Cuts to Achieve Goal for Deficit, but Toll Is High

WASHINGTON — The latest budget impasse ushered in a new round of austerity on Saturday, with the nation facing reduced federal services, canceled contracts, job furloughs and layoffs. But lost in the talk of Washington’s dysfunction is this fact: on paper at least, President Obama and Congress have reduced projected deficits by nearly $4 trillion over a decade — the widely embraced goal for...

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Bits Blog: Judge Slashes Jury Award in Apple-Samsung Case

7:30 p.m. | Updated A federal judge on Friday weakened the blow from Apple’s legal victory in a patent case against Samsung, lopping more than 40 percent off the damages a jury awarded last year.It was a mostly symbolic setback for Apple, one that did not shift the case — one of the most closely watched in the technology industry — in Samsung’s favor. While Apple has lost other skirmishes against...

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Army Private Admits Giving Military Files to WikiLeaks

Alex Wong/Getty ImagesPrivate Manning pleaded guilty to 10 criminal counts in connection with the leak to WikiLeaks. FORT MEADE, Md. — Pfc. Bradley Manning on Thursday confessed in open court to providing vast archives of military and diplomatic files to the antisecrecy group WikiLeaks, saying that he wanted the information to become public because more openness could “spark a debate about foreign...

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Senate, in a More Affable Mode, Backs Treasury Nominee

WASHINGTON – The Senate on Wednesday easily and, for the most part, affably confirmed President Obama’s pick for Treasury secretary, Jacob J. Lew, just one day after the president’s nominee for defense secretary narrowly survived a highly politicized confirmation vote. Little of the acrimony that held up the nomination of Chuck Hagel, the former Nebraska senator who began his first day...

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DealBook: Wall Street Pay Rises, for Those Who Still Have a Job

7:39 p.m. | Updated Wall Street may be shrinking — cutting thousands of jobs over the last year — but for those who remain, the pay is still very lucrative.The average cash bonus for those employed in the financial industry in New York last year rose roughly 9 percent, to $121,900, Thomas P. DiNapoli, New York State’s comptroller, said on Tuesday.Cash bonuses in total are forecast to increase by roughly...

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The Caucus: Michelle Obama Makes a Star Turn at the Oscars (via Satellite)

6:21 p.m. | Updated She may not have walked the red carpet, but Michelle Obama — all bangs and biceps and bling — had her own star turn during Sunday night’s Academy Awards ceremony, when she announced the winner for best picture via satellite from the White House.Barely moments after Mrs. Obama’s late night revelation  of the fate of the nominated best films, the question of whether it was proper...

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Last-Lap Crash in Nationwide Race Injures Fans

Chris Graythen/Getty ImagesKyle Larson, No. 32, was thrown into the fence after a crash with Brad Keselowski, driver of the No. 22 car, at Daytona International Speedway on Saturday. DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — As many as 28 spectators at Daytona International Speedway were injured Saturday when debris from a crash at the end of a Nascar Nationwide Series race flew into the stands. The exact number...

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In Niger, U.S. Troops Set Up Drone Base

WASHINGTON — Opening a new front in the drone wars against Al Qaeda and its affiliates, President Obama announced on Friday that about 100 American troops had been sent to Niger in West Africa to help set up a new base from which unarmed Predator aircraft would conduct surveillance in the region. The new drone base, located for now in the capital, Niamey, is an indication of the priority...

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15 G.O.P. Senators Urge Hagel’s Withdrawal as Democrats Push Toward Vote

WASHINGTON — A group of 15 Republican senators insisted on Thursday that President Obama withdraw the nomination of Chuck Hagel to be defense secretary, the latest move in a contentious battle to block the confirmation of their former colleague. But even as Republican senators tried to throw up another obstacle, Senate Democrats said they were pushing ahead with plans to hold a final...

