The case has been closely watched by educators. Almost seven million students nationwide receive special-education services, with 71,000 educated in private schools at public expense, according to the federal Education Department. Usually, districts agree to pay for those services after conceding that they cannot provide suitable ones.

New York City pays for private schools for more than 7,000 severely handicapped children because it agrees that it cannot properly instruct them. But, officials said, requests for tuition payments for special education students by parents who have placed their children in private school on their own have more than doubled in five years, to 3,675 in 2006 from 1,519 in 2002. And the cost of these payments grew to more than $57 million in the last school year.

“The trend has been increasing for several years,” said Michael Best, general counsel for the city’s Education Department.

Leonard Koerner, chief of the New York City Law Department’s appeals division, said: “We are very disappointed in the court’s ruling, because it does not require the parents to place their children initially in the public school system. This detracts from schools’ abilities to work with parents for the best possible educational outcomes for children with disabilities.”

But Mr. Koerner noted that the ruling did not set a precedent that would bind all schools in the country, and he expressed hope that the justices would soon consider the issues again. That seems likely. At least one other circuit court has come to a conclusion opposite from that of the Second Circuit.

Moreover, there is another Second Circuit case, from Hyde Park, N.Y., that is already available for review.

The justices last February decided to hear arguments in the New York City case and not the Hyde Park one, but Justice Kennedy’s decision to recuse himself only 12 days before the New York City case was argued created the possibility of the 4-4 tie and could make the court inclined to take up the issue again this winter. The court gave no reason for Mr. Kennedy’s lack of participation.

Both the New York and Hyde Park cases involve interpretations of a landmark 1975 special education law now known as the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act and amendments to it in 1997. The law requires school systems to provide a “free appropriate” public education to disabled students, with individually tailored programs.

The law permits parents to seek public financing for private schools if they can show that the public schools cannot meet their children’s needs.

Mr. Freston’s fight on behalf of his son began a decade ago, when his son, then 8, was found to have learning disabilities.

The city offered the child a coveted spot in the Lower Laboratory School for Gifted Education, on the Upper East Side, but Mr. Freston wanted a smaller setting and put his child in the private Stephen Gaynor School. He won tuition reimbursements through administrative hearings and an appeals board proceeding.

Then the Board of Education sued in federal court, where a district judge ruled that a family could not receive tuition reimbursement unless a child first attended public school. But the Second Circuit court found for Mr. Freston, sending the case to the Supreme Court.

Mr. Freston, who left Viacom with a separation package worth an estimated $85 million, has said he brought the case on principle and has donated his tuition reimbursement to tutoring for public school children.

The Hyde Park case involves a boy born in 1991 to a crack-addicted mother and suffering from learning disabilities. The child’s adoptive parents placed him in a private school after turning down the public school programs designed for him. A federal district judge ruled that the parents were entitled to tuition reimbursement, and the Second Circuit agreed.

Wal-Mart (WMT) shares climbed 3% Thursday after the giant retailer surprised Wall Street by boosting its earnings estimate for the third quarter, despite tepid sales.

The Bentonville, Ark., company said it now expects to make 68 cents to 69 cents a share for the quarter, up from its previous forecast of 62 cents to 65 cents a share. Analysts polled by Thomson Financial expected earnings of 63 cents a share.

The company said it had improved expense controls at its Wal-Mart Stores division, which expanded profit margins. That helped offset relatively meager sales growth.

Wal-Mart said same-store sales rose 1.4% from a year ago in September, at the lower end of its forecast for a 1% to 3% rise. Analysts expected a 1.8% increase in same-store sales, or sales at stores open at least a year.

Sales in established Wal-Mart stores inched up 0.8%, and those at warehouse-club operator Sam's Club jumped 4.4%.

"Overall, apparel and home remain soft. Company research reinforces that customers remain concerned about their finances, especially the cost of living," Wal-Mart said. "In addition, unseasonably warmer weather in much of the country, coupled with tighter consumer spending, negatively impacted key seasonal categories."

The report came as many retailers reported sluggish sales for September, including Wal-Mart rival Target (TGT) and department-store chains like J.C. Penney (JCP) and Macy's (M) . While several chains attributed the drop to warmer-than-average weather, the companies are also dealing with inventory missteps and the threat of tighter consumer spending.

The latest salvo from those hoping Gore would reprise his 2000 run for the White House came in a full-page ad in The New York Times sponsored by draftgore.com, which says it is a group of grass-roots Democrats. Gore has said repeatedly, if not definitively, that he is not planning to seek the presidency.

"Your country needs you now — as do your party and the planet you are fighting so hard to save," said Wednesday's ad, which group founder Monica Friedlander of Oakland, Calif., said cost $65,000.

