India Ink: In Hyderabad, Anger and Frustration

Srinivas Mahesh, 28, was snacking outside his hostel near the Konark Theater in Dishknagar, his usual hangout in Hyderabad, when he heard a loud explosion Thursday evening. Not long after, he saw smoke filling up the air. Once he realized it was a bomb blast, instead of rushing back to his hostel he resolved to helping the injured.“I saw disfigured bodies for the first time in my life,” he said. He...

Read More..

Jessica Biel's Style Is 'More Confident' as a Married Woman, Says Her Stylist

Stylewatch Style News Now 02/22/2013 at 03:00 PM ET Gregory Pace/BEImagesJustin Timberlake has been getting lots of notice for his “Suit and Tie” style lately, but his new wife Jessica Biel has been making quite a fashionable impact herself these past few months.And her longtime stylist and friend Estee...

Read More..

FDA approves new targeted breast cancer drug

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration has approved a first-of-a-kind breast cancer medication that targets tumor cells while sparing healthy ones.The drug Kadcyla from Roche combines the established drug Herceptin with a powerful chemotherapy drug and a third chemical linking the medicines together. The chemical keeps the cocktail intact until it binds to a cancer cell, delivering a potent...

Read More..

Investors face another Washington deadline

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Investors face another Washington-imposed deadline on government spending cuts next week, but it's not generating the same level of fear as two months ago when the "fiscal cliff" loomed large. Investors in sectors most likely to be affected by the cuts, like defense, seem untroubled that the budget talks could send stocks tumbling. Talks on the U.S. budget...

Read More..

India Ink: Can Doordarshan’s New Look Attract Profits?

A Doordarshan newscast from the late 1990s.After it became the first TV channel in India in 1959, the public broadcaster Doordarshan enjoyed a monopoly on viewership for decades. Even after the government opened the airwaves to private players in 1992, Doordarshan enjoyed a 90 percent share of the audience in the 1990s and had no reason to take the threat of competition seriously.Twenty years later,...

Read More..

Josh Brolin & Diane Lane: Inside Their Up-and-Down Marriage

By Dahvi Shira 02/22/2013 at 07:30 AM EST Diane Lane and Josh Brolin Steve Granitz/Wireimage Josh Brolin and Diane Lane's eight-year marriage is ending in divorce, but the road wasn't always rocky for the occasionally tumultuous pair."We're very similar in that...

Read More..

Car Bomb in Damascus Kills Dozens, Opposition Says

Sana/European Pressphoto AgencyAn injured man was carried near the site of a car bomb explosion in Damascus on Thursday. In renewed violence reaching the center of the Syrian capital, a car bomb exploded in Damascus on Thursday near the headquarters of President Bashar al-Assad’s ruling party, killing more than two dozen people, mainly civilians and but also including security forces, according to...

Read More..

Dean Cain 'Not Surprised' By Mindy McCready's Death

By Sandra Sobieraj Westfall 02/21/2013 at 08:00 AM EST Mindy McCready and Dean Cain at the Scream 2 premiere Fred Prouser/Reuters/Landov Speaking out for the first time about his former fiancée's suicide, actor and writer-producer Dean Cain tells PEOPLE that Mindy...

Read More..

Adults get 11 percent of calories from fast food

ATLANTA (AP) — On an average day, U.S. adults get roughly 11 percent of their calories from fast food, a government study shows.That's down slightly from the 13 percent reported the last time the government tried to pin down how much of the American diet is coming from fast food. Eating fast food too frequently has been seen as a driver of America's obesity problem.For the research, about 11,000 adults...

Read More..

Wal-Mart holiday profit rises despite lackluster sales

(Reuters) - Wal-Mart Stores Inc posted a larger-than-expected rise in quarterly profit on Thursday, as a lower-than-anticipated tax rate helped to overcome some weakness in sales at its major Walmart U.S. unit that persisted into the beginning of February. The world's largest retailer also raised its dividend payout. Its shares fell 1 percent in premarket trading. Wal-Mart...

Read More..

Vladimir Pekhtin Resigns From Russian Parliament

MOSCOW — A senior lawmaker from Russia’s ruling party, who is also the chairman of Parliament’s ethics committee, resigned from the legislature on Wednesday after opposition bloggers revealed that he owned more than $1.3 million worth of luxury real estate in Florida, which he did not list on required disclosure forms. The lawmaker, Vladimir A. Pekhtin, said that he did not want the scandal...

Read More..

Robin Roberts Welcomed Back to GMA by the Obamas

By Stephen M. Silverman 02/20/2013 at 07:50 AM EST From left: Josh Elliott, Sam Champion, Robin Roberts, Lara Spencer, and George Stephanopoulos Heidi Gutman/ABC A standing ovation from her crew greeted Robin Roberts at the door of the ABC Times Square studio...

Read More..

