The Neediest Cases: Medical Bills Crush Brooklyn Man’s Hope of Retiring

Andrea Mohin/The New York TimesJohn Concepcion and his wife, Maria, in their home in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. They are awaiting even more medical bills. Retirement was just about a year away, or so John Concepcion thought, when a sudden health crisis put his plans in doubt. For the past 100 years, The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund has provided direct assistance to children, families...

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The Neediest Cases: Medical Bills Crush Brooklyn Man’s Hope of Retiring

Andrea Mohin/The New York TimesJohn Concepcion and his wife, Maria, in their home in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. They are awaiting even more medical bills. Retirement was just about a year away, or so John Concepcion thought, when a sudden health crisis put his plans in doubt. For the past 100 years, The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund has provided direct assistance to children, families...

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DealBook: Michael Dell’s Empire in a Buyout Spotlight

The computer empire of Michael S. Dell spreads across a campus of low-slung buildings in Round Rock, Tex.But his financial empire — estimated at $16 billion — occupies the 21st floor of a dark glass skyscraper on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.It is there that MSD Capital, started by Mr. Dell 15 years ago to manage his fortune, has quietly built a reputation as one of the smartest investors on Wall Street....

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Algerian Raid to Free Hostages Turns Deadly

BAMAKO, Mali — Britain said on Friday that an operation against hostage takers in the Sahara was not yet over and could produce “bad news,” almost a day after Algeria mounted an assault on heavily armed fighters holding American and other captives at a remote Sahara gas field facility without consulting foreign governments with citizens working at the plant. The operation on Thursday was...

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State of the Art: Imagining Ho-Hum C.E.S. as an Action Movie - State of the Art

Hi boss! I’m back from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. You assigned me to report on what’s new and exciting, but I have some bad news. The answer is: almost nothing. I mean, think about it: Apple, Google, Microsoft and Facebook don’t even attend C.E.S.; they’d rather make their product announcements on their own schedules without being locked into this every-January thing. It’s...

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Some With Autism Diagnosis Can Recover, Study Finds

Doctors have long believed that disabling autistic disorders last a lifetime, but a new study has found that some children who exhibit signature symptoms of the disorder recover completely. The study, posted online on Wednesday by the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, is the largest to date of such extraordinary cases and is likely to alter the way that scientists and parents...

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Some With Autism Diagnosis Can Recover, Study Finds

Doctors have long believed that disabling autistic disorders last a lifetime, but a new study has found that some children who exhibit signature symptoms of the disorder recover completely. The study, posted online on Wednesday by the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, is the largest to date of such extraordinary cases and is likely to alter the way that scientists and parents...

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State of the Art: Imagining Ho-Hum C.E.S. as an Action Movie - State of the Art

Hi boss! I’m back from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. You assigned me to report on what’s new and exciting, but I have some bad news. The answer is: almost nothing. I mean, think about it: Apple, Google, Microsoft and Facebook don’t even attend C.E.S.; they’d rather make their product announcements on their own schedules without being locked into this every-January thing. It’s...

Read More..

Militants Seize Americans and Other Hostages in Algeria

Kjetil Alsvik/Statoil, via ReutersAn undated photo of the In Amenas gas field in Algeria, where Islamist militants took at least 20 foreign hostages on Wednesday. BAMAKO, Mali — The French military assault on Islamist extremists in Mali escalated into a potentially much broader North African conflict on Wednesday when, in retribution, armed attackers in unmarked trucks seized an internationally managed...

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Rights Group Reports on Abuses of Surveillance and Censorship Technology

A Canadian human rights monitoring group has documented the use of American-made Internet surveillance and censorship technology by more than a dozen governments, some with harsh human rights policies like Syria, China and Saudi Arabia. Jakub Dalek of the Munk School of Global Affairs. Thor Swift for The New York TimesMorgan Marquis-Boire led the research...

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