Plenty of Theories, and Enemies, in Killing of 3 Kurds in Paris

Joel Saget/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe brother of Sakine Cansiz (on poster), one of three Kurdish activists found shot on Thursday, said his family was convinced that it was a professional assassination. PARIS — With her signature long hennaed hair, fiery resolve and olive-green military fatigues, Sakine Cansiz was a feminist, guerrilla fighter and former political prisoner as adept at...

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Biden seeks video game industry input on guns

WASHINGTON (AP) — Looking for broader remedies to gun violence, Vice President Joe Biden is reaching out to the video game industry for ideas as the White House seeks to assemble proposals in response to last month’s massacre at a Connecticut elementary school.Biden is scheduled to meet with video game representatives Friday as the White House explores cultural factors that may contribute to violent...

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Jason Sudeikis and Olivia Wilde Are Engaged

People Exclusive By Julie Jordan 01/12/2013 at 04:45 PM EST Jason Sudeikis and Olivia Wilde AKM-GSI Saturday Night Live funnyman Jason Sudeikis is definitely serious about his relationship with actress Olivia Wilde. The actor proposed to Wilde shortly after the...

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Wall Street Week Ahead: Attention turns to financial earnings

NEW YORK (Reuters) - After over a month of watching Capitol Hill and Pennsylvania Avenue, Wall Street can get back to what it knows best: Wall Street. The first full week of earnings season is dominated by the financial sector - big investment banks and commercial banks - just as retail investors, free from the "fiscal cliff" worries, have started to get back into the markets. ...

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Featured Videos from Syria

Latest VideoNews/TimesCastBest of 2012WorldU.S.BusinessScienceOpinionArtsStyleSportsAfricaAmericasAsia PacificEuropeMiddle EastConflict in Syria The Civilian Toll of Cluster MunitionsThe Fight for AleppoDirty Tricks in Syria’s Civil WarFighting for IdlibThe Lions of TawhidMore video from Conflict in Syria HomeMember CenterLog In© 2013 The New York Times CompanyPrivacy PolicyContact UsH...

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Factbox: Video game industry meets with Biden gun task force

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Representatives from the companies that make “first-person shooter” games such as “Call of Duty,” “Medal of Honor” and “Grand Theft Auto” met with Vice President Joe Biden on Friday as the Obama administration looks for ways to curb U.S. gun violence.Biden is heading a task force formed after a gunman shot dead 20 children and six adults last month at a Connecticut elementary...

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Man Arrested for Murder in Teen's Facebook-Revealed Death

By Jeff Truesdell 01/11/2013 at 05:15 PM EST Police have arrested a sometime boyfriend in the murder of Jasmine Benjamin, a 17-year-old Georgia college student whose parents first learned about her death last November on Facebook.Benjamin, a freshman at Valdosta State University, was found Nov. 18 on a dormitory...

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Flu season puts businesses and employees in a bind

WASHINGTON (AP) — Nearly half the 70 employees at a Ford dealership in Clarksville, Ind., have been out sick at some point in the past month. It didn't have to be that way, the boss says."If people had stayed home in the first place, a lot of times that spread wouldn't have happened," says Marty Book, a vice president at Carriage Ford. "But people really want to get out and do their jobs, and sometimes...

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Wall Street ends flat as rally slows, earnings eyed

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks ended little changed on Friday as investors took a step back from buying ahead of next week's busy corporate earnings calendar. Overall earnings are expected to grow by just 1.9 percent in this season, according to Thomson Reuters data. Analysts say that, with the bar low, there's room for companies to beat expectations, and that may have contributed to the...

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Zorbing Accident Kills 1 Man and Injures Another in Russia

MOSCOW — It is called a zorb, an outsize inflatable ball in which people strap themselves, then bounce down a ski slope and, presumably, have a good time doing so. But when a zorb veered off a ski run high in Russia’s Caucasus Mountains earlier this month, there was little anyone could do but watch as the two men inside careened along a jagged ridge and then plunged over a precipice. The...

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Jimmy Dushku: The 25-year-old who is North Korea’s one true Twitter friend

Mother Jones takes a look at a globetrotting young investor who’s the only American — and the only human being — Pyongyang followsGoogle Chairman Eric Schmidt capped a controversial four-day visit to North Korea on Thursday with a call for the country’s censorship-happy communist government to give its people access to the internet, or face further economic decline due to the country’s global isolation....

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Dumb Criminal: Juan Ramirez Tijerina Packed for Jail Break

01/10/2013 at 05:30 PM EST Give him an "A" for ingenuity. Four years into a 20-year sentence for illegal weapons possession, Juan Ramirez Tijerina had had enough of life in the pokey. After a conjugal visit in July 2011 with his partner, Maria del Carmen Arjona Rivero, he was packed and ready to go – literally. Ramirez...

