Gadgetwise Blog: Protect Your iPhone With a Vision From Australia

Cygnett, an Australian maker of gadget accessories and cases, is strengthening its brand in the United States with a new line of slim-fit cases for the iPhone 5.Cygnett joined with some visionary artists for the line, called the Icon Art Series, to create some striking looks, including bright graffiti designs by Tats Cru, the Bronx-based muralists, and hypnotic birds by the Australian illustrator...

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U.S. Drone Strike Kills a Top Pakistani Militant

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — An American drone strike killed a top Pakistani militant commander in a northwestern tribal region, security officials said on Thursday. The death of Maulvi Nazir was seen as a serious blow to Taliban fighters who attack United States and allied forces in neighboring Afghanistan. The drone strike took place Wednesday night and targeted Mr. Nazir’s vehicle in the Angoor...

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Tech Giants, Learning the Ways of Washington, Brace for More Scrutiny

Mario Tama/Getty ImagesNadine Wolf demonstrated against online piracy legislation a year ago in New York. The measures were defeated. SAN FRANCISCO — Silicon Valley lobbied hard in Washington in 2012, and despite some friction with regulators, fared fairly well. In 2013, though, government scrutiny is likely to grow. And with this scrutiny will come even greater efforts by the tech industry to press...

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Scant Proof Is Found to Back Up Claims by Energy Drinks

Energy drinks are the fastest-growing part of the beverage industry, with sales in the United States reaching more than $10 billion in 2012 — more than Americans spent on iced tea or sports beverages like Gatorade. Their rising popularity represents a generational shift in what people drink, and reflects a successful campaign to convince consumers, particularly teenagers, that the drinks...

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Scant Proof Is Found to Back Up Claims by Energy Drinks

Energy drinks are the fastest-growing part of the beverage industry, with sales in the United States reaching more than $10 billion in 2012 — more than Americans spent on iced tea or sports beverages like Gatorade. Their rising popularity represents a generational shift in what people drink, and reflects a successful campaign to convince consumers, particularly teenagers, that the drinks...

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Gadgetwise Blog: Paper For The Paperless Revolution

It may appear that apps like Evernote are intended to cut down on your use of paper. After all, they let you jot notes, store webpages and contact information, while making all of that data electronically searchable on computers, phones and tablets.But you wouldn’t recognize them as part of the paperless revolution from the posh notebooks that are being manufactured specifically with such apps in...

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IHT Rendezvous: Hoping to End Decades-long Kurdish Conflict, Turkey Calls on Archenemy

LONDON — Turkish intelligence agents have been making the short hop from Istanbul across the Sea of Marmara to the prison Island of Imrali in recent weeks for talks with a jailed Kurdish separatist leader who was once Turkey’s most wanted man.Abdullah Ocalan, founder of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, the P.K.K., has been languishing on Imrali since he was captured in Nairobi, Kenya in 1999 while on...

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Senate Passes Tax Increases on Wealthy Americans

Jonathan Ernst/ReutersSenator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, departed early Tuesday after the vote. WASHINGTON — The Senate, in a pre-dawn vote two hours after the deadline passed to avert automatic tax increases, overwhelmingly approved legislation on Tuesday that would allow tax rates to rise only on affluent Americans while temporarily suspending sweeping, across-the-board spending cuts....

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Hispanic Pregnancies Fall in U.S. as Women Choose Smaller Families

ORLANDO, Fla. — Hispanic women in the United States, who have generally had the highest fertility rates in the country, are choosing to have fewer children. Both immigrant and native-born Latinas had steeper birthrate declines from 2007 to 2010 than other groups, including non-Hispanic whites, blacks and Asians, a drop some demographers and sociologists attribute to changes in the views of many Hispanic...

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Hispanic Pregnancies Fall in U.S. as Women Choose Smaller Families

ORLANDO, Fla. — Hispanic women in the United States, who have generally had the highest fertility rates in the country, are choosing to have fewer children. Both immigrant and native-born Latinas had steeper birthrate declines from 2007 to 2010 than other groups, including non-Hispanic whites, blacks and Asians, a drop some demographers and sociologists attribute to changes in the views of many Hispanic...

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