With Malaysia’s doubles stars and Lee’s girlfriend Wong Mew Choo crashing out of these Games, Lee is the nation’s last remaining hope in badminton and its strongest chance of winning its first gold in any sport.

Lee, ranked second in the world, played down his 21-9, 21-11 quarter-final victory over the Indonesian, achieved with a mixture of delicate drop shots and airborne attacks, saying the Athens bronze medallist had been nervous.

Lee, ranked two in the world, was circumspect about his chances of causing an upset over China to clinch gold, saying although he had beaten their three players before, they were enjoying a home ground advantage.

“Maybe it’s too tough for me but I’ll try,” he said of possibly reaching the final where, barring a major upset, he would meet world number one Lin Dan.

China are gunning for a clean sweep of all five golds with the men’s singles firmly in their sights after failing to clinch the coveted title in Athens.

Lee meets the winner of the quarter-final clash between China’s third seed Bao Chunlai and South Korean champion Lee Hyunil to be played later Thursday.

China’s fourth seed Chen Jin thumped Taiwan’s Hsieh Yu-Hsing, ranked just 46 in the world, to move into the semi-finals.

Chen, the All England champion, raced to a 14-4 lead and conceded just four more points on his way to wrapping gave up the first game.

Unseeded Hsieh offered more resistance in the second game, but Chen was never in trouble, and quickly killed off a one-sided affair 21-14.

“In the second game, I was behind at first because the wind was behind me. This affected me a lot. He was in good shape and played very well in the second game and I was too slow to catch up in the beginning,” Chen said.

Chen faces a semi-final showdown with the winner of the clash between Europe’s last remaining player, Denmark veteran Peter Gade, and top seed Lin, played later Thursday.

One man who had been trapped for 139 hours was pulled alive from a collapsed hospital on Sunday, “only slightly bruised”, China’s state news agency reported.Tang Xiong was pulled from the wreckage in Beichuan in the northern part of the province “only slightly bruised and in his right senses”, Xinhua said.

Later, a 53-year-old man was pulled from the rubble in the devastated town of Yingxiu, after surviving for 148 hours. At least 63 people were rescued alive a day earlier.

But bad weather and aftershocks have hindered rescue efforts, with one tremor registering a 6.0-magnitude hitting the region early on Sunday and killing at least three people. State television reported that rescue crews in the quake-ravaged region had gone on heightened alert following the overnight aftershock, fearful further strong tremors could hurt their teams.

“Rainfall and the aftershock have added difficulties to rescue efforts,” it said, giving no details.

China has experienced more than 20 aftershocks of 5.0 or above on the Richter scale since the initial earthquake last Monday.

Al Jazeera’s Tony Cheng, reporting from Dujiangyan, said hopes of finding more survivors were fading.

“The rescue operation seems to be moving from recovery of the living to removal of the dead,” he said.

“It’s unlikely we’re going to see many more survivors now than we’ve been seeing in the last few days.

The government says it expects the final toll to surpass 50,000 people.

More than 4.8 million people have been left homeless.

National mourning

China on Sunday revised upwards the magnitude of the earthquake to 8.0 on the Richter scale.

Beijing also declared three days of national mourning, to start on Monday, for victims of the earthquake.

The Olympic torch relay will also be suspended during that time.

Beijing Olympic organisers said in a statement on Sunday that the suspension would “express our deep mourning to the victims of the earthquake”.

The government is also ordering all flags be flown at half-staff and a halt to all public recreation activities.

Rescue efforts

The official People’s Daily newspaper urged a nationwide “battle” against the disaster amid a rush by Chinese to volunteer.

“More than ever, people are aware that to win the battle against the devastating earthquake requires the contribution of the whole country,” the newspaper said in a commentary.

As rescue work resumed on Sunday, flood threats from blocked rivers appeared to have eased, after three backed-up rivers overflowed without causing major problems, state media reported.

Xinhua quoted Liu Ning, engineer-in-chief with the ministry of water resources, as saying some facilities, such as reservoirs and hydroelectric stations, have been damaged but that no reservoirs burst.

Worries about possible flooding had earlier sent thousands of people fleeing the area.

More than 10,600 people are known to be still buried nearly a week after the earthquake shattered tens of thousands of buildings in dozens of towns and cities in Sichuan, Xinhua said, citing regional officials.

