DealBook: Suit to Accuse S.&P. of Fraud in Mortgage Bond Ratings

The Justice Department plans to file civil fraud charges against the nation’s largest credit-ratings agency, Standard & Poor’s, accusing the firm of inflating the ratings of mortgage investments and setting them up for a crash when the financial crisis struck.The suit, expected to be filed as early as this week, would be the first significant federal action against the ratings industry, which...

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Greuel is in good position in mayor's race

Wendy Greuel's success in winning support of key city employee unions has enabled her to jump ahead of rivals in TV advertising...

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Wired Science Space Photo of the Day: Wheatley Crater on Venus

Magellan radar image of Wheatley crater on Venus. This 72 km diameter crater shows a radar bright ejecta pattern and a generally flat floor with some rough raised areas and faulting. The crater is located in Asteria Regio at 16.6N,267E. Image: NASA/GSFC [high-resolution]Caption: N...

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Keys sings national anthem on piano at Super Bowl

Alicia Keys performed a lounge-y, piano-tinged — and live — version of the national anthem ahead of the Super Bowl on Sunday.The Grammy-winning singer played the piano as she sang “The Star Spangled Banner” in a long red dress with her eyes shut. Her publicist said the performance was live, days after halftime performer Beyonce admitted singing along to a prerecorded track at the Inauguration.Keys’...

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Phys Ed: Helmets for Ski and Snowboard Safety

Phys EdGretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness.Recently, researchers from the department of sport science at the University of Innsbruck in Austria stood on the slopes at a local ski resort and trained a radar gun on a group of about 500 skiers and snowboarders, each of whom had completed a lengthy personality questionnaire about whether he or she tended to be cautious or a risk taker.The researchers...

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Thomas Tull of Legendary Entertainment Faces a Critical Juncture

Kerry Hayes/Warner Brothers PicturesLegendary is the primary backer behind the coming release “Pacific Rim.” LOS ANGELES — During the baseball strike of 1995, Thomas Tull, then a 24-year-old laundromat owner, was audacious enough to turn up at a training camp for the Atlanta Braves. They looked at his swing and sent him home. No matter. Mr. Tull swatted through the entrepreneurial minor leagues,...

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The World's Tweets Light Up the Globe in Stunning Live Visualization

It’s simple, but lovely. Web designer Franck Ernewein‘s real-time Twitter visualization, Tweetping, drops a bright pixel at the location of every tweet in the world, starting as soon as you open the page.The result is a constantly changing image that grows to look like a nighttime satellite shot, bright spots swarming over the most developed areas. But Ernewein has packaged it all in a subtly...

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Afghan singer’s star is rising, as are the threats

KABUL (Reuters) – With a scarf loosely covering a fancy television hairstyle, Latifa Azizi raised her arms in victory after surviving another elimination round on the hit talent show, “Afghan Star“.But the victory pales into insignificance when compared with the larger battle 17-year-old Azizi is fighting – to pursue her dream of becoming a famous singer despite the censure of ultra-conservative Afghan...

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Ferrol Sams, Doctor Turned Novelist, Dies at 90

Ferrol Sams, a country doctor who started writing fiction in his late 50s and went on to win critical praise and a devoted readership for his humorous and perceptive novels and stories that drew on his medical practice and his rural Southern roots, died on Tuesday at his home in Fayetteville, Ga. He was 90. The cause, said his son Ferrol Sams III, also a doctor, was that he was “slap...

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Iceland, Prosecutor of Bankers, Sees Meager Returns

Ilvy Njiokiktjien for The New York Times"Greed is not a crime. But the question is: where does greed lead?" said Olafur Hauksson, a special prosecutor in Reykjavik. REYKJAVIK, Iceland — As chief of police in a tiny fishing town for 11 years, Olafur Hauksson developed what he thought was a basic understanding of the criminal mind. The typical lawbreaker, he said, recalling his many encounters with...

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