A Dutch U.N. employee arrested at the scene and later questioned by police was released without charge. A jogger, cyclist and taxi were also seen in the security footage. “This is New York,” said the police commissioner, Raymond Kelly. “It’s 3:30 in the morning, yet these people were out on the street.”

One of the cameras appeared to show something being thrown from across the street. The timing of the blasts led to speculation that they were linked to the British election and perhaps the country’s role in the Iraq war.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg described the bombs as “relatively unsophisticated” explosive devices. “It is true that the British Consulate is in that building, but I don’t think anybody should jump to conclusions,” he said.

The British consul general, Sir Philip Thomas, said an election night party at the offices, hosted by the journalist Sir Harold Evans, would go ahead. “I’m not frightened,” Sir Philip said. “Clearly this is Election Day in Britain and our staff just want to get on with their work.” British interests overseas have been on the alert in the run-up to the election amid fears of a repeat of the attack in Madrid last year that killed nearly 200 people and swayed the vote days later.

Members of the New York Police Department’s counterterrorism bureau, the intelligence division, the FBI and the Joint Terrorism Task Force were called to the site. The British Consulate occupies the ninth and 10th floors of the otherwise anonymous office building at 845 Third Ave. Other countries have missions in the 21-story building, and it houses a number of domestic and international companies. At street level, the building has a branch of the North Fork Bank and a sports store.

Five hours after the blasts, the street was still cordoned off. Sniffer dogs combed the area for any other devices but found nothing. The grenades, described as Second World War “novelty” toys, were planted in the soil of the tub, one of 12 installed outside the building as part of post-Sept. 11 security measures to prevent car bombs. There was no evidence of a timer, suggesting the explosives were detonated by hand, according to Kelly.

At the scene, bomb experts were picking through earth from the flower tub mixed with pieces of glass and shrapnel strewn across the pavement in front of the building. A large gash ran the length of the glass door. Pieces of the devices were found up to half a block away.

Police determined that one of the bombs was the size of a pineapple, the other the size of a lemon. The toy grenades had been packed with black powder, which was taken for testing.

“I heard a bang, that’s it,” a witness told the Associated Press. “I came outside to check it out and I see nothing around, no flames, no smoke, that’s it.”

Police cordoned off several blocks around the consulate and conducted a sweep of other diplomatic buildings in the area. The consulate is one block from the head office of Citigroup, which is said to be one of a handful of financial institutions listed as targets by al-Qaida.

After the incident, police in Chicago temporarily closed off the area surrounding the British Consulate there.

Finkelstein, an advisor to New York Gov. George Pataki and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, is a controversial figure within his party. He raised eyebrows by warning against the influence of evangelical Christians. He is also openly gay, and startled some party supporters when headlines last weekend disclosed that he had recently married his long-term partner.

Although Clinton has refused to be pinned down on a run for president, she is widely seen as a leading contender among Democrats, and her popularity in New York is at an all-time high. She was introduced as “the next great president of the United States of America” at an address in Minnesota over the weekend. One of her advisors told the Associated Press that the Stop Her Now group was evidence that the Republicans planned “a negative campaign of lies and distortion.”

The New York Republican Party’s chairman has also launched a Stop Hillary Now fundraising drive. In a letter dated April 8 seen by the AP, Stephen Minarik said the campaign “is not merely a race for New York. It’s a race for America. Stopping Hillary Rodham Clinton is the most important thing you and I can do as Republicans in the next two years.”

Clinton has told potential supporters in an e-mail that she is the “No. 1 target for the rightwing attack machine.” Her spokeswoman, Ann Lewis, told the AP that the Clinton campaign was “not surprised that the Republican Party has chosen to wage a personally negative campaign. They don’t want to talk about Hillary’s record of working for New Yorkers, throughout the state and in the Senate.”

Last July, another of the big Wall Street banks, Morgan Stanley, agreed to pay $54 million to settle a discrimination suit brought by the EEOC, the U.S. employment commission, on behalf of Allison Schieffelin, a former bond trader, and 340 other women. Also last year, Merrill Lynch paid out $2.2 million to a female former broker.

Zubulake said she was “gratified and relieved” that the case she filed three years ago was over. “Do I think I’m unique?” she considered. “Probably not. I’d like this to send a message to other women on Wall Street that if they are experiencing different treatment, they should stand up and speak out, which is a difficult thing to do, believe me.”

Zubulake’s testimony offered insight into the secretive, clubby and often brutal world of high finance. She was hired on the Asian equities sales desk at the bank in 1999 and worked in UBS offices in Manhattan and Stamford, Conn. She initially enjoyed the job.

