By Andrew Jacobs CHENGDU, China » It was, at first glance, a rather modest initial public offering by a small Chinese company seeking to expand production of the key ingredient used in traditional remedies said to shrink gallstones, reduce fevers and sooth the aftereffects of excessive drinking.
By Scott Shane WASHINGTON » President Barack Obama embraced drone strikes in his first term, and the targeted killing of suspected terrorists has come to define his presidency.
By Leslie Kaufman The wheels of justice move slowly sometimes, but not, apparently, as slowly as Webster's New World Dictionary. Slang has always been a challenge for the courts in cases that involve vulgar or insulting language. Conventional dictionaries lag the spoken word by design.
By Fernanda Santos and Rebekah Zemansky TUCSON, Ariz. » In the Pima County Medical Examiner's Office here — repository of the nation's largest collection of missing-person reports for immigrants who vanished crossing the United States-Mexico border — 774 sets of remains awaited identification in mid-May, stored in musty body bags coated in dust.
By MICHAEL CIEPLY LOS ANGELES — Film counts are down. Production is going elsewhere. And yet big Hollywood studios are planning to expand.
By JOE COCHRANE JAKARTA, Indonesia — Tree-lined Cendana street in an upscale neighborhood in central Jakarta has not changed much in recent decades, save for the demolition of a few Dutch colonial homes in favor of modernist villas.
By DECLAN WALSH RUK, Pakistan — Resplendent in his gleaming white uniform and peaked cap, jacket buttons tugging his plump girth, the stationmaster stood at the platform, waiting for a train that would never come. "Cutbacks," Nisar Ahmed Abro said with a resigned shrug.
By CHARLES V. BAGLI NEW YORK — Only 10 floors have been completed in what is intended to be the tallest residential building in the Western Hemisphere — a slender, 84-story tower on Park Avenue at 56th Street in Manhattan.
By MARK LANDLER and MICHAEL D. SHEAR President Barack Obama, struggling to find his footing after one of his most turbulent weeks in office, will try to push past the moment's political furor with a focus on the few pieces of legislation he believes have a chance in Congress and on executive actions that do not require Republican approval.
By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM, JAMES GLANZ and RANDY KENNEDY The all-night games were held in rarefied settings like a suite at the Plaza Hotel. One pink chip was worth $25,000. Masseuses were on hand to help relieve the tension, while the players were fueled by food and drink. And the stakes climbed into the stratosphere, with as much as $2 million on the table to be lost or won.
By DAVID W. DUNLAP The wreckage had not been cleared from ground zero when planners and neighbors began imagining how the devastation of 9/11 could be redeemed — in some way — by a new World Trade Center, one that would be fully joined to the rest of Lower Manhattan rather than standing apart in chilling isolation.
By BEN HUBBARD The black flag of jihad flies over much of northern Syria. In the center of the country, pro-government militias and Hezbollah fighters battle those who threaten their communities. In the northeast, the Kurds have effectively carved out an autonomous zone.
By JAMES DAO and ANDREW W. LEHREN After Spc. Freddy Hook, a medic with the Army's 82nd Airborne Division, killed himself in 2010, the trail of possible causes seemed long.
"If I had a dollar every time they asked me for the next Honey Boo Boo Child," said James Bearb, a Louisiana native and the president of Hollywood South Casting, "I swear I would be the next millionaire."
By JOHN SCHWARTZ Mauney, 42, lives in an apartment tower in this city's Uptown neighborhood, a pedestrian-friendly quarter with new office buildings, sparkling museums and ambitious restaurants. He so seldom needs to drive that when he does go to retrieve his car in his building's garage, he said, "I always forget where I parked it."
By THOM SHANKER One day this month, a pair of Russian Mi-17 assault helicopters delivered two teams of Afghan commandos, their faces obscured by black masks, in a touch-and-go landing at this camp in a lush valley encircled by frosty peaks about 50 miles from Kabul, Afghanistan.