Chinese Official Reaffirms ‘Rebalancing’ of Economy

BEIJING — A senior Chinese official reaffirmed on Saturday a national goal of shifting China’s economy away from its dependence on investment and exports and toward a more sustainable emphasis on consumption spending. In doing so, the official, Zhang Ping, the chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, glossed over recent data that suggested the reverse might be happening....

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Bits Blog: On Twitter, Steve Jobs Is Immortal

Steve Jobs is gone, but on Twitter his @name lives on. And on.The chief executive of Apple, who died in 2011, is memorialized on Twitter by about a thousand fans, parodists, traffic seekers, unrepentant haters and crypto-historians, among others. The accounts use his name as either as a title or, with many variations, as an address.The copycats include @FakeSteveJobs, @FauxSteve and @SteveJobsFalso,...

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The New Old Age Blog: The Emotional Aftermath of Hurricane Sandy

Let’s talk about the emotional aftermath of the storm that left tens of thousands of older people on the East Coast without power, bunkered down in their homes, chilled to the bone and out of touch with the outside world.Let’s name the feelings they may have experienced. Fear. Despair. Hopelessness. Anxiety. Panic.Linda Leest and her staff at Services Now for Adult Persons in Queens heard this...

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The New Old Age Blog: The Emotional Aftermath of Hurricane Sandy

Let’s talk about the emotional aftermath of the storm that left tens of thousands of older people on the East Coast without power, bunkered down in their homes, chilled to the bone and out of touch with the outside world.Let’s name the feelings they may have experienced. Fear. Despair. Hopelessness. Anxiety. Panic.Linda Leest and her staff at Services Now for Adult Persons in Queens heard this...

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DealBook: In Unusual Move, the Delaware Supreme Court Rebukes a Judge

As the chief judge of the Delaware Court of Chancery — the country’s most influential court overseeing business cases — Leo E. Strine Jr. has been called an activist. He has also been called an iconoclast, a genius and a humorist.But this week, Delaware’s highest court called him out of bounds.The Delaware Supreme Court issued a stinging rebuke of Judge Strine on Wednesday, criticizing him for what...

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Citing Affair, Petraeus Resigns as C.I.A. Director

The sudden development came just days after President Obama won re-election to a second term. Mr. Petraeus, a highly decorated general who had led the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, had been expected to remain in the president’s administration. Instead, Mr. Petraeus said in the statement that the president accepted his resignation on Friday after he had informed him of his indiscretion a day...

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Bits Blog: Google Is Blocked in China as Party Congress Begins

All Google services, including its search engine, Gmail and Maps, were inaccessible in China on Friday night and into Saturday, the company confirmed. The block comes as the 18th Communist Party Congress, the once-in-a-decade meeting to appoint new government leadership, gets under way.Traffic to Google sites fell off Friday evening in China, according to Google’s Transparency Report, which provides...

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Well: Can Foods Affect Colon Cancer Survival?

A new study suggests that what you eat may affect your chances of surviving colon cancer.The research is among the first to look at the impact that specific nutrients have on the likelihood of disease recurrence in people with colon cancer, one of the leading causes of cancer death in the United States. It found that people treated for Stage 3 disease, in which tumor cells have spread to lymph nodes,...

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Well: Can Foods Affect Colon Cancer Survival?

A new study suggests that what you eat may affect your chances of surviving colon cancer.The research is among the first to look at the impact that specific nutrients have on the likelihood of disease recurrence in people with colon cancer, one of the leading causes of cancer death in the United States. It found that people treated for Stage 3 disease, in which tumor cells have spread to lymph nodes,...

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Your Money: After the Storm: Managing Your Homeowner’s Claim

Tom Mihalek/ReutersMark Baronowski shoveled sand from the living room of a beach front property in Bay Head, N.J., last week. Many victims of Hurricane Sandy are novices when it comes to catastrophic insurance claims. There is a sort of honeymoon period that occurs after a big storm like Hurricane Sandy, when insurance executives appear on the local news offering reassuring words. Their brightly...

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Preparing to Step Aside in China, Hu Jintao Warns of Challenges

Changing of the Guard in China: The New York Times’s Beijing correspondents discuss the challenges ahead for China as the country begins its once-in-a-decade leadership transition.BEIJING — Capping 10 careful years at the helm of the Communist Party, China’s top leader, Hu Jintao, on Thursday boasted of successes during his tenure while issuing a blunt warning against unrest and political reform....

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After Many Slip-Ups, Mideast E-Commerce Gains Its Footing

DUBAI — Back in 2005, Souq.com was a new Web site modeled after eBay in the United States, catering to the nascent online retailing market in the Middle East. In the last week of October 2012, the fast-growing site received $45 million in funding from international investors, creating a new benchmark for the region’s evolving e-commerce scene. “When we launched at the end of 2005, e-commerce...

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Global Update: Polio Eradication Efforts in Pakistan Focus on Pashtuns

Michael Kamber for The New York TimesPolio will never be eradicated in Pakistan until a way is found to persuade poor Pashtuns to embrace the vaccine, according to a study released by the World Health Organization. A survey of 1,017 parents of young children found that 41 percent had never heard of polio and 11 percent refused to vaccinate their children against it. The survey was done in...

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Global Update: Polio Eradication Efforts in Pakistan Focus on Pashtuns

Michael Kamber for The New York TimesPolio will never be eradicated in Pakistan until a way is found to persuade poor Pashtuns to embrace the vaccine, according to a study released by the World Health Organization. A survey of 1,017 parents of young children found that 41 percent had never heard of polio and 11 percent refused to vaccinate their children against it. The survey was done in...

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News Analysis: For Obama, Housing Policy Presents Second-Term Headaches

A second-term president may be just the person to tackle America’s housing problems.When President Obama first came into office, home prices were crashing, foreclosures were soaring and the previous Bush administration had just initiated the bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-backed entities that agree to repay mortgages if the original borrower defaults.With the market in shambles...

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Obama’s Other ‘Cliff’ Is in Foreign Policy

For all the talk of a “fiscal cliff” threatening the nation’s finances, President Obama also faces a foreign policy cliff of sorts, with a welter of national security issues that he put on the back burner during the campaign now clamoring for his attention. Atop that list, administration officials and foreign policy experts say, is the bloody civil war in Syria and the standoff with Iran...

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A Capitalist’s Dilemma, Whoever Wins the Election

WHATEVER happens on Election Day, Americans will keep asking the same question: When will this economy get better? Victo NgaiClayton Christensen, author of “The Innovator’s Dilemma,” says the winner of the presidential election must face “the capitalist’s dilemma." In many ways, the answer won’t depend on who wins on Tuesday. Anyone who says otherwise...

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A Collective Effort to Save Decades of Research at N.Y.U.

The calls started coming in late on Tuesday and early Wednesday: offers of dry ice, freezer space, coolers. By the end of Thursday there were dozens more: A researcher at Weill Cornell Medical College would clear 1,000 tanks to save threatened zebra fish; another, at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, promised to replace some genetically altered mice that were lost; and a doctor at the Children’s Hospital...

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