German Health Care Attracts Foreign Patients

BERLIN — When Jalal Talabani, the president of Iraq, needed advanced medical care for a stroke suffered this week, he flew not to the United States or Britain but to Germany, for treatment here in the capital. For many Americans, Germany is known as a way station where soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan received immediate medical care on United States military bases. But it is also...

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Russia bill to ban U.S. adoptions of Russian children advances

MOSCOW — Russia's parliament took a first step Wednesday toward banning the adoption of Russian children by American parents,...

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Cosmo Strikes Again, Taking Over Another Westboro Twitter Account

It feels a little bit like hacker Groundhog Day. After hijacking a Westboro Baptist Church leader’s Twitter account on Monday, Wired has confirmed that the 15-year-old hacker known as Cosmo the God took over another account belonging to one of the of the same church members on Wednesday, using much the same method.A source with direct knowledge of the attack who spoke...

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Music, roses at singer Jenni Rivera’s memorial

UNIVERSAL CITY, Calif. (AP) — Jenni Rivera‘s “celestial graduation” was marked by festive music, heartfelt speeches in Spanish and English and passionate chants of “Jen-ni! Jen-ni!”Rivera’s children and famed singers Olga Tanon and Joan Sebastian performed during the nearly 2 ½-hour memorial service Wednesday at the Gibson Amphitheatre, where thousands of fans gathered to salute the “Diva de la Banda”...

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F.D.A. and States Meet About Regulation of Drug Compounders

Mary Calvert/ReutersMargaret Hamburg, the F.D.A. commissioner, testified on the meningitis outbreak before Congress in November. She addressed the need for greater federal oversight of large compounding pharmacies, which mix batches of drugs on their own, often for much lower prices than major manufacturers charge. SILVER SPRING, Md. – The Food and Drug Administration conferred with public health...

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State of the Art: Android Cameras From Nikon and Samsung Go Beyond Cellphones - Review

60 Seconds with Pogue: Android Cameras: David Pogue reviews the Nikon Coolpix S800C and the Samsung Galaxy Camera.“Android camera.” Wow, that has a weird ring, doesn’t it? You just don’t think of a camera as having an operating system. It’s like saying “Windows toaster” or “Unix jump rope.” But yes, that’s what it has come to. Ever since cellphone cameras got good enough for everyday...

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Two more funerals in Newtown; NRA responds to school massacre

NEWTOWN, Conn. -- Two more of the children killed by a gunman who invaded a Connecticut elementary school were buried on Tuesday...

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Instagram Puts a Sunny Filter on Its Terms of Service

Instagram won’t be selling your food photos to Denny’s after all.The popular photo-sharing site made an abrupt about-face on Tuesday and said it will remove a portion of its updated terms of service that would have allowed Instagram to use your photographs, likeness, photo metadata (location information) and screen name to generate revenue from third-party businesses and “other entities” without...

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Naomi Watts pulls off “The Impossible” to critical acclaim

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Days after the devastating 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, actress Naomi Watts took part in a fundraising telethon spearheaded by George Clooney to help the region’s hundreds of thousands of people in 14 nations whose lives were shattered.Little did Watts know that eight years later she would be starring in “The Impossible,” out in the U.S. movie theaters on Friday, about a real...

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DealBook: Private Equity Giant to Sell Gunmaker; Cites Massacre

12:12 p.m. | Updated The investment firm Cerberus Capital Management announced Tuesday that it would sell its stake in the country’s largest gun maker after one of the company’s guns was used in the Connecticut school shootings.Cerberus said that it was putting the company, Freedom Group, up for sale just hours after one of its largest investors, the California teachers’ pension fund, said it was...

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