Africa Must Take Lead in Mali, France Says

Marco Gualazzini for The New York TimesA French armored vehicle patrolled a strategic bridge over the Niger River in Markala, Mali, on Saturday. PARIS — With French officials saying confidently on Saturday that an advance by Islamist militants on Bamako, Mali’s capital, had been halted, France’s foreign minister told African leaders that “our African friends need to take the lead” in a multilateral...

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With Graph Search, Facebook Bets on More Sharing

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook’s greatest triumph has been to persuade a seventh of the world’s population to share their personal lives online. Now the social network is taking on its archrival, Google, with a search tool to mine that personal information, just as people are growing more cautious about sharing on the Internet and even occasionally removing what they have already put up. ...

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Personal Health: That Loving Feeling Takes a Lot of Work

When people fall in love and decide to marry, the expectation is nearly always that love and marriage and the happiness they bring will last; as the vows say, till death do us part. Only the most cynical among us would think, walking down the aisle, that if things don’t work out, “We can always split.”But the divorce rate in the United States is half the marriage rate, and that does not bode well...

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Personal Health: That Loving Feeling Takes a Lot of Work

When people fall in love and decide to marry, the expectation is nearly always that love and marriage and the happiness they bring will last; as the vows say, till death do us part. Only the most cynical among us would think, walking down the aisle, that if things don’t work out, “We can always split.”But the divorce rate in the United States is half the marriage rate, and that does not bode well...

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Corner Office: Kon Leong of ZL Technologies, on Encouraging Creativity

This interview with Kon Leong, co-founder, president and chief executive of ZL Technologies, an e-mail and file archiving company, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant. Q. Tell me about some important leadership lessons you’ve learned. A. One of my early jobs was selling computer hardware. What I learned about selling was probably more valuable than my M.B.A. I had seen selling...

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British Leader, David Cameron, Sees Wider Threat in Algeria Attack

Oli Scarff/Getty ImagesPrime Minister David Cameron en route to Parliament to deliver a statement on the Algeria hostage crisis. LONDON — With more than 60 hostages still missing and many feared dead, Prime Minister David Cameron told Parliament on Friday that the Qaeda-linked attack on a remote Algerian gas installation demonstrated the need for Britain and its western allies, including the United...

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DealBook: Michael Dell’s Empire in a Buyout Spotlight

The computer empire of Michael S. Dell spreads across a campus of low-slung buildings in Round Rock, Tex.But his financial empire — estimated at $16 billion — occupies the 21st floor of a dark glass skyscraper on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.It is there that MSD Capital, started by Mr. Dell 15 years ago to manage his fortune, has quietly built a reputation as one of the smartest investors on Wall Street....

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Flu Season ‘Worse Than Average,’ Officials Say

This year’s flu season is shaping up to be “worse than average and particularly bad for the elderly,” Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the nation’s top federal disease-control official, said Friday. But the season appears to have peaked, added Dr. Frieden, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with new cases declining over most of the nation except for the far West. ...

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Flu Season ‘Worse Than Average,’ Officials Say

This year’s flu season is shaping up to be “worse than average and particularly bad for the elderly,” Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the nation’s top federal disease-control official, said Friday. But the season appears to have peaked, added Dr. Frieden, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with new cases declining over most of the nation except for the far West. ...

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Your Money: Finding Investment Advice for More Modest Retirement Accounts

If you’re perfectly capable of running your own retirement savings, selecting the right mix of low-cost investments, rebalancing at the right time and not buying and selling out of fear or greed, then good for you. But the majority of people — maybe the vast majority — are not like that. They may be smart enough to do the right thing, in theory, but they forget or slip up or are taken in...

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IHT Rendezvous: Jihadist Kingpin Suspected in Hostage Seizure

LONDON — Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the one-eyed smuggler-jihadist said to be behind the seizure of foreign hostages at a gas plant in Algeria, has been a notorious kingpin of the Sahara for more than a decade.As a successful kidnapper, cigarette smuggler — he is nicknamed “Mr. Marlboro” — and go-between for Al Qaeda, Mr. Belmokhtar has been a wanted man in his native Algeria after returning from training...

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Bits Blog: Facebook's Other Big Disruption

Facebook just made a potentially game-changing announcement. It got less fanfare than Tuesday’s announcement that it is going into the social search business, but this other announcement may have bigger long-term implications for the technology industry.Put simply, some of the world’s biggest computing systems just got a little cheaper, and a lot easier to configure. As a consequence, the companies...

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Well: Life, Interrupted: Brotherly Love

Life, InterruptedSuleika Jaouad writes about her experiences as a young adult with cancer.There are a lot of things about having cancer in your 20s that feel absurd. One of those instances was when I found myself calling my brother Adam on Skype while he was studying abroad in Argentina to tell him that I had just been diagnosed with leukemia and that — no pressure — he was my only hope for a cure.Today,...

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Well: Life, Interrupted: Brotherly Love

Life, InterruptedSuleika Jaouad writes about her experiences as a young adult with cancer.There are a lot of things about having cancer in your 20s that feel absurd. One of those instances was when I found myself calling my brother Adam on Skype while he was studying abroad in Argentina to tell him that I had just been diagnosed with leukemia and that — no pressure — he was my only hope for a cure.Today,...

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With Debt to Sell, Troubled Euro Nations Find Willing Buyers

MADRID — January is turning out to be a bumper month for Spain and some of the euro zone economies most in need of debt financing, with governments and companies flooding the market with bonds that have sold at significantly lower interest rates than just a few months ago. On Thursday, the Spanish Treasury sold €4.5 billion, or $5.9 billion, of debt, including bonds with a maturity of as...

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China Arrests 7 in New Effort to Stop Tibetan Self-Immolations

BEIJING — The authorities in northwest China have detained seven people they claim organized the fatal self-immolation of a Tibetan villager in October, photographed his burning body and then sent the images abroad. The arrests, announced Tuesday by Xinhua, the official news agency, suggest that the Chinese government is increasing the use of its newest strategy against the politically motivated...

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DealBook: H.P. Said to Field Takeover Inquiries for Autonomy and E.D.S. Units

Hewlett-Packard has received a number of inquiries from would-be buyers for its Autonomy and Electronic Data Systems units in recent weeks, though the technology company isn’t interested in selling at the moment, a person briefed on the matter said on Wednesday.The volume of calls from potential suitors and bankers picked up after H.P. filed its annual report with regulators on Dec. 28, this person...

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Ask Well: Help for the Deskbound

One of the problems with office work is that many of us are using chairs that don’t fit our bodies very well or give adequate support to the back, said Jack Dennerlein, a professor at Northeastern’s Bouvé College of Health Sciences in Boston who specializes in ergonomics and safety. If you are experiencing back pain, you may be able to adjust your chair to increase its lumbar support. A good office...

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Ask Well: Help for the Deskbound

One of the problems with office work is that many of us are using chairs that don’t fit our bodies very well or give adequate support to the back, said Jack Dennerlein, a professor at Northeastern’s Bouvé College of Health Sciences in Boston who specializes in ergonomics and safety. If you are experiencing back pain, you may be able to adjust your chair to increase its lumbar support. A good office...

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DealBook: Goldman Sachs Earnings Soar

9:46 a.m. | Updated Goldman Sachs on Wednesday reported a fourth-quarter profit of $2.89 billion, or $5.60 a share, a significant jump from the period a year earlier.The per-share figure is after the company paid preferred dividends, and comes in well ahead of analysts’ expectations of $3.78 a share, according to Thomson Reuters. Analysts had been anticipating a fairly decent quarter for Goldman,...

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