The Lede Blog: Bulgarian Politician Faces Off With Gunman During Televised Conference

A man climbed onstage and attempted to fire a gas pistol Saturday at the leader of the country’s ethnic Turkish political party while he was giving a speech at his party’s annual conference in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria.The gun misfired, according to a BBC report citing Bulgarian officials, and Ahmed Dogan, the leader of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, was not harmed. Video of the incident...

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Nintendo’s Wii U problems turn into a crisis

In just a week, the problems Nintendo’s (NTDOY) new home console is facing have cascaded into something sinister. The traditional post-New Year slump hit Nintendo’s home market in the week ending January 12 and exposed cruelly how weak the consumer interest in Wii U truly is. According to Famitsu, Wii U sales slumped from a pace of 70,000 per week to just 21,000. The ancient PlayStation 3 sold the...

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Fiery Orioles manager Earl Weaver dead at 82

BALTIMORE (AP) — Loved in Baltimore long after he ended his Hall of Fame career, Earl Weaver remained an Oriole to the end.The notoriously peppery Hall of Fame manager died at age 82 on a Caribbean cruise associated with the Orioles, his marketing agent said Saturday.The Duke of Earl, as he was affectionately known in Baltimore, took the Orioles to the World Series four times over 17 seasons but won...

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Personal Health: That Loving Feeling Takes a Lot of Work

When people fall in love and decide to marry, the expectation is nearly always that love and marriage and the happiness they bring will last; as the vows say, till death do us part. Only the most cynical among us would think, walking down the aisle, that if things don’t work out, “We can always split.”But the divorce rate in the United States is half the marriage rate, and that does not bode well...

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Boeing Closer to Answer on 787s, but Not to Getting Them Back in Air

Issei Kato/ReutersSafety inspectors looked over a 787 on Friday in Japan. The plane made an emergency landing after receiving a smoke alarm. With 787 Dreamliners grounded around the world, Boeing is scrambling to devise a technical fix that would allow the planes to fly again soon, even as investigators in the United States and Japan are trying to figure out what caused the plane’s lithium-ion batteries...

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As Rescue Operation Continues in Algeria, Fate of Hostages Remains Unclear

British Petroleum, via European Pressphoto AgencyThe remote In Amenas natural gas field in Algeria, the site of a terrorist attack and the taking of hostages on Wednesday. BAMAKO, Mali — Dozens of foreign hostages may still be held by Islamist extremists who have defied demands to surrender in a besieged Algerian gas-field complex, Algeria’s state-run news agency reported Friday, and the United States...

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With an air kiss or empty hug, Te’oing is Twitter craze

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Manti Te’o, the Notre Dame linebacker entangled in a girlfriend hoax that gives a whole new meaning to the term “air kiss,” is inspiring a new fad racing through social media: Te’oing.An avalanche of pictures of people hugging empty chairs or puckering up to an otherwise empty room were posted to Twitter with the hashtag #Te’oing days after the college football star’s story about...

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Anti-doping officials say Armstrong must say more

For anti-doping officials, Lance Armstrong's admission of cheating was only a start. Now they want him to give details — lots of them — to clean up his sport.Armstrong's much-awaited confession to Oprah Winfrey made for riveting television, but if the disgraced cyclist wants to take things further, it will involve several long days in meetings with anti-doping officials who have very specific questions:...

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Flu Season ‘Worse Than Average,’ Officials Say

This year’s flu season is shaping up to be “worse than average and particularly bad for the elderly,” Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the nation’s top federal disease-control official, said Friday. But the season appears to have peaked, added Dr. Frieden, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with new cases declining over most of the nation except for the far West. ...

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Media Decoder Blog: John Geddes, Managing Editor, Is Leaving The New York Times

2:37 p.m. | Updated John M. Geddes, a managing editor for The New York Times for the last decade and one of the top three editors at the paper, has decided to leave the company. In a note sent to the newsroom staff on Friday afternoon, Mr. Geddes said he was accepting a buyout package and would depart in several months after helping with transition on the newspaper’s masthead.In his note, Mr. Geddes...

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Algeria Confirms Hostage Deaths in Rescue Raid

BAMAKO, Mali — Kidnappers and at least some of their hostages were killed on Thursday as Algerian forces assaulted a heavily armed group of Islamist extremists holding dozens of captives, including Americans and other foreigners, in a remote gas field facility in the Algerian desert, the Algerian government announced. Kjetil Alsvik/Statoil, via Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAn undated...

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Amazon holiday results to show sales tax impact

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Acting as a tax collector may have hurt Amazon.com, Inc’s holiday sales analysts and industry executives said, but they expect to know more when the internet retailer reports its fourth-quarter results on January 29.Best Buy Co., an archrival of Amazon in consumer electronics, saw holiday online sales increase in three states where Amazon started collecting sales tax ahead...

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Brandt: Manti Te'o's draft stock could plummet

NFL draft consultant Gil Brandt believes the uncertainty surrounding Manti Te'o could affect when he is selected in April by a team.Brandt called the story that Notre Dame's All-American linebacker was involved in a hoax "something I have never witnessed" in his half-century in pro football."I think some teams will say it isn't worth the problem" to draft Te'o, said Brandt, who has the linebacker...

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Well: Life, Interrupted: Brotherly Love

Life, InterruptedSuleika Jaouad writes about her experiences as a young adult with cancer.There are a lot of things about having cancer in your 20s that feel absurd. One of those instances was when I found myself calling my brother Adam on Skype while he was studying abroad in Argentina to tell him that I had just been diagnosed with leukemia and that — no pressure — he was my only hope for a cure.Today,...

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With Debt to Sell, Troubled Euro Nations Find Willing Buyers

MADRID — January is turning out to be a bumper month for Spain and some of the euro zone economies most in need of debt financing, with governments and companies flooding the market with bonds that have sold at significantly lower interest rates than just a few months ago. On Thursday, the Spanish Treasury sold €4.5 billion, or $5.9 billion, of debt, including bonds with a maturity of as...

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Deepening Crisis for the Dreamliner

Noboru Tomura/Asahi Shimbun, via Associated PressAn All Nippon Airways flight in Takamatsu, Japan, after an emergency landing on Wednesday. TOKYO — The two largest Japanese airlines said Wednesday that they would ground their fleets of Boeing 787 aircraft after one operated by All Nippon Airways made an emergency landing in western Japan. The latest episode elevates the safety concerns about...

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Facebook search to generate revenue, no rival to Google: analysts

(Reuters) – Facebook Inc’s new search tool has strong potential to generate revenue for the social networking company, though it is unlikely to challenge Google Inc as the world’s dominant search engine, Wall Street analysts said on Wednesday.Facebook’s “graph search” tool, rolled out on Tuesday, lets its more than 1 billion users trawl their network of friends to find everything from restaurants...

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Eagles get their man, hire Oregon's Chip Kelly

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — In the end, Chip Kelly chose the NFL, giving the Eagles their guy.Philadelphia hired Kelly on Wednesday, just 10 days after he decided to stay at Oregon. The 49-year-old Kelly, known as an offensive innovator, becomes the 21st coach in team history and replaces Andy Reid, who was fired on Dec. 31 after a 4-12 season.He'll be introduced at a news conference Thursday at 1:30 p.m....

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