Heavy Snow and Winds Batter Northeast

A powerful storm swept fast and furiously across the Northeast on Saturday, dumping mountains of snow, forcing hundreds of motorists to abandon their cars at the height of the blizzard and knocking out power for hundreds of thousands of people. Even with the storm still raging on Saturday morning, officials in Massachusetts ordered the evacuation of some communities along the coast as waves...

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Stars salute MusiCares honoree Bruce Springsteen

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Be it concert or charity auction, Bruce Springsteen can bring any event to a crescendo.Springsteen briefly took over auctioneering duties before being honored as MusiCares person of the year Friday night, exhorting the crowd to bid on a signed Fender electric guitar by amping up the deal. The 63-year-old rock 'n' roll star moved the bid north from $60,000 by offering a series of...

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In Nigeria, Polio Vaccine Workers Are Killed by Gunmen

At least nine polio immunization workers were shot to death in northern Nigeria on Friday by gunmen who attacked two clinics, officials said. The killings, with eerie echoes of attacks that killed nine female polio workers in Pakistan in December, represented another serious setback for the global effort to eradicate polio. Most of the victims were women and were shot in the back of...

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U.S. Use of Mexican Battery Recyclers Is Faulted

United States companies are sending spent lead batteries to recycling plants in Mexico that do not meet American environmental standards, according to an environmental agency created under the North American Free Trade Agreement, putting Mexican communities at risk. In a blistering report submitted this week, the agency, the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, notes that the United...

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Big Storm and Its Disruptions Descend on the Northeast

Mary Altaffer/Associated PressPedestrians made their way to work in New York on Friday morning. As heavy, wet snow started to blanket much of the Northeast on Friday morning, people rushed to stores to stock up on supplies, drivers lined up at gas stations to fill their tanks and local authorities from New York City to Maine started working to battle what forecasters said could be the biggest blizzard...

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Uggs? Ugh. NY Fashion Week battles the elements

NEW YORK (AP) — Mother Nature is clearly not a fashionista.An impending blizzard forced Michael Kors to arrive at New York Fashion Week's Project Runway show on Friday in — gasp — Uggs."I came in looking like Pam Anderson," he joked backstage, where the offending boots had been traded for tasteful black leather.Marc Jacobs postponed his Monday night show until Thursday, citing delivery problems, but...

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The New Old Age: The Executor's Assistant

I’m serving as executor for my father’s estate, a role few of us are prepared for until we’re playing it, so I was grateful when the mail brought “The American Bar Association Guide to Wills and Estates” — the fourth edition of a handbook the A.B.A. began publishing in 1995.This is a legal universe, I’m learning, in which every step — even with a small, simple estate that owes no taxes and includes...

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DealBook: Helping Start-Ups With Local Support and National Networks

When Will Fuentes planned an extended business trip to Seattle last year, he tapped into the local chapter of a national networking group there. Within hours, Mr. Fuentes, who founded the Arlington, Va., software company Lemur Retail, had secured a work space, introductions and even restaurant recommendations via the group, the Startup America Partnership.“Before I flew out there, I already had five...

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DealBook: E-Mails Show Flaws in JPMorgan's Mortgage Securities

When an outside analysis uncovered serious flaws with thousands of home loans, JPMorgan Chase executives found an easy fix.Rather than disclosing the full extent of problems like fraudulent home appraisals and overextended borrowers, the bank adjusted the critical reviews, according to documents filed early Tuesday in federal court in Manhattan. As a result, the mortgages, which JPMorgan bundled into...

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Morrissey rules as The Governor in 'Walking Dead'

NEW YORK (AP) — "Brother against brother," says The Governor fiercely. "Winner goes free. Fight to the death."Is this any way to run a town?AMC's zombie drama "The Walking Dead" ended the first half of this season with a wrenching faceoff: roughneck brothers Merle and Daryl were pitted in a bloody test of loyalty to The Governor as he rallied his flock — the residents of Woodbury, Ga. — to goad them...

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Well: Think Like a Doctor: A Confused and Terrified Patient

The Challenge: Can you solve the mystery of a middle-aged man recovering from a serious illness who suddenly becomes frightened and confused?Every month the Diagnosis column of The New York Times Magazine asks Well readers to sift through a difficult case and solve a diagnostic riddle. Below you will find a summary of a case involving a 55-year-old man well on his way to recovering from a series of...

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DealBook: K.K.R.'s Earnings Rise 22% on Investment Gains

Improving markets lifted the fortunes of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts in the fourth quarter, as the investment firm reported a 22 percent rise in profit.K.K.R. said on Thursday that it earned $347.7 million for the quarter, as all of its businesses showed strong gains. For the year, the firm reported earning $2.1 billion.The fourth-quarter profit, reported as economic net income and which includes unrealized...

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Boy Scouts Postpone Decision on Gays

IRVING, Tex. — The Boy Scouts of America, which reconfirmed last summer its policy banning openly gay people from participation, then said last week it was reconsidering the ban, said on Wednesday that it would postpone until May their decision, as talk of gays in the ranks has roiled a storied organization that carries deep emotional connection and nostalgia for millions of Americans. An...

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AP NewsBreak: Timothy Geithner planning book

NEW YORK (AP) — Former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner will write a book focusing on his response to the financial crisis, The Associated Press has learned.Geithner, 51, will be represented by Washington-based attorney Robert Barnett, who confirmed Wednesday that Geithner would be meeting with publishers, but otherwise declined comment. Barnett has negotiated deals for President Barack Obama,...

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Ipswich Journal: Paul Mason Is One-Third the Man He Used to Be

Paul Nixon PhotographyPaul Mason in 2012, two years after gastric bypass surgery stripped him of the unofficial title of “the world’s fattest man.” IPSWICH, England — Who knows what the worst moment was for Paul Mason — there were so many awful milestones, as he grew fatter and fatter — but a good bet might be when he became too vast to leave his room. To get him to the hospital for a hernia operation,...

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DealBook: Liberty Global Reaches Deal for Virgin Media

8:07 p.m. | Updated LONDON – Liberty Global, the international cable company owned by the American billionaire John C. Malone, agreed on Tuesday to buy the British cable company Virgin Media for about $16 billion.The deal gives Liberty Global access to Europe’s largest cable market, and pits Mr. Malone against Rupert Murdoch, his longtime rival and biggest shareholder in Britain’s largest pay-TV provider...

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Bulgaria Implicates Hezbollah in Deadly Israeli Bus Blast

ReutersBulgaria's Burgas airport on July 18 after an explosion on a bus carrying Israeli tourists outside the airport. SOFIA, Bulgaria — The Bulgarian government said on Tuesday that two of the people behind a deadly bombing attack that targeted an Israeli tour bus six months ago were believed to be members of the military wing of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. The announcement could...

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NJ Gov. Christie, Letterman laugh about fat jokes

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and David Letterman have shared some laughs about the many fat jokes the comedian has made about the lawmaker's ample girth.Christie has termed his plumpness "fair game" for comedians. And during his first appearance on "Late Show with David Letterman" on Monday, the outspoken Republican and potential 2016 presidential contender read two of Letterman's...

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Well: Gluten-Free for the Gluten Sensitive

Eat no wheat.That is the core, draconian commandment of a gluten-free diet, a prohibition that excises wide swaths of American cuisine — cupcakes, pizza, bread and macaroni and cheese, to name a few things.For the approximately one-in-a-hundred Americans who have a serious condition called celiac disease, that is an indisputably wise medical directive.One woman’s story of going gluten-free.Now medical...

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