Heavy Snow and Winds Batter Northeast

A powerful storm swept fast and furiously across the Northeast on Saturday, dumping mountains of snow, forcing hundreds of motorists to abandon their cars at the height of the blizzard and knocking out power for hundreds of thousands of people. The storm played out the way many forecasters said it would — with New York City spared the worst, and points to the north and east hit harder. ...

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Google's Schmidt to sell roughly 42 percent of stake

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt is selling roughly 42 percent of his stake in the Internet search company, a move that could potentially net the former chief executive a $2.51 billion windfall. Schmidt, 57, will sell 3.2 million shares of Class A common stock through a stock trading plan, Google said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange...

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Stars salute MusiCares honoree Bruce Springsteen

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Be it concert or charity auction, Bruce Springsteen can bring any event to a crescendo.Springsteen briefly took over auctioneering duties before being honored as MusiCares person of the year Friday night, exhorting the crowd to bid on a signed Fender electric guitar by amping up the deal. The 63-year-old rock 'n' roll star moved the bid north from $60,000 by offering a series of...

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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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Fair Game: Credit-Rating Club Is Tough to Get Into

Ozier Muhammad/The New York TimesAnn Rutledge and her husband, Sylvain Raynes, of R&R Consulting, which has been trying to gain S.E.C. recognition as a debt ratings agency. That was probably a common response to the news last week that the Justice Department had filed a civil suit against Standard & Poor’s, one of the two big credit ratings agencies that...

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The Lede: Updates on the Winter Storm

Updates on the Winter Storm - NYTimes.com!--!-- ...

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LinkedIn shares soar after stellar results

(Reuters) - Shares of LinkedIn Corp climbed nearly 21 percent in midday trading on Friday on results that beat analysts' estimates for the seventh quarter in a row. The social networking website for professionals reported on Thursday an 81 percent increase in fourth-quarter revenue and raised its forecast for the current first quarter. Several research firms raised their...

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Rock pioneer Patti Smith receives Hepburn medal

BRYN MAWR, Pa. (AP) — Rock musician and writer Patti Smith is being honored by Bryn Mawr College with a medal named after the late actress Katharine Hepburn.Smith received the 2013 Katharine Hepburn Medal on Thursday night in a ceremony at the women's liberal arts school in suburban Philadelphia.Smith is recognized as a rock 'n' roll trailblazer whose work as a musician, writer, performer and visual...

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The New Old Age: 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...

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Media Decoder Blog: Macmillan Settles With Justice Department on E-book Pricing

11:58 a.m. | Updated Macmillan said on Friday that it had agreed to settle a lawsuit brought by the Department of Justice over the pricing of e-books, asserting that the potential costs of continuing to fight the action were too high.The agreement means that all five major publishing houses have settled the charges brought by the government last spring.Apple, which is also a defendant, will continue...

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Massive Manhunt On for Ex-Cop Accused of Killing 3

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Thousands of police officers throughout Southern California and Nevada hunted Thursday for a former Los Angeles officer who was angry over his firing and began a deadly shooting rampage that he warned in an online posting would target those on the force who wronged him, authorities said. Authorities issued a statewide "officer safety warning" and police were sent to protect...

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Greenlight's Einhorn sues Apple, seeks bigger payout

(Reuters) - David Einhorn wants Apple to "think different" ... about its cash. The hedge fund manager's Greenlight Capital sued Apple Inc on Thursday, saying the company should give stockholders a bigger share of its huge cash pile. Apple shares, which had fallen 35 percent from mid-September through Wednesday, were up 0.9 percent at $458.70 in morning trading. ...

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Afghan boys from nominated film to walk red carpet

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Fawad Mohammadi has spent half his life peddling maps and dictionaries to foreigners on a street of trinket shops in Kabul. Now the 14-year-old Afghan boy with bright green eyes is getting ready for a trip down the red carpet at the Oscars.It will also be his first time out of the country and his first time on a plane.Mohammadi was plucked from the dingy streets of the Afghan...

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Well: Expressing the Inexpressible

When Kyle Potvin learned she had breast cancer at the age of 41, she tracked the details of her illness and treatment in a journal. But when it came to grappling with issues of mortality, fear and hope, she found that her best outlet was poetry.How I feared chemo, afraidIt would change me.It did.Something dissolved inside me.Tears began a slow drip;I cried at the news storyOf a lost boy found in the...

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Retailers' Sales Beat Forecasts, but Worries Remain

(Reuters) - Many top retailers reported strong January sales on Thursday after offering merchandise and deals that drew in shoppers in spite of higher payroll taxes. But shares of many retailers fell as investors worried that the sales owed too much to margin-sapping discounts and that the tax hit to take-home pay would hurt spending in coming months. Macy's Inc, whose shares rose...

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DealBook: 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....

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Dell to go private in landmark $24.4 billion deal

SAN FRANCISCO/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Michael Dell struck a deal to take Dell Inc private for $24.4 billion in the biggest leveraged buyout since the financial crisis, partnering with the Silver Lake private equity firm and Microsoft Corp to try to turn around the struggling computer company without Wall Street scrutiny. The deal, which requires approval from a majority of shareholders excluding...

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Monopoly fans vote to add cat, toss iron tokens

PAWTUCKET, R.I. (AP) — The Scottie dog has a new nemesis in Monopoly after fans voted in an online contest to add a cat token to the property trading game, replacing the iron, toy maker Hasbro Inc. announced Wednesday.The results were announced after the shoe, wheelbarrow and iron were neck and neck for elimination in the final hours of voting that sparked passionate efforts by fans to save their...

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Well: Gluten-Free for the Gluten Sensitive

Eat no wheat.That is the core, draconian commandment of a gluten-free diet, a prohibition that excises wide swaths of American cuisine — cupcakes, pizza, bread and macaroni and cheese, to name a few things.For the approximately one-in-a-hundred Americans who have a serious condition called celiac disease, that is an indisputably wise medical directive.One woman’s story of going gluten-free.Now medical...

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