New Zealand Wants a Hollywood Put on Its Map

WELLINGTON, New Zealand — Standing by his desk in New Zealand’s distinctive round Parliament building, known locally as the Beehive, Prime Minister John Key proudly brandished an ornately engraved sword. It was used, he said, by Frodo Baggins, the protagonist of the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, and in the films it possesses magical powers that cause it to glow blue in the presence of goblins. ...

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Scientists See Advances in Deep Learning, a Part of Artificial Intelligence

Hao Zhang/The New York TimesA voice recognition program translated a speech given by Richard F. Rashid, Microsoft’s top scientist, into Mandarin Chinese. Using an artificial intelligence technique inspired by theories about how the brain recognizes patterns, technology companies are reporting startling gains in fields as diverse as computer vision, speech recognition and the identification of promising...

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Gadgetwise Blog: Having a Beer With a Smartphone

Drinking beer used to be simple. But the exploding popularity of craft beer over the past several years has changed that, giving beer drinkers a new world of possibilities — and a range of hard decisions. Predictably, the ever-expanding roster of oatmeal stouts and vanilla porters has been accompanied by the creation of dozens of beer-related apps. These include local guides to the best pints,...

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Roadside Bomb Kills at Least 7 in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A roadside bomb in northwestern Pakistan killed at least seven people early Saturday, including four children, police officials said, as the government struggled to control sectarian violence in the country. Militants targeted a procession of Shiite Muslims in Dera Ismail Khan, a town on the edge of the restive tribal region in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province. At least 30...

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The Lede Blog: Vignettes of Black Friday

With promotions, discounts and doorbusters already well under way on Thanksgiving Day itself, many big-box retailers are making Black Friday stretch longer than ever. The Lede is checking out the mood of American consumers in occasional vignettes Thursday and Friday as the economically critical holiday shopping season kicks o...

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Documents Show F.D.A.’s Failures in Meningitis Outbreak

Newly released documents add vivid detail to the emerging portrait of the Food and Drug Administration’s ineffective and halting efforts to regulate a Massachusetts company implicated in a national meningitis outbreak that has sickened nearly 500 people and killed 34. In the documents, released on Tuesday in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, the agency would threaten to bring...

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Documents Show F.D.A.’s Failures in Meningitis Outbreak

Newly released documents add vivid detail to the emerging portrait of the Food and Drug Administration’s ineffective and halting efforts to regulate a Massachusetts company implicated in a national meningitis outbreak that has sickened nearly 500 people and killed 34. In the documents, released on Tuesday in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, the agency would threaten to bring...

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Bits Blog: Amazon’s Diminishing Discounts

Is it just my imagination, or is the price of physical books on Amazon going up? I have no evidence beyond what I see as I browse through the retailer’s virtual shelves, where I have routinely been noticing books selling for the same price they cost in the rest of the world. Selling at full price is not the sort of value proposition that propelled Amazon to its current perch as one of the country’s...

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Military Analysis: For Israel, Gaza Conflict Is Test for an Iran Confrontation

Menahem Kahana/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAn Israeli missile is launched from a battery. Officials said their antimissile system shot down 88 percent of all assigned targets. WASHINGTON — The conflict that ended, for now, in a cease-fire between Hamas and Israel seemed like the latest episode in a periodic showdown. But there was a second, strategic agenda unfolding, according to American...

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Tool Kit: Online Shopping Tips for the Holidays

Some people may be looking forward to leaving Thanksgiving dinner before the pie is served to join the Black Friday rush, which will begin during dinnertime Thursday, earlier than ever, at stores like Sears, Walmart and Lord & Taylor. But for those who prefer to stay for the pie course, avoid the lines and freezing temperatures and shop from the comfort of their homes, there are just...

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Documents Show F.D.A.’s Failures in Meningitis Outbreak

Newly released documents add vivid detail to the emerging portrait of the Food and Drug Administration’s ineffective and halting efforts to regulate a Massachusetts company implicated in a national meningitis outbreak that has sickened nearly 500 people and killed 34. In the documents, released on Tuesday in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, the agency would threaten to bring...

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Recipes for Health: Apple Pear Strudel — Recipes for Health

Andrew Scrivani for The New York TimesThis strudel is made with phyllo dough. When I tested it the first time, I found that I had enough filling for two strudels. Rather than cut the amount of filling, I increased the number of strudels to 2, as this is a dessert you can assemble and keep, unbaked, in the freezer. Filling for 2 strudels: 1/2 pound mixed dried fruit, like raisins, currants,...

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H.P.’s Misstep Shows Risk in the Push for Big Ideas

When Hewlett-Packard spent roughly $10 billion on the software company Autonomy, it thought it was buying a slice of the future — investing in the hot trend of big data. But the deal turned out to be a debacle, and not only because H.P. wrote down $5 billion of the purchase. The ill-fated marriage of the companies is a lesson for H.P. and other older technology giants as they throw billions...

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Israel and Hamas Maintain Cease-Fire, After Push by the U.S. and Egypt

CAIRO — A cease-fire agreed to under intense Egyptian and American pressure between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas to halt eight days of bloody conflict seemed to be holding on Thursday, averting a full-scale Israeli ground invasion of the Gaza Strip without resolving the underlying disputes. With Israeli forces still massed on the Gaza border, a tentative calm in the fighting...

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Blue Laws Curb Consumerism Where Pilgrims Gave Thanks

Charlie Mahoney for The New York TimesThe annual Thanksgiving celebration in Plymouth, Mass., is held the weekend before the holiday, so as not to interfere. PLYMOUTH, Mass. — Here in the birthplace of Thanksgiving, where the Pilgrims first gave thanks in 1621 for their harvest and their survival, some residents are giving thanks this year for something else: the Colonial-era blue laws that prevent...

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Well’s Vegetarian Thanksgiving 2012

Every fall, Well goes vegetarian for Thanksgiving, taking the meaty bird off the table to make room for a spectacular array of vegetarian soups, sides, main courses, salads and desserts. So get ready to save a turkey and savor the flavors of the fall harvest.Every day until Thanksgiving, we will add more vegetarian recipes for your holiday table. Click on a photo to learn more about each reci...

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Well’s Vegetarian Thanksgiving 2012

Every fall, Well goes vegetarian for Thanksgiving, taking the meaty bird off the table to make room for a spectacular array of vegetarian soups, sides, main courses, salads and desserts. So get ready to save a turkey and savor the flavors of the fall harvest.Every day until Thanksgiving, we will add more vegetarian recipes for your holiday table. Click on a photo to learn more about each reci...

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For Web Images, Creating New Technology to Seek and Find

STANFORD, Calif. — You may think you can find almost anything on the Internet. But even as images and video rapidly come to dominate the Web, search engines can ordinarily find a given image only if the text entered by a searcher matches the text with which it was labeled. And the labels can be unreliable, unhelpful (“fuzzy” instead of “rabbit”) or simply nonexistent. To eliminate...

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Fighting Continues as U.S. Seeks Truce in Gaza

JERUSALEM — To a backdrop of airstrikes and mounting casualties, American efforts to negotiate a cease-fire in the latest Gaza fighting between Israel and Hamas continued on Wednesday but the struggle to achieve even a brief pause in the fighting emphasized the obstacles to finding any lasting solution. Israeli airstrikes overnight continued into Wednesday morning, hitting government buildings,...

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