Despite no overt campaigning for the presidency, Gore was backed by 12 percent of Democrats in this month's Associated Press-Ipsos poll. That's down from 20 percent in June, but enough to tie for third with former Sen. John Edwards, well behind Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and just trailing Sen. Barack Obama.

"Doggone him," Pat Sutton, 69, a Gore supporter and homemaker from Lincoln, Neb., said of Gore's non-candidacy. "That's the kind of president I want, who's willing to stand up to the hard stuff. And there's a lot of hard stuff out there."

"He's far and away more intelligent than the others," said Jason Thompson, 36, an environmental health inspector in Fort Myers, Fla. "I like his environmental stand, I think he's the more sincere of the candidates, and I think he got hosed in his first election" when George W. Bush defeated him in 2000 in a disputed election.

Longtime political aide Roy Neel, who runs Gore's office in Nashville, Tenn., said the former vice president is focusing on prompting action against global warming. He said he has seen no signs Gore is contemplating a race.

"He's making no plans, and we're doing nothing," said Neel, adding, "He's not ruled it out in the future."

Asked what "the future" meant, Neel said, "Sometime later than today."

Donna Brazile, campaign manager for Gore's bitter 2000 loss to Bush, said she believes he will not run — this time.

"He's very comfortable and committed" to his work on global warming, she said, and to business pursuits that include Current TV, a cable network he helped found. She would not rule out a future presidential run.

"Al Gore should be viable for the rest of his life" as a candidate, she said.

Gore has been in the public eye this year, particularly in February when the movie "An Inconvenient Truth" about his efforts to educate about global warming won the Oscar for best documentary. Current TV also captured an Emmy.

Friends hope a crowning third award will come later this week, when the Nobel Prize for peace is announced.

As Mozilla continues to develop Mozilla2, the second version of the platform on which Firefox is built, it will add mobile devices as a category. That means developers of Mozilla2, which is expected to be complete in early 2009, will keep mobile phones in mind as they build the new platform, Schroepfer wrote.

He didn't get more specific on a release date for the mobile browser other than to say "not before 2008." Schroepfer also said Mozilla hadn't yet decided which mobile phones the browser would work on.

Depending on compatibility, Mozilla could face competition from companies such as Microsoft Corp. and Apple that include their own browsers in phones running their operating systems, as well as from third parties such as Opera Software ASA that have been fine-tuning their mobile browsers for years now.

The announcement comes after the release earlier this year of a new version of Minimo, a Mozilla-based mobile browser for Windows Mobile devices. A few months prior to the release, the lead developer of Minimo said he wouldn't be spending much time on the project in the future. On Tuesday, Schroepfer said that there are no plans to further develop Minimo.

Mozilla also offers Joey, a project in development that lets users clip and save text, photos, videos and other content while using a PC and then access that content through a browser on a cell phone.

Mozilla is also involved with a group of companies including Arm Ltd. and MontaVista Software Inc. that is developing an open-source Linux-based platform for devices that are bigger than a cell phone but smaller than a laptop. Mozilla is developing a browser for the platform and has already built one for a similar device, the N800, from Nokia Corp.

The new Mozilla hires who will contribute to the mobile Firefox initiative are Christian Sejersen, who recently worked for Openwave Systems Inc., and Brad Lassey, who worked for France Telecom R&D, which has been very active in mobile Linux initiatives.

In June 2003, the state gave class-action status to the case which grew to include 1.7 million people who bought similar computers.

H-P is a major employer in Roseville.

"The critical question is the price level of homes in the United States, which are almost certainly going to fall," Greenspan said, as the hefty inventory of unsold homes continues to drive down prices. "What we don't know at this stage is whether, in fact, the decline in home prices will be a large one or a modest one," he said.

Given the current climate, the odds that the United States will skirt a recession now look better than 50/50, Greenspan said. In March, he put the odds of a recession over the next six to nine months at one-third, but that could be offset by stock market prices if they continue to rise, he said.

Greenspan also addressed the credit crisis that roiled markets this summer, noting that credit market adjustments were "an accident waiting to happen" given the low level of credit spreads for such a long period of time.

"History always suggests that that does not last," Greenspan said. "If it wasn't subprime, it would have been something else."

The United States came into the credit crisis amid a "fairly strong" global economic upswing, and talking about the U.S. economy without the worldwide context is "no longer relevant," he said.

Turning to China, Greenspan said growth there has been "quite remarkable," adding that "nobody is fully cognizant or understands why they have done so well for so long." China has moved dramatically toward capitalism, he said, and even though its economy appears to be "overheating," the country continues to progress.

Greenspan also said rising Chinese inflation was of little significance, noting that much of the increase was due to rising food prices.

But, he added, "at some point, they've got to slow down" and other areas of eastern Asia could begin to successfully compete with the country. At least through the Olympics, however, China "should do very well," he said.