Experts say buried earthquake survivors can last a week or more, depending on factors including the temperature and whether they have water to drink.

International aid

Hu Jintao, the Chinese president, has urged rescue teams to reach remote villages battered by the earthquake, according to Xinhua.

The number of security forces helping victims rose to almost 150,000, and the government added cash payments of $715 to each family that lost a member.

But some residents in the earthquake-hit areas complained the government was not doing enough

Rescue efforts continued on Sunday, despite threats of further aftershocks [AFP]

The Associated Press said that one of its reporters was stopped at a petrol station in Miangyang city on Sunday, by a group of about 15 people appealing for help for their village, Xiushui.

“The government is doing nothing to help us,” said one man, handing over a note which said it had been signed “by the people of Xiushui”.

More than 200 rescuers from Japan, Russia, South Korea and Singapore have been searching alongside Chinese soldiers.

International aid continued to arrive, with a US air force cargo plane landing in the Sichuan provincial capital of Chengdu on Sunday, carrying tents, lanterns and 15,000 meals.

Chinese authorities are also battling to prevent the outbreak of disease, with the risks heightened by the rotting carcasses of 12.5 million livestock and poultry.

“Combating epidemics is the most urgent and the biggest task facing us right now,” Wei Chaoan, vice minister of agriculture, said on Saturday.

The World Health Organisation said that the lack of safe drinking water or proper waste disposal along with cramped conditions in temporary shelters was “conducive” to outbreaks.

“Preventing communicable disease outbreaks is the key public health issue now facing the People’s Republic of China,” the UN body said in a statement.

Roofs were reportedly torn off buildings and trees blown over on Saturday, but details were difficult to come by as telephone and internet connections were affected. A UN official in neighbouring Thailand said that staff had managed to contact a colleague in the former capital as the eye of the storm passed overhead.

“A lot of roofs from well-constructed buildings have been blown off,” Tony Craig, regional emergency co-ordinator for the World Food Programme (WFP), told the Reuters news agency.

“That would lead you to believe that less well-constructed buildings will have taken a really big whack.”

Flights diverted

An official at Yangon International Airport said all incoming flights had been diverted to the second city of Mandalay, in the middle of the southeast Asian nation, and all departures from Yangon had been cancelled.

An official at Thai Airways in Bangkok said the airline planned to resume flights on Sunday.

There were no immediate reports of casualties but an official in the capital Naypyidaw told the AFP news agency that some fishing boats were missing.

The Associated Press news agency reported an official from the country’s meteorology department, who refused to be named because he was not authorised to speak to the press, as saying: “The cyclone wreaked havoc in Yangon.”

“The damage will be extensive as the cyclone passed through many densely populated areas,” the official said.

States of emergency

The Federation of Trade Unions, Burma said from Thailand that the military government had declared states of emergency in five affected provinces, most of them in the low-lying floodplains of the Irrawaddy delta.

Cyclone Nargis made landfall around the mouth of the Irrawaddy river, about 220km southwest of Yangon, before hitting the country’s economic hub.

Tens of thousands of people were made homeless in the Irrawaddy delta last August after unusually heavy rains triggered floods in the low-lying region.

On Saturday evening it was forecast to move northeast towards Thailand, which warned that flash floods could hit the north, centre and east of the country and said heavy rains were expected until Monday.

The main reason hip hop dance is so popular is because hip hop music is so popular in today’s society. So that begs the question: why is hip hop music so popular?

Hip hop music is popular in part because black culture is popular. Historically, African Americans have proven that they have “soul” and they have a better sense of “cool,” culturally speaking, and musically speaking.

Most music stems from black culture, actually. All of today’s music is related to rock and pop, whose roots are found in R&B (rhythm & blues) which was founded by black musicians in the mid 20th Century.

Because many African Americans historically have had so much soul, so much rhythm, and so much musical talent, hip hop is just one more expression of that. Some would argue that “rap” vocals are not as impressive as sung vocals. However, it takes a lot of creativity to put complex lyrical patterns into a rhythmic structure that is both catchy and expressive.

Hip hop music is based around “the beats,” in the same way that techno music is based around them. Because of this focus on the drum pattern, the dance-ability of hip hop is inherent.

