Jan
07

Ten banks to pay $8.5 billion to settle foreclosure abuse review

WASHINGTON -- Ten of the nation's largest mortgage servicers have agreed to an $8.5-billion settlement with federal regulators...
Read More..

Why Nvidia's New Console Portends a Transformational Year for Gaming

For videogames, 2013 will be the year of the hardware avalanche. It’ll happen all of a sudden and almost surely cause catastrophic, unpredictable change.Today at the Consumer Electronics Show, PC hardware maker Nvidia announced its entry into the gaming console market with Shield. It’s based on Android and looks like a smartphone glued to an Xbox controller. Not only will it play Android games,...
Read More..

Letterman says he sees psychiatrist weekly

PASADENA, Calif. (AP) — David Letterman says he sees a psychiatrist once a week, part of his attempt to be the person he once believed he was.The late-night talk show host gave an extraordinary interview to Oprah Winfrey in which he talked about his feuds with her and Jay Leno, and his own effort to make amends for the affairs that became public three years ago when a man tried to extort him.The interview...
Read More..

When the Plague Came to New York

Jakob Schiller for The New York TimesSurvivors Lucinda Marker and John Tull at home a decade after having the plague. It was November 2002, little more than a year after planes had been flown into the World Trade Center and anthrax mailings had killed five Americans. New York City was still in a state of high alert for suspected terrorists. Suddenly all eyes were on a middle-aged married...
Read More..

U.S. to Require Electric Cars to Make Noise

DETROIT (AP) — A government safety agency wants electric and hybrid vehicles to make more noise when traveling at low speeds so pedestrians can hear them coming. The cars and trucks, which are far quieter than conventional gasoline or diesel-powered vehicles, don't make enough noise at low speeds to warn walkers, bicyclists and the visually impaired, the National Highway Traffic Safety...
Read More..
Jan
06

A solution to La Jolla's smell problem proves elusive

LA JOLLA — There's a political stink rising in this seaside community, blown ashore from the rocks of La Jolla Cove, where myriad...
Read More..

Looney Gas and Lead Poisoning: A Short, Sad History

Author’s note: Most people don’t realize that we knew in the 1920s that leaded gasoline was extremely dangerous. And in light of a Mother Jones story this week that looks at the connection between leaded gasoline and crime rates in the United States, I thought it might be worth reviewing that history. The following is an updated version of an earlier post based on information from my book...
Read More..

‘Chainsaw 3-D’ carves out No. 1 debut with $23M

LOS ANGELES (AP) — It took Leatherface and his chainsaw to chase tiny hobbit Bilbo Baggins out of the top spot at the box office.Lionsgate‘s horror sequel “Texas Chainsaw 3-D” debuted at No. 1 with $ 23 million, according to studio estimates Sunday. The movie picks up where 1974′s “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” left off, with masked killer Leatherface on the loose again.Quentin Tarantino‘s revenge...
Read More..

Despite New Health Law, Some See Sharp Rise in Premiums

Health insurance companies across the country are seeking and winning double-digit increases in premiums for some customers, even though one of the biggest objectives of the Obama administration’s health care law was to stem the rapid rise in insurance costs for consumers. Bob Chamberlin/Los Angeles TimesDave Jones, the California insurance commissioner, said some insurance companies...
Read More..

Economic View: Pigovian Taxes May Offer Economic Hope

NO one enjoys paying taxes — and no politician relishes raising them. Yet some taxes actually make us better off, even apart from the revenue they provide for public services. Taxes on activities with harmful side effects are a case in point. Strongly favored even by many conservative Republican economists, these levies are known as Pigovian taxes, after the British economist Arthur C....
Read More..