Business Briefing | Retailing: Best Buy Shares Rally on Improved Holiday Sales

The Best Buy Company had better-than-expected holiday sales, setting off a gain of $2, or 16.4 percent, in its stock price, to $14.21 a share on Friday. The holiday quarter accounted for about a third of Best Buy’s revenue last year. The chain said that revenue at stores open at least a year fell 1.4 percent for the nine weeks ended Jan. 5. The company’s performance in the United States was flat....

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Former Lab Technician Denies Faulty DNA Work in Rape Cases

A former New York City laboratory technician whose work on rape cases is now being scrutinized for serious mistakes said on Friday that she had been unaware there were problems in her work and, disputing an earlier report, denied she had resigned under pressure. The former lab technician, Serrita Mitchell, said any problems must have been someone else’s. “My work?” Ms. Mitchell said....

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Former Lab Technician Denies Faulty DNA Work in Rape Cases

A former New York City laboratory technician whose work on rape cases is now being scrutinized for serious mistakes said on Friday that she had been unaware there were problems in her work and, disputing an earlier report, denied she had resigned under pressure. The former lab technician, Serrita Mitchell, said any problems must have been someone else’s. “My work?” Ms. Mitchell said....

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Gadgetwise Blog: Project Basement: The Receiver

My search for a receiver is over.As I had said in a previous installment, buying a receiver used to be easy. You got the one that sounded best in your price range, period. Now, connections are the first concern — will you have enough HDMI slots for the next few years?That said, I couldn’t make the purchase based on connectors and specifications alone. This is, after all, audio equipment. How could...

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IHT Rendezvous: Hostages Caught Up in France's African Intervention

LONDON — The widespread satisfaction expressed in France at the government’s decision to intervene militarily against Islamic militants in Mali was tempered on Saturday by news of a failed overnight French hostage rescue mission on the other side of Africa.After reports emerged from Somalia of a helicopter-borne commando raid in the south of the country, Jean-Yves Le Drian, the French defense minister...

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DealBook: Wells Fargo Profit Jumps 24% in Fourth Quarter, Driven by Mortgages

8:46 a.m. | Updated Wells Fargo on Friday reported $5.1 billion in profit for the fourth quarter, a 24 percent increase, driven by the bank’s lucrative mortgage business.Seizing on low-interest rates that have spurred a flurry of refinancing activity, the San Francisco-based bank again notched record profits. For the last 12 quarters, profits at the bank have increased.In this latest quarter, Wells...

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The New Old Age Blog: Taking a Zen Approach to Caregiving

You try to help your elderly father. Irritated and defensive, he snaps at you instead of going along with your suggestion. And you think “this is so unfair” and feel a rising tide of anger.How to handle situations like this, which arise often and create so much angst for caregivers?Jennifer Block finds the answer in what she calls “contemplative caregiving” — the application of Buddhist principles...

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The New Old Age Blog: Taking a Zen Approach to Caregiving

You try to help your elderly father. Irritated and defensive, he snaps at you instead of going along with your suggestion. And you think “this is so unfair” and feel a rising tide of anger.How to handle situations like this, which arise often and create so much angst for caregivers?Jennifer Block finds the answer in what she calls “contemplative caregiving” — the application of Buddhist principles...

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Visit by Google Chairman May Benefit North Korea

BEIJING — As a work of propaganda, the images that North Korea circulated this week showing Google’s executive chairman, Eric E. Schmidt, touring a high-tech incubation center are hard to beat. Adrian Bradshaw/European Pressphoto AgencyEric E. Schmidt, Google’s executive chairman, at left wearing a tie, and former Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico spoke to reporters in Beijing on Thursday...

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IHT Rendezvous: Top Pirate Quits as Tide Turns Against Somali Raiders

LONDON — A notorious Somali sea raider known as Big Mouth is a pirate with a retirement plan.He announced this week that he was quitting after an eight-year career in which he and his pirate crews plagued shipping in the Indian Ocean and raised millions of dollars in ransom.Big Mouth — Mohamed Abdi Hassan — was named in a United Nations report last year as one of the most notorious and influential...