Aside from hip hop’s roots in black culture, it is now part of our world culture. Older generations may not see this, but in the future, hip hop will be considered a classic style of music. As a result, hip hop dance will also be considered a classic dancing style. Hip hop dancewear, styles and influences are prevelant and will become moreso.

Hip hop dancing is very sexy and arguably risque at times. This type of dance is also popularly performed to other styles of music other than hip hop, such as rock, pop, and electronic music.

Need dancewear? Visit http://www.starsdancewear.net

The largest offshore installation of its kind in the world, the Production-Drilling-Quarters platform, is a semi-submersible floating structure with a displacement of 130 kilotons. The topside is the size of 3 football fields.

It is capable of treating and exporting ¼ million barrels of oil per day. It has twin state-of-the-art drilling derricks 130m high capable of going through 6km of mud, rock and salt topped by 1.9km of ocean at pressures of over 1200 bar and temperatures of 135 degrees Celsius. It is valued in excess of $1 billion.

The installed power generation equipment totals 100 megawatts – enough to supply a large town of about 80,000 homes, and is the biggest offshore power plant in the world. It took 15 million man-hours for design and fabrication.

The heavy lift device onboard is able to lift up to 12 kilotons at an outreach of 60m and now holds the top spot in the world rankings for onshore heavy lift cranes. The rig is fully-automated and all operations can be controlled by two people in the control cabin.

2 – The Whopping Titan

Look out Tonka. Monster trucks are no match for this 260 ton Titan (610 tons when fully loaded to its 350 capacity). It is made in Canada out of real Canadian steel. It holds the world record for the largest tandem axle, rear dumping hauler. It measures 22.5’ tall, almost 66’ long, and nearly 25’ wide (56’ tall with the bed up).

Each of its ten nearly 12’ diameter tires weigh 4 tons. It’s driven by a 16 cylinder 3300 horsepower locomotive engine. 4 traction motors located on its rear wheels require a generator (strong enough to power 250 homes) to assist the engine.

One might shudder to think about how much it would cost to fill its 800 gallon fuel tank at today’s prices or even the oil change needing 278 gallons! Relocation of this heavy equipment takes 8 flat-bed rail cars.

3 – Move Some Earth!

The biggest earth mover on the planet is brought to us by the Decepticons from the Transformers cartoon, though a German company claims it. With the dimensions 311’ x 705’ it’s taller than the length of a football field and more than twice in length.

Weighing in at over 45,500 tons, she is heavy but lighter than the Titanic. She cost $100 million U.S. dollars to build and her design took 5 years to complete and another 5 years to assemble.

A crew of 5 is needed for operation. Her bucket wheel has a diameter of more than 70’, with each of her 20 buckets which a 6’ man could stand up straight in) holds more than 530 cubic feet of material.

Rolling around using her dozen 12’ wide, 8’ high, and 46’ long crawlers (with 4 in back and 8 up front) she isn’t winning the Indy500 with a top speed of 1 mile per 3 hours! But, with the ability to remove more than 76,455 cubic meters per day, she can get a job done faster than her competition.

Whether you need Automobile Transportation, Heavy Equipment Transportation, or Motorcycle Transportation, National Transport can help you!

Adding to the mystery, police said firearms and an “anarchist type textbook” were found in the same room where the ricin was discovered two days later.

Capt. Joseph Lombardo said at a news conference late Friday that the book was tabbed at a spot with information about ricin. Police found the firearms and books on Tuesday after a manager at the Extended Stay America motel called police upon discovering weapons, he said, without elaborating.

After authorities seized the book and weapons, tests for ricin were conducted but came back negative, Lombardo said.

He said a 53-year-old friend or relative of the sick man contacted motel management on Feb. 22 to inform them about pets in the room.

Earlier Friday, police Deputy Chief Kathy Suey said the friend or relative found two vials of ricin on Thursday after going to the motel to retrieve the hospitalized man’s belongings. Authorities on Friday confirmed that the vials contained ricin.

It was unclear how long the vials were in the unoccupied motel room, and whether they might have been overlooked when ricin tests were conducted on Tuesday. Lombardo did not address such questions during the brief news conference.

“The only positive tests (were) on the powder in question” in the vials, he said.

Authorities said there was no apparent link to terrorist activity, and no indication of any spread of the deadly substance beyond the vials.

