercise to the audio cues alone when you’re offline.

The free iOS and Android Alpha Trainer app is almost the opposite. It’s very sophisticated, and has a much more serious tone about working out and getting fit. It’s centered around the idea of a 14-week program, which it builds for you based on the goals you enter into its settings menu. You can tell the app you work out at home or in the gym, and it will adjust â€" for example, recommending that you use simple hand weights at home or that you use a particular piece of bodybuilding equipment in the gym.

The free part of the app is limited, however, and to access the full functions you have to pay for in-app purchases that vary, from individual workouts (for example, plyometrics jump training costs $9.99) to “elite” membership that unlocks the app for $9.99 a month or $59.99 a year.

On the other hand if you prefer a simpler type of workout, like going for a bicycle ride, taking a fast walk or going for a jog, then there are apps like the $2.99 Run Tracker Pro for iOS. This is one of the training apps I use because I prefer not to be “nagged” or even motivated by a trainer (albeit in video form) and instead I make my own targets. The app also lets you try out interval training workouts, such as alternating your pace every minute as you run. But its main purpose is to track you through GPS and monitor your pace. The app can show you each workout on a map, and it stores information like your pace and split times so you can see how your current times compare with your previous ones. For a similar alternative app, check out Endomondo free on iOS or Android; you may find its interface better suits your tastes.

Have fun getting fit!

Quick call

Rovio has added 100 new levels to its Angry Birds game on the Windows Phone platform. The game is a classic of the touch-screen smartphone era and if you’ve not played Angry Birds before, now is a good time to try it out. It’s free for Windows Phone 8 devices and for those running the 7.5 version.

Some Estimates Suggest Black Voting Milestone Occurred in 2008

Did the Census Bureau and the media miss the milestone moment on black voter turnout?

A study by the Census Bureau released Wednesday found that the rate of black voter turnout surpassed that of white voters for the first time on record in 2012. According to the agency’s estimate, based on surveys, 66.2 percent of “eligible” black citizens cast a ballot in the 2012 presidential election, compared with 64.1 percent of eligible, non-Hispanic whites.

But some researchers contend that slightly different calculations show the black turnout might have first moved ahead of the white rate in 2008, the year when a black candidate first led a major party ticket.

Any American citizen who is 18 or older meets the census’s definition of an eligible voter. But some American adults have lost that right: an estimated 5.85 million people with felony convictions were disenfranchised in 2010, according to the Sentencing Project, and they are disproportionately African American. That advocacy group determined that 5.6 percent of nonincarcerated, voting-age blacks face such restrictions, compared with 1.9 percent for nonblacks.

“Turnout seems lower than it actually is if we don’t take into account felon disenfranchisement,” said Bernard L. Fraga, a political scientist studying at Harvard.

When Mr. Fraga recalculated the rates without disenfranchised felons, 68.5 percent of eligible blacks voted in 2008, compared with 67 percent of eligible whites. (Under the census definition of eligibility, black turnout was 64.9 percent in 2008 and white turnout was 67 percent.)

If disenfranchised felons are excluded in the 2012 estimates, 70.1 percent of eligible blacks went to the polls, as did 65 percent of non-Hispanic whites.

Michael P. McDonald, an associate professor at George Mason University, is among those who contend that the black turnout milestone occurred in 2008, by making different assumptions about people who did not give a usable answer. The Census Bureau counted people who gave such a “non response” as a “no” to questions about voting. Mr. McDonald simply removed them from his calculations, yielding much higher turnout rates for all. In 2008, according to his estimate, black turnout was 78.9 percent and white turnout was 75.5 percent. In 2012, black turnout dipped to 77.9 percent and white turnout was 72.8 percent.

The Early Word: Signals

In Today’s Times:
The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s decision in 2011 to close an investigation of the older of two brothers accused of carrying out the Boston bombings has cast an unflattering shadow over the legacy of Robert S. Mueller III at the agency as he prepares to step down as director. Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Michael S. Schmidt write that “instead of coasting into retirement, Mr. Mueller will spend the final months answering tough questions about how the bombing suspects slipped away.”

Testifying Thursday at a Congressional hearing on the bombings, the Boston police commissioner said the F.B.I. did not tell him about its investigation of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, although the agency said Boston police officers were involved in the inquiry, Scott Shane and Mr. Schmidt report.