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Obama’s Pick for Treasury Is Said to Be His Chief of Staff

WASHINGTON — With his choice of Jacob J. Lew to be the secretary of Treasury, President Obama on Thursday will complete the transformation of his economic team from the big-name economists and financial firefighters hired four years ago to budget negotiators ready for the next fiscal fights in Congress. If confirmed by the Senate, the 57-year-old Mr. Lew — Mr. Obama’s current chief of staff...

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Flu Widespread, Leading a Range of Winter’s Ills

It is not your imagination — more people you know are sick this winter, even people who have had flu shots. The country is in the grip of three emerging flu or flulike epidemics: an early start to the annual flu season with an unusually aggressive virus, a surge in a new type of norovirus, and the worst whooping cough outbreak in 60 years. And these are all developing amid the normal winter...

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Flu Widespread, Leading a Range of Winter’s Ills

It is not your imagination — more people you know are sick this winter, even people who have had flu shots. The country is in the grip of three emerging flu or flulike epidemics: an early start to the annual flu season with an unusually aggressive virus, a surge in a new type of norovirus, and the worst whooping cough outbreak in 60 years. And these are all developing amid the normal winter...

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Nokia Has Better-Than-Expected Quarter

HELSINKI (Reuters) - Finland's Nokia said its fourth-quarter results were better than expected and that the mobile phone business achieved underlying profitability, a rare spot of good news for the struggling handset maker. Quarterly net sales in devices and services was about 3.9 billion euros ($5.09 billion). It sold a total of 86.3 million devices. Smartphones accounted for 6.6 million...

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Chinese Firm Buys an American Solar Technology Start-Up

Alexander F. Yuan/Associated PressThe chief of MiaSolé, John Carrington, left, at the announcement of the company’s purchase by Hanergy Holding Group, for which Zhou Jiesan is an executive. Just a few years ago, Silicon Valley investors were pouring money into solar technologies and talking about how they would bring the same kind of innovation to green energy that they had to the computer chip. ...

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DealBook: Ping An Shares Fall for 2nd Straight Day

SHANGHAI – Shares in the Ping An Group, the Chinese insurance and banking giant, fell in Shanghai trading for the second consecutive day on Wednesday over concerns that the British bank HSBC was having trouble selling its 15.6 percent stake in the company.HSBC had announced plans in December to sell a $9.4 billion stake in Ping An to the Charoen Pokphand Group of Thailand. Part of that sale has already...

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Recipes for Health: Cauliflower and Tuna Salad — Recipes for Health

Andrew Scrivani for The New York TimesI have added tuna to a classic Italian antipasto of cauliflower and capers dressed with vinegar and olive oil. For the best results give the cauliflower lots of time to marinate. 1 large or 2 small or medium cauliflowers, broken into small florets 1 5-ounce can water-packed light (not albacore) tuna, drained 1 plump garlic clove, minced...

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Recipes for Health: Cauliflower and Tuna Salad — Recipes for Health

Andrew Scrivani for The New York TimesI have added tuna to a classic Italian antipasto of cauliflower and capers dressed with vinegar and olive oil. For the best results give the cauliflower lots of time to marinate. 1 large or 2 small or medium cauliflowers, broken into small florets 1 5-ounce can water-packed light (not albacore) tuna, drained 1 plump garlic clove, minced...

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Online Banking Attacks Were Work of Iran, U.S. Officials Say

SAN FRANCISCO — The attackers hit one American bank after the next. As in so many previous attacks, dozens of online banking sites slowed, hiccupped or ground to a halt before recovering several minutes later. Daniel Rosenbaum for The New York TimesJames A. Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington believes that recent online attacks on American banks have...

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As Asian-Americans’ Numbers Grow, So Does Their Philanthropy

About 800 people gathered in November in a ballroom in Midtown Manhattan for one of the year’s more elegant galas. They dined on beef tenderloin with truffle butter, bid on ski and golf vacations in a charity auction, and gave more than $1 million to a nonprofit group based in New York. But this was not an old-money event. The donors were largely Korean immigrants and their children. ...

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