The 57-year-old man was the last to stay in the room, and has been in critical condition since calling an ambulance on Feb. 14 complaining of respiratory distress.

Authorities offered little more about the man’s identity: He left pets in the room and was not considered a suspect. A dog was found dead, but the animal had gone at least a week without food or water, Suey said.

“We don’t know an awful lot about him,” she said. “We don’t even know that it was him that was in possession of the ricin.” Suey said she could not say how much ricin was in the vials.

Lombardo said precautionary tests were also done in a room at the Excalibur hotel-casino, on the Las Vegas Strip, where the friend or relative had been saying. He said they came back negative.

The only legal use for ricin is cancer research. A pinprick is enough to kill.

Police, National Guard, Homeland Security and FBI officials responded when the substance was found Thursday.

Seven people, including the man who found the ricin, the manager, two other motel employees and three police officers, were decontaminated at the scene and taken to hospitals for examination. None have shown any signs of being affected by ricin, Suey said. All have been released.

Along with the ricin, police found castor beans possibly used to make the substance. Suey said the manufacture of ricin is a crime.

Greg Evans, director of the Institute for Biosecurity at Saint Louis University in Missouri, said the man’s respiratory illness suggested he was exposed to a powder fine enough to float in the air.

“If he went to the hospital with difficulty breathing, he actually inhaled it,” Evans said. “For some reason, he opened the vial and it must have been aerosolized.”

Multiple vials would probably contain enough ricin to sicken many people if it was spread, for example, around a buffet table or sprayed in a closed room.

“If it was aerosolized in a confined space then it certainly could harm dozens of people,” he said.

As little as 500 micrograms of ricin, or about the size of the head of a pin, can kill a human, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

In March 2003, a Las Vegas man committed suicide by injecting himself with liquid ricin. He was a retired gaming executive and former chemist.

For the most part, however, the toxin has more of a cloak-and-dagger reputation linked more closely to spies and assassins.

___

Associated Press writers Noaki Schwartz in Los Angeles and Kathleen Hennessey in Las Vegas contributed to this report.

The announcement was made at a media conference at his office here and telecast live on RTM1 at noon.

The prime minister also advised all the state governments, except Sarawak, to dissolve their state assemblies to enable the state elections to be held simultaneously.

He said he had an audience with Yang di-Pertuan Agong Tuanku Mizan Zainal Abidin this morning and had received his consent to dissolve the 11th Parliament.

The dissolution of this Parliament was made 15 months before the expiry of its five-year term on May 16, 2009.

The Election Commission (EC) is expected to meet soon to fix the dates for nominations and polling.

Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Abdul Razak, who was present when the announcement was made, expressed the hope that the general election would run smoothly.

He said the Barisan Nasional (BN) hoped to retain the two-thirds majority that it received in the 11th general election in 2004.

He said the BN machinery was ready for the general election.

“The list of candidates has been fixed,” he said, adding that the BN would field new faces as well as the old guard and would announce the names in a day or two.

Political observers had forecast that the polls would be held early next month, with nominations expected in the last week of February, based on the EC practice of fixing only 10 days for campaigning in several past elections.

Under Article 55(4) of the Federal Constitution, a general election must be held within 60 days of the dissolution of Parliament. However, the EC practice after 1969 has been to hold the election within 16 to 20 days of the dissolution.

The 11th general election was held on March 21, 2004, 17 days after the dissolution of Parliament.

A total of 222 parliamentary seats will be contested this time, three more than in the last election due to the new seats in Sarawak following the electoral delineation in 2006. At the state level, 505 seats will be contested.

Before today’s dissolution, the BN held 199 seats in the Dewan Rakyat and the opposition 20, with the DAP holding 12, PAS six and Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) and an independent, one each.

Abdullah said the government dissolved parliament 15 months before the current mandate ended as it wanted a new mandate to continue its development programmes.

He hoped that voters would show strong support for the BN in the general election for their own benefit.

“I hope the voters understand the issues in the country, evaluate them objectively and give their votes to BN,” he said.

Abdullah was confident that BN would win big based on the government’s performance and its ability to fulfil its promises to the people.

Furthermore, he said, the programmes implemented had benefited the people.

The X1–the first product in the company’s new Xperian brand for high-end smartphones–was the big news at Sony Ericsson’s press event on the eve of the giant Mobile World Congress wireless telecom trade show here. MWC (which in previous years was known as 3GSM) opens Monday and continues through Thursday.