In her suit against the bank, though, she described how she was passed over for the job of manager on the sales desk in early 2001. The position was given to a former UBS employee, Matthew Chapin, who, she testified, went on to belittle and ridicule her in front of the rest of the office, make sexist remarks, exclude her from trips with clients and deny her important accounts. Zubulake said her desk was even placed across an aisle from the rest of the team, seating her with the office assistants.

In the complaint, she said Chapin on several occasions asked, “Does anybody like you?” in front of other workers. While looking at a C.V. for a female job candidate, he allegedly said, “I have to interview this chick … Oh, I mean woman,” and remarked that he had “yellow fever,” meaning he liked Asian women. She said she was accused of insubordination while male colleagues were allowed to yell back at Chapin.

The behavior was not isolated to Chapin, she said. Written peer evaluations said she should “smile more” and be “softer.” Despite her complaints, the bank allegedly took no action. The head of human resources responded by telling her she should be more “soft-spoken,” the complaint said.

“It was a constant battle,” Zubulake said. “It was demoralizing. I kept trying to work with them, but it was a very difficult period.” Exasperated, she filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in August 2001, and was fired two months later.

Her lawyer, James Batson, said: “It is nice to see some recovery not just for gender discrimination but for retaliation. A lot of women feel that if they complain they will get fired — that they are history. I hope this verdict will serve notice to companies that they can’t do that.”

The most notorious case of sex discrimination on Wall Street was brought against the firm Smith Barney in 1996; it detailed the existence of drinking parties for mainly male brokers in the firm’s basement, called the “boom-boom room,” where a toilet bowl hung from the ceiling.

Martha Burk, author of the book “Cult of Power; Sex Discrimination in Corporate America and What Can Be Done About It,” says bad behavior on Wall Street is still pervasive. “I don’t think firms have learned a thing. This trickles down from top management and creates a corporate culture that is hostile to women. It is notorious in New York that clients are taken to strip clubs.”

The American Securities Industry Association said recently that more than 70 percent of all investment bankers, traders and brokers in management positions were white men. Women have yet to break through to the very top jobs. Sallie Krawcheck, chief financial officer and head of strategy at Citigroup, is arguably the most powerful. She is effectively No. 3 at the company.

An additional case against Smith Barney (now a part of Citigroup) was filed last month by four women who alleged that they were denied promotions and were paid less than male colleagues. The suit was filed with the help of the Washington-based National Council of Women’s Organizations, which set up the Women on Wall Street Project last year to combat discrimination.

The initial focus of the project was to lobby financial firms whose bosses are members of the male-only Augusta Golf Club. They include the bosses of Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, American Express, Bank of America and J.P. Morgan Chase.

Burk, who works with the project, said awards need to go higher. The “$29 million won’t even make a footnote to a bank. They see this as the cost of doing business. It is cheaper to pay out every five years or so than it is to fix pay disparities.”

UBS argued in its defense that Zubulake had not been singled out. Chapin, defense lawyers said, had treated everyone badly. In closing statements, the lawyer for UBS, Bettina Plevan, argued that Zubulake was fired because she had “performance problems” and was not a team player.

A UBS spokesman said the bank was “disappointed” and would appeal. “We regard the amount awarded as excessive and will now move to set aside the verdict.”

Critics said the mass protest came in the same year that Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller assumed command of the camp in Cuba with orders to get more information from prisoners suspected of having links to al-Qaida or the Taliban.

Allistair Hodgett, a spokesman for Amnesty International in Washington, told the Associated Press: “When you have suicide attempts or so-called self-harm incidents, it shows the type of impact indefinite detention can have.” In total there were 350 “self-harm” incidents at the camp during 2003, the military said. Last year there were 110 self-harm incidents. The military has reported 34 actual suicide attempts since the camp opened in January 2002.

The plans appear to be a sign of the increasing frustration at the continued level of violence in Iraq. Direct actions, such the attack on Fallujah in November, have had little more effect than spreading the rebels out. Newsweek cited an unidentified senior military officer. “What everyone agrees is that we can’t just go on as we are,” he said. “We have to find a way to take the offensive against the insurgents. Right now, we are playing defense. And we are losing.”

A retired four-star general, Gary Luck, is due in Iraq this week to conduct a reevaluation of tactics in Iraq, including troop levels and the training of Iraqi forces.

The U.S. and Iraqi security forces are facing mounting losses, and the stubbornness of the insurgents is causing increasing concern in Washington. Gen Luck is due to report back to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld within a month.

The Iraqi elite squads would most likely be made up of Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shiite militiamen and could even operate across the Syrian border, the report said. It remains unclear whether they would be used for assassinations or in so-called snatch operations, capturing targets and taking them to U.S. bases for interrogation. According to Newsweek it is also still unclear which part of the U.S. government would take responsibility for the squads. Covert operations have in the past been run by the CIA, but the Defense Department under Rumsfeld has been seeking to build up the Pentagon’s intelligence operations.