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Sony Unveils PlayStation 4, Aiming for Return to Glory

For the Sony Corporation, a tech industry also-ran, the moment of reckoning is here. The first three generations of PlayStation sold more than 300 million units, pioneered a new style of serious gaming and produced hefty profits. PlayStation 4, introduced by Sony on Wednesday evening, is a bold bid to recapture those glory days of innovation and success. The first new PlayStation in...

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Pistorius Denies Murdering Girlfriend

PRETORIA, South Africa — Early on Feb. 14, Oscar Pistorius says, he heard a strange noise coming from inside his bathroom, climbed out of bed, grabbed his 9-millimeter pistol, hobbled on his stumps to the door and fired four shots. “I fail to understand how I could be charged with murder, let alone premeditated,” Mr. Pistorius said in an affidavit read Tuesday to a packed courtroom by his...

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Sidebar: Bucking Trend, Supreme Court Still Rejects Video Coverage

WASHINGTON — Justice Sonia Sotomayor, populist, revealed a paternalistic streak this month, announcing that she had rethought her enthusiasm for video coverage of Supreme Court arguments. At her confirmation hearings in 2009, she said she was in favor of letting citizens see their government at work. “I have had positive experiences with cameras,” she said. “When I have been asked to join...

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Protests at Egypt Port Close Offices, but Not Suez Canal

CAIRO — Thousands of demonstrators shut down the administrative buildings of the Suez Canal terminal in the city of Port Said on Sunday, as part of a general strike protesting the death sentences handed down three weeks ago to 21 local soccer fans for their roles in a deadly riot last year. The protests marked the closest that the chaos in Egypt over the last two years has come to threatening...

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N.B.A. Players Dismiss Union Leader

HOUSTON — Billy Hunter was fired as executive director of the N.B.A. players union Saturday, with a bold, decisive vote and a public rebuke. Twenty-four player representatives voted unanimously to terminate Hunter, ending his 16 ½-year tenure. The move was announced by the union president, Derek Fisher, who led the drive to oust Hunter over questionable business practices that have drawn...

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Incomes Flat in Recovery, but Not for the 1%

WASHINGTON — Incomes rose more than 11 percent for the top 1 percent of earners during the economic recovery, but barely at all for everybody else, according to new data. The numbers, produced by Emmanuel Saez, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, show overall income growing by just 1.7 percent over the period. But there was a wide gap between the top 1 percent, whose...

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DealBook: Buffett in $23 Billion Deal for Heinz, as Big Mergers Revive

10:12 a.m. | Updated Warren E. Buffett has found another American icon worth buying: H. J. Heinz.Berkshire Hathaway, the giant conglomerate that Mr. Buffett runs, said on Thursday that it would buy the food giant for about $23 billion, adding Heinz ketchup to its stable of prominent brands.The proposed acquisition, coming fast on the heels of a planned $24 billion buyout of the computer maker Dell...

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Media Decoder Blog: Time Warner in Talks to Spin Off Majority of Magazines

3:53 p.m. | Updated Time Warner is in early talks to shed much of Time Inc., the country’s largest magazine publisher and the foundation on which the $49 billion media conglomerate was founded, according to people involved in the negotiations.The company is currently in talks with the Meredith Corporation to put most of its magazines, including People, InStyle and Real Simple into a separate, publicly-traded...

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Ex-Officer Locked in Mountain Standoff With Police

LOS ANGELES — Law enforcement officials were locked in a standoff after a shootout outside a forest cabin on Tuesday afternoon with Christopher J. Dorner, the former Los Angeles police officer who is the target of the largest manhunt in Los Angeles Police Department history, officials said. Stan Lim/The Press-Enterprise, via Associated PressPolice officers manned a road block near Big...

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Tests of Some Deadly Diseases on Mice Mislead, Report Says

Evan McGlinn for The New York TimesDr. H. Shaw Warren is one of the authors of a new study that questions the use of laboratory mice as models for all human diseases. For decades, mice have been the species of choice in the study of human diseases. But now, researchers report evidence that the mouse model has been totally misleading for at least three major killers — sepsis, burns and trauma. As a...

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