House Republicans are focused on one word in their call for the White House to release an e-mail that raised the possibility that Islamic extremists might have been involved in the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks in Benghazi. Mark Landler writes that the move signals that “Republican leaders intend to continue portraying the attack as a major failure of the administration as well as a potentially effective issue against former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton if she runs for president in 2016.”

In preparation for a likely standoff over the debt ceiling in the fall, House Republicans have approved a bill that would allow the Treasury Department to prioritize payments to its creditors in the event that its borrowing limit is reached, Jonathan Weisman writes.

As senators began plowing through more than 300 amendments offered Thursday for immigration overhaul legislation, lawmakers hoped that approving some measures offered by Republicans â€" but rejecting proposals that would undermine the legislation â€" would encourage more G.O.P. members to support the bill, Ashley Parker writes.

A day after delaying a panel vote on President Obama’s nominee to lead the Department of Labor, Republicans on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee blocked a committee vote on the nominee to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, infuriating Democrats who accused their G.O.P. colleagues of engaging in a pattern of obstructionism, John M. Broder writes. The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, vowed that the Senate would vote on the nominations, although it was unclear whether Democrats had enough votes to confirm the nominees.

Happening in Washington:
Economic reports expected Friday include the federal budget for April from the Treasury Department at 2 p.m.

President Obama will “deliver a statement on the impact of the Affordable Care Act on the health, lives and pocketbooks of women and their families” at 2:40 p.m. in the East Room, according to the White House.

During a meeting on Friday, the board of governors of the Postal Service will hold an open session at 8:30 a.m.

At 9 a.m., the United States Chamber of Commerce and its foundation will hold a quarterly economic briefing.

At 1:30 p.m., Secretary of State John Kerry will participate in an online video discussion titled “The U.S. in the World: What’s in It for Us?” The conversation, to be held through a Google+ Hangout, will be moderated by Andrea Mitchell of NBC News.

The Early Word: Signals

In Today’s Times:
The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s decision in 2011 to close an investigation of the older of two brothers accused of carrying out the Boston bombings has cast an unflattering shadow over the legacy of Robert S. Mueller III at the agency as he prepares to step down as director. Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Michael S. Schmidt write that “instead of coasting into retirement, Mr. Mueller will spend the final months answering tough questions about how the bombing suspects slipped away.”

Testifying Thursday at a Congressional hearing on the bombings, the Boston police commissioner said the F.B.I. did not tell him about its investigation of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, although the agency said Boston police officers were involved in the inquiry, Scott Shane and Mr. Schmidt report.

House Republicans are focused on one word in their call for the White House to release an e-mail that raised the possibility that Islamic extremists might have been involved in the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks in Benghazi. Mark Landler writes that the move signals that “Republican leaders intend to continue portraying the attack as a major failure of the administration as well as a potentially effective issue against former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton if she runs for president in 2016.”

In preparation for a likely standoff over the debt ceiling in the fall, House Republicans have approved a bill that would allow the Treasury Department to prioritize payments to its creditors in the event that its borrowing limit is reached, Jonathan Weisman writes.

As senators began plowing through more than 300 amendments offered Thursday for immigration overhaul legislation, lawmakers hoped that approving some measures offered by Republicans â€" but rejecting proposals that would undermine the legislation â€" would encourage more G.O.P. members to support the bill, Ashley Parker writes.

A day after delaying a panel vote on President Obama’s nominee to lead the Department of Labor, Republicans on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee blocked a committee vote on the nominee to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, infuriating Democrats who accused their G.O.P. colleagues of engaging in a pattern of obstructionism, John M. Broder writes. The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, vowed that the Senate would vote on the nominations, although it was unclear whether Democrats had enough votes to confirm the nominees.

Happening in Washington:
Economic reports expected Friday include the federal budget for April from the Treasury Department at 2 p.m.

President Obama will “deliver a statement on the impact of the Affordable Care Act on the health, lives and pocketbooks of women and their families” at 2:40 p.m. in the East Room, according to the White House.

During a meeting on Friday, the board of governors of the Postal Service will hold an open session at 8:30 a.m.

At 9 a.m., the United States Chamber of Commerce and its foundation will hold a quarterly economic briefing.

At 1:30 p.m., Secretary of State John Kerry will participate in an online video discussion titled “The U.S. in the World: What’s in It for Us?” The conversation, to be held through a Google+ Hangout, will be moderated by Andrea Mitchell of NBC News.