Florida Sinkhole Growing as Engineers Investigate

Chris O'Meara/Associated PressAn engineer wore a safety line Saturday outside the house in Seffner, Fla., where a bedroom and its occupant fell into a sinkhole. SEFFNER, Fla. (AP) — Engineers worked gingerly on Saturday to find out more about a slowly growing sinkhole that had swallowed a Florida man in his bedroom, believing the entire house could succumb to the unstable ground. Brian...

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Comings and goings at 'Downton Abbey' next season

NEW YORK (AP) — Shirley MacLaine will be returning to "Downton Abbey" next season, and opera star Kiri Te Kanawa is joining the cast.MacLaine will reprise her role as Martha Levinson, Lord Robert Crawley's freewheeling American mother-in-law, Carnival Films and "Masterpiece" on PBS said Saturday. MacLaine appeared in episodes early last season.New Zealand-born soprano Te Kanawa will play a house guest....

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England Develops a Voracious Appetite for a New Diet

LONDON — Visitors to England right now, be warned. The big topic on people’s minds — from cabdrivers to corporate executives — is not Kate Middleton’s increasingly visible baby bump (though the craze does involve the size of one’s waistline), but rather a best-selling diet book that has sent the British into a fasting frenzy. “The Fast Diet,” published in mid-January in Britain, could do...

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Hungary Experiments With Food Tax to Coax Healthier Habits

Akos Stiller for The New York TimesStore owners say sales of some salty and sugary foods are down, but youths are still eating similar snacks, some with less salt or with cheaper ingredients, and drinking sugary beverages. BUDAPEST — Gizella Beres Devenyi, who works behind the cash register at the delicatessen Zena in a working-class neighborhood here, says it is easy to see Hungary’s new salt tax...

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U.S. Finds Erdogan Comments on Zionism ‘Offensive,’ Official Says

ANKARA (Reuters) - Secretary of State John Kerry said on Friday the United States found a comment by Turkey's prime minister, likening Zionism to crimes against humanity, "objectionable", overshadowing their talks on the crisis in neighboring Syria. Kerry, on his first trip to a Muslim nation since taking office, met Turkish leaders for talks meant to focus on Syria's civil war and bilateral...

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German lawmakers back Internet copyright, Google critical

* Critics say bill too vague to help publishers * Search engine Google says will hurt consumers BERLIN (Reuters) - German lawmakers approved a bill on Friday that aims to protect publishers' copyright on the Internet but critics branded it too weak for failing to make search engines such as Google pay for displaying news snippets. The bill, which follows years...

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Husband and wife behind 'The Bible' miniseries

NEW YORK (AP) — Mark Burnett was taken aback by the scale of what his wife, actress Roma Downey, had in mind when she suggested over tea one morning four years ago that they make a television miniseries based on the Bible."Momentarily, I think he thought I'd lost my mind," Downey recalled. "He went out on his bicycle and he prayed on it and he came back and said, 'You know what, I think it's a good...

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The New Old Age Blog: Why Can’t I Live With People Like Me?

“Aging in place” is the mantra of long-term care. Whether looking at reams of survey data, talking to friends or wishing on a star, who among us wouldn’t rather spend the final years — golden or less so — at home, surrounded by our cherished possessions, in our own bed, no cranky old coot as a roommate, no institutional smells or sounds, no lukewarm meals on a schedule of someone else’s making?That...

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Detroit Car Sales Climb Again

DETROIT – Sales of new vehicles in the United States rose modestly in February, as consumers continued to buy more fuel-efficient cars and as businesses replaced aging pickup trucks with newer models. Auto executives said overall industry sales for the month would improve about 2 percent over the strong results reported in the same period a year ago. The seasonally adjusted annual...

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After Pledging Loyalty to Successor, Pope Leaves Vatican

VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI left the Vatican by helicopter on Thursday afternoon to spend the final hours of his nearly eight-year, scandal-dogged papacy at the papal summer residence. Onlookers in St. Peter’s Square cheered, church bells rang and Romans stood on rooftops to wave flags as he flew from Rome to Castel Gandolfo, a hilltop town southeast of the city where popes have summered for...

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Donald Trump returns to the 'Apprentice' boardroom

NEW YORK (AP) — There is something Donald Trump says he doesn't know.Trump has welcomed a reporter to his 26th-floor corner office in Trump Tower to talk about "All-Star Celebrity Apprentice." And here in person, this one-of-a-kind TV star, billionaire businessman, ubiquitous brand mogul and media maestro strikes a softer pose than he has typically practiced in his decades on public display.Relaxed...

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The New Old Age Blog: For the Elderly, Medical Procedures to Avoid

The Choosing Wisely campaign, an initiative by the American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation in partnership with Consumer Reports, kicked off last spring. It is an attempt to alert both doctors and patients to problematic and commonly overused medical tests, procedures and treatments.It took an elegantly simple approach: By working through professional organizations representing medical specialties,...

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DealBook: For S.E.C., a Setback in Bid for More Time in Fraud Cases

The Supreme Court on Wednesday delivered a swift and decisive rejection of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s argument that it should operate under a more forgiving statute of limitations in pursuing penalties in fraud cases.As a result of the decision, the agency will have to find a long-term solution to give itself more time to investigate cases.In Gabelli v. Securities and Exchange Commission,...

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Conservative Justices Voice Skepticism on Voting Law

WASHINGTON — A central provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 may be in peril, judging from tough questioning on Wednesday from the Supreme Court’s more conservative members. Justice Antonin Scalia called the provision, which requires nine states, mostly in the South, to get federal permission before changing voting procedures, a “perpetuation of racial entitlement.” Chief Justice John...

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Van Cliburn, American classical pianist, dies

FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — Van Cliburn, the internationally celebrated pianist whose triumph at a 1958 Moscow competition helped thaw the Cold War and launched a spectacular career that made him the rare classical musician to enjoy rock-star status, died Wednesday after a fight with bone cancer. He was 78.Cliburn died at his home in Fort Worth surrounded by loved ones, said his publicist and longtime...

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Personal Health: Too Many Pills in Pregnancy

The thalidomide disaster of the early 1960s left thousands of babies with deformed limbs because their mothers innocently took a sleeping pill thought to be safe during pregnancy,In its well-publicized wake, countless pregnant women avoided all medications, fearing that any drug they took could jeopardize their babies’ development.I was terrified in December 1968 when, during the first weeks of my...

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