Sudan and South Sudan Fail to Reach a Deal on Oil and Border Security

JUBA, South Sudan (AP) — South Sudan and Sudan have failed to reach an agreement on how to carry out security arrangements and resume oil exports, officials said Saturday after several days of talks. The two sides were in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, to talk about setting up a safe demilitarized border zone, which would require both South Sudan and Sudan to withdraw their armies at least...

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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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Business Briefing | Medicine: F.D.A. Clears Botox to Help Bladder Control

Botox, the wrinkle treatment made by Allergan, has been approved to treat adults with overactive bladders who cannot tolerate or were not helped by other drugs, the Food and Drug Administration said on Friday. Botox injected into the bladder muscle causes the bladder to relax, increasing its storage capacity. “Clinical studies have demonstrated Botox’s ability to significantly reduce the frequency...

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Business Briefing | Medicine: F.D.A. Clears Botox to Help Bladder Control

Botox, the wrinkle treatment made by Allergan, has been approved to treat adults with overactive bladders who cannot tolerate or were not helped by other drugs, the Food and Drug Administration said on Friday. Botox injected into the bladder muscle causes the bladder to relax, increasing its storage capacity. “Clinical studies have demonstrated Botox’s ability to significantly reduce the frequency...

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Boeing Closer to Answer on 787s, but Not to Getting Them Back in Air

Issei Kato/ReutersSafety inspectors looked over a 787 on Friday in Japan. The plane made an emergency landing after receiving a smoke alarm. With 787 Dreamliners grounded around the world, Boeing is scrambling to devise a technical fix that would allow the planes to fly again soon, even as investigators in the United States and Japan are trying to figure out what caused the plane’s lithium-ion batteries...

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IHT Rendezvous: How Far Will Europeans Support France's Counter-Jihad?

LONDON — It did not require a crystal ball to foresee, as Rendezvous did in our 2013 preview, that Mali would be in the news and that France might be the first to intervene there to counter a perceived terrorist threat to Europe.Less predictable, however, is the extent to which the French can rely on the support of their European allies now that they have decided to go it alone.The crisis had been...

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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: Your Twitter Tips for Going Vegan

In this week’s Well column, “How to Go Vegan,”, we asked you to send in your favorite tips and tricks for adopting a solely plant-based diet on Twitter. We received a range of responses, from quirky ingredient combinations that replicate a nonvegan dish to simple mantras to get you in a vegan frame of mind. Here are some of our favorites. To see the entire list of submissions, visit the hashtag, #vegantips.Let’s...

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Well: Your Twitter Tips for Going Vegan

In this week’s Well column, “How to Go Vegan,”, we asked you to send in your favorite tips and tricks for adopting a solely plant-based diet on Twitter. We received a range of responses, from quirky ingredient combinations that replicate a nonvegan dish to simple mantras to get you in a vegan frame of mind. Here are some of our favorites. To see the entire list of submissions, visit the hashtag, #vegantips.Let’s...

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The Lede: Live Blog: Inside the Fed's 2007 Deliberations

On Friday the Federal Reserve released the transcripts of its discussions in 2007, the year the housing market, the financial markets, and the broader economy began to unravel. Reporters from The Times are sharing their findings on what the transcripts reveal in the blog entries and tweets bel...

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Cameron to Outline a Recast European Role for Britain

Weighted down by centuries of entrenched wariness in this island nation toward the Continent — and the knowledge that a gallery of his predecessors as Conservative prime ministers saw their tenures blighted by divisions within the party over the issue — Mr. Cameron is heading for Amsterdam on Friday to set out his vision of a sharply whittled-down role for Britain in the affairs of 21st-century Europe....

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DealBook: H.P. Said to Have Suitors for Two 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 is not interested in selling at the moment, a person briefed on the matter said on Wednesday.The calls from potential suitors and bankers picked up after H.P. filed its annual report with regulators on Dec. 28, said the person, who...

