Alarm as China Issues Rules for Disputed Sea

Kham/ReutersFishing boats off Vietnam’s coast in the South China Sea. One Chinese official said the new rules applied to disputed islands, too. HAIKOU, China — New rules announced by a Chinese province last week to allow interceptions of ships in the South China Sea are raising concerns in the region, and in Washington, that simmering disputes with Southeast Asian countries over the waters will escalate....

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Who Do Online Advertisers Think You Are?

Illustration by Edward del RosarioNot long ago, I decided to test how much privacy I have online. I cleared the cookies, the bits of code that Web sites leave on my computer to track what I browse and buy, from my two Internet browsers, Safari and Firefox. Then, with my digital past superficially erased, I set out to create two new identities: Democratic Jeff and Republican Jeff. Safari became...

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Israel Moves to Expand Settlements in East Jerusalem

Rina Castelnuovo for The New York TimesFrom his home in East Jerusalem last year, Haj Ibrahim Ahmad Hawa looked at the separation barrier surrounding Jerusalem with the Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim in the background. More Photos »JERUSALEM — Israel is moving forward with development of Jewish settlements in a contentious area east of Jerusalem, defying the United States by advancing a project...

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This Life: Maria Popova Has Some Big Ideas

Elizabeth Lippman for The New York TimesMaria Popova is the editor of Brain Pickings, an online grab bag of eclectic information. SHE is the mastermind of the one of the faster growing literary empires on the Internet, yet she is virtually unknown. She is the champion of old-fashioned ideas, yet she is only 28 years old. She is a fierce defender of books, yet she insists she will never write one herself....

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Hockey Coaches Defy Doctors on Concussions, Study Finds

Despite several years of intensive research, coverage and discussion about the dangers of concussions, the idea of playing through head injuries is so deeply rooted in hockey culture that two university teams kept concussed players on the ice even though they were taking part in a major concussion study. The study, which was published Friday in a series of articles in the journal Neurosurgical...

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Hockey Coaches Defy Doctors on Concussions, Study Finds

Despite several years of intensive research, coverage and discussion about the dangers of concussions, the idea of playing through head injuries is so deeply rooted in hockey culture that two university teams kept concussed players on the ice even though they were taking part in a major concussion study. The study, which was published Friday in a series of articles in the journal Neurosurgical...

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France Reaches Deal to Save Jobs at Steel Plant

PARIS — The French government reached an agreement late Friday with the steel giant ArcelorMittal that commits it to investing 180 million euros over five years in one of its three large French factories and avoids the elimination of about 600 jobs. The deal, announced by Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, brings to an end a tense two-month standoff that escalated earlier this week into the...

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Myanmar Security Forces Use Incendiary Devices in Raid on Protest Camp

BANGKOK — Security forces in Myanmar mounted a violent raid on Thursday against Buddhist monks and villagers who have been protesting the expansion of a copper mine. The crackdown was the largest since the civilian government of President Thein Sein came to power 20 months ago. Witnesses said dozens of monks and other protesters were injured when security forces used incendiary devices that...

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Bryce Bayer, Inventor of a Filter to Make Color Digital Pictures, Dies at 83

Bryce Bayer, a retired Eastman Kodak research scientist who invented the checkerboard-like filter that has allowed millions of digital cameras to capture vivid color images, died on Nov. 13 in Bath, Me. He was 83. The cause was a long illness related to dementia, his son Douglas said. “Without his invention we’d still be getting only black-and-white pictures from our digital cameras,”...

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Clearing the Fog Around Personality Disorders

For years they have lived as orphans and outliers, a colony of misfit characters on their own island: the bizarre one and the needy one, the untrusting and the crooked, the grandiose and the cowardly. Their customs and rituals are as captivating as any tribe’s, and at least as mystifying. Every mental anthropologist who has visited their world seems to walk away with a different story, a...

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Clearing the Fog Around Personality Disorders

For years they have lived as orphans and outliers, a colony of misfit characters on their own island: the bizarre one and the needy one, the untrusting and the crooked, the grandiose and the cowardly. Their customs and rituals are as captivating as any tribe’s, and at least as mystifying. Every mental anthropologist who has visited their world seems to walk away with a different story, a...

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U.S. Growth Revised Up, but Year-End Slowdown Is Feared

Even as the government said that the United States economy grew faster than first estimated in the third quarter, economists warned that the rate of expansion could slow sharply before the end of the year as worries mount about the fiscal impasse in Washington. Nam Y. Huh/Associated PressAn employee on the assembly line this month at Generac Power Systems in Whitewater, Wis., a maker...

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As Opposition Meets in Cairo, More Violence Mars Syria

The Syrian opposition pushed ahead on military and political fronts on Wednesday, as rebels shot down a government warplane in the north of Syria and a newly formed coalition started talks in Cairo on how to pick a transitional government to replace that of President Bashar al-Assad. The coalition, whose official name is the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces,...

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A Mediator, Peter Swire, Is Appointed in ‘Do Not Track’ Efforts

Over the last few months, an international effort to give consumers more control over the collection of their online data has devolved into acrimonious discussions, name-calling and witch hunts. Andrew Spear for The New York TimesPeter Swire, a law professor and former White House privacy official, will be the new co-chairman of an international consortium's Tracking Protection working...

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Well: Weight Loss Surgery May Not Combat Diabetes Long-Term

Weight loss surgery, which in recent years has been seen as an increasingly attractive option for treating Type 2 diabetes, may not be as effective against the disease as it was initially thought to be, according to a new report. The study found that many obese Type 2 diabetics who undergo gastric bypass surgery do not experience a remission of their disease, and of those that do, about a third redevelop...

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Well: Weight Loss Surgery May Not Combat Diabetes Long-Term

Weight loss surgery, which in recent years has been seen as an increasingly attractive option for treating Type 2 diabetes, may not be as effective against the disease as it was initially thought to be, according to a new report. The study found that many obese Type 2 diabetics who undergo gastric bypass surgery do not experience a remission of their disease, and of those that do, about a third redevelop...

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