After the Big Snowfall, the Struggle to Dig Out

Residents and emergency workers in the Northeast struggled to dig out Sunday after a gigantic midwinter storm left much of the region buried under drifting snow and reeling from gale-force wind. As temperatures dipped into the teens across the region, utility crews worked to restore power to the more than 650,000 customers who were blacked out by the storm. By Sunday morning, more...

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Boeing 787 Completes Test Flight

A Boeing 787 test plane flew for more than two hours on Saturday to gather information about the problems with the batteries that led to a worldwide grounding of the new jets more than three weeks ago. The flight was the first since the Federal Aviation Administration gave Boeing permission on Thursday to conduct in-flight tests. Federal investigators and the company are trying to determine...

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Heavy Snow and Winds Batter Northeast

A powerful nor’easter 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. Through the night, winds gusted with hurricane force strength in some places, downing powerlines and creating white-out conditions. More than...

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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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John E. Karlin, 1918-2013: John E. Karlin, Who Led the Way to All-Digit Dialing, Dies at 94

Courtesy of Alcatel-Lucent USAJohn E. Karlin, a researcher at Bell Labs, studied ways to make the telephone easier to use. A generation ago, when the poetry of PEnnsylvania and BUtterfield was about to give way to telephone numbers in unpoetic strings, a critical question arose: Would people be able to remember all seven digits long enough to dial them? And when, not long afterward, the dial...

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Flights and Trains Canceled as Storm Heads to Northeast

Richard Perry/The New York TimesIn Jersey City, Jose Angelo, left, helped Isauro Palacios, a contractor from Belleville, N.J., as he loaded a new snow blower into the back of his truck Thursday as a snowstorm approached the region. As heavy, wet snow started to blanket much of the Northeast on Friday morning, people rushed to stores to stock up on supplies, drivers lined up at gas stations to fill...

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Alicia Keys, Bobby Brown perform at Will.i.am show

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Fergie may have been absent — but the Black Eyed Peas were joined by another female diva onstage: Alicia Keys.Keys sang "Where Is the Love" with the pop-rap group at will.i.am's charity event Thursday night at The Avalon Hollywood in Los Angeles. British singer Estelle also sang Fergie's portion of "The Time (Dirty Bit)."Will.i.am's TRANS4M benefit show — which assists his i.am.angel...

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The New Old Age Blog: 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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Chinese Imports and Exports Soar in January

HONG KONG — January trade data from China on Friday showed a surge in exports and imports from the levels of a year earlier — a phenomenon largely due to the timing of the Lunar New Year holiday but also supporting the view that the Chinese economy is firming up. Economic data from China are often severely distorted by the holiday, when many factories shut down for a week or more. ...

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European Central Bank Leaves Interest Rate Unchanged

FRANKFURT — The European Central Bank left its main interest rate unchanged at its current record low Thursday, as expected, amid signs that the euro zone economy could be crawling out of recession. The E.C.B. left its main rate at 0.75 percent, where it has been since July. Recent surveys of business sentiment have raised expectations that the euro zone could be slowly recovering, although...

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