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Flu season strikes early and, in some places, hard

NEW YORK (AP) — From the Rocky Mountains to New England, hospitals are swamped with people with flu symptoms. Some medical centers are turning away visitors or making them wear face masks, and one Pennsylvania hospital set up a tent outside its ER to deal with the feverish patients.Flu season in the U.S. has struck early and, in many places, hard.While flu normally doesn't blanket the country until...

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Wall Street climbs as China data puts S&P back at five-year high

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks rose on Thursday and the S&P 500 ended at a fresh five-year high as stronger-than-expected exports from China spurred optimism about global growth prospects. Buying accelerated late in the day after the S&P 500 broke through technical resistance at 1,466.47, which was the market's closing level last Friday and the highest level since December 2007....

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Venezuelan Court: Chávez Swearing-In Can Be Postponed

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuelan opposition leader Henrique Capriles is condemning the Supreme Court's endorsement of a delay in President Hugo Chavez's inauguration. The Supreme Court sided with Venezuela's government and ruling party earlier Wednesday in the heated dispute with the opposition while the ailing leader struggles with complications a month after cancer surgery in Cuba. ...

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Men and Women of (Limited) Letters: Must-Follow Twitter Accounts of 2013

Scientific American editors voted in recent weeks on the 20 most informative Twitter accounts to stay abreast of the latest ideas, issues and developments in science and technology. We weeded through hundreds of lists and feeds to select the most brilliant and engaging, as well as the quirkiest of the bunch.Our picks are often witty, sometimes eccentric and occasionally silly, but each brings valuable...

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David Bowie's New Single Is No Splashy Comeback

By Chuck Arnold 01/09/2013 at 05:00 PM EST "Where Are We Now?" ponders a plaintive David Bowie on his comeback single after seemingly retiring from music. Indeed, this august, atmospheric ballad previews his first album in 10 years, The Next Day, due out March 12. Out of nowhere the song was dropped in the middle...

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Retooling Pap test to spot more kinds of cancer

WASHINGTON (AP) — For years, doctors have lamented that there's no Pap test for deadly ovarian cancer. Wednesday, scientists reported encouraging signs that one day, there might be.Researchers are trying to retool the Pap, a test for cervical cancer that millions of women get, so that it could spot early signs of other gynecologic cancers, too.How? It turns out that cells can flake off of tumors in...

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Wall Street rises after Alcoa reports earnings

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks rose on Wednesday, rebounding from two days of losses, as investors turned their focus to the first prominent results of the earnings season. Stocks had retreated at the start of the week from the S&P 500's highest point in five years, hit last Friday, on worries about possible earnings weakness. Shares of Alcoa Inc were down 0.5 percent to...

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British Soldier Killed by Afghan Soldier

KABUL, Afghanistan — A British soldier who was helping to build new quarters for the Afghan National Army at a small base in southern Afghanistan was fatally shot by an Afghan soldier in the first insider attack of 2013, military officials said Tuesday. The attacker, who struck on Monday evening, also shot and wounded six other British soldiers in the engineering regiment, three of them seriously,...

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Google offers New York City neighborhood free WiFi

(Reuters) – Google Inc and a New York redevelopment organization are providing a Manhattan neighborhood with free public WiFi Internet access, making it the largest area of coverage in New York City.The search giant and the non-profit Chelsea Improvement Co are making Internet access available outdoors in Chelsea, which is home to Google’s New York offices and several technology start-ups.The neighborhood...

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Report: Death rates from cancer still inching down

WASHINGTON (AP) — Death rates from cancer are continuing to inch down, researchers reported Monday.Now the question is how to hold onto those gains, and do even better, even as the population gets older and fatter, both risks for developing cancer."There has been clear progress," said Dr. Otis Brawley of the American Cancer Society, which compiled the annual cancer report with government and cancer...

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Wall Street slips as earnings season gets under way

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks fell on Tuesday, retreating from last week's rally on the "fiscal cliff" deal in Washington, as companies started to report results for the fourth quarter. After a 4.3 percent jump in the two sessions around the close of the fiscal cliff negotiations, the S&P has declined a bit, with investors finding few catalysts to extend the rally that took the benchmark...

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Oil Sand Industry in Canada Tied to Higher Carcinogen Level

Todd Korol/ReutersAn aerial view of a tar sands mine in Alberta, where cancer-causing compounds have been rising according to a study. OTTAWA — The development of Alberta’s oil sands has increased levels of cancer-causing compounds in surrounding lakes well beyond natural levels, Canadian researchers reported in a study released on Monday. And they said the contamination covered a wider area than...

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