Fair Game: New York Fed Agreed to Testify for Bank of America

A.I.G., which is suing Bank of America to recover losses it suffered on those securities, has calculated the value of the fraud claims at $7 billion. Late on Thursday, a copy of the actual agreement came to light. It was filed by Bank of America in a California court that is hearing the matter of who owns those fraud claims — A.I.G. or the New York Fed. The agreement was also filed by the...

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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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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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Jennifer Sultan Pleads Guilty to Selling Prescription Drugs

At the height of dot-com mania 13 years ago, Jennifer Sultan and a few colleagues sold their small technology company for $70 million in stock and cash. She and her boyfriend rented a large house in the Hamptons for the summer and bought a spacious loft near Union Square. John Marshall Mantel for The New York TimesJennifer Sultan faced 15 years to life on the top charge against her, and...

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Seized Arms Off Yemen Raise Alarm Over Iran

An Iranian dhow seized off the Yemeni coast was carrying sophisticated Chinese antiaircraft missiles, a development that could signal an escalation of Iran’s support to its Middle Eastern proxies, alarming other countries in the region and renewing a diplomatic challenge to the United States. Among the items aboard the dhow, according to a review of factory markings on weapons and their packing...

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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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Think Like a Doctor: The Man Who Wobbled

The Challenge: Can you solve the medical mystery of a man who suddenly becomes too dizzy to walk?Every month, the Diagnosis column of The New York Times Magazine asks Well readers to try their hand at solving a medical mystery. Below you will find the story of a 56-year-old factory worker with dizziness and panic attacks. I have provided records from his two hospital visits that will give you all...

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Think Like a Doctor: The Man Who Wobbled

The Challenge: Can you solve the medical mystery of a man who suddenly becomes too dizzy to walk?Every month, the Diagnosis column of The New York Times Magazine asks Well readers to try their hand at solving a medical mystery. Below you will find the story of a 56-year-old factory worker with dizziness and panic attacks. I have provided records from his two hospital visits that will give you all...

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Gadgetwise Blog: App Smart Extra: Starry Night

Stars, galaxies, meteors and satellites were the subject of App Smart this week as I tested out astronomy apps to help identify objects in the night sky. These apps typically use your phone or tablet’s sensors to display a view of what you’re pointing your device at in the sky in real time, helping you identify planets and constellations. Here are more apps like this to try out:Star Walk — 5 Stars...

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India Ink: Image of the Day: March 1

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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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Study Finds Genetic Risk Factors Shared by 5 Psychiatric Disorders

Their study, published online Wednesday in the Lancet, was based on an examination of genetic data from more than 60,000 people world-wide. Its authors say it is the largest genetic study yet of psychiatric disorders. The findings strengthen an emerging view of mental illness that aims to make diagnoses based on the genetic aberrations underlying diseases instead of on the disease symptoms. ...

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Bits Blog: One on One: Sugata Mitra, 2013 TED Prize Winner

Are teachers keeping students from learning in the digital age? Sugata Mitra, a professor of educational technology at Newcastle University, believes so. Dr. Mitra is best known for an experiment in which he carved a hole from his research center in Delhi into an adjacent slum, placing a freely accessible computer there for children to use.The children quickly taught themselves basic computer skills....

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Way of the World: When Supercitizens Pull Up the Opportunity Ladder

MIAMI — Louis D. Brandeis, the American jurist, famously warned: “We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” Brandeis’s cri de coeur was inspired by an indignant observation of the shenanigans of America’s robber barons during the Gilded Age. Today, we live in a data-driven age, and some careful students of the connection between...

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State of the Art: A Review of Cookoo, G-Shock and Other Smartwatches

Clockwise from top left: The Cookoo, I'm Watch, Meta Watch, Casio G-Shock GB-6900 and Martian. Every time you look, our computers have moved closer to us. In the beginning, they existed only in corporate headquarters. Then came the desktop PC — three feet away. Then the laptop — one foot. Then the smartphone — in our pockets. What’s next — computers on our wrists? Exactly. As though...

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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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