Drug overdose deaths up for 11th consecutive year

CHICAGO (AP) — Drug overdose deaths rose for the 11th straight year, federal data show, and most of them were accidents involving addictive painkillers despite growing attention to risks from these medicines."The big picture is that this is a big problem that has gotten much worse quickly," said Dr. Thomas Frieden, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which gathered and analyzed...

Read More..

Stock futures flat with data, Fed minutes on tap

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stock index futures were little changed on Wednesday, ahead of data on the housing market and inflation, as well as minutes from the Federal Open Market Committee's January meeting. Housing starts and permits for January along with the January producer price index are due at 8:30 a.m. (1330 GMT). Economists in a Reuters survey forecast the housing starts...

Read More..

Pistorius Denies Murder in Killing of Girlfriend

PRETORIA, South Africa — Facing a charge of premeditated murder following the killing of his girlfriend, Oscar Pistorius, the double amputee track star and one of the world’s best-known athletes, flatly denied on Tuesday that he intended to take her life when he opened fire at a closed bathroom door at his home last week. “I fail to understand how I could be charged with murder, let alone...

Read More..

Oscar Pistorius Charge Upgraded to Premeditated Murder

Breaking News By Stephen M. Silverman 02/19/2013 at 07:20 AM EST Oscar Pistorius Antonie de Ras/Reuters/Landov Charges against Oscar Pistorius have been upgraded to premeditated murder, after the judge in Pretoria, South Africa, said during Tuesday's bail hearing...

Read More..

Hip implants a bit more likely to fail in women

CHICAGO (AP) — Hip replacements are slightly more likely to fail in women than in men, according to one of the largest studies of its kind in U.S. patients. The risk of the implants failing is low, but women were 29 percent more likely than men to need a repeat surgery within the first three years.The message for women considering hip replacement surgery remains unclear. It's not known which models...

Read More..

Stock futures edge higher after seven-week rally

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stock index futures edged higher on Tuesday, indicating the S&P 500 will build on its seven-week winning streak ahead of data on the housing market. * The S&P 500 <.spx> has risen for seven straight weeks, its longest streak since January 2011, and is up 6.6 percent for the year. * The strong start to the year was fueled by legislators in...

Read More..

South African Leader Launches New Political Party

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Respected anti-apartheid activist Mamphela Ramphele launched a new political party on Monday to challenge South Africa's ruling ANC, saying self-interested and corrupt leaders were threatening the continent's biggest economy. Invoking the spirit of Nelson Mandela and the optimism that prevailed at South Africa's first all-race elections in 1994, Ramphele said the...

Read More..

Photo Fun at the Oscar Nominees Luncheon

Jessica Chastain, Hugh Jackman, Denzel Washington and more pull their best poses at PEOPLE's exclusive photo shoot Credit: Larry Busacca/Getty for People.com Updated: Tuesday Feb 05, 2013 | 01:30 PM EST By: Alison Schwartz Subscribe Now ...

Read More..

Study: Better TV might improve kids' behavior

SEATTLE (AP) — Teaching parents to switch channels from violent shows to educational TV can improve preschoolers' behavior, even without getting them to watch less, a study found.The results were modest and faded over time, but may hold promise for finding ways to help young children avoid aggressive, violent behavior, the study authors and other doctors said."It's not just about turning off the television....

Read More..

Euro, dollar up after G20, stocks ease on growth concern

LONDON (Reuters) - The euro and the dollar rose against the yen on Monday after the G20 decided not to criticize Japan for its expansionist policies, but shares eased as Europe's weak growth outlook weighed on sentiment. Financial leaders from the world's 20 biggest economies promised on Saturday not to devalue their currencies to boost exports, aiming to defuse talk of currency wars...

Read More..

IHT Rendezvous: In Singapore's Immigration Debate, Sign of Asia's Slipping Middle Class?

BEIJING — Immigration is a hot-button issue nearly everywhere in the world, though the contours of the debate vary from place to place. In the United States, sweeping changes to the law may offer legal residency for millions of people who have entered the country illegally, my colleague Ashley Parker reports.Here in Asia, in the nation of Singapore, the debate looks somewhat different: The government...

Read More..

Beyoncé's Life Is But a Dream: The Best Moments

TV Watch By Aaron Parsley 02/16/2013 at 11:05 PM EST I am ... still singing!Beyoncé's HBO documentary, Life Is But a Dream, aired Saturday night and it was a 90-minute whirlwind of music, dance and emotion. And though the singer, 31, has been everywhere recently (the Inauguration, the Super Bowl halftime show,...

Read More..

UN warns risk of hepatitis E in S. Sudan grows

GENEVA (AP) — The United Nations says an outbreak of hepatitis E has killed 111 refugees in camps in South Sudan since July, and has become endemic in the region.U.N. refugee agency spokesman Adrian Edwards says the influx of people to the camps from neighboring Sudan is believed to be one of the factors in the rapid spread of the contagious, life-threatening inflammatory viral disease of the liver.Edwards...

Read More..