Egypt Court Orders Block on YouTube Over Anti-Islam Video

CAIRO (AP) — A Cairo court on Saturday ordered the government to block access to the video-sharing Web site YouTube for 30 days for carrying an anti-Islam film that set off deadly riots last year, but the ruling can be appealed and, based on precedent, may not be enforced. Judge Hassouna Tawfiq described the video as “offensive to Islam” and to the Prophet Muhammad. The first protests against...

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Northeast storm disrupts travel for sports teams

Several professional and college sports teams were forced to rearrange their travel plans as a massive storm swept through the Northeast, dumping a few feet of snow in some areas.The NBA's New York Knicks were stuck in Minnesota after playing the Timberwolves on Friday night, hoping to try to fly home sometime Saturday. The San Antonio Spurs were also staying overnight in Detroit after seeing their...

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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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India Ink: Online Abuse of Teen Girls in Kashmir Leads to Arrests

SRINAGAR —Online abuse and a fatwa aimed at a rock band of Muslim teenage girls in Kashmir have led to arrests and a threat of a lawsuit.Three men were arrested this week for posting threatening messages on the Facebook page of Praagaash, an amateur rock band in Indian-occupied Kashmir made of up Muslim girls. “The investigation is ongoing,” said Manoj Pandita, spokesman for the Jammu and Kashmir...

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Super Bowl blackout traced to preventive equipment

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — An electrical device that had been installed expressly to prevent a power outage caused the Super Bowl blackout, the stadium's power company said Friday as it took the blame for the outage that brought the game to a halt for more than a half-hour.Officials of Entergy New Orleans, a subsidiary of New Orleans-based Entergy Corp., said the device, called a relay, had been installed...

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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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IHT Rendezvous: Stark Numbers Reveal the Scale of Elephant Killings

HONG KONG — The past couple of years has seen a stream of news about elephant killings and increasingly massive ivory seizures, a stream so relentless that it has become numbing.A study released on Wednesday, however, still has the power to shock. Over the past eight years or so, according to the study, 11,000 elephants have been killed by poachers in the western African state of Gabon, where the...

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NFL reinstates Williams, Titans add him to staff

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The NFL has reinstated Gregg Williams after suspending him for his role in the New Orleans' bounty scandal, and the Titans have added him to their coaching staff.The NFL ended Williams' indefinite suspension Thursday and approved the Titans' contract hiring Williams. Tennessee also announced in the same release that Williams had been hired as a senior assistant coach for its...

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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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Clashes Erupt in Damascus, Shattering Lull, as Prospects for Talks Dim

Goran Tomasevic/ReutersA building in the Damascus suburb of Zamalka was hit by a mortar shell fired by the Syrian Army on Wednesday. BEIRUT, Lebanon — Syrian insurgents attacked military checkpoints and other targets in parts of central Damascus on Wednesday, antigovernment activist groups reported. The fighting shattered a lull there as prospects for any talks between the antagonists appeared to...

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Braun says he used Fla clinic owner as consultant

NEW YORK (AP) — Milwaukee Brewers slugger Ryan Braun said the person who ran the Florida clinic being investigated by Major League Baseball was used only as a consultant on his drug suspension appeal last year."I have nothing to hide," Braun said in a statement released by his representatives on Tuesday night.Earlier in the day, Yahoo Sports reported the 2011 NL MVP's name showed up three times in...

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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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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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China Issues Plan to Narrow Income Gap

HONG KONG — The Chinese government on Tuesday issued a long-awaited plan to narrow the gulf between rich and poor, offering broad vows to lift the incomes of workers and farmers and choke off corrupt wealth but few specific goals to rein in the nation’s wide inequality. The proposal was mired for months in an internal dispute about whether to aggressively scale back the rising salaries and...

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Vonn hospitalized after crash in super-G at worlds

SCHLADMING, Austria (AP) — Lindsey Vonn crashed and apparently hurt her right knee during a super-G at the world championships Tuesday and was taken to a hospital by helicopter.Austria's ski federation president said doctors told him that Vonn tore her cruciate and lateral ligaments. Peter Schroecksnadel added that this is "the only injury she has, nothing besides this."The U.S. team gave no immediate...

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Personal Health: Effective Addiction Treatment

Countless people addicted to drugs, alcohol or both have managed to get clean and stay clean with the help of organizations like Alcoholics Anonymous or the thousands of residential and outpatient clinics devoted to treating addiction.But if you have failed one or more times to achieve lasting sobriety after rehab, perhaps after spending tens of thousands of dollars, you’re not alone. And chances...

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DealBook: $24 Billion Buyout for Dell, Biggest Since 2007

9:32 a.m. | Updated Dell announced on Tuesday that it had agreed to go private in a $24.4 billion deal led by its founder and the investment firm Silver Lake, in the biggest leveraged buyout since the financial crisis.Under the terms of the deal, the buyers’ consortium, which also includes Microsoft, will pay $13.65 a share in cash. That is roughly 25 percent above where Dell’s stock traded before...

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