Dutch Put Electric Cars to the Test

AMSTERDAM — When Patrick Langevoort’s company issued him an electric vehicle two years ago, the first months were filled with misadventure: he found himself far from Amsterdam, with only a 25 percent charge remaining, unable to find the charging point listed on a map. Though the car was supposed to travel 100 miles on a full battery, he discovered that cold weather and fast driving decreased that...

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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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U.S. Use of Mexican Battery Recyclers Is Faulted

United States companies are sending spent lead batteries to recycling plants in Mexico that do not meet American environmental standards, according to an environmental agency created under the North American Free Trade Agreement, putting Mexican communities at risk. In a blistering report submitted this week, the agency, the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, notes that the United...

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IHT Rendezvous: 'Downton Abbey' vs. 'Girls': Who's Happier?

BROOKLYN — Can we have too much freedom?Page TwoPosts written by the IHT’s Page Two columnists.That’s the question behind my latest Currents column, where I discuss what “Downton Abbey” and “Girls,” two wildly popular television shows set 100 years apart, have to tell us about ourselves and our society — especially when it comes to personal freedom and its consequences.What begins on ‘‘Downton’’ as...

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Illini buzzer-beater upsets No. 1 Hoosiers, 74-72

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. (AP) — At this rate, no one will want to be No. 1.Indiana became the fifth straight top-ranked men's college basketball team to lose, falling to unranked Illinois 74-72 on a buzzer-beater by Tyler Griffey on Thursday night.The senior forward took an inbounds pass with 0.9 seconds to play and made a wide-open layup. And, just like that, the Hoosiers — who moved into the top spot by...

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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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Postal Service Posts Loss of $1.3 Billion in First Quarter

WASHINGTON — Holiday shipping and the 2012 election helped the Postal Service stems its losses, but the agency’s financial woes continued in the first quarter, which ended Dec 31. The Postal Service posted a $1.3 billion loss in the first quarter, compared with a $3.1 billion loss over the same period last year. The agency said the first quarter has traditionally been one of its strongest...

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Lens Blog: Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen's Photos of Her Newcastle Neighborhood

On clear days in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, a small yet bustling working-class city in northeast England, the view from the hills of Byker can be spectacular. That shabby neighborhood’s rows of brick houses and terraced streets overlook a historic city center, the river and sometimes far beyond.Those vistas were rare in 1969, when Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen, a 21-year-old Finnish photographer, arrived. The...

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TCU shocks Kansas, 1st losing streak in 7 years

FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — Kansas coach Bill Self's Big 12 bullies are suddenly beatable.Even against the league newcomer that hadn't won a conference game.The fifth-ranked Jayhawks have their first losing streak in more than seven years after trailing throughout in a 62-55 loss Wednesday night at TCU, which had never before beaten a top 5 team."It's not so much that we lost, it's just so much to me...

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Well: Think Like a Doctor: A Confused and Terrified Patient

The Challenge: Can you solve the mystery of a middle-aged man recovering from a serious illness who suddenly becomes frightened and confused?Every month the Diagnosis column of The New York Times Magazine asks Well readers to sift through a difficult case and solve a diagnostic riddle. Below you will find a summary of a case involving a 55-year-old man well on his way to recovering from a series of...

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TIMESCAST: PC Industry Shifts as Dell Goes Private

February 6, 2013By Fritzie Andrade, Zena Barakat, Emily B. Hager, Erica Berenstein, Krishnan Vasudevan, Kriston Lewis, Abe Sater and Robin LindsayTimesCast Media+Tech: The effects of Dell’s landmark deal. | Kit Eaton reviews video editing apps. | The entrepreneur and inventor James Dys...

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IHT Rendezvous: 'Rigoletto' in Vegas, 'Manon Lescaut' in the Metro

BRUSSELS—The day after the Metropolitan Opera in New York unveiled a production of Verdi’s “Rigoletto” set in Las Vegas during the 1960s, I was in Belgium, where another exercise in operatic updating is underway at the Théâtre royal de la Monnaie. Here, Mariusz Trelinski’s staging of Puccini’s “Manon Lescaut” — through Feb. 8 — situates the opera in the waiting room of a subway station.Opera goers...

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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: Getting Into Your Exercise Groove

Phys EdGretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness.This isn’t meant as an insult, but you are physiologically lazy. So am I. So are we all. Using treadmill testing, scientists have definitively established that, like other animals, humans naturally aim to use as little energy as possible during most movement. So when we walk or run, our bodies tend to choose a particular cadence, a combination of...

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DealBook: As Unit Pleads Guilty, 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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At War Blog: Remembering Chris Kyle, a Deadly American Sniper

In the fall of 2006, my infantry platoon gathered in a dusty patrol base in Baghdad to watch our own being killed in fuzzy, pixilated video clips. An insurgent sniper named Juba was terrorizing Baghdad with precise and methodical shots at allied troops, and it was all captured on film. A soldier in a turret falls in a puff of smoke. Another soldier standing along a road is shot in the head.“Don’t...

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Vonn hospitalized after crash in super-G at worlds

SCHLADMING, Austria (AP) — Lindsey Vonn crashed during the super-G Tuesday and was taken to a hospital by helicopter after apparently hurting her right knee at the world championships.The four-time overall World Cup champion lost balance on her right leg while landing after a jump. Her ski came off immediately, and Vonn slid off course and hit a gate before coming to a halt.She received treatment...

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The New Old Age Blog: In Blended Families, Responsibility Blurs

Every year, Fran McDowell waited for the summer week when she would sing in a choral festival in the North Carolina mountains, then spend a few days in a lakeside cabin with close women friends.That getaway grew more complicated to arrange — but perhaps more necessary — after her husband, Herb Beadle, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. They had a “gloriously happy” marriage — her first, his second...

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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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