DealBook: R.B.S. Settlement a Burden for Britain

LONDON — The British government is taking aim at an unlikely target in the latest rate-rigging case: the British government.The $612 million settlement that the Royal Bank of Scotland reached with authorities on Wednesday over rate manipulation will leave British taxpayers liable for part of the fine.The government still owns a 82 percent stake in the bank, which was bailed out in 2008 during the...

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Child porn suspect indicted by federal grand jury

A North Hills woman whom authorities allege plied a young girl with crack cocaine and photographed her having sex with an older...

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Don't Call It a Tablet

The Surface Pro looks like a tablet, but it’s not a mobile device. It’s a portable device. Sure, put the Surface Pro next to the Surface RT and it’s hard to spot many differences. One’s a little thicker, but their shapes are otherwise identical. Both have the same matte-black, magnesium-based casing. They both can be used with snap-in keyboards and they’re both propped up into typing position...

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Smooth-singing Josh Groban offers edgier sound on new album

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – After selling more than 22 million albums in the United States and becoming a staple in the classical music field, singer Josh Groban is embracing an edgier sound for his latest record, “All That Echoes,” out on Tuesday.Groban, 31, put together a collection of covers and original songs for the album, including a rendition of one of his personal favorites, “Falling Slowly” from...

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Question Mark: Women’s Eggs Diminish With Age

Baby girls enter the world with enough of them to populate perhaps 40 small cities. A dozen or so years later, the first will make a debut of its own. And in the months and years to come, others will appear regularly, sometimes greeted with relief, other times with disappointment, perhaps most often with a touch of annoyance. Abdullah Pope/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesNot women's...

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DealBook: Dell Goes Private in $24 Billion Buyout, Largest Since 2007

9:22 p.m. | Updated For Dell, a $24.4 billion deal to take itself private is a bold move out of Wall Street’s harsh spotlight as it tries to remake itself in a world where personal computers are no longer the big business in technology.Yet the buyout — which was announced on Tuesday and would be the biggest by far since the days of the recession — is a huge gamble. It will saddle Dell with $15 billion...

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Scientists identify remains as those of King Richard III

LONDON -- More than 500 years after his death in battle, scientists announced Monday that they had definitively identified a...

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Navy's Next-Gen Binoculars Will Recognize Your Face

Take a close look, because the next generation of military binoculars could be doing more than just letting sailors and soldiers see from far away. The Navy now wants binoculars that can scan and recognize your face from 650 feet away.That’s according to a Jan. 16 contract announcement from the Navy’s Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command, which is seeking a “Wireless 3D Binocular Face Recognition...

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Ed Koch remembered as quintessential New York City mayor

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Former New York City Mayor Ed Koch was memorialized on Monday as an in-your-face, wisecracking leader who helped transform the city from a symbol of urban decay to the vital, glittering metropolis it is today.As Koch’s casket was led out of Temple Emanu-El, a soaring Fifth Ave. synagogue opposite Central Park, an organ played Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York” while mourners...

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Well: Expressing the Inexpressible

When Kyle Potvin learned she had breast cancer at the age of 41, she tracked the details of her illness and treatment in a journal. But when it came to grappling with issues of mortality, fear and hope, she found that her best outlet was poetry.How I feared chemo, afraidIt would change me.It did.Something dissolved inside me.Tears began a slow drip;I cried at the news storyOf a lost boy found in the...

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