Sony Ericsson also announced a slew of other phones, including new Walkman and Cyber-shot handsets, plus a couple of high-speed HSPA XpressCards.

The X1 won’t appear until the second half of this year, but most of the others should begin shipping worldwide by mid year. Most of the phones support either HSDPA or its slightly slower (but still considered broadband) sibling, UMTS–although some only support the latter in Europe (and are therefore unlikely to ship in the U.S.).

Windows Mobile Downplayed

Sony Ericsson officials downplayed the significance of its decision to launch a Windows Mobile-based handset, focusing more on the new Xperia brand. The X1’s Windows Mobile 6 underpinnings were referenced only via some visual cues in a video about Xperia and the X1, and were mentioned only in passing later on.

Xperia X1

In fact, the handset has a custom user interface–consisting of 9 square icons that Sony Ericsson calls panels–which sits on top of the usual Windows Mobile 6 interface. The company also said the Xperia brand was not tied to Windows Mobile, so that future Xperia models could support other mobile phone platforms.

However Rikko Sakaguchi, head of Portfolios and Propositions for Sony Ericsson, said using Windows Mobile would allow the company to broaden its customer base, and also said it was the best platform in terms of PC integration.

The handset itself has a resistive 3-inch VGA touchscreen atop an optical navigation pad; the display slides sideways in a gently curved arc (and changes screen orientation to landscape mode) to reveal a roomy QWERTY keyboard. It supports assisted GPS and Wi-Fi as well as HSDPA, and has a built-in 3.2-megapixel camera.

Touchscreens, Cameras, Action!

Other Sony Ericsson handsets announced Sunday evening include:

G700

–The G900 and G700 touchscreen handsets, which feature a Post-It note style application that lets you create handwritten or drawn notes using a stylus and then manage them at the touch of a finger. Both of these phones have 2.4-inch displays atop conventional keypads. The G900 has a 5-megapixel autofocus camera and Wi-Fi; the G700 has a 3.2 megapixel camera and no Wi-Fi.

However because these phones operate in the 900, 1800, and 1900 GSM/GPRS frequency and only support UMTS in the 2100 band, they are unlikely to hit North America, where good GSM coverage requires the 850 band and UMTS on the 2100 band is not supported.

–The Z770, a skinny Java clamshell with HSDPA support, a 2-megapixel camera, and e-mail and messaging features. It can be used with a cable as a notebook modem.

–The C902 and C702 Cyber-shot camera phones are both skinny (under half an inch thick) handsets that support face detection and autofocus. The C702 is splash- and dust-resistant (publicity photos showed one half covered with sand on a beach), and designed for one-handed operation. Its assisted GPS technology supports geo-tagging of images captured by its 3.2-megapixel camera.

C902

The C902 slides open to reveal the lens of its 5-megapixel camera; it has a built-in flash and higher-end features (such as video and image stabilization) than the C702. It also supports Wi-Fi.

–The Walkman W980 music phone, a clamshell that lets you select and play your music from controls on the external display (no need to flip open the phone). It has 8GB of built-in memory as well as an FM transmitter so you can play your music through an available frequency on your car or home stereo.

DILI, East Timor - Rebel soldiers shot and critically wounded East Timor’s president and opened fire on the prime minister Monday in a failed coup attempt in the recently independent nation. A top rebel leader was killed during one of the attacks.

President Jose Ramos-Horta, a Nobel Peace laureate, was injured in the stomach. He was flown to a hospital in Australia in an induced coma, breathing through a ventilator, a spokesman for the company that airlifted him out of East Timor said.

Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao escaped an attack on his motorcade unhurt.

Army spokesman Maj. Domingos da Camara said rebel leader Alfredo Reinado and one of his men were killed in the attack on the home of Ramos-Horta, while one of the president’s guards also died.

“I consider this incident a coup attempt against the state by Reinado and it failed,” Gusmao said. He called it a well-planned operation intended to “paralyze the government and create instability.”

“This government won’t fall because of this,” he said.

The attacks plunged the tiny country into fresh uncertainty after the firing of 600 mutinous soldiers in 2006 triggered unrest that killed 37 people, displaced more than 150,000 others and led to the collapse of the government.

