Jerry Brown, California Democrats appear to be big winners in election

Gov. Jerry Brown’s $6-billion-a-year tax initiative to rescue California schools and the state's finances appeared to squeak...

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SparkTruck's Surprise Lesson: Using Design Skills to Build Kids' Character

When Eugene Korsunskiy and seven of his fellow students from Stanford University’s d.school set out to tour the nation in a brightly painted truck full of laser cutters and rapid prototyping machines, they thought they were bringing a chance to play with high-tech maker tools to school kids who hadn’t had one yet.And they were: SparkTruck, the educational make-mobile, made 73 stops this summer,...

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CBS’s ‘Elementary’ gets prized post-Super Bowl slot

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – CBS’s freshman Sherlock Holmes drama “Elementary” will get a big boost in February, when it airs following Super Bowl XLVII, the network said Monday.The series, which stars Jonny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu, delivers a modern-day take on the Sherlock Holmes saga, with both the detective and his sidekick Watson living in contemporary...

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Alarm Over India’s Dengue Fever Epidemic

Enrico Fabian for The New York TimesA man at the Yamuna River, an ideal breeding ground for mosquitoes. Filthy standing water abounds in New Delhi. More Photos »NEW DELHI — An epidemic of dengue fever in India is fostering a growing sense of alarm even as government officials here have publicly refused to acknowledge the scope of a problem that experts say is threatening hundreds of millions of people,...

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Fiscal Impasse Leads to Caution After Election

Business leaders and investors on Wall Street reacted cautiously to President Obama’s re-election early Wednesday, warning that the focus would quickly shift from electoral politics to the looming fiscal uncertainty in Washington. Stocks opened sharply lower in New York, with the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index down 1.4 percent, while European shares drifted lower and Asian stocks were...

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Mothers from Central America search for missing kin in Mexico

SALTILLO, Mexico — The mothers knock on the doors of flophouses and morgues. They sift through pictures of prisoners and the...

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Simon Cowell Stamps His Sound on Sony's Top End

The concept of “personal music” has become so embedded in modern culture that we no longer even entertain the idea of not pocketing our music and piping it directly into our brains.For those of us minted prior to the iPod age, the Sony brand is synonymous with creating and laying that foundation with its Walkman line of portable players. Clearly, much has changed since the early ’80s, and...

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American composer Elliott Carter dies at age 103

(Reuters) – Classical composer Elliott Carter, who twice won Pulitzer Prizes in a career that spanned more than 75 years, died on Monday in New York at age 103, music publisher Boosey & Hawkes said.Carter was awarded Pulitzer Prizes in 1960 and 1973 for string quartet compositions. He composed 158 works, including several at over 100 years of age....

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New Drugs for Lipids Set Off Race

LOS ANGELES — A new class of powerful cholesterol-reducing drugs is showing promising results, potentially offering a new option for people who do not respond to medication now on the market, according to studies presented at a conference of heart specialists here on Monday. Although the final word on the effectiveness of the drugs is still a few years away, the results so far are so promising...

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Antwerp Journal: Antwerp’s Diamond Industry Facing Challenges

Colin Delfosse for The New York TimesIndian businessmen in the diamond district of Antwerp, Belgium. ANTWERP, Belgium — Step off the train here and you cannot miss the signs on the stores: Diamond World, Diamond Gallery, Diamond Creations or simply, Diamonds. Of late, there are the banners and posters reading simply, “Antwerp Loves Diamonds.” Though this Belgian port has had a love affair...

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