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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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Lawmakers Seek Data on Energy Drinks

Three Democratic lawmakers on Thursday sent letters to 14 marketers of high-caffeinated energy drinks requesting data about the products’ ingredients and any company studies showing their risks and benefits to children and young people. In recent months, the Food and Drug Administration has begun examining the safety of energy drinks following reports of several deaths and numerous injuries...

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French and Malian Ground Troops Confront Islamists in Seized Town

Eric Feferberg/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFrench soldiers rode in armored vehicles as they left Bamako and started their deployment to the north of Mali on Wednesday. BAMAKO, Mali — French soldiers battled armed Islamist occupiers of a desert village in central Mali on Wednesday, a Malian army colonel said, in the first direct ground combat involving Western troops since France launched its...

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Pushing France Onto the Digital Stage

PARIS — When the most prominent new face in France’s effort to oversee the new economy speaks, her pronouncements may be followed almost as closely in Silicon Valley and Seoul as in Paris. Fleur Pellerin, a deputy finance minister, is the point woman in President François Hollande’s campaign to stimulate innovation. But in trying to put a French imprint on the digital economy, she has...

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The New Old Age: In Flu Season,Use a Mask. But Which One?

Face masks help prevent people from getting the flu. But how much protection do they provide?You might think the answer to this question would be well established. It’s not.In fact, there is considerable uncertainty over how well face masks guard against influenza when people use them outside of hospitals and other health care settings. This has been a topic of discussion and debate in infectious...

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The New Old Age: In Flu Season,Use a Mask. But Which One?

Face masks help prevent people from getting the flu. But how much protection do they provide?You might think the answer to this question would be well established. It’s not.In fact, there is considerable uncertainty over how well face masks guard against influenza when people use them outside of hospitals and other health care settings. This has been a topic of discussion and debate in infectious...

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Conversation: A Founder of the Soap Maker Method Discusses Its Sale

For Eric Ryan and Adam Lowry, the quest began in 2001 in what they call a “dirty little flat” in San Francisco, where the two childhood buddies from Detroit first plotted to disrupt the all-but-impenetrable cleaning products industry long dominated by giants like SC Johnson and Procter & Gamble. They started by mixing soap formulas in beer pitchers labeled “Do Not Drink” and wound up...

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Deadly Explosions Hit Aleppo University

A series of deadly explosions struck the Aleppo University campus in Syria on Tuesday, antigovernment activists and Syrian state television reported, in what appeared to be a major expansion of the violent struggle for control of the largest city in the nearly two-year-old Syrian conflict. Each side blamed the other for the blasts. Antigovernment activists also reported that violence convulsed...

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Media Decoder: Resignation Suggests Rift Between CNET and CBS

There are companies with divisions that spend billions of dollars on entertainment. There are also companies with divisions that review new gadgets and sometimes champion the spectacular ones — even those that challenge the status quo.And when those divisions are owned by the same company, there is a chance that they will wind up in the kind of predicament that the CBS Corporation found itself in...

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Well: For DTaP Vaccine, Thigh May Be Better Injection Site Than Arm

Children are less likely to develop bad reactions to the DTaP vaccine, a routine immunization shot that protects against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis, or whooping cough, if they get it in their thigh instead of in their arm, a new study shows.The research looked at more than a million children who were given injections of the vaccine. In many cases it causes some degree of redness or swelling...

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Well: For DTaP Vaccine, Thigh May Be Better Injection Site Than Arm

Children are less likely to develop bad reactions to the DTaP vaccine, a routine immunization shot that protects against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis, or whooping cough, if they get it in their thigh instead of in their arm, a new study shows.The research looked at more than a million children who were given injections of the vaccine. In many cases it causes some degree of redness or swelling...

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Roche Hires Dr. John Reed to Lead Research Operations

The Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche is turning to a prolific American academic scientist to revitalize its lagging research operations. Dr. John C. Reed, the chief executive of the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute in San Diego, will become head of Roche’s pharmaceutical research and early development group in April, the company announced Tuesday. Dr. Reed, 54, has spent...

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