Reinado was one of several army commanders who joined the mutiny. While most have returned home, Reinado and an unknown number of armed supporters had remained in hiding, refusing pleas to surrender.

Australia announced it would send scores more soldiers to the international peacekeeping force it currently heads in the country, bringing total troop levels to around 1,000. The neighboring nation also pledged more police officers to the 1,400 strong U.N.-led force already there.

“Someone out there tried to assassinate the political leadership of our friend, partner and neighbor,” Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said. “They have asked for some help, and we are about to provide it.”

Ramos-Horta underwent surgery at an Australian army hospital in East Timor before being flown to the northern Australian city of Darwin for further treatment, said Ian Badham, a spokesman for medical evacuation service CareFlight International. Badham said Ramos-Horta was in critical condition, on a ventilator and “in an induced coma.”

Earlier, Gusmao urged the volatile country to stay calm. “I also appeal to the people not to spread any false rumors and information,” he said.

Two cars carrying rebel soldiers passed Ramos-Horta’s house on the outskirts of the capital, Dili, at around 7 a.m. and began shooting, da Camara said. The guards returned fire, he said. Reinado, former head of the military police, took part in the attack and was killed.

Reinado was to go on trial in absentia for his alleged role in several deadly shootings between police and military units during the violence in 2006. He was briefly arrested but broke out of jail later the same year and had since evaded capture.

Despite the outstanding charges, Ramos-Horta had met with Reinado on several occasions in recent months to try to persuade him to surrender.

The attack on Gusmao’s car was led by another rebel commander, Gustao Salsinha, said one of Gusmao’s bodyguards, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

Australian-led troops restored calm following the 2006 turmoil and Ramos-Horta was elected president in peaceful elections held in May 2007. Low-level violence has continued in the country of 1 million people since then.

Deposed Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri has maintained that Ramos-Horta’s government is illegitimate. His political party immediately condemned Monday’s attacks in a statement released to the media.

East Timor, a former Portuguese colony, gained independence in 2002 after voting to break free from more than two decades of brutal Indonesian occupation in a U.N.-sponsored ballot.

Gusmao, who led the armed struggle against the occupation, has vowed along with Ramos-Horta to tackle rampant poverty and restore damaged relations between the country’s police and army.

The Brussels-based International Crisis Group warned last month that East Timor risked lapsing back into unrest if lingering resentment following the 2006 violence was not addressed by the government and the United Nations.

Analysts predicted Reinado’s supporters may riot in the coming days, but said his death had removed one of the major obstacles to peace in the country. The streets of Dili were calm Monday, witnesses said.

“I’ve always thought that Major Reinado was a pretty dangerous person, very unstable, (but he) has only had a small amount of support in East Timor,” Former Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. “Not to wish anyone their death, but the fact he is off the scene altogether will be a good thing for the stability of East Timor.”

Ramos-Horta shared the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize with countryman Bishop Carlos Belo for leading a nonviolent struggle against the Indonesian occupation.

Kenneth D. Lewis has gambled on bold acquisitions to build Bank of America into the nation’s largest bank. But few of Mr. Lewis’s bets match the one he placed on Friday, when Bank of America announced it was buying the Countrywide Financial Corporation, the mortgage giant brought to its knees by the weakening housing market and its own lax lending standards. The expected price is about $4 billion.

While that amount is relatively small, the risks to Bank of America far outweigh what the company is paying. Mr. Lewis must overcome many challenges that could tarnish the Bank of America brand he has worked so hard to build, as well as his legacy.

Chief among those challenges will be converting Countrywide’s mortgage customers into profitable clients of other financial services. Mr. Lewis, chief of Bank of America, must also integrate two vastly different cultures, prevent or at least hedge against further declines in the value of Countrywide’s assets and soothe anxious investors — all as the housing market weakens and the economy teeters on the edge of a recession.

For Mr. Lewis, the payoff now rides on how he manages the Countrywide acquisition, which is expected to close no earlier than the third quarter of this year.

“There’s still a awful lot of meat on the bones at Countrywide, and Ken is getting it at a great price,” said Tom Brown, a hedge fund manager and longtime critic of Bank of America. “It’s been at least a decade since I liked any of B. of A.’s deals. But this one may make sense.”

