DealBook: As Unit Pleads Guilty, R.B.S. to Pay $612 Million Over Rate Rigging

LONDON – The Royal Bank of Scotland on Wednesday struck a combined $612 million settlement with American and British authorities over accusations that it manipulated interest rates, the latest case to emerge from a broad international investigation.In an embarrassing blow to the bank, its Japanese subsidiary also pleaded guilty to criminal wrongdoing in its settlement with the Justice Department....

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Well: Getting Into Your Exercise Groove

Phys EdGretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness.This isn’t meant as an insult, but you are physiologically lazy. So am I. So are we all. Using treadmill testing, scientists have definitively established that, like other animals, humans naturally aim to use as little energy as possible during most movement. So when we walk or run, our bodies tend to choose a particular cadence, a combination of...

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Well: Getting Into Your Exercise Groove

Phys EdGretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness.This isn’t meant as an insult, but you are physiologically lazy. So am I. So are we all. Using treadmill testing, scientists have definitively established that, like other animals, humans naturally aim to use as little energy as possible during most movement. So when we walk or run, our bodies tend to choose a particular cadence, a combination of...

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Bits Blog: Most Facebook Users Have Taken a Break From the Site, Survey Finds

Facebook is the most popular social network in America — roughly two-thirds of adults in the country use it on a regular basis.But that doesn’t mean they don’t get sick of it.A new survey by the Pew Research Center‘s Internet and American Life Project, conducted in December, found that 61 percent of current Facebook users admitted that they had voluntarily taken breaks from the site, for as many...

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IHT Rendezvous: 'Rigoletto' in Vegas, 'Manon Lescaut' in the Metro

BRUSSELS—The day after the Metropolitan Opera in New York unveiled a production of Verdi’s “Rigoletto” set in Las Vegas during the 1960s, I was in Belgium, where another exercise in operatic updating is underway at the Théâtre royal de la Monnaie. Here, Mariusz Trelinski’s staging of Puccini’s “Manon Lescaut” — through Feb. 8 — situates the opera in the waiting room of a subway station.Opera goers...

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DealBook: $24 Billion Buyout for Dell, Biggest Since 2007

9:32 a.m. | Updated Dell announced on Tuesday that it had agreed to go private in a $24.4 billion deal led by its founder and the investment firm Silver Lake, in the biggest leveraged buyout since the financial crisis.Under the terms of the deal, the buyers’ consortium, which also includes Microsoft, will pay $13.65 a share in cash. That is roughly 25 percent above where Dell’s stock traded before...

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The New Old Age Blog: In Blended Families, Responsibility Blurs

Every year, Fran McDowell waited for the summer week when she would sing in a choral festival in the North Carolina mountains, then spend a few days in a lakeside cabin with close women friends.That getaway grew more complicated to arrange — but perhaps more necessary — after her husband, Herb Beadle, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. They had a “gloriously happy” marriage — her first, his second...

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The New Old Age Blog: In Blended Families, Responsibility Blurs

Every year, Fran McDowell waited for the summer week when she would sing in a choral festival in the North Carolina mountains, then spend a few days in a lakeside cabin with close women friends.That getaway grew more complicated to arrange — but perhaps more necessary — after her husband, Herb Beadle, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. They had a “gloriously happy” marriage — her first, his second...

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DealBook: $24 Billion Buyout for Dell, Biggest Since 2007

9:32 a.m. | Updated Dell announced on Tuesday that it had agreed to go private in a $24.4 billion deal led by its founder and the investment firm Silver Lake, in the biggest leveraged buyout since the financial crisis.Under the terms of the deal, the buyers’ consortium, which also includes Microsoft, will pay $13.65 a share in cash. That is roughly 25 percent above where Dell’s stock traded before...

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The Female Factor: In U.S., Outrage Over All the President's Men

WASHINGTON — It began before the inauguration, a persistent hiss emerging from feminists and organizations that keep track of what women are due. In no time, the hiss grew into a deafening buzz that nearly drowned out other big noises in this city. It all boiled down to one nagging question: Where are the women? President Barack Obama’s all-male, all-white nominations for the top jobs...

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