Daily Briefing
Deep buzz for the content-deprived
Every weekday, while you get showered and dressed, we pluck these dewy- fresh, breaking stories from the info-clogged byways of the datasphere. Pour yourself a cup of coffee and stoke up on everything you need to know, or at least enough to fake it.
It was supposed to be the world's biggest traffic jam, the weekend that bumper-to-bumper gridlock would finally eat up Los Angeles.
In the end, though, what was called Carmageddon looked less like a Hollywood disaster movie and more like the Rapture, the moment of resurrection when Christian believers are "caught up" to heaven, leaving empty space and eerie silence for sinners left behind...
The United States was giving away $65 million in grants to build democracy, and Marwan Youness wanted in. But as the portly engineer scrolled through the application on a warm Cairo night, he began to worry.
“Oh, my God, there are a lot of things they need,” Youness told his business partner, Sherif Hossny, who was perched on the edge of his desk. Youness, 38, dragged on his cigarette, leaned toward the laptop and ran through the six pages of questions...
Britain’s top police official resigned on Sunday, the latest casualty of the phone-hacking scandal engulfing British public life, just hours after Rebekah Brooks, the former chief executive of Rupert Murdoch’s News International, was arrested on suspicion of illegally intercepting phone calls and bribing the police...
Two new studies released on Wednesday add to the growing body of evidence that taking a daily pill containing one or two AIDS drugs can keep an uninfected person from catching the fatal human immunodeficiency virus. The studies were the first to show protection in heterosexuals; the only earlier one with similarly encouraging results involved gay men...
Amazon, the world’s largest online merchant, has an ambitious and far-reaching new agenda: it wants to rewrite tax policy for the Internet era. Amazon said this week that it would push a voter initiative in California that could eliminate sales tax for virtual sellers with only a modest physical presence in the state. Its move instantly escalated the company’s long-running battle with many states over collecting sales tax...
For the U.S. women’s soccer team, the 2011 World Cup has been a series of triumphs over a number of obstacles, some their own making. On Wednesday, the problem came in the form of sloppy midfield play against a relentless French team that dominated possession after falling behind early. But, sparked in part by the 65th-minute entrance of substitute Megan Rapinoe, the Americans were able to repel France’s attack, and in the 79th minute, Abby Wambach struck again...
The obituaries for Betty Ford, who died Friday at the age of 93, were filled with colorful stories about an incongruous life: former Martha Graham dancer, dispenser of scandalous comments to the media, alcohol and drug addict. So colorful, in fact, that they may crowd out her historical importance — which may well have been greater than those of her husband, President Gerald R. Ford...
News of the World shuttered, consigliere Les Hinton and the BSkyB deal at risk -- can Rupert still prevail as he always has in the past?...
Just 48 hours before his premiere gun-fighting agency took a public flogging in Congress last month, Attorney General Eric Holder sent a memo that escaped much public notice but left federal prosecutors with an unmistakable message.
People who buy guns at U.S. shops with the intent of secretly transferring them to someone else–a tactic known as “straw buying” that is at the heart of Mexican border violence–should face new, stiffer prison sentences, Holder declared...
When the writer joined the social network three years ago, she used it to share random thoughts about TV and life. Since then, she has become a Twitter addict. In an extract from her new book, she explains what she loves -- and hates -- about it...
