Instagram Reversal Doesn’t Appease Everyone

Peter DaSilva for The New York TimesKevin Systrom, right, co-founder of Instagram, with employees in the company office in San Francisco last year. SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook may have quelled a full-scale rebellion by quickly dumping the contentious new terms of use for Instagram, its photo-sharing service. But even as the social network furiously backpedaled, some users said Friday they were carrying...

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Alabama to End Isolation of Inmates With H.I.V.

Jamie Martin/Associated PressThe H.I.V. ward of an Alabama women's prison in 2008. The state was ordered to stop segregating inmates with the virus. A federal judge on Friday ordered Alabama to stop isolating prisoners with H.I.V. Alabama is one of two states, along with South Carolina, where H.I.V.-positive inmates are housed in separate prisons, away from other inmates, in an attempt to...

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Alabama to End Isolation of Inmates With H.I.V.

Jamie Martin/Associated PressThe H.I.V. ward of an Alabama women's prison in 2008. The state was ordered to stop segregating inmates with the virus. A federal judge on Friday ordered Alabama to stop isolating prisoners with H.I.V. Alabama is one of two states, along with South Carolina, where H.I.V.-positive inmates are housed in separate prisons, away from other inmates, in an attempt to...

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Instagram Reversal Doesn’t Appease Everyone

Peter DaSilva for The New York TimesKevin Systrom, right, co-founder of Instagram, with employees in the company office in San Francisco last year. SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook may have quelled a full-scale rebellion by quickly dumping the contentious new terms of use for Instagram, its photo-sharing service. But even as the social network furiously backpedaled, some users said Friday they were carrying...

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Philippines Enacts Strong Penalties for Abductions

MANILA — The Philippines has enacted a law aimed at stopping the military and police officers from abducting people suspected of antigovernment activity, one of the ugly legacies of the country’s years of dictatorship. The law, which President Benigno S. Aquino III signed late Friday, makes the “arrest, detention, abduction or any other form of deprivation of liberty committed by agents of...

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Boehner Tax Plan in House Is Pulled, Lacking Votes

Brendan Hoffman for The New York TimesSpeaker John A. Boehner of Ohio leaving a meeting Thursday with fellow House Republicans on talks over the “fiscal cliff.” WASHINGTON — Speaker John A. Boehner’s effort to pass fallback legislation to avert a fiscal crisis in less than two weeks collapsed Thursday night in an embarrassing defeat after conservative Republicans refused to support legislation that...

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Stigma Fading, Marijuana Common in California

Jim Wilson/The New York TimesAt a San Francisco concert in 2010, marijuana use was general while signatures were collected for a measure to decriminalize it. LOS ANGELES — Let Colorado and Washington be the marijuana trailblazers. Let them struggle with the messy details of what it means to actually legalize the drug. Marijuana is, as a practical matter, already legal in much of California. ...

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Stigma Fading, Marijuana Common in California

Jim Wilson/The New York TimesAt a San Francisco concert in 2010, marijuana use was general while signatures were collected for a measure to decriminalize it. LOS ANGELES — Let Colorado and Washington be the marijuana trailblazers. Let them struggle with the messy details of what it means to actually legalize the drug. Marijuana is, as a practical matter, already legal in much of California. ...

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U.S. Makes Arrest in Olympus Accounting Scandal

Federal agents arrested a former bank executive in Los Angeles on Thursday in connection with the accounting scandal that erupted last year at Olympus, the Japanese camera and medical equipment maker. Prosecutors in New York said that the executive, Chan Ming Fon, received more than $10 million from Olympus for assisting in its accounting fraud. The Federal Bureau of Investigation...

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Afghan Factions Hold Informal Talks Near Paris

PARIS — A year that began with hopes that the Taliban were ready to start talking peace is ending with a final initiative — informal talks outside Paris among Afghanistan’s competing factions, including militants — that, if anything, exemplifies how little progress has been made in 2012 toward opening negotiations to end the war. The talks, which began Thursday and are to last two days, have...

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Obama and Boehner Split on Fiscal Plan

Brendan Hoffman for The New York TimesSpeaker John A. Boehner delivered a cutting response to President Obama on Wednesday. WASHINGTON — Hopes for a broad deficit-reduction agreement faded on Wednesday as President Obama insisted he had offered Republicans “a fair deal” while Speaker John A. Boehner moved for a House vote as early as Thursday on a scaled-down plan to limit tax increases to yearly...

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The New Old Age Blog: After Storm, 'Friends' Rescue a Caregiver

Tales of Hurricane Sandy survival will likely emerge for years — particularly about the sick and elderly who were trapped in their homes or forced to evacuate under harrowing circumstances. Many of those stories have happy endings, like this one of social media and neighborliness I recently heard.It is about two ailing 90-year-olds who, because of social media, formal and informal, and the ingenuity...

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The New Old Age Blog: After Storm, 'Friends' Rescue a Caregiver

Tales of Hurricane Sandy survival will likely emerge for years — particularly about the sick and elderly who were trapped in their homes or forced to evacuate under harrowing circumstances. Many of those stories have happy endings, like this one of social media and neighborliness I recently heard.It is about two ailing 90-year-olds who, because of social media, formal and informal, and the ingenuity...

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Lebanon’s Shiites and Sunnis Fight in Syria, but Not at Home

Natalie Naccache for The New York TimesA Lebanese man who had been in Homs, Syria, fighting President Bashar al-Assad’s forces. ARSAL, Lebanon — The patchwork of Sunni Muslim and Shiite villages arrayed along the northern border with Syria are heavily embroiled in the protracted struggle there, but with a distinctive twist. Fighters from Hezbollah, the militant Lebanese Shiite movement, cross...

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DealBook: As Unit Pleads Guilty, UBS Pays $1.5 Billion Over Rate Rigging

UBS, the Swiss banking giant, announced a record settlement with global authorities on Wednesday, agreeing to a combined $1.5 billion in fines for its role in a multiyear scheme to manipulate interest rates.In a sign that officials are increasingly taking a hard line against financial wrongdoing, the Justice Department also secured a guilty plea from the bank’s Japanese subsidiary, sending a warning...

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The New Old Age Blog: Older People Become What They Think, Study Shows

All of us have beliefs — many of them subconscious, dating back to childhood — about what it means to get older. Psychologists call these “age stereotypes.” And, it turns out, they can have an important effect on seniors’ health.When stereotypes are negative — when seniors are convinced becoming old means becoming useless, helpless or devalued — they are less likely to seek preventive medical care...

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