The Lede Blog: Rorschach in Hebron: Grainy Footage Fails to End Arguments Over Fatal Shooting

Video of a fatal shooting last week at a checkpoint in the West Bank city of Hebron, released by Israel’s military.When the Israel Defense Forces released 49 seconds of grainy, black-and-white video this week, showing some of what happened at a checkpoint in the West Bank city of Hebron before the fatal shooting of a Palestinian teenager by an Israeli officer, a military spokesman expressed confidence...

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Amazon Book Reviews Deleted in a Purge Aimed at Manipulation

Giving raves to family members is no longer acceptable. Neither is writers’ reviewing other writers. But showering five stars on a book you admittedly have not read is fine. After several well-publicized cases involving writers buying or manipulating their reviews, Amazon is cracking down. Writers say thousands of reviews have been deleted from the shopping site in recent months. Amazon...

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Genetic Gamble : Drugs Aim to Make Several Types of Cancer Self-Destruct

C.J. Gunther for The New York TimesDr. Donald Bergstrom is a cancer specialist at Sanofi, one of three companies working on a drug to restore a tendency of damaged cells to self-destruct. For the first time ever, three pharmaceutical companies are poised to test whether new drugs can work against a wide range of cancers independently of where they originated — breast, prostate, liver, lung. The drugs...

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Genetic Gamble : Drugs Aim to Make Several Types of Cancer Self-Destruct

C.J. Gunther for The New York TimesDr. Donald Bergstrom is a cancer specialist at Sanofi, one of three companies working on a drug to restore a tendency of damaged cells to self-destruct. For the first time ever, three pharmaceutical companies are poised to test whether new drugs can work against a wide range of cancers independently of where they originated — breast, prostate, liver, lung. The drugs...

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Amazon Book Reviews Deleted in a Purge Aimed at Manipulation

Giving raves to family members is no longer acceptable. Neither is writers’ reviewing other writers. But showering five stars on a book you admittedly have not read is fine. After several well-publicized cases involving writers buying or manipulating their reviews, Amazon is cracking down. Writers say thousands of reviews have been deleted from the shopping site in recent months. Amazon...

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Obama Nominates Kerry for Secretary of State

WASHINGTON — President Obama nominated Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts as secretary of state on Friday, choosing an elder of the Democratic Party’s foreign policy establishment and a crucial political ally in the Senate to succeed Hillary Rodham Clinton. “In a sense, John’s entire life has prepared him for this role,” Mr. Obama said, making the widely expected announcement at the White...

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As Shoppers Hop From Tablet to PC to Phone, Retailers Try to Adapt

Ryan O’Neil, a Connecticut government employee, was in the market to buy a digital weather station this month. His wife researched options on their iPad, but even though she found the lowest-price option there, Mr. O’Neil made the purchase on his laptop. “I do use the iPad to browse sites,” Mr. O’Neil said, but when it comes time to close the deal, he finds it easier to do on a computer....

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The New Old Age Blog: The Ex-Wives Club

Weather permitting, Kappy Lundy and Barbara Thompson are heading out to Vancouver, Wash., on Saturday night to have a holiday dinner with the parents of their daughter’s husband.Yes, these women both mothered the same children — now grown and with children of their own. Ms. Lundy is their biological parent; Ms. Thompson is the stepmother who married their father after he and Ms. Lundy divorced.But...

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The New Old Age Blog: The Ex-Wives Club

Weather permitting, Kappy Lundy and Barbara Thompson are heading out to Vancouver, Wash., on Saturday night to have a holiday dinner with the parents of their daughter’s husband.Yes, these women both mothered the same children — now grown and with children of their own. Ms. Lundy is their biological parent; Ms. Thompson is the stepmother who married their father after he and Ms. Lundy divorced.But...

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DealBook: Former SAC Trader Is Indicted

A former SAC Capital Advisors portfolio manager was indicted on Friday on securities fraud and conspiracy charges in a case that federal prosecutors have called the most lucrative insider trading scheme ever uncovered.A federal grand jury in Manhattan indicted the former portfolio manager, Mathew Martoma, a month after the government arrested on him charges that he used inside tips about a clinical...

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The Lede Blog: Awaiting the End in a Small Turkish Town

Telegraph TV video reports people have gathered in France and Turkey to await the end of days.SIRINCE, TURKEY — Despite assurances from leading Islamic and Christian clerics and the global skepticism based on scientific facts, as many as 10,000 people are expected to descend on this small Turkish town in the Aegean region in hopes of being among the few to survive the Dec. 21, 2012, doomsday supposedly...

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U.S. Makes Arrest in Olympus Accounting Scandal

Federal agents arrested a former bank executive in Los Angeles on Thursday in connection with the accounting scandal that erupted last year at Olympus, the Japanese camera and medical equipment maker. Prosecutors in New York alleged that the executive, Chan Ming Fon, received more than $10 million from Olympus for assisting in its accounting fraud. The Federal Bureau of Investigation...

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The Consumer: Grapefruit and Drugs Often Don't Mix

The patient didn’t overdose on medication. She overdosed on grapefruit juice.The 42-year-old was barely responding when her husband brought her to the emergency room. Her heart rate was slowing, and her blood pressure was falling. Doctors had to insert a breathing tube, and then a pacemaker, to revive her.They were mystified: The patient’s husband said she suffered from migraines and was taking a...

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The Consumer: Grapefruit and Drugs Often Don't Mix

The patient didn’t overdose on medication. She overdosed on grapefruit juice.The 42-year-old was barely responding when her husband brought her to the emergency room. Her heart rate was slowing, and her blood pressure was falling. Doctors had to insert a breathing tube, and then a pacemaker, to revive her.They were mystified: The patient’s husband said she suffered from migraines and was taking a...

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Madoff's Younger Brother Sentenced to 10 Years

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Peter Madoff will serve 10 years in prison for his role in his older brother's multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme, a U.S. judge said on Thursday. Peter Madoff, 67, pleaded guilty in June to criminal charges including conspiracy to commit securities fraud for falsifying the books and records of the investment advisory company founded by his brother, Bernard Madoff. ...

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France Details Plan to Shrink Banking Risk

PARIS — François Hollande began his campaign for the French presidency in January with the declaration that he and his Socialist party were prepared to break from policies that they said had contributed to the financial crisis, notably promising a separation of investment banking from consumer banks. “My real adversary has no name, no face, no party; it will never be a candidate, even though...

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Kodak to Sell Patents for $525 Million

Eastman Kodak once described the sale of 1,100 digital imaging patents as a windfall that could prop up and even save the beleaguered company. On Wednesday, the sale was finally announced, but instead of bringing as much as $2.6 billion as Kodak once predicted, the selling price was far short of that amount, at about $525 million. The buyer was a consortium that includes many of the world’s...

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