Venezuela, Despite Myriad Problems, Seizes On a Hat

Carlos Garcia Rawlins/ReutersVice President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela wore a patriotic cap to a parade Monday in Caracas. CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuela seems to lurch from one crisis to another. President Hugo Chávez has virtually disappeared since going to Cuba for cancer surgery more than eight weeks ago. Last month, 58 people were killed in a prison when inmates clashed with soldiers. Inflation...

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Wisconsin beats No. 3 Michigan 65-62 in OT

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — When Ben Brust tied the game at the end of regulation with a shot just from just inside midcourt, his teammate Mike Bruesewitz looked over at Wisconsin coach Bo Ryan and saw something unusual.His coach had both his arms in the air."You know when he shows some emotion, you've done something pretty special," Bruesewitz said.Brust hit a tie-breaking 3-pointer with less than 40 seconds...

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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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Business Week in Pictures

Phil Libin, the chief executive of Evernote, during a staff meeting at Evernote’s headquarters in Redwood City, Calif. Evernote is among the privately held Silicon Valley start-ups that are worth more than $1 billion. An unprecedented number of high technology start-ups, easily 25 and possibly exceeding 40, have crossed that threshold. Many employees are quietly growing rich, or at least building...

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IHT Rendezvous: French Communists Abandon Hammer and Sickle

LONDON — The Communist Party of France has sparked a revolution among the comrades by removing the hammer and sickle from their membership cards.The iconic symbol of the international proletariat has been replaced with the star of the multi-party European Left alliance, much to the horror of traditionalists at the party’s 36th congress that opened near Paris on Thursday.What was billed by the party...

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Super Bowl blackout was caused by electrical relay

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The company that supplied electricity to the Super Bowl says the blackout that halted the big game was caused by a device it installed specially to prevent a power failure.But the utility stopped short of taking all the blame and said Friday that it was looking into whether the electrical relay at fault had a design flaw or a manufacturing defect.The relay had been installed as...

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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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Trade Deficit Narrows, Brightening Outlook

The United States economy most likely expanded slightly in the fourth quarter, instead of contracting, according to trade data released Friday that suggested a surprise drop in gross domestic product reported last week may have been overstated. The country’s trade deficit narrowed to $38.5 billion in December, its lowest reading in nearly three years, Commerce Department data showed....

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China Makes Arrests in Crackdown on Immolations

HONG KONG — The police in a restive Tibetan area have arrested 12 people and detained dozens more accused of playing a part in acts of self-immolation by Tibetan monks and others protesting Chinese rule, the state-run news media said Thursday, as the government stepped up its campaign of attributing the protests to a plot inspired by the exiled Dalai Lama. The announcement of the crackdown...

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NFL's Redskins, others should junk names, make money: panel

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Showing the profits of rebranding is more effective than moral arguments in prodding sports teams such as the NFL's Washington Redskins to drop names seen as offensive to Native Americans, symposium panelists said on Thursday. Arguments against stereotyping Native Americans will carry less weight than new revenue in changing names such as the Redskins, the target...

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Well: The 'Monday Morning' Medical Screaming Match

I did not think I would ever see another “morbidity and mortality” conference in which senior doctors publicly attacked their younger colleagues for making medical errors. These types of heated meetings were commonplace when I was a medical student but have largely been abandoned.Yet here they were again on “Monday Mornings,” a new medical drama on the TNT network, based on a novel by Dr. Sanjay Gupta,...

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U.S. Official Faults F.A.A. for Missing 787 Battery Risk

The nation’s top transportation safety official said Thursday that the Federal Aviation Administration accepted test results from Boeing in 2007 that failed to properly assess the risks of smoke or fire leaking from the batteries on Boeing’s new 787 jets.   Deborah Hersman, the chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board, told reporters that the problems seemed to have...

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At War Blog: Interview With Gen. John R. Allen on Leaving Afghanistan

The New York Times interviewed Gen. John. R. Allen on Sunday, a week before his scheduled departure from Afghanistan after 19 months as the commander of the American and allied forces.Following are some of General Allen’s comments. Brief explanations have been provided in brackets.On his relationship with President Hamid Karzai:“I wanted him to understand that he was always going to have my loyalty...

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Signing Day: Ole Miss muscles in on power programs

Alabama. Ohio State. Michigan. Florida. Notre Dame. Mississippi?Ole Miss muscled in on the powerhouses that usually dominate national signing day, landing some of the most sought-after prospects in the country on college football's annual first-Wednesday-in-February frenzy.The Rebels, coming off a promising 7-6 season in their first season under coach Hugh Freeze, had the experts swooning by signing...

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Personal Health: Effective Addiction Treatment

Countless people addicted to drugs, alcohol or both have managed to get clean and stay clean with the help of organizations like Alcoholics Anonymous or the thousands of residential and outpatient clinics devoted to treating addiction.But if you have failed one or more times to achieve lasting sobriety after rehab, perhaps after spending tens of thousands of dollars, you’re not alone. And chances...

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Media Decoder Blog: Cable TV Revenue Help Spur Time Warner Profit

2:14 p.m. | Updated The cable television business helped propel Time Warner to a 51-percent increase in net income and offset weakness in magazine publishing and movies in the three months that ended Dec. 31.The media company said Wednesday that an increase in advertising revenue and subscription fees paid by cable and satellite companies to carry channels like TNT and TBS helped lift net income in...

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North Korean Propaganda Video Imagines Attack on U.S.

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea is not known for its subtlety, famous instead for its soaring patriotic rhetoric and threats to turn the capital of its rival, South Korea, into a “sea of fire.” But even by those standards, the latest volley of North Korea propaganda is noteworthy. Posted recently on YouTube, a video by one of the North’s propaganda agencies shows an animated version of Manhattan...

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Her knee shredded, Lindsey Vonn done for season

SCHLADMING, Austria (AP) — All it took was a moment. Lindsey Vonn landed hard and tumbled face first with a piercing shriek.Just like that, her season was done. The star American skier was on the ground with two ligaments in her right knee torn, a bone in her lower leg broken.The cascading fall down the slope during the super-G at the world championships Tuesday knocked out the four-time World Cup...

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