Feb
09

A delicate new balancing act in senior healthcare

When Claire Gordon arrived at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, nurses knew she needed extra attention.She was 96, had heart disease...
Read More..

DC Comics Turns the Occupy Movement Into a Superhero Title

Eighteen months after the phrase first entered the collective public consciousness, the plight of the 99 percent is coming to mainstream superhero comics — via a new series from the second biggest publisher in the American comic industry, which just happens to be a subsidiary of a multi-national corporation that makes around $12 billion a year. Irony, anybody?In May, DC Comics will launch...
Read More..

Michael Costigan Lands two-Year, First-Look Deal at Sony Pictures

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Sony Pictures Entertainment said Tuesday that it has entered into a two-year, exclusive first-look agreement with producer Michael Costigan and his company COTA Films.The deal reunites Costigan with Sony Pictures, where he previously worked for nine years and served as a production executive. Costigan then served as president of Ridley and Tony Scott‘s Scott Free Productions...
Read More..

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...
Read More..

John E. Karlin, 1918-2013: John E. Karlin, Who Led the Way to All-Digit Dialing, Dies at 94

Courtesy of Alcatel-Lucent USAJohn E. Karlin, a researcher at Bell Labs, studied ways to make the telephone easier to use. A generation ago, when the poetry of PEnnsylvania and BUtterfield was about to give way to telephone numbers in unpoetic strings, a critical question arose: Would people be able to remember all seven digits long enough to dial them? And when, not long afterward, the dial...
Read More..
Feb
08

Big Bear locked down amid manhunt

The bustling winter resort of Big Bear took on the appearance of a ghost town Thursday as surveillance aircraft buzzed overhead...
Read More..

The Decades That Invented the Future, Part 12: The Present and Beyond

Today's leading-edge technology is headed straight for tomorrow's junk pile, but that doesn't make it any less awesome. Everyone loves the latest and greatest.Sometimes, though, something truly revolutionary cuts through the clutter and fundamentally changes the game. And with that in mind, Wired is looking back over 12 decades to highlight the 12 most innovative people,...
Read More..

The New Old Age Blog: 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...
Read More..

U.S. Trade Deficit Shrinks

WASHINGTON — The trade deficit in the United States shrank in December to its narrowest in nearly three years, the Commerce Department said Friday, and the numbers suggested that the economy did much better in the fourth quarter than initially estimated. The country’s trade gap narrowed to $38.5 billion during the month, the department said. Analysts polled by Reuters had expected a deficit...
Read More..
Feb
07

3 officers shot, 1 fatally; ex-LAPD cop sought

A massive manhunt was underway Thursday morning for an ex-Los Angeles Police Department officer suspected of shooting three...
Read More..

Apple Should, And Will, Make a Smartwatch

It isn’t a matter of “if” Apple creates a smartwatch, but rather “when.” And “why.”Moving into the hot “wearables” market with a smartwatch would allow Apple to compete against upstarts like Pebble and seasoned stalwarts like Sony and capitalize on a trend that is sweeping the industry — as shown by the vast number of “wearable” computing devices seen at CES this year. Companies like...
Read More..

The Wanted take music to television with E! reality show

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – After storming the U.S. pop charts with their infectious dance songs last year, British-Irish boy band The Wanted are set to invade television screens with a new reality show on the E! channel this summer, the network announced on Wednesday.“The Wanted Life,” co-produced by Ryan Seacrest Productions, will follow the band members as they move into a house in the Hollywood Hills...
Read More..

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...
Read More..

DealBook: Ireland to Liquidate Anglo Irish Bank

LONDON – The Irish government passed emergency legislation on Thursday to liquidate Anglo Irish Bank, one of the country’s largest financial institutions.The legislation, which was signed into law after an all-night parliamentary session, came after negotiations with the European Central Bank over swapping so-called promissory notes, which were used to bail out the Irish lender in 2009, for long-term...
Read More..
Feb
06

Tunisian opposition leader Chokri Belaid shot dead outside home

Authorities said Tunisian opposition leader Chokri Belaid was shot as he left his house in the capital, Tunis. ...
Read More..

Karen Russell's <em>Vampires in the Lemon Grove</em> Is a Darkly Surreal Treat

Karen Russell is one of America’s most lauded young writers. Her first novel, Swamplandia!, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist and has been optioned by HBO. Her fiction combines a literary sensibility with a generous helping of the weird and surreal, which has made her popular with both literary magazines and fantasy and science fiction fans. This cross-genre approach is one that she sees in the...
Read More..

“Game of Thrones” writer George R.R. Martin lands overall deal with HBO

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – There just might be a lot more dragons and swords in HBO‘s future.George R.R. Martin, whose “A Song of Fire and Ice” fantasy novel series served as the basis for HBO’s hit drama “Game of Thrones,” has entered an overall deal with the network.The two-year agreement will retain Martin as a co-executive producer of the series, which begins its third season March 31, but will...
Read More..

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,...
Read More..

DealBook: As Unit Pleads Guilty, R.B.S. to Pay $612 Million Over Rate Rigging

LONDON – The Royal Bank of Scotland on Wednesday struck a combined $612 million settlement with American and British authorities over accusations that it manipulated interest rates, the latest case to emerge from a broad international investigation.In an embarrassing blow to the bank, its Japanese subsidiary also pleaded guilty to criminal wrongdoing in its settlement with the Justice Department....
Read More..
Feb
05

Friends, investigators seek answers in killing of O.C. couple

They met in college, two highly regarded basketball players who seemed to have the same winning touch on the court and off.After...
Read More..