Mr. Lewis’s strategy has long revolved around trying to meet retail customers’ every financial need. Bank of America has almost 5,800 branches in 31 states, more than any other bank in the nation. But the bank thinks that mortgages are the key to selling each customer more services. People who get home loans from Bank of America, according to analysts familiar with the company’s internal data, are likely to purchase an average of six other products like credit cards and savings accounts. Other customers typically purchase only two products.

But if Bank of America is to successfully cross-sell services to the customers who have taken out nine million loans through Countrywide, it will have to overcome cultural divides between the companies.

The aggressive business practices of Countrywide, where employees were encouraged to push borrowers into shaky loans to rake in high fees, stand in sharp relief to the friendly, welcoming image that Bank of America has worked hard to project. The bank instructs its tellers to use customers’ names frequently, smile constantly and to think of a bank’s lobby as the “onstage” area.

“The cultural differences at these companies are staggering,” said John Kanas, who headed North Fork Bank for 35 years, before overseeing its acquisition by Capital One; he left Capital One last year. “Overcoming all of the trauma of Countrywide employees, and convincing angry Countrywide customers that this company is now kind and benevolent is going to be no small feat,” he said.

For instance, Mr. Lewis’s Bank of America will have to reach out to distressed Countrywide borrowers whose credit profiles would have qualified them for low-cost loans but were steered into expensive mortgages.

“The first thing to do is come up with an algorithm to figure out who those folks are and how to deal with them,” said Herbert M. Sandler, founder, with his wife, Marion, of Golden West Financial, the giant California savings and loan bought by the Wachovia Corporation in 2006. “The borrowers are the ones we have to worry about.”

But Mr. Lewis has to some degree placed his own bank at risk. He must fix Countrywide while simultaneously absorbing the company’s employees, seeking to cut costs and managing its still-hefty exposure to the troubled mortgage market. On Friday, Moody’s Investors Service, the credit rating company, said it might cut Bank of America’s financial strength rating, currently A, in light of the acquisition.

Bank of America has stumbled over Countrywide before. The bank completed an extensive analysis of Countrywide before spending $2 billion last summer for a 16 percent stake in the lender. Since then, Countrywide stock has plummeted by more than 60 percent. Shares of Countrywide surged by more than 70 percent on Thursday after reports of the deal surfaced, but ended at $6.33 on Friday, down 18 percent from the previous day’s close.

“They’ve done a fair amount of due diligence,” said Mr. Brown, the hedge fund manager and Bank of America critic. “But they’ve got to get their arms all the way around protecting themselves from interest-rate risk and credit risk before the deal closes. Countrywide has shown that you can’t rely on their executives.”

Finally, Mr. Lewis will have to assure skeptical investors that Bank of America can overcome all of these challenges. Shares in Bank of America fell 2 percent on Friday, to $38.50, amid a broad decline in the market.

“There’s been a lot of criticism today, so Ken’s got work to do with his own investors,” Mr. Kanas said. “The merger agreement hasn’t been made public, and it’s entirely possible that it provides a lot of wiggle room for B. of A., but I would expect he’s going to spend the next few weeks on airplanes convincing his institutional investors he knows what he’s doing.”

To make that case, Mr. Lewis will probably point to Bank of America’s acquisition of the credit card giant MBNA in 2005, an analogy he made in a conference call with analysts Friday morning.

At the time, that $35 billion purchase was also roundly questioned. Although the deal made Bank of America the country’s largest credit card issuer, skeptics said it posed serious integration challenges. The buttoned-down MBNA culture, where employees usually dressed in coat and tie, was a contrast to Bank of America’s casualness. MBNA executives worried that Bank of America would arrogantly overrun competitive advantages they had worked hard to build, like a proprietary computer system that was unlike the outsourced technology used by their new owners.

Those concerns, however, proved unfounded. The integration was so successful it inspired two Bank of America managers to rewrite the lyrics to the U2 song “One,” to celebrate the companies’ pairing.

“At the end of the day, this deal catapults B. of A. into a dominant position that puts them in contact with almost every aspect of a consumer’s financial needs,” Walter O’Haire, a senior analyst at Celent, a strategy consultant firm, said of the Countrywide acquisition.

“It’s like watching professional poker,” Mr. O’Haire said. “You have to look at how they’ve played in the past, how much they’ve got in the pot, and then basically do a gut check.”