The plan would expand the role of the U.S. Special Forces into undercover missions, something many in the CIA are said to oppose. The interim government of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi is said to have given the proposal strong backing.

As a part of the $1.75 billion deal Lenovo will have use of the IBM name on personal computers and laptops for at least five years. IBM, founded in 1911, has been one of the most enduring symbols of corporate America and played a crucial role in shaping the modern era. The company, known as the Big Blue, ushered computers into homes and offices when it launched its first desktop in 1981. In the early years IBM became the standard in PC manufacturing, at one stage selling 70 percent of all computers made. Information technology departments fell back on the adage that nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM. The company’s technology bled into everyday life, providing software for the first cashier machines and supermarket scanners in the 1970s.

IBM was not the first to the market in the early 1980s, but lending its experience in mainframes to the desktop computer moved it into the mainstream. The speed with which the PC made its mark was reflected in 1982 when Time magazine broke with tradition and chose the personal computer as its “Man of the Year.”

IBM also shaped the industry in another way. Its first desktop computer opened the door for a still fledgling Microsoft, while Intel produced the processor. That decision has been hugely criticized by historians for allowing the two suppliers to build a stranglehold on the computing industry. The move effectively ceded control to Microsoft, which set the standard for software and continues to make billions of dollars in profits.

The disposal of the IBM’s PC division illustrates how computers have become a pervasive part of everyday life. The PC is now little more than a commodity item in an intensely competitive market, offering manufacturers the hope of only slim profits. IBM Chief Executive Sam Palmisano said the PC market “continues to take on characteristics of the home and consumer electronics industry, which favors enormous economies of scale.”

Although a symbolic wrench with the past, IBM’s decision to shed the computer division came as little surprise to anyone who has watched the industry. IBM has been transforming its business for years, shifting from the building and sale of PCs to more lucrative areas like services and consulting work for the world’s largest corporations. The sale of desktop and laptop computers today accounts only for around 12 percent of IBM’s annual revenue of $92 billion. This year the division was expected to make less than $100 million in profits — peanuts for a company of IBM’s size — on sales of around $10 billion.

IBM led the market until 1994, but the firm then began to lose ground, suffering as the likes of Dell began to put pressure on prices. IBM had around 6 percent of the global market for PC sales before Wednesday’s deal was announced, putting it a distant third behind Hewlett Packard with 16.1 percent and Dell with 18 percent.

IBM has been under pressure for years to sell its PC business. By 1993, the company’s annual losses had reached $8 billion. In an effort to stem the problem, IBM retreated from the retail market and began focusing on corporate customers. It sold its manufacturing plants three years ago and had confined itself to design, product development and sales. The Lenovo deal covers IBM’s desktop and laptop business, including the Think brand. Lenovo is paying IBM $1.25 billion in cash and shares and assuming an additional $500 million in debt from the U.S. company. IBM as a result will own an 18.9 percent stake in the Chinese firm.

Lenovo, founded in 1984 and already the leading brand in China with more than a quarter of the market, is expected to have $12 billion in annual revenues and around 8 percent global share. The company’s founder, Chuanzhi Liu, described the deal as a breakthrough in its ambition to become a global business. “Our unwavering goal has been to create a truly international enterprise,” he said. Lenovo will gain access to 160 countries by taking over IBM’s sales and distribution network.

The company will open a new U.S. headquarters in New York, with its principal operations based in Beijing and Raleigh, N.C. American management imported from IBM will lead the company, a nod to the still greater experience of the U.S. on the international scene.

Lenovo’s rapid rise to international prominence is typical of the path taken by China’s leading corporations since the launch of the country’s market-oriented economic reforms in 1978. The firm, known until last year as Legend, was founded in 1984 by a group of Chinese government scientists and financed from public coffers. For most of its first decade, the company merely distributed foreign-built computers, but its engineers quickly learned how to copy and adapt the designs. In 1997 — only four years after the start of its manufacturing operations — Legend overtook IBM as the leading seller of PCs in China.

Further deals from Chinese firms can be expected in the future as the government in Beijing pushes ahead with an industrial strategy that aims to turn at least one domestic producer into an international competitor in every field of business.

Flush with cash from an export industry in overdrive and a domestic economy that has hurtled forward at an annual rate of more than 9 percent for the past two decades, Chinese firms are being encouraged to step out from the shadows of joint ventures with foreign multinationals and establish their own global brands.

“It’s a signpost, and a really prominent one, on what’s the next phase for China, which is moving outwards,” said Bob Broadfoot of the Political and Economic Risk consultancy in Hong Kong. Employment will not be affected — about 10,000 IBM workers, more than 40 percent already in China